This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.
I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)
Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).
“Armageddon Game” See this for a plot summary.
This episode raises the issue of weapons of mass destruction. Getting rid of WMD is a good idea. These weapons are totally indiscriminate and have lasting environmental effects. However, the United States, and any other country that wants to, needs to take the lead on abandoning these weapons. This is too important for nations to say “we’ll move after they move.” The deterrent should be a global pact that whoever uses WMD will be ostracized and isolated by the global community.
When it comes to nuclear weapons, my thoughts on this are influenced by one of three novels that are more or less in the genre associated with novelist Tom Clancy but that I nonetheless recommend to progressives for reading. That book is “Fire Lance” by David Mace. It was written in 1986 and is about a future nuclear war where after the US and USSR exchange fire with most of their respective nuclear arsenals, the northern hemisphere is going through nuclear winter- a condition which is spreading south. The two sides are taking a break and the US government, in bunkers, is considering starting things up again. They end up doing that and at the end it’s made clear that pretty much all human life on the planet will die as a result of nuclear winter. It’s a very powerful anti-nuclear war statement.
When people say that we need these weapons to deter terrorists or to eliminate other countries’ WMD, that ridiculous. Terrorists are not deterred by our WMD, they get more popular support because we have WMD. And our possession of WMD makes it more dificult for the global community to make it very clear that WMD are unnaceptable on our planet.
Going back to the episode, it also sees a bit of movement towards O’Brien and Bashir being friends, although I think that friendship is still about 5-10 episodes away.
I give it four stars out of five.
“Whispers” See this for a plot summary.
A very non-political episode, but a good one, I give it three stars out of five.
“Paradise” See this for a plot summary.
A fairly political episode.
It’s about a group of people who have developed a society without technology, a back-to-nature type thing. Their leader arranged for them to be forced by circumstances into that situation- she wanted to establish such a community, as she decided that technology was bad for people.
Although I’m not interested in being part of such a community myself, I see little problem with people living like that if they choose, although there are probably some potential problems, such as the issue of whether or not modern medical treatment is availed of, especially for children. I haven’t looked into it or thought about it much, but as long as any available medical treatment was used for children and people could leave if they wanted, as far as I can tell, there’s little problem with it, although today opportunities to live that way are few considering how crowded the planet is getting. There MIGHT also be some problems with such people rejecting reasonable regulations and laws that have to be applied to them. I guess I would have to evaluate each case on it’s own.
One neat aspect of this episode is that we learn how O’Brien became an engineer after initially being more or less an infantry soldier during the war with the Cardassians.
A good episode, I’d give it three stars out of five.
“Shadowplay” See this for a plot summary.
A very non-political episode, but a good one. I give it two stars out of five.
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