Why Star Trek is Great

Hello dear readers,

I wanted to write about why I like Star Trek so much and why I think a lot of people could get something out of it. So today I’ll be writing about the show in general. In the future, I’ll be talking about each of the series.

Anyway, I finally rewatched all of Star Trek in preparation of writing these blog posts. By “all of Star Trek”, I mean The Original Series (TOS), The Next Generation (TNG), Deep Space 9 (DS9) and Voyager (VOY). I’m not including the animated series, Enterprise or the modern series. People who watch them may quibble with what makes up the Star Trek canon, but for me those are the most essential. Also, Enterprise sucks and is awful. Don’t ever watch it.

Star Trek isn’t a far-flung future or a space opera like Dune or Star Wars (near contemporaries). It’s a (somewhat) realistic several centuries in our future. It’s unapologetically utopian, and conflict comes from outside not from within. Imagine all the little problems in life, petty miscommunications or frustrations like bureaucracy, money woes or assholes like dictators or rulers. The Earth is united and in an alliance with various planets called the Federation.

What exactly and who exactly composes the Federation and the others powers isn’t examined in depth in the original series, which is a product of the 60s. I’m going to write a blog post all about the original series, but each of the four series has their own emphasis. But, nevertheless, except for DS9, they all occur on a space ship as it travels between the planets. They generally don’t have overarching plots… and I’ll deal with the exceptions when I get there.

The reason why I like Star Trek so much is it seems to be the only show that consistently wanted to ask philosophical questions. Sometimes they’re entirely abstract, and sometimes they’re really ham-fisted. But, given that I really like Philip K. Dick, the presentation doesn’t matter as much as the idea. So you have some episodes that is basically “this is the Nazi planet. Now we talk about why the Nazis were bad” or you have something that’s like “one character is Klingon and has a hard time adapting to human civilization.”

I guess we should talk about the general structure of things. The Federation includes an alliance of different races. How they contribute or join (or leave) isn’t well defined. In TNG (80s-90s), they define it pretty well. Basically, the world has to be utopian and have all of its problems solved. No sectarian violence. One world government. Equality and just laws. No currency (this wasn’t true in TOS but becomes true for the other three series). The worlds of the Federation benefit from mutual cooperation. The best known one besides Earth is probably Vulcan, home to Spock, by far the most iconic character in Star Trek. He is purely logical and avoids emotions.

There are other empires or collectives that live outside of the federation. The most well known are the Klingons who have the forehead ridges (in everything past TOS. It’s explained in Enterprise, but that’s not real Trek). The Klingons in TOS were space Russians or the devil: vindictive, powerful and ruthless and in later series they were all about might over knowledge. There are the Romulans, which are as cunning and methodical as the Vulcans but evil.

There is much more to talk about in each series, but that’s the general show. What if humans could be better than we are now? Could we find the meaning of life without all these (human) obstacles in our way? What is a life without unneeded suffering?

I often think of the grocery store where I used to go in Florence. In Italy, the clerks and employees don’t smile at you like they do in the United States. Nor do the waiters. They’re expressing the truth of the moment, that working in a  grocery store sucks bad. Why should they pretend that it’s any better? Why shouldn’t we accept the truth of existence? If we can accept that, could we imagine a world where we don’t have someone toiling away in their life for no real productive or lasting benefit? Could we imagine a world where everyone is a scientist, an artist, a captain, someone who plants a millions of trees, a video game designer? Life has gone so much beyond a thousand serfs supporting one nobleman. Instead, everyone is a nobleman and can pursue what they are truly best at, whether that is creativity or a really good janitor (I’m looking at you, O’Brien). In the end, it’s a truly progressive vision of the future (especially for the era in which it was originally created), where we can cooperate and direct our resources to provide everyone a utopia instead of the few. I can’t think of any other show that does this, so that’s why I love Star Trek.