Which Moore-penned “Star Trek” episode most shows his love for “The Conscience of the King”? I’d say it’s “In The Pale Moonlight” from “Deep Space Nine.” (Moore did uncredited rewrites for the late Peter Allan Fields.) The episodes forces Captain Ben Sisko (Avery Books), who’ve we called the best “Trek” captain, to face a dilemma outstripping even Kirk’s.
“In The Pale Moonlight” is set knee-deep in the Dominion War, and the Federation is losing. So Sisko, conspiring with the former spy and current tailor Garak (Andrew Robinson), works to bring the Romulans into the war under false pretenses. Some bribery, forgery, and eventually a few murders later, it works, but Sisko is left to wonder if his conscience was too high a price to save the world.
The episode uses a framing device where Sisko is recording a data log about the episode’s events. Dramatically, it functions as a Shakespearean soliloquy (a character monologuing and asking questions to themself, and by extension the audience). Take this “Macbeth” passage where our lead tempers compulsion to murder King Duncan and claim his throne:
“Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?”
Brooks, a stage actor first and foremost, feels at home in these moments, especially the ending. In a particularly theatrical moment, Sisko stares straight ahead and decides “I can live with it” — because he’s going to have to. Kirk was wrestling with how to act, while Sisko had to accept what he’d already done.
I don’t know if Peter Allan Fields shared Moore’s love for “The Conscience of the King,” but one of his earlier episodes suggests he might’ve. Season 1’s “Duet” focuses on Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor). Kira is a Bajoran, a people who endured a brutal occupation by the neighboring Cardassians, and Kira was active in rebel cells during this occupation.
“Duet” features a Cardassian named Maritza (Harris Yulin) arriving on Deep Space Nine. Kira suspects that he is actually the war criminal Gul Darhe’el, who ran the Gallitep concentration camp during the Cardassian occupation and oversaw countless atrocities. Both “Duet” and “The Conscience of the King” are mysteries where the lead must confront a horrible part of their past and come face to face with, possibly, the individual responsible. While Kirk is unsure of how to act or what to believe, Kira wants Maritza to be the monster she thinks he is; the Cardassians must be punished and he’ll do as well as the next.
It’s episodes like these, where the characters wrestle with complicated problems and the actors playing them can give it their all, which show why “Star Trek” attracts writers of Ron Moore’s caliber.
