Strange (New Worlds) Tidings

I finally had an opportunity to watch the first three episodes of the new Star Trek series Strange New Worlds, on the weekend.

Set on the familiar U.S.S. Enterprise but under earlier Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), the series is a real return to form for the franchise, eschewing long-form, arc-driven stories in favour of more episodic morality tales very much in keeping with the original series (TOS).

The original Trek used the guise of sci-fi entertainment to raise many controversial issues of the day, including racial segregation, gender equality, and superpower involvement in Viet Nam. TOS established a legacy of progressive leadership, perhaps best exemplified in Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. encouraging Nichelle Nichols to remain on the show as communications officer Uhura. While by no means a major character, King felt the critical imagery of a black woman officer, already unheard of in either television or the real armed forces gf the day, being treated as a peer by white males, needed to be kept in the limelight.

SNW seems to be following suit even in its first episode, even if naysayers will invariably accuse them of 'going woke' (check your receipts, idiots; Trek always has been 'woke'). Never a franchise to shy away from speechifying, Capt. Pike (possibly the handsomest captain to date? you be the judge!) delivers an address to government and rebel heads on a first-contact world. He compares their development to the history of his own planet, Earth:

My world is called Earth. And though it's far from here, uh, my people and yours are, uh, very much alike. This is my world today. But we were not always peaceful. 

This is Earth in our 21st century. Before everything went wrong. It's a lot like your world today. Recently I was treated to a glimpse of my future. It was not all I'd hoped. After all, what good is there in knowing your future? A friend of mine asked me that recently and... didn't understand what he meant. ( short chuckle ) Until now. I've seen my future. Let me show you yours. 

Our conflict also started with a fight for freedoms. We called it the Second Civil War, then the Eugenics War, and finally just World War III. This was our last day. The day the Earth we knew ceased to exist.

Global suicide. 

What we gave you is the means to exterminate yourselves. And from the looks of you, you're gonna do it. You'll use competing ideas of liberty to bomb each other to rubble, just like we did, and then your last day will look just like this.

When Pike says "Let me show you [your future]," the video display turns from the idyllic utopia of the 24th century into images of current-day civil unrest. including a protest sign reading "AUDIT THE VOTE" and the ominous scene of a gallows erected outside the U.S. Capitol.

Seeing those images while constant revelations about the poor state of American democracy play out from the Jan. 6 committee, and mere days after Roe Vs Wade was repealed and even more divisiveness appeared south of the border really gave me pause for thought. 

And not that things are so much better where I live - the leading candidates for Premier of Alberta are both couching a lot of separatist ideology in terms like "sovereignty" and "autonomy", and Federal Conservative leadership candidates jostle over embracing or rejecting the "Freedom Convoys" of trucks while arguing over Bitcoin as a buttress against inflation. "Competing ideas of liberty" indeed!

Make no mistake - the battle for hearts and minds, information and disinformation and misuse of political powers both by those in power and those who wish to supersede the rule of law makes this a very, very dangerous time for society in general and democracy in particular.

In the future history of Star Trek, the crucible of the Last World War spawned a peaceful planetary government and eventually the United Federation of Planets.

I hope we can get to a brighter future, all of us, without the need for another Dark Ages, but who can say where we are on the cycle of history? 

In the meantime, I wish this new incarnation of Star Trek all the best, and I hope people of all ideologies not only watch it but do so with an open mind. Because changing our collective minds begins with exposure to new ideas, and the best science-fiction does that with one hand while entertaining us with the other.

Live long and prosper, everyone.