Roughly a year ago, a certain subset of Star Trek fans began to get really excited, because we were at long last coming up on the canonical date of the Bell Riots within the Star Trek universe.

Some context: in January of 1995, the TV show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine aired this fan-favorite, critically-acclaimed, two-part episode entitled “Past Tense I & II.” In it, the intrepid crew of the space-station Deep Space Nine make a rare trip home to Earth–headquarters of the utopian United Federation of Planets–when they suffer one of the many freak transporter accidents that litter the franchise. In this case, three members of the bridge-crew are accidentally beamed back in time to 2024 San Francisco, which is presented as a dystopian nightmare filled with widespread homelessness, massive income inequality, and draconian policies against the unhoused.

Although Star Treks’ futurism has always been shaky at best^[1]e.g. the 1990s never did feature a global Eugenics War against a race of genetically-engineered supermen led by Khan Noonien Singh., this particular prophecy turned out to be almost too on the nose.

The crew of Deep Space Nine specifically materialize on August 30th, 2024, the eve of the Bell Riots. The homeless in the Bay Area, you see, had all been forced into so-called “Sanctuary districts:” walled-off city-sectors that were initially intended to provide the poor with shelter and resources, but which for all intents and purposes have become glorified prison camps. Commander Sisko and Doctor Bashir are thrown into one such district after the cops find them on the sidewalk without photo ID (and it is no coincidence that it is the two characters of color who are targeted by police, while Jadzea Dax—an attractive white woman—is rescued from the streets by a wealthy tech bro). The timing is auspicious, because a major riot is about to break out in the San Francisco sanctuary district, wherein the impoverished denizens, under the impromptu leadership of a local black man named Gabriel Bell, storm the processing center and hold the state employees hostage.

In the ensuing standoff with the California Governor and National Guard, the rioters are allowed to broadcast their heart-breaking personal stories on national TV, thanks to the mediation of Gabriel Bell, who also ensures the hostages’ safety. Although the Governor ultimately renegs on further negotiations and sends in the National Guard to massacre the rioters–including Gabriel Bell himself–the broadcasts are enough to touch the hearts of their fellow citizens nationwide, and leads to real, substantive housing reform in 21st-century America.

These riots, in fact, turn out to be pivotal in the eventual creation of the Federation, which we learn when Gabriel Bell is accidentally killed while defending Sisko and Bashir from a desperate thief on August 31st; his death in turn causes the Federation to abruptly disappear back in the 24th century. In order to restore the timeline, Sisko must assume the identity of Gabriel Bell and lead the Bell riots himself on September 1st.

Our heroes of course succeed in restoring the Federation timeline by the end of the two-parter and get beamed back to the 24th century in the nick of time, just before they can be killed by the National Guard. The only difference this time around, is that all historical records of the Bell riots now show pictures of Commander Sisko’s face instead.

Yet though the two-parter had an unusually clear-eyed view of where America was headed even during the relative prosperity of the 1990s, it still remained achingly naive in its dogged utopianism.^[2]Those Trek fans who have long accused Deep Space Nine of being “too dark” and a betrayal of Gene Roddenberry’s hopeful vision, would do well to remember that all of that purported … Continue reading For not only did we not get any homeless riots in the actual September 2024, it’s not at all clear that such would’ve inspired any real housing reform even if we had.

Because we just had the George Floyd riots in 2020, remember–which also featured a black man murdered on TV–and not only did they fail to produce any substantive police reform or reckoning with race in America, but just four years later, we saw the re-election of an obvious white-supremacist who immediately went about dismantling what few token anti-racist policies we did manage to pass after Floyd’s death. Based on recent voting patterns, I have to assume that if we’d somehow gotten an actual Bell Riot around Labor Day of 2024, at least a third of America would have cheered on the massacre of the homeless and argued that Gabriel Bell deserved to die, as they had previously done with Floyd; another third would have just apathetically ignored the riots entirely; while only the remaining third would have agitated for reforms that would then get immediately overturned by the next administration anyways. We would still be no closer to the Federation—nor to achieving Zion, for that matter.

No, that, sadly, will require something more than our mortal efforts. To turn to the scriptures: It straight-up took a Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit to cause those 3,000 converts in Acts 2:44-45 to immediately begin living the United Order and Law of Consecration, and there’s precious little record (scriptural or otherwise) to indicate that this society ever survived the first century; the Lehites in 4 Nephi at least got two solid centuries of United Order, though that required the personal visitation of the resurrected Jesus Christ to accomplish, and it still collapsed catastrophically once all living memory of His visit vanished entirely; Joseph Smith, Jr., meanwhile, didn’t even get a full half-decade of United Order out of the Saints in Missouri due to internal dissensions, even before the Extermination Order made its demise a fait accompli; and of course the City of Enoch had to be taken away into heaven itself to save it from being corrupted again here on Earth.

These failures were not surprising: the inexorable tendency of almost all human beings, even those with the very best of intentions (and boy is there no guarantee of that), is towards selfishness, viciousness, and cruelty. These are the “natural man.” For these reasons, perhaps, the first principles of the Gospel–before even baptism and confirmation–are faith and repentance, because we must repent and change our natural man tendencies before we can change literally anything else.

Because here’s the thing: we will get the Federation! It’s a fundamental part of our faith and our eschatology. It may be called the United Order or the Law of Consecration or simply Zion, but per our 10th article of faith, it is coming. There’s no getting around it; it’s a matter of when, not if. The only question is whether we will each individually be qualified to live in it when it comes. Because next time, it will not be the poor who will be walled off from entering, for “the LORD hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall trust in it.”^[3]Isaiah 14:32; 2 Nephi 24:32 And it will come about after a latter-day destruction far more catastrophic than a mere riot.