Star Trek: SNW Reviews E

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.

“A Quality of Mercy” Episode Ten, Season One. See this for a plot summary.

This episode has four main political themes that I’ll briefly discuss.

First, it touches on the issue of genetic engineering, which I discussed here, in relation to the LEADERSHIP of StarFleet going after Pike’s second-in-command for being engineered.

War (General)

Second, the issue of war and paranoia and bigotry. Although it’s suggested that had Pike acted a little less like a StarFleet Captain and more like an officer of the US military, it would have prevented war, I don’t think that means the writers, producers, etc. are veering off to the right. The tendency in a Cold War-type context to say “we can’t trust them” (referring to the enemy) is well-illustrated and Pike’s response to that sort of thing is admirable. Especially when you consider that in the possible future he experiences, his attempt at peace-making probably would have gone somewhere if the Romulan ship’s second-in-command hadn’t violated a direct order from his peace-sympathizing superior. To a large degree you also can’t hold it against Pike that that Romulan ship, whose Captain had potential to promote peace, was destroyed as an example to others on the orders of the Romulan Praetor.

We also see some racist hostility towards Spock when it’s learned that Vulcans and Romulans look almost exactly the same. As it’s in the possible future, we probably won’t see it again (especially since that discovery takes place about 8 years later in The Original Series).

Anti-Muslim Bigotry

In the very last paragraph of a SNW review here I wrote about something that puzzlingly comes up in episode 10. In episode three Pike reads five names- people important to his future. One of them is, I THINK, a Muslim name (Google AI sort of confirmed that for me), but now, in episode 10, another name, taken from Pike’s knowledge of his future, is mentioned but wasn’t mentioned in Episode three. That name is, I am almost certain, a Muslim name- Maat Al-Salah. Even if it’s not a reference to a SECOND Islamic-named character prominent in Pike’s future and ST just decided to re-name that character, it is a second mention of a StarFleet cadet whose ancestors were almost certainly Muslims. Also, Maat’s father is a StarFleet officer.

Star Trek: SNW Reviews C

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.

“Ghosts of Illyria” Episode Three, Season One. See this for a plot summary. 

This raises the issue of genetic engineering, something I wrote about very briefly in a couple of  places here. I should be more familiar with the Star Trek aspect of this issue- there’s a two part novel about the “Eugenics Wars” and I read the first part about 30 years ago and then, about 10 years ago after I lost that book I bought the second book and then recently bought the first one. I remember very little about the first one, and not well enough that I would like to type up any kind of book report on it. I think that in a couple years or so I will read them both and then type up something on this blog. In the next paragraph I’ll repeat what I DO remember from different sources about the Eugenics Wars.

The EW took place at some point in the 1990s (of ST lore) and I believe they were not a truly global war but took the form of relatively isolated conflicts here and there throughout the globe, unlike WWII which consumed practically all of the European area, and practically all of the Pacific area but practically nowhere else. There was one scientific creator of the augments but they were separated after they were born and joined up many years later. They were advanced in many neurological and physical ways. Somehow they developed into a small movement and might have initially spoken of being for good, but ended up being autocratic, narcissistic, and bloodthirsty. They started many military conflicts and 30-35 million people were killed. They were eventually, somehow, stopped (probably at great mortal cost to democratic forces) and the surviving augments fled Earth. (The fact that they were initially said (by characters in the future) to have taken place in the 1990s is one reason I thought that at some point around 15 years ago maybe ST should have rebooted as the two different histories (reality and Star Trek) conflicted more and more)

In response to this history, the Federation bans genetic engineering, but in DS9 and in this series (beginning with this episode) those in charge of ST in recent decades seem to be saying that maybe it’s not that bad after all. In DS9 Dr. Bashir (a main character) and the station’s Chief Medical Officer is allowed to continue serving AFTER it’s discovered that he was engineered. In general I like that character, but an argument could be made that someone with that background shouldn’t be given room to become some kind of Dr. Frankenstein considering the power he had over medical stuff. I think there’s a conflict between that part of DS9 and most of the EW stuff in ST. Although I can’t remember any details about this in the SNW context except what there is in this episode, I know that Captain Pike defends Chin-Riley (his engineered second in command) when StarFleet comes after her.

Is this mostly new attitude towards genetic engineering reasonable? I don’t think so. I think it’s best said by Spock in “Space Seed” (The Original Series) when he says that “superior ability breeds superior ambition.” Some would say that *I* lack ambition and that’s why I’m saying this. To a small degree I kind of DO lack ambition, although I have some and I think it’s a healthy amount. The thing is, someone who probably CAN be among the very best leaders in a technical sense because of their enhanced abilities will probably think that they deserve to be THE leader at the very top, by any means necessary and with no democratic checks or balances on their power and such people will fight any democratic resistance to this and will fight, with bad effects for anyone nearby, other similar rivals.

 

UPDATE 3/27/26 Another reason I am so anti-Genetic Engineering is that I have a PhD in Genetics. No, I don’t  :  ). To be honest, the additional argument/source I have is a non-documentary movie. In the 1997 film “Gattaca,” we see a dystopian future where the first decade or three of genetic engineering has created a two-tier society reinforced by discrimination against those who aren’t engineered. The movie is about such a person who becomes successful anyway (by assuming the identity of someone with better genes), but I think it does an okay job of illustrating how bad things would be for the under-class. So, as I admitted earlier, I am not familiar with how fair or how unfair discrimination based on your genes would be. In the movie the guy who succeeds anyway is an example of how flawed a genes-based estimate of your ability/potential could be. And it just seems like such a bad thing the way the movie illustrates it. So, it does contribute to my hostility to both genetic engineering and the apparent softening of Star Trek’s opposition to that practice. 

Star Trek: The Original Series Reviews D

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).

“Tomorrow Is Yesterday” See this for a plot summary.

A very non-political episode, which is kind of a surprise. Often episodes involving time travel back to Old Earth (that is, Earth in recent decades of the past and in decades of the near future) have some liberal-left political commentary. This doesn’t have that. There is one reference to an alien planet dominated by women- but I have mixed feelings about the nature of that statement. Normally I’d think it’s a good thing, to mention that women are capable of leading a planet. But there’s something about it that’s kind of sexist in this case.

I give it three stars out of five.

“Court Martial” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“The Return of the Archons” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it one star out of five.

“Space Seed” See this for a plot summary.

This is the first ST episode or movie to mention the Eugenics Wars. Some of my thoughts on the issue of genetically engineered humans can be found here while discussing the first three-parter in that post (there is also some background in the plot summaries). In short I think that the Federation is right to ban genetic engineering of humans, with some possible exceptions.

This episode doesn’t really add much to what I had seen in other episodes or movies about the Eugenics Wars issue. There is a two or three book novel about the EW. I read the first one years ago and seem to have lost it. I somehow got either the second or third but don’t want to read it without the other 1 or 2. The thing is, in reference to one of those books, a former friend of mine said he thought it was racist. I can’t really say anything about those books. I am pretty sure he was referring to the fact that the villain was an Indian, and possibly-probably some other details; I would need more than that (Khan’s nationality) to agree.

I give it three stars out of five.

“A Taste of Armageddon” See this for a plot summary.

This episode has a very good anti-war theme. It’s about two planets that have waged war for 500 years using computers, kind of like a war game. When an attack takes place, people in the area of the attack are identified as casualties and are killed by “disintegration machines.” The idea behind this form of war-fare is that the civilizations will not be physically destroyed. But as kirk explains it: “Death, destruction, disease, horror- that’s what war is all about, Anan- that’s what makes it a thing to be avoided. You’ve made it neat and painless. So neat and painless you’ve had no reason to stop it.” Although it would be horrible if one or more civilizations were destroyed through war, it’d be better if there were no war at all (nothing is said about the war being just, it probably is like most wars, i.e. like World War I). Millions of people were being killed every year, and the war probably diverted at least some resources that could have been better used on something else. If they had experienced real war, the destruction and the injured people might have prodded the leaders to seek peace.

I give it three stars out of five.

“This Side of Paradise” See this for a plot summary.

There are a couple political things to mention about this episode.

1. The colonists are all vegetarians.

2. Towards the end, Kirk talks about “paradise” and wonders if humans are meant for “paradise” or meant to “struggle, claw our way up.” I believe something in the middle but leaning towards being meant for “paradise.” We will always have some degree of difficulty (i.e. natural disasters, etc.) but we can, probably in a couple centuries or so, create something pretty close to “paradise.” This reminds me of something that the socialist writer Michael Parenti said once. He said that socialism isn’t the utopia- it is the struggle to create the utopia (I’d say the latter stages of creating a utopia). And I’d say that even the utopia probably won’t be 100% utopian.

I give it two stars out of five.

Star Trek: Enterprise Reviews R

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).

“Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” “The Augments” See the links for a plot summary.

This three-parter contains one very large political theme and a couple smaller ones. The big one is the question of genetic engineering. My thoughts on this are here while discussing the episode “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?”

At one point one of the augments and Archer have the following exchange:

Malik: We were defending our right to exist.

Archer: You’ve already killed over 25 people. Your existence has a pretty high price.

Malik: It could get higher.


Obviously they are pretty much unable to co-exist with normal people, and StarFleet was right to prevent any more augments from being born.

The other issues:

1. We learn that at one point Earth space ships were nuclear-powered, something which I have negative feelings about (even in the context of ST, I believe they should have postponed further space travel until they found something better than nuclear power). Could cause serious environmental problems on Earth.

2. There’s also an element of slavery. First, when the slaves can no longer be controlled by the neurolytic restraints, they rebel, which is pretty cool.

It raises the question for me, shouldn’t StarFleet do something about the Orion slave trade? It doesn’t count as an internal issue for the Orions because they enslave outside of their race most of the time. And even if it were internal, I’m very open-minded about StarFleet intervening anyway. I have difficulty imaging that happening in the past with black slaves in America, since I don’t think there was a world power comparable to the Federation of ST. I mean, the British ended slavery in almost all of the Empire in 1833 but I’m not sure if they would have been an ideal candidate for this. Would black slaves in America have welcomed liberation in that way? I imagine they would have. And of course they did welcome liberation during and at the end of the Civil War, and of course many former slaves fought for the Union in that war.

On a non-political note, it was brilliant of them to have Brent Spiner play Soong, an ancestor of the man who created Data (The Next Generation).

I give this three-parter five stars out of five.

“The Forge,” “Awakening,” and “Kir’Shara” See the links for a plot summary.

This three-parter has one main theme- religious persecution, and there are several minor things that come up here and there:

I’m against religious persecution, although there would of course be some exceptions- for example if children are being abused in some way. My thoughts on religion can be found here, here (while discussing the episode "Who Watches The Watchers?"), here (while discussing the episode "Destiny"), here (while discussing the episode "In The Hands Of The Prophets").

1. At one point Archer seems to compare the different interpretations of Surock’s writing with what has happened with the Bible. The basic message I believe was that the Bible (and similar books) shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

2. The leader of the Syrrannites says that the High Command defiled the monastery of P’Jem by placing an intelligence operation there. It really is very inappropriate to use religious places for what might be called intelligence or military efforts.

3. We’re reminded that Vulcans who can do mind melds are treated poorly, and this is undoubtedly a statement against homophobia. See this when I discuss the episode “Stigma.”

4. I think this is my first exposure to the political system on Vulcan. It’s not made clear, but I got the idea that the High Command was the government; I used to think it was the leadership of the military; and what kind of civilian government leadership is known as the High Command? It also turns out that the head of the High Command (HC) organized a large-scale invasion force without the other members knowing. All members of the HC were men. Vulcan still uses the death penalty for some crimes. And lastly, there is apparently a loyalty oath that at least some Vulcans must take. Unless I’m missing something from The Original Series, I would have to say that the Vulcan government isn’t very democratic and considering most of what I wrote in this paragraph, I wonder what they're doing in the Federation? (on the other hand, it IS suggested at one point that the head of the HC was elected).

5. The leader of the HC seems to have gone after the Syrrannites because, as pacifists, they might stir up opposition to his invasion of Andoria.

6. There is one part where a Vulcan is tortured mentally instead of physically, which Vulcans can usually resist. After that the interrogator who used torture suggests that very often people being tortured will say whatever they think their interrogator wants to hear, even if it’s not true (which makes torture ineffective in addition to being immoral).

I’m not a big fan of Vulcan episodes, so I can only give this one two stars out of five.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Reviews H

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).

“Loud as a Whisper” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“The Schizoid Man” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode, although I missed about half because of the DVD having problems. I give it two stars out of five.

“Unnatural Selection” See this for a plot summary.

Could barely watch because of problems with the DVD. Might try again later.

UPDATE 1/6/12 I have now seen this episode (for the first time since about 6 years ago). It's non-political, although there is one thing to mention. It partly involves genetically created (not engineered) children. I imagine that genetically created is the sort of thing that the movie Gattaca is about. Is that considered acceptable in the Federation when genetic ENGINEERING isn't?

I give it four stars out of five.

“A Matter of Honor” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I like the idea of Riker serving on a Klingon ship. I give it four stars out of five.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Reviews Y

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).

“For The Uniform” See this for a plot summary.

Aside from the politics of the Maquis, a non-political episode. I give my thoughts on the Maquis here, while discussing the two-parter “The Maquis.” I have mixed feelings about Sisko making the ex-Federation colony uninhabitable for humans. It seems okay since Cardassians moved there right afterwards and from their perspective the environment wasn’t damaged. But it’s still using an indiscriminate biological or chemical weapon and even with the warning Sisko issued, it could have caused civilian death or illness. But it did get Eddington to surrender. So, I’ve got mixed feelings about it.


“In Purgatory’s Shadow” and “By Inferno’s Light” See this and this for a plot summary.

A very non-political two-parter, but a good one, I give it four stars out of five.


“Doctor Bashir, I Presume?” See this for a plot summary.

I haven’t looked into this much, but I would say that genetic enhancement as they talked about in this episode is a bad idea. The Eugenics Wars (in the ST universe) are a good reason to ban genetic enhancement. There are probably related procedures that I would support- things like curing someone of neurological disorders. But what they describe in the episode seems like a bad idea.

UPDATE 2/24/11 Here's a brief note about the Eugenics Wars (I can't find an article about it on startrek.com). The only thing of any importance that I can remember, is that it was a war on Earth which resulted in 30-35 million deaths, sometime in the 1990s I believe.

A good episode, I give it two stars out of five.