Star Trek: 10 Greatest Captain Sisko Speeches

It's not that they don't give a damn, Doctor. It's that they've given up. The social problems they face seem too enormous to deal with.

Past Tense is a two-parter that was incredibly prescient when it aired, though as the years pass, it feels more and more timely. As this piece is written in 2024, we are mere months away from the supposed date of the Bell Riots, and the world seems even closer to the reality portrayed in these episodes than ever before.

The social problems that Sisko were speaking about - poverty, homelessness, mental health crises, the vast divide of the classes - have all only grown in the thirty years since this episode aired. Now, even more than when it was television, the apathy in society looks set to allow this dark prediction to come true. 

However, in true Trek fashion, Sisko took the unorthodox step of getting directly involved in past events. The episode, temporal prime directive aside, was an indictment not for violent revolution but for direct action and aid. What should have been an unimaginable future back then really does threaten to become reality now, with Star Trek: Picard's second season even revisiting this theme. 

If the problems seem too enormous to deal with, then they're problems that need to be shared. Perhaps this is a lofty Starfleet ideal, yet it still seems like a truly powerful message via his speech all these years later.