Why we still love Star Trek

newscientist ^ | 12 June 2009 | Lawrence Krauss

[JoeProBono]

NOTHING has surprised me more in the past month than the barrage of phone calls I received from reporters about the new Star Trek movie. Many asked me to comment on what Star Trek technologies have been realised since the original series, which ones remain a vague hope and which are impossible. Others wanted to know what I thought of the science in the movie, from space-diving to black-hole time travel. Frankly, I had expected quite the opposite reaction to the prequel, figuring that fans would pan it and pundits would bemoan an attempt to hark back to a 1960s phenomenon. Yet the fascination with Star Trek is everywhere, in magazines and on the opinion pages of major newspapers.

Why, 43 years after it first aired, does Star Trek still hold us in such thrall? I think that a large part of the fascination can be traced to our many current crises, both fiscal and environmental. Of all science-fiction drama in the past half-century, Star Trek was based on a hopeful view of the future - one where the "infinite possibilities of existence", as the character Q said in The Next Generation series, could be exploited for the benefit of humankind and aliens alike.....

[JoeProBono]

The enduring popularity of Star Trek has its roots in our hope for a better and more rational society (Image: Andrzeg Krause)

[fwdude]

At its core, Star Trek is humanist drivel. As entertaining as it may be, the basic premise and message that underpins the whole series is Godless evolution. In the more recent resurrection of the franchise, increasingly leftist ideology has crept in - a logical conclusion considering its false premise.

[SIDENET]

Guys just always wanted to see the Enterprise in a big battle.

All of that other stuff was weak.

[IrishCatholic]

The most popular old Star Trek TV episodes were the naval battles in space.

The trailer for the new movie is all action and battle.

I agree that the rest is filler. If they had Federation marines and more fighting and war the movies would really take off.

[lafroste]

At its core, Star Trek is humanist drivel.

I always thought the original series gave plenty of deference to God. The original Enterprise had a chapel, Kirk invoked the name of God several times. Star Trek TNG, OTOH was humanist drivel.

[Charles Martel]

There are hopeful signs that we are moving closer to a society based on reason, as in Star Trek. President Obama has spoken out explicitly for the need to base decision-making on sound science, as well as acknowledging the reality of various environmental and energy challenges and pointing out that we urgently need to exploit science and technology to meet them.

"Humor... it is a difficult concept."

[DesertRhino]

I always give the creator or Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, a pass. He flew B-17s in WWII, and witnessed a lot of killing and inhumanity at 20,000 feet. So he creates a story about the “Enterprise”, basically a B-52 in outer space, trying to do things as morally as they can.

A lot of oddball art and literature has come from combat veterans trying to make sense of what they saw. That Guy JRR Tolkien wrote his “Lord of the Rings” after his experiences in WWI, losing tons of good friends.

I think Star Trek wasn’t at all a bad thing, as originally done, but now the wussy-boy writers are firmly in charge and it’s a whole different thing. I miss sci-fi from the 50s.

[cmonkey]

Speaking of Star Trek, saw this rebuttal to comparisons between obama and spock, thought it was really well done:

http://www.pjtv.com/video/Afterburner_/__The_Dowd_Conundrum:_Why_Vulcans_and_Other_Intellectuals_Don’t_Belong_in_the_Big_Chair/1995/

[NappyOne]

I cannot agree with Krauss in his assessment that Star Trek is about mankind finding a common goal.

In it’s latest incarnation, we see Captain Pike recruiting a maverick Kirk because Star Fleet had become collectivist in thought and direction. The rot of stagnation demanded in Pike’s thinking a break out thinking like Kirk.

Even Spock was a maverick, rejecting Vulcan collectivism for individual identity.

In a world in which uniformity, a common goal for humanity for example, demands we all conform to the group, Star Trek depicted free action by individualists spelling the difference between destruction and survival of mankind.

Star Trek has always put in tension the demands of the collective and the need for the individualists, even the individual operating within the overarching collective. Even as Star Trek established individualism as the highest ideal, the ultimate collective, unimaginably powerful and irresistible, had to be introduced. Time after time, even the Borg was defeated due to individualism.

Thus, for me, Star Trek, even with the leftist drivel so often present, is about individualism pushing back the frontiers and taming the Universe, not the collective common goals of humanity.

Krauss is full of it.

The NappyOne

[Buckeye McFrog]

at it’s core, it’s the babes in the short, short skirts (always has been...)

[fnord]

The funny thing is none of the technology can be credited to the moonbattery and leftist drivel every one was parroting. The basic drama of most episodes was that the engineers and warriors had to work around the idiocracy and liberal roadblocks in order to achieve victory for the good guys. I thought that theme came through in most of the series and movies.

[Texan Tory]

“Star Trek has always put in tension the demands of the collective and the need for the individualists, even the individual operating within the overarching collective.”

Well said. In the second Star Trek movie, Spock justified sacrificing his life to save his friends by saying “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” But in the next movie, Spock’s friends risk everything to rescue the newly-regenerated Spock. They explain their actions by telling him that sometimes “the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.”

[Erasmus]

...and without regard to race, creed religion, or color.

Especially color.

≤]B^)

[dfwgator]

Except for Red:

[Joe 6-pack]

"A lot of oddball art and literature has come from combat veterans trying to make sense of what they saw."

Few people know Rod Serling was an Army paratrooper with the 11th Airborne Division in the Pacific theater. Like Rodenberry, he gets a pass from me, too.

[gogeo]

at it’s core, it’s the babes in the short, short skirts (always has been...)

...and the green women...

[Paradox]

As something of a wannabe Trekkie, I'd like to refer you to the episode "Bread and Circuses". Its one from the original series, where a culture based on the Roman Empire had evolved into modernity. The rebels on the planet (good guys) were worshipers of the Sun. Always thanking the Sun. Well, at the end of the episode, Kirk is musing out loud on the bridge, wondering why an otherwise modern person would worship the sun. At that point, Uhura, who had been monitoring the planets communications, informs him, reverently, that the rebels aren't worshiping the sun up in the sky, that instead, they are worshiping the Son... the Son of God.

Cool episode.

[Political Junkie Too]

Will we as a species finally discard the silly religious myths that separate groups and get in the way of an honest and realistic assessment of the world around us, so that we can address real problems with real solutions?

That's asking for trouble.

-PJ

[Political Junkie Too]

There were several stories in the original series where the time lag between communications with Star Fleet Command forced Kirk to make decisions on his own.

-PJ

[TADSLOS]

LOL! True, true...the plague of the red shirt.