Posted on 03/13/2002 3:13:17 PM PST by ReveBM
Okay, let me first off say that I am a big fan of the newest Star Trek series, Enterprise. I thought that the last series, Voyager, had gotten tired and had too many episodes revolving around the masturbatory holodeck. And, don't even get me started on the series before that, Deep Space 9, with its "angry pissed-off black man in space" theme.
The new Enterprise series has a freshness about it not seen in my opinion since the original series of 1967-69, what with the swashbuckling Captain Kirk. A good slice of the new series' appeal for me is its handsome, rugged, all-American Captain, Jonathan Archer.
One particular episode, though, rubbed me the wrong way. If you've watched the series you may remember the pivotal episode where they visit the "Great Plume of Agasoria", a stellar object that has religious significance for many alien peoples. Smack in the middle of this episode, the alien doctor pointedly asks Captain Archer whether he has a faith (I don't remember the exact wording, he may have used religion or some other wording).
Captain Archer's response: "I try to keep an open mind".
Let's step back a bit and realize that in the Star Trek universe at this point Earth is just emerging from a hard 100+ years of recovering from nuclear war. If there were ever a time for people to turn to God, perhaps it would have been in the aftermath of that holocaust. However, not so for the boys at Star Fleet.
Perhaps in the Star Trek future, people who are religious do not go into space, staying on their farms (as shown in the first episode of the series) or perhaps forming small communities on spacefaring cargo ships (as shown in another episode). However, religious people don't seem to go into Star Fleet, to my knowledge. It's fine and understandable to run across aliens who are committed religiously, particularly the Vulcans, but I have yet in my memory to run across a significant Star Trek character who is committed to Christianity. You might think I'm harping on Christianity in particular, but it's not only a major and still-growing religion in our world today, but it's the dominant religion in the United States, which fields a large portion of visible Star Fleet personnel, perhaps due to the San Francisco location of its training center (or perhaps many other people in the world died during nuclear war)?
Wait, I get it, maybe religious people are somehow screened out during Star Fleet Academy, perhaps for unacceptable views they might have on one or another topic.
Let's also not forget that in the future, at least according to Star Trek, there is no capitalism at some point. The description of how this happens and in what century is vague, but I vividly remember more than one Star Trek Captain saying that in the future they don't use money anymore, just look to expand their "human potential". Thank God for the Ferengi.
Star Trek is written by writers and reflects their view of what the future will be like. They obviously seem to assume that Christianity and capitalism will die out over the generations. This reflects the fondness of liberals in particular to enter our schools and inculcate our young people so that they don't have unacceptable, politically incorrect views among the future generations, whether regarding homosexuality or some other topic.
It would have been extremely refreshing to have had Captain Archer at LEAST say "Yes, I have a faith, but it's very personal to me" and leave it at that.
Whether Christianity could survive the discovery of intelligent life on other planets is a topic for another day. I have read some science fiction suggesting it could. Others may disagree.
Have a nice day!
I see them all the time. Seems to me that they are on the mens network or whatever. Both DS-9 and STNG.
Good grief! Coffee Please! LOL!
Writing seems better, more dramatic and intense.
It has a chance, but you could be right.
Well, in a robot or 'replicator' based economy, physical posssessions would have almost no intrinsic value except for sentimental reasons. Additional worlds would relieve real estate pressures for living space and transporters would certainly remove the requirement for a lot of private vehicles.
Labor would still be expensive .... this could be a post on it's own. How replicator based economies would work.
You're just an Andorrian sympathizer.
I think the Ferenggi are mentioned in one episode......they figured in an episode of Voyager, too. And, portraying a young Quezon (sp?) who wants to kill an Earthman so he can become an "adult", Aron Eisenberg recycled from his usual Ferenggi role on DS9.
One thing I think Gene Roddenberry might have missed is how much his Ferenggi resemble old antisemitic caricatures of Jewish money-lenders. I think he deliberately made them ugly because they were capitalists -- and gave them sharp teeth as visual cues -- but he may have sailed a lot closer to the wind than a lot of other people would be allowed to without being strongly challenged for ethnic slights and stereotyping. Most of the actors portraying Ferenggi seem to have been Jewish, too.
Or Majel Roddenberry, either, who now controls the enterprise (so to speak).
Roddenberry wasn't shy about promoting good old-fashioned "Americanism"; one episode in the original series features a planet where people have somehow come into possession of a U.S. flag and a copy of the Constitution, courtesy of an errant space probe (like Voyager in Star Trek: The Movie, the one with Persis Khambatta). And in another episode, a whole world has gone Gangsterland, reproducing 20's Chicago right down to the Thompson choppers and Packard getaway cars.
He wasn't too averse to sex in the first series, either -- Kirk hit on that yeoman enough times to get bounced out of Starfleet for fraternization -- so that he can't be said to have sheltered behind "barber shop rules" or "bar rules" for avoiding controversial subjects. But you're right, the series seldom portrays any human being as devoutly religious in any religion whatever. I can't think of any characters in DS9 who would meet that description as "religious". Commander Sisko becomes "the Emissary", but he's sucked into someone else's religion, and into interacting with Bajoran religious leaders and divine presences (who are explained away as various sorts of benevolent or malign [the Pa Reis] disembodied space beings). None of the other major species depicted in the DS9 series exhibits any strong tendency toward religiosity, other than the (enslaved and conditioned) Vorta.
As for themes that suggest scratching itches, I was struck by the number of Voyager episodes that revolved around group consciousness(es)......mostly involving the Borg or ex-Borg. In DS9, it was the Prophets and Pa Reis. Anyone else notice that?
Enterprise "E" is the one that fought the big battle in the future, right? The one Archer gets whisked aboard very briefly to view the fight?
Enterprise "D" is Picard's ship, and Enterprise "C" is the one that got killed by the Romulans and eventually opened the way to the Treaty of Kittomer, yes?
Oh, yes -- now his religion was "respectable"! (Because authentic, you see.....)
I once saw a U of Houston history prof deconstructing ethnicity among non-Asian, non-Hispanic, non-Afro-Americans. He was pretty deft, and obviously had had a lot of help cobbling up his toad-in-the-hole of selective reasoning; but basically, "old ethnics" weren't valid anymore because they were too middle-class and had bought into "whiteness". Which sounded hellaciously ascriptive to me and peremptory; but then it's always been a characteristic of the Left, hasn't it, to keep their eye on the Main Enemy while allowing themselves maximum tactical flexibility to achieve their victory?
So you see, "old ethnics bad" and "new ethnics good" -- er, make that "authentic"!
I think they might be showing DS9 reruns on Spike TV ... I get satellite TV and, in going through the channels checking to see what was on tonight, I distinctly remember one channel showing episode after episode of DS9 reruns tonight. I think it might be Spike TV, but it might also be UPN or one of those other off-the-wall channels.
Well, that's what I get for not reading the whole thread before responding ... or noticing that the thread was as old as it was.
BTW ... good morning HIAHC.
I tend to concur, overall it was the best of the group so far. Although I have to agree that Sisko did go "ABM" a lot......with Eddington, e.g., and in the reality-warp back to the Golden Age of Sci-Fi, when the ensemble appeared without their latex, and we got to see what Marc Alaimo and Armin Shimerman looked like without all the Michael Westmore physiognomic magic. That whole episode was full of grace touches -- I even liked the hat-tip to the screenwriters: "Commander Sisko sat at his desk and looked out the window...." Plus, the final episode was just great -- and everyone went to the wrap party in costume, which was filmed and rolled into the story line. I kept that one.
But the best episode of them all, bar none (IMHO) is from TNG: it's the time-loop conundrum, in which Kelsey Grammer guests in a cameo.
Uh, OK, but it just happens not to be true. Siddig El-Fadil (Alexander Siddig in some later episodes) is a Cairene, IIRC. And by the way, he brought a really BIG Arab, a friend of his named Crown Prince Abdullah, of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, onto the set and let him do a walk-on as a DS9 crewman. Not only that, but I spotted him in a corridor in a Voyager episode that might have been made about the same time.
Yup, boys and girls -- that was the King of Jordan.
LOL. What is this, a Counter-Strike server all of a sudden? BTW, it's spelled "n00b"! :-)
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