The Politics of Star Trek

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Star Trek Into Darkness , the number one movie in America, is rife with political resonance. Political scientists have taken to analyzing popular cultural entertainment, and Star Trek, in its classic and current incarnations, is perhaps the most fertile ground of all for this. It was always deeply political. The original s television series reflected cold war tensions, featuring border strife between the idealistic good guys and other belligerent, mysterious superpowers.

This was married to an uplifting vision of a future of gender and racial equality, an absence of avarice, and a military with a primary mission of exploration and peacekeeping. The central governance structure, the Federation, was an interstellar United Nations. Member planets made collaborative decisions, were accorded absolute equality, and pooled their resources in pursuit of collective security and cultural exchange rather than plundering conquest. Later movie versions continued this idea-driven focus, dealing with weapons of mass destruction , the strange human lust for damaging our habitat , religious fanaticism , and the end of the cold war.

Although these new Star Trek movies — this is the second in the series directed by JJ Abrams — have altered the ratio of ideas to action in favor of the latter, there is a lot to think about in Into Darkness.

A Relativist Utopia?: The Politics of Star Trek: The Next Generation

I will not seek primarily to evaluate the merits of the film — with apologies to Leonard McCoy, I am a doctor, not a movie critic — but instead focus on political themes that deserve our attention. Those yet to see the movie and who wish to do so without knowing plot points will want to postpone reading any further.

The movie opens with a sequence exploring the most politically relevant idea in the Star Trek universe: This sacred covenant of the Federation — it is Star Fleet General Order 1 — prohibits interference in the internal affairs of less advanced civilizations. The Prime Directive engages classic political issues of imperialism, colonialism, and development.

It is a deeply idealistic principle — self-determination of peoples regardless of their material capacity — that is often compromised in Star Trek and in our own world. Foreign policy realists have constantly cautioned idealists that universal principles, divorced from concrete situations, are likely to be untenable and may do more harm than good.

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In Into Darkness , the crew faces a choice between allowing a devastating natural catastrophe that will result in the death of the native inhabitants of a planet, or preventing it by making the pre-industrial population aware of technology that can only appear God-like, thus upending their culture and changing the trajectory of their development. Mildly entertaining, but most Star Trek fans will realize that the author is way off-base on a number of topics.

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Writing style is pretentious and much of the subtext is poorly defended and seems to be the author grasping at straws. An interesting and curious library read but anyone genuinely interested in politics or a fan of Star Trek will wince while reading. Jul 10, Martina rated it liked it. This book had its heart in the right place, but the realization was poor. A lot of repetition of information and unfocused way of structuring and leading the "story" made it a poor read.

Still, it contains certain useful and interesting information about the Star Trek franchise and would benefit from a heavily revised edition. Oct 17, Mills College Library added it. Mauricio Santoro rated it liked it Apr 26, Bob rated it liked it Jan 07, Nick Ronzi marked it as to-read Oct 28, Rebecca Xu marked it as to-read Oct 29, Katbyrdie marked it as to-read Oct 30, Jessica Xiong marked it as to-read Jan 15, Will marked it as to-read Jan 27, Whether or not Bloom, et al. To the extent that relativism offered a dividing line between left and right, Star Trek: The Next Generation was clearly on the left.

In championing the new form that liberal values were now taking, however, it sometimes found itself at odds with its predecessor series. The clearest example of this new direction involves stories that featured the Prime Directive.

In the earlier series, this was typically justified by some reference to the human need for self-determination in order to flourish. When he did so, however, he justified his actions by some standard of self-determination which he believed to be objective.

That is, if Kirk believed that interfering would make people more free rather than less, he would interfere. His attitude on these matters, then, reflected a form of the traditional liberal humanism that one might associate with Locke or Rousseau. That is the essential conflict in the liberal humanist project, one which can embody a healthy and creative tension. But by the time of TNG this tension had been resolved so that the ideal of non-interference simply no longer referred to humanistic flourishing. Instead, it was about cultural integrity. As a result, the Prime Directive embodied a commitment to cultural sensitivity rather than to liberty.

The fundamental values of the Federation were no longer rooted in the liberal humanistic claim that every people has its own right to self-determination and autonomy. Instead, they were now based on the claim that there is no Archimedean point from which to make value judgments. The latter planet owes its entire economy to the production of an addictive drug for the former. Crusher discovers they have not had the disease in generations, and now the drug only saves them from the effects of the withdrawal symptoms.

Crusher claims that this is a case of exploitation of one group by another. Timicin is a scientist, the one who is closest to the solution to the problems that plague his planet. Unfortunately, Timicin turns 60 in a few days, and his people undergo a ritual suicide as they reach that age. After trying, and failing, to convince Timicin to abandon his culture by refusing to participate in the ritual called the Resolution , Lwaxana and Deanna are discussing the situation.

This somewhat cloying observation is tossed around as though it trumps any possible moral position. This is because, from a relativist perspective, it does. During the repair, two Mintakans see the duck blind. In the process of investigating it, one accidentally hurts himself quite badly. Crusher brings him up to the ship for medical care, and Picard is not happy about it. It was either bring him aboard or let him die.

But the show does not take a consistent relativist line. For any transgression, however, the penalty is death.

Picard tries to convince the Edo to return the boy to him, but at every turn they best the captain in moral argument. They point out that they did not ask the crew to come to their planet, that their society is based on respect for the law, and that they have no crime precisely because their laws are so strict. Ultimately Picard decides that he simply cannot allow a member of his crew to die under these circumstances, and he removes Wesley from jail with his superior technology. The reasoning that supports such an action is inconsistent and problematic.

Starfleet is a dangerous business, and crew members die on missions with some frequency. Picard is willing to sacrifice those under his command for the goals of his mission; what he is presumably not willing to do is allow his crew member to die for an offense that he views as trivial. The idea that the Edo respect for order may in fact be a better way to organize society than his own emphasis on individuality appears to play no role in his decision making. Thus the Prime Directive, which could be a troubling but ultimately self-congratulatory nuisance for liberal humanist Kirk, is a site of serious tension if not hypocrisy for Picard.

That is to say, it was given more sophisticated lip service…Yes, Captain Picard will break the PD,…but not without soul-searching and hand-wringing. The philosophy of cultural relativism has little relevance when the vast majority of people that you meet belong to the same culture.

Few of us in the viewing audience have the opportunity to decide whether we should impose our moral views on a people who do not share them. Picard, in his fictional Star Trek universe, actually has to put this doctrine to the test. Thus his problems are like a laboratory experiment in cultural relativism. To my mind, this experiment reveals two interesting results.

The first is that telling a satisfying story with a relativist moral is a difficult, if not impossible, task.

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