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 have been more or less ignoring this- the need for me to become familiar with The Original Series. In general I don’t like much of what I’ve seen. In any case, I am now watching it and will be doing reviews of those episodes. I will be giving pretty low scores, probably no higher than three stars out of five- I just don’t like TOS.
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).
“Return to Tomorrow” See this for a plot summary.
A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.
“Patterns of Force” See this for a plot summary.
I could probably type thousands of words about this, but I’ll keep it pretty brief. There are two major political aspects to this episode.
1. The pacifist response of most of Europe’s Jews living in either camps or more generally Nazi-occupied areas. Obviously this is stating the obvious and is kind of using hind-sight, but pacifism wasn’t a good response to Nazi persecution of the Jews. Also, I believe that that could have been said WITHOUT hindsight, as I explain about 1/4 the way down a post here where I seriously attack the Irish government and the IRA about their separate responses to Nazi Germany. (I have heard that at some point non-Jewish anti-Nazi elements, including those quite prepared to fight, didn’t engage in armed resistance either (because their leadership failed to give them orders), which might have discouraged European Jews from resisting)
2. Kirk at one point says something about how they need to help the Zeons, but also need to help the Ekosians. I’m not sure if he was talking about the lack of freedom that Ekosians had under a dictatorship, or the way that bigotry does a fair amount of damage to the group oppressing another group through hate. I go into more details about that here while discussing the episode “Duet.”
I give it three stars out of five stars.
“By Any Other Name” See this for a plot summary.
At first I thought this was pretty non-political. But there is the issue of outsiders colonizing empty planets in the Federation. It reminds me of the settling of the area now known as the US by Europeans and European-Americans. It’s embarrassing for me to say this, but I’m not sure if the question I’m raising came up at any point in my studies; if it did I have forgotten it (some of my Ethnic Studies knowledge has disappeared).
Let’s say European governments and European people had been very different (you could call it “bizzaro Europe”) and had been interested in peace-full co-existance with the indigenous people of this hemisphere who, DID sort of welcome them. Would that have worked? I’m not sure. How much of what is now America was available for settlement? I’ don’t know. But it’s an interesting question. Of course another more positive scenario would have been no settlement at all. Anyway, it's something that this episode got me thinking about some.
I give it two stars out of five.
“The Omega Glory” See this for a plot summary.
This is a weird episode. Part of it is the idea that in the last years of the 20th Century, Chinese Communists (apparently joined or followed by free-market, democratic Americans) left Earth to colonize some far away planet. Apparently, long before StarFleet came to the planet, there had been a large scale war between the two sides that involved Weapons of Mass Destruction. There’s a few lines or so with good comments about bio-weapons and about democratic rights for everyone. On the other hand there is little said about the negative aspects of American democracy.
I give it two stars out of five.
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