Picard Just Tied Into DS9's Bell Riots (But Jean-Luc Won't Meet Sisko)
Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard Season 2, Episode 3 — «Assimilation»
Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) time-traveling to 2024 in Star Trek: Picard season 2 ties into the infamous Bell Riots on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, although Picard won't encounter Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks). Thanks to Q (John de Lancie) causing a divergence in the timeline, Star Trek history has been rewritten and the authoritarian and xenophobic Confederation of Earth rose instead of the United Federation of Planets. Picard and his motley crew have to travel back to 2024 to set the timeline right, which curiously brushes up against a well-known time travel story from DS9.
The Bell Riots were seen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 3. In the two-part episode, «Past Tense,» Sisko, Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig), and Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) were sent to 2024 as a result of a transporter accident. They landed in San Francisco, where Sisko and Bashir, who had no identification in the 21st century, were sent to Sanctuary District A, a walled-off area where thousands of the city's homeless and unemployed were banished. After a violent altercation, a man named Gabriel Bell (John Lendale Bennett) was killed. Bell is pivotal to Star Trek history for leading a protest against the Sanctuary Districts during one of the most violent civil disturbances in American history. Sisko had no choice but to impersonate Bell and perform his role to ensure the timeline wouldn't be violated. Even after Sisko, Bashir, and Dax returned to the 24th century, it's Benjamin's image that history records as «Gabriel Bell» during the Bell Riots of September 2024, which finally prompted the United States to deal with his homelessness problem.
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