Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review a key character from the Deep Space 9 two-part episode Past Tense, that being Biddle Coleridge or "BC."
We see BC when Ben Sisko and Julian Bashir are trapped in the past, specifically in the 2020s. In this version of our future on Earth, San Francisco is divided into several Sanctuary Districts, and BC is known as a ghost, one who terrorizes the residents of his District with violence and thievery. This is also the episode where Sisko's time travels lead him to meet Gabriel Bell, a key player in the history of the America of Starfleet's past and our future.
Bell helps Sisko and Bashir when BC attack them to steal their food ration cards, but BC ends up killing Bell. The rest of the Defiant crew still in the future gets to observe the changes that Bell's untimely death causes, as there is no Starfleet and the Romulans take over the Alpha Quadrant. All because this punk BC lives the life of crime.
Sisko realizes the importance of this historical figure being killed, so he poses as Bell and later teams up with BC during riots in the Districts that would later become known as the Bell riots. BC attacks and takes control of the processing center, taking some hostages, and Sisko playing as Bell keeps him from killing the hostages while BC negotiates for his escape from the Sanctuary District.
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Bell also convinces BC to demand the end of the Sanctuary Districts altogether, and Sisko basically replaces the role that Gabriel Bell played in the original historical timeline. The government ends up storming the processing center to free the hostages, and BC is killed in this fight. However, the messages BC and Sisko were able to send to the free world and the lack of harm to the hostages eventually led to the end of those Sanctuary Districts.
The Biddle Coleridge character goes by BC as a nod to DS9 assistant director B.C. Cameron. And while it doesn't look like America will be divided into Sanctuary Districts in the next 4 years, this dark alternative future unfortunately evokes some of the tensions in our society today, and with a few different leaders or decisions, maybe we would've ended up there.
BC was played by Frank Military, who has done more as a show writer than an actor during his career. He was one of the lead writers for the shows Miami Vice and NCIS, and he's appeared in small roles on Miami Vice and CSI during his time as a writer.
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