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Growing Up "Star Trek" (Star Trek, Culture And Conservatism Alert)
National Review ^ | 09//28/2007 | Peter Suderman

Posted on 09/28/2007 9:32:11 AM PDT by goldstategop

Star Trek — the Kirk version — was the first television show I ever watched regularly. By age three, I had become convinced that, just as mid-afternoon was naptime and early morning was breakfast time, Sunday nights were always and forever to be designated as Star Trek time, and I began a lifelong interest in all things science fiction. My social life has been in decline ever since.

To a small town, midwestern boy still learning to read picture books, Star Trek seemed both awesomely exciting and delightfully familiar. On one hand, I revered Kirk, Spock, and McCoy as space-faring titans, legendary futuristic nomads who spent their days gallivanting amongst the stars and doing as they pleased. These were men who had escaped the world of plastic toys and parental authority for something far better: a universe filled with bigger toys, like phasers and space ships, and broader authorities, like Starfleet and the Federation. At the beginning of each episode, Kirk proclaimed that the crew’s mission was “to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” In other words, they ran around getting into trouble and figuring out how stuff worked, which is a pretty accurate summary of the job description for most little kids.

Eventually, the local affiliate cancelled the Sunday-night reruns, but it wasn’t long before the franchise returned with a new crew piloting a new Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation. And my how things had changed. Klingons were no longer the enemy, and they had evolved rather quickly from leering, brawl-crazy drunks with strange bumps on their nose bridges into honor-obsessed, vaguely feral warriors. And, in a triumph for diversity casting, one of them was even on the crew of the Enterprise. In the future, apparently, we will rise above any qualms about illegal aliens to embrace — and employ — actual aliens.

Also new were the room-sized virtual reality playgrounds called holodecks. With the touch of a button, these snazzy rooms could put you into any environment you could imagine, even letting you play out your favorite novels as one of the characters. Not wanting to fail on my duties as a child, I immediately began pressuring my parents to begin the conversion process on my bedroom.

In another important change (for me, at least), I was six years old, not three, and already well on my way to becoming both a full-fledged geek and a conservative. Even to my gestating right wing sensibility, changing “no man” in “to boldly go where no man has gone before” to simply “no one” seemed needlessly P.C., an evisceration of one of the original’s most important and traditional lines. Also, it may have made some difference that I still believed girls had cooties. Such are the limits of gender politics to a six year old.

Still, even if my burgeoning conservative radar alerted me to a few of the show’s ideological underpinnings, I managed to completely miss its larger political posturing until far later in life. Where Kirk-era Star Trek took what was essentially a Cold War liberal view of society, arguing for racial tolerance while wrestling (in Kirk’s case, often literally) with relations to foreign — or more accurately, alien — entities of overwhelming power, Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted as little more than an hour long commercial for socialism.

The show was almost Brechtian in its explicit endorsement of some of the wackiest tenets of the left. In the series pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint,” the crew is put on trial by Q, a sarcastic, temperamental, all-powerful being who reflects the show’s disdain for God-figures. During the course of the trial, Lt. Riker proclaims that “Humanity is no longer a savage race!” Roughly translated, this comes out as, “Hey there God, not only are you a belligerent twit, but we don’t need you any more — nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah!” Somewhere, a cranky tenured professor is telling the same thing to his freshman lit class.

With that, the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, reintroduced the series as a vision of the future in which in humanity has transcended its pettiness and imperfections, taming its baser instincts so that it might teeter on the edge of Utopia. Taking place in a moneyless, peaceful, egalitarian society, it announced triumphantly that man, through socialism, can do all — and that when we do, we’ll be lead by a tea-drinking, smartypants Frenchman named Jean-Luc.

The pilot episode’s story is a classic tale of the evils of the market economy, in which a sniveling capitalist overlord withholds all but the most meager resources from his workers. The Farpoint of the title is a grandiose, technologically advanced city built when a developer finds an alien species that can convert energy into matter. The creature feeds on raw energy, and it is starving, so the developer doles out just enough of his planet’s rich geothermal energy resources to keep it alive, forever enslaving the creature to its energy-hording master. In the end, the crew of the Enterprise dishes out a full meal of the ship’s energy and set the creature free.

The episode comes across as a sort of inverted Randian parable that shames anyone who would withhold anything from a person — or in this case, a glowing, city-sized, tentacled alien — who claims need. Society’s job, we’re to understand, is to give freely without regard to cost. True, this works somewhat more plausibly in a society with almost infinite energy resources. Forget ethanol and wind turbines; let’s start funding research into dilithium crystals!

Other early episodes were similarly well-stocked with absurdity. We see short-lived security officer Tasha Yar participate in a tribal fight to the death using a weapon that appears to be a cross between a baseball glove and a spiked, copper-plated watermelon. Somehow this seems like a less than efficient killing device, but I’m sure the prop department thought it looked cool at the time.

Later, young Wesley Crusher, the ship’s requisite brainy, annoying kid, meets up with The Traveler, a sort of interstellar metaphysical shaman. He helps little Wesley to come to the conclusion that “space and time and thought are essentially the same thing,” which sounds like the sort of loopy declaration Barbara Streisand might make on one of her more cogent days.

But despite all this, I remained a Star Trek devotee. As far as pop culture obsessions go, one could certainly do worse. Star Trek products, like the energy provided by dilithium crystals, are nothing if not abundant. With five live action series and one cartoon comprising 30 seasons and 722 episodes of television, as well as 10 movies, a handful of video games, and hundreds of officially licensed novels, reference books, and short stories, it’s entirely possible to become completely drunk on Star Trek and its ancillary material. It may not be as potent as Romulan ale, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to come by. For a show that despised capitalism, it sure knew how to make money selling stuff.

In some ways, it’s strange to think that so many conservatives — and, as evidenced here today, so many conservative pundits — are also science-fiction fans, and even stranger to find that they’re fans of a show as vigorously liberal as Star Trek. Last I heard, conservatives were supposed to stand athwart history yelling “stop!,” not peer into the future drooling “cool.” But in another way, it makes sense. Star Trek, like all good science fiction, encourages its fans to spend time considering how society will evolve, and what societal consequences will result from changes in technology, media, and government policy. It’s punditry as pulp adventure. From Star Trek to National Review — surely that must qualify as “to boldly go…”


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: conservatism; culture; nationalreview; petersuderman; philosophy; sciencefiction; scifi; startrek
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A conservative's look at Star Trek and culture. This Star Trek fan is also a conservative. Did I mention I also love science fiction? Then do read on and let's boldly go where...

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

1 posted on 09/28/2007 9:32:17 AM PDT by goldstategop
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To: goldstategop

I’m really bummed there are no Star Treks series on currently. The Star Trek series was always thought-provoking, intelligent storytelling. That just doesn’t fly in this current climate of lobotomizing reality shows.


2 posted on 09/28/2007 9:33:44 AM PDT by Slapshot68
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To: Slapshot68
The Star Trek series was always thought-provoking, intelligent storytelling.

Well.....occasionally, anyway.

3 posted on 09/28/2007 9:35:25 AM PDT by Psycho_Bunny
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To: goldstategop

I grew up watching ST:TNG and I liked it. Not everything has to be politicized. It’s a TV show. I like Farscape too. I don’t agree totally with the creators’ world view, but I like the show.


4 posted on 09/28/2007 9:37:47 AM PDT by jjm2111 (http://www.purveryors-of-truth.blogspot.com)
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To: goldstategop

Star Trek the Neurotic Generation had better effects, better acting, and better scripting than “old” Star Trek.

But the old Star Trek had better stories and was a lot more fun. If I want to be preached at, I’ll go to church.


5 posted on 09/28/2007 9:38:18 AM PDT by Little Ray (Rudy Guiliani: If his wives can't trust him, why should we?)
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To: Slapshot68

They were always pretty much aligned with the left in their social agenda. If you payed careful attention you would see that they didn’t like capitalism. Still, I watched it religiously and still catch the reruns. I can sift through the propaganda and still enjoy the show.


6 posted on 09/28/2007 9:39:49 AM PDT by saganite
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To: goldstategop
I recently finished watching the three seasons on dvd (one show per dinner) and I was surprised at how anti-Irish the first season was. I still enjoyed it though. lol
7 posted on 09/28/2007 9:41:49 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper (ETERNAL SHAME on the Treasonous and Immoral Democrats!)
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To: Slapshot68

A show on sci-fi comes on mondays @ 7pm. Enterprise, is a prequal to the very first ST series with Kirk & Bones. It has Scot Bakula playing the capt. It is pretty good but you would need to judge it for yourself.


8 posted on 09/28/2007 9:43:18 AM PDT by DirtyPigpen
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To: goldstategop

Actually, if you examine ST:TNG, you’ll see that the period when the show started getting wildly popular...from about season 3 onwards...is when they started abandoning (or at least playing down) some of Roddenberry’s loopier liberal themes, and started playing up more of the Kirk-esque badass elements. Riker becaume more of a traditional authority figure, and less of an Alan Alda-meets-the horny lounge lizard kind of guy. Worf was the honor figure. The Ferengi, the capitalist bad guys, utterly flopped as villains, and so the anti-capitalist stuff was played down. The Romulans, inspired by Rome and modern day China, became the new villains, along with the Borg. Think about it; who typifies the “hive mind” better than liberals?


9 posted on 09/28/2007 9:43:23 AM PDT by DesScorp
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To: goldstategop
I watch Star Trek: Voyager - it's on Spike TV, which could stand to improve its advertising, but I suffer through it to at least watch something Star Trek.

Carolyn

10 posted on 09/28/2007 9:43:31 AM PDT by CDHart ("It's too late to work within the system and too early to shoot the b@#$%^&s."--Claire Wolfe)
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To: goldstategop
I discovered girls about halfway through the first season.

It would have a whole lot cheaper to stick with Kirk and the crew. :-(
11 posted on 09/28/2007 9:43:42 AM PDT by Thrownatbirth (.....when the sidewalks are safe for the little guy.)
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To: goldstategop
Sulu: boldly going where no women are.
Uhura: Roddenbury's mistress, probably via casting couch, lots of good panty shots.
Nurse Chapel: love unrequited.
McCoy: Why? Even in the Sixties, WHY?
Scotty: an insult to the sobriety of Scotsmen.
Spock & Kirk: the closest thing the Sixties had to an Ambiguously Gay Duo.

In many ways, Star Trek: Enterprise was the best Trek show. More interesting writing and character development, I think.
12 posted on 09/28/2007 9:43:47 AM PDT by George W. Bush (Apres moi, le deluge.)
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To: goldstategop

JJ Abrams is going to screw all of Trekdom up in his movie due out Christmas 2008.

Shatner is Kirk! Nimoy is Spock! Recasting those icons with MTV generation people will give the same results of replacing Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger!


13 posted on 09/28/2007 9:43:57 AM PDT by Sybeck1 (Join me for the Million Minutemen March --- Summer 2008!!)
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To: goldstategop
In some ways, it’s strange to think that so many conservatives — and, as evidenced here today, so many conservative pundits — are also science-fiction fans, and even stranger to find that they’re fans of a show as vigorously liberal as Star Trek.

Conservatism is about finding the best in ourselves and in others and freeing the human spirit from the shackles of oppression. There is no reason, therefore, that a conservative should not embrace the freedom offered by science fiction. However, the liberalism of Trek is highly annoying, which is why when push comes to shove I am a Stargate SG-1 fan. :)

14 posted on 09/28/2007 9:44:01 AM PDT by Colonel_Flagg (We are the people.)
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To: Psycho_Bunny

Ok. Spock’s Brain was DREADFUL.


15 posted on 09/28/2007 9:44:04 AM PDT by Politicalmom (Of the potential GOP front runners, FT has one of the better records on immigration.- NumbersUSA)
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To: goldstategop

I LOVED the original series. Campy and fun. I still have a concordance somewhere.

TNG was just boring to me.

Now, Deep Space 9 was the best soap opera on tv!


16 posted on 09/28/2007 9:45:49 AM PDT by netmilsmom (To attack one section of Christianity in this day and age, is to waste time .)
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To: CDHart

Voyager is my favorite, behind the Original.

I’d take Janeway as my Captain over ol’ Boiled Onion Head any day. :)


17 posted on 09/28/2007 9:46:25 AM PDT by Politicalmom (Of the potential GOP front runners, FT has one of the better records on immigration.- NumbersUSA)
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To: All
Where Kirk-era Star Trek took what was essentially a Cold War liberal view of society, arguing for racial tolerance while wrestling (in Kirk’s case, often literally) with relations to foreign — or more accurately, alien — entities of overwhelming power, Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted as little more than an hour long commercial for socialism.

and I should add : athiesm, and moral relativism... I am glad I am not the only one who saw this and felt bad about it...
18 posted on 09/28/2007 9:47:07 AM PDT by BigEdLB (BigEd)
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To: goldstategop
The show was almost Brechtian in its explicit endorsement of some of the wackiest tenets of the left. In the series pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint,” the crew is put on trial by Q, a sarcastic, temperamental, all-powerful being who reflects the show’s disdain for God-figures.

During the course of the trial, Lt. Riker proclaims that “Humanity is no longer a savage race!” Roughly translated, this comes out as, “Hey there God, not only are you a belligerent twit, but we don’t need you any more — nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah!” Somewhere, a cranky tenured professor is telling the same thing to his freshman lit class.

The writer missed the point,Q was a near omnipotent being that had all the negative qualities in himself that he hated in mankind,in other words a Super jerk.I never saw any anti religion or anti capitalism in that episode.some people just like grasping at straws

19 posted on 09/28/2007 9:48:36 AM PDT by Charlespg (Peace= When we trod the ruins of Mecca and Medina under our infidel boots.)
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To: goldstategop
Star Trek TNG was predicated on social Darwinism that allowed us to "evolve" into a society of Utopian socialism, but that stuff was pretty easy to spot and overlook.

As a science fiction geek I still loved it.

20 posted on 09/28/2007 9:48:42 AM PDT by colorado tanker (I'm unmoderated - just ask Bill O'Reilly)
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