These are the voyages... of privilege
Last night was the much-anticipated premiere of Star Trek: Discovery, the first new series for the franchise in twelve years. I'm still processing what I thought of the two-part pilot. The setup reminds me vaguely of David Gerrold's Voyage of the Star Wolf novels, which are also centered on the first officer of a starship that gets blamed for bumbling into a war - but I'm pretty sure that similarity will end within an episode or two. I was irked by the main character's behavior, although you can't say she didn't suffer the consequences of her actions, so maybe she'll grow from here. And I was ticked that they killed off Michelle Yeoh, even though I suspected they would it do after both she and Jason Isaacs were announced as the new Star Trek Captain.
What I found most dismaying is that we have yet another Trek series about war. The final years of DS9 covered almost nothing but the Federation's war against the Dominion. Voyager, being a single ship, couldn't exactly declare war on anyone, but they shot up plenty of alien civilizations as they made their way across the Delta Quadrant. And Enterprise had its 9/11-inspired season of conflict with the Xindi. Now, here we are again. In the original Trek, we had the Organians around to keep conflicts from getting out of hand. Well, the Organians and network budget constraints. But thanks to CGI, now we can blow up as much stuff as we want. Ain't technology grand.
But there was one other thing that caught my attention, one that could possibly bring some sense to the war story line if they play it right. It's the way the Klingons have been revised for this Trek incarnation. Just like with Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur and other modern mythology, Star Trek has been around long enough for each generation to pick it up and give it a new interpretation. In the 60s, the Klingons were the Soviet Union, locked in a massive Cold War with Federation good guys. Now they are al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban and other such groups. The series opens with a Klingon bin Laden-ish figure promising to reunite the twenty-four Klingon houses in the name of their great leader, Kahless the Unforgettable.
That wasn't the interesting part, though. The interesting part comes next. The would-be Klingon bin Laden portrays the Federation as a menacing colonial power, absorbing and assimilating other planets while at the same time proclaiming, "We come in peace." It's effective. When Michelle Yeoh's Captain Georgiou says it in a later scene, you want to cringe like John Kelly at Donald Trump's UN speech. Thanks to the introduction these Klingons have been given, an innocuous but supposedly reassuring platitude becomes an ominous threat.
It's an example, dare I say it, of Federation Exceptionalism.
If we Americans are supposed to see ourselves in the Federation good guys, then Discovery just might be giving us a message we need to hear today. Here in America, we wonder why people hate us in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq, while we continue to drop bombs on them and send troops onto their land. We tell ourselves that "they hate us because of our freedom," because we can't possibly be doing anything wrong. We're the good guys! We believe in freedom and democracy! We come in peace!
I'm not sure how far Discovery will be able to carry this idea, even if they want to (which I'm not sure they do - unlike Vulcans, I can't read minds). The show is supposed to take place ten years before the original series, and we know what things were like between the Federation and the Klingons at that point. But it would be really interesting to have the Federation do some soul-searching, to see them wonder if maybe they're a bit high-handed, if maybe they're acting from a sense of Federation privilege and entitlement.
Science fiction is at its best when it enables us to look at ourselves - especially when it enables us to see something about ourselves that we might otherwise be blind to. Discovery has an opportunity to do something like that. They may not want it - as I said, I'm not a mind reader - and the show can still be good even if they pass up this chance. But such chances don't come along every day, and it will be a loss if Discovery doesn't at least try to pull it off.
What I found most dismaying is that we have yet another Trek series about war. The final years of DS9 covered almost nothing but the Federation's war against the Dominion. Voyager, being a single ship, couldn't exactly declare war on anyone, but they shot up plenty of alien civilizations as they made their way across the Delta Quadrant. And Enterprise had its 9/11-inspired season of conflict with the Xindi. Now, here we are again. In the original Trek, we had the Organians around to keep conflicts from getting out of hand. Well, the Organians and network budget constraints. But thanks to CGI, now we can blow up as much stuff as we want. Ain't technology grand.
But there was one other thing that caught my attention, one that could possibly bring some sense to the war story line if they play it right. It's the way the Klingons have been revised for this Trek incarnation. Just like with Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur and other modern mythology, Star Trek has been around long enough for each generation to pick it up and give it a new interpretation. In the 60s, the Klingons were the Soviet Union, locked in a massive Cold War with Federation good guys. Now they are al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban and other such groups. The series opens with a Klingon bin Laden-ish figure promising to reunite the twenty-four Klingon houses in the name of their great leader, Kahless the Unforgettable.
That wasn't the interesting part, though. The interesting part comes next. The would-be Klingon bin Laden portrays the Federation as a menacing colonial power, absorbing and assimilating other planets while at the same time proclaiming, "We come in peace." It's effective. When Michelle Yeoh's Captain Georgiou says it in a later scene, you want to cringe like John Kelly at Donald Trump's UN speech. Thanks to the introduction these Klingons have been given, an innocuous but supposedly reassuring platitude becomes an ominous threat.
It's an example, dare I say it, of Federation Exceptionalism.
If we Americans are supposed to see ourselves in the Federation good guys, then Discovery just might be giving us a message we need to hear today. Here in America, we wonder why people hate us in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq, while we continue to drop bombs on them and send troops onto their land. We tell ourselves that "they hate us because of our freedom," because we can't possibly be doing anything wrong. We're the good guys! We believe in freedom and democracy! We come in peace!
I'm not sure how far Discovery will be able to carry this idea, even if they want to (which I'm not sure they do - unlike Vulcans, I can't read minds). The show is supposed to take place ten years before the original series, and we know what things were like between the Federation and the Klingons at that point. But it would be really interesting to have the Federation do some soul-searching, to see them wonder if maybe they're a bit high-handed, if maybe they're acting from a sense of Federation privilege and entitlement.
Science fiction is at its best when it enables us to look at ourselves - especially when it enables us to see something about ourselves that we might otherwise be blind to. Discovery has an opportunity to do something like that. They may not want it - as I said, I'm not a mind reader - and the show can still be good even if they pass up this chance. But such chances don't come along every day, and it will be a loss if Discovery doesn't at least try to pull it off.
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