Star Trek: SNW Reviews A

I am now starting to do “reviews” of episodes of the new Star Trek series “Strange New Worlds.” Unlike earlier ST review posts this time I’ll be doing, at least MOST of the time, one relatively long essay for a single episode that merits some significant commentary (I wouldn’t be surprised if out of a final total of 46 episodes I’ll do one or two posts that are very brief). I’ll be focusing almost exclusively on the political aspects of the episodes but will usually not comment on the pervasive multiculturalism and gender equality of ST.

“Strange New Worlds” Episode One, Season One. See this for a plot summary.

This episode promises that the series will be roughly as political and progressive as most ST TV episodes are. I’ll get to the more important and general topics in a minute. One minor thing is that there are wind generators conspicuously visible in the background of a scene on Earth.

The main issues are war, civil war (of the sort that we face at this point in America), and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Elsewhere I have gotten slightly long-winded about WMD. Bearing in mind that I didn’t come up with that term, it’s true that only one is INCREDIBLY DESTRUCTIVE, but they are all united by how indiscriminate they are or at least can be (it just occurred to me that Anthrax in an envelope might not be that indiscriminate, but Anthrax (for example) in the water supply is pretty horrible). Chemical weapons are totally indiscriminate although the non-persistent ones might not go far beyond a battlefield, but if that battlefield is populated, that’s a serious problem and the persistent ones are much worse. And I imagine a death from most of these weapons is worse than a death from a few bullets in the chest that kill you after an hour. Nukes are INCREDIBLY DESTRUCTIVE AND INDISCRIMINATE, most easily consume entire cities, there are some lasting and regional environmental problems, and radiation is a slow and painful killer. As far as the pinnacle of the nuclear threat (to humanity’s existence) you should read the book review I did here.                                       

The weapon developed by the aliens sounds very destructive- like it could easily destroy a StarFleet vessel. The idea of using such a weapon on the surface of a populated planet is horrifying.

In general I am very much against war, although I stop short of embracing pacifism. Some of my thoughts about war IN GENERAL can be found here and there in the posts here.

As far as the topic of a second civil war in this country… First, for the Trekkers out there, present and future, I have to point out that ST has shifted the date for the Eugenics Wars, I THINK for WWIII, and has now added an American second civil war, which apparently now all blend into each other. I kind of knew this sort of thing might happen- about 15 years ago I silently suggested ST should make a LOT of TV stuff and then, as there was more and more conflict between between the two histories (ST lore and reality) with the passage of time, just stop making ST, or reboot it possibly? 

Anyway, let me say some things about a second civil war here in reality. I sort of talked about this here, when I made a plea for, in some ways, partisan peace. There are probably a total of 2,000 more words scattered in different paragraphs on my blog that are relevant to this. I am not sure how you can find them, although probably about 15% of them are in a recent post here. Some times I think it might be becoming increasingly unavoidable, with Trump as President and the division that that means. His supporters simply do not believe the various sources that most of us (liberals and progressives/leftists) do and you cannot believe the things that people around Trump imply we support. That’s part of something that’s a big part of what’s wrong- there is no respect for the facts. I’m not saying that’s brand new or totally avoidable in politics, but it is much worse today than it usually is, and that worsening is 100% one-sided- CNN, for example, spends a HUGE amount of time fact-checking Trump, and spent about 5% as much time fact-checking Biden. I believe that there are some other fact-checkers out there that are also good and might possibly be more acceptable to Republicans (is it better if they’re NOT part of the media?). If it hadn’t just started requiring subscriptions I would, as I have in the past, strongly recommend the BBC News website- it’s WIDELY respected throughout the world, and it’s coverage of Northern Ireland 1997-2005 was close behind the Irish media in accuracy and not far behind how sensitive it was to the Irish perspective (if you know Anglo-Irish history and the early history of Northern Ireland, you’d understand the importance of that in coverage of The Troubles) (I say 1997-2005 because during that time each week I read an average of about 100 articles from Irish news sources (primarily the Irish News and the Irish Times) and about 25 articles from the BBC). GOPers would do a lot worse than getting their news there. I am not going to do an entire essay here on this topic and I think I have said all I have to say here about a possible second American civil war.