By Maia Engelbrecht
Star Trek, since the beginning of its inception, has always been a franchise revolving around crafting “the ideal future”; the depiction of human civilization as having transcended the terrestrial maladies of our history: poverty, war, gender inequality, racial prejudice, etc. It’s the rare piece of media that’s managed to prevail and evolve past its initial conception in 1966. It champions the limitless potential of human evolution, while paradoxically serving as a case study for the restrictions of humans to imagine a future that doesn’t comply with our immediate experience.
Star Trek may have always strived to depict the perfect utopia, but it has frequently struggled in aptly succeeding to envision a perfect future that may be detached from the current status quo.
This is perhaps the most evident in Star Trek: The Original Series, Where, the utopian depiction of human-alien space travel is spearheaded by a slew of protagonists that are predominantly white, male, and, interestingly, human. While the original show is certainly notable for its diversity of the time, with Nichelle Nichols, an African American woman, and George Takei, a Japanese American man, each with prominent roles, the majority of the action is carried by William Shatner’s Captain Kirk and his posse of Spock, Leonard McCoy and Scotty. Ironically enough, the show whose central premise is the co-existence of aliens and humans is distinctly lacking in aliens on board the ship piloted in the original series.
The only exception in the main cast is Leonard Nimoy’s character Spock, who’s half-vulcan and half-human. Furthermore, the depiction of women also demands commentary; onboard a starship, with its concomitance of labour, danger, and need for mobility, it seems peculiar that a good portion would choose to fashion mini skirts instead of the more pragmatic trousers that all of the male cast wears. It should also be noted that the women were often relegated to slightly more subservient roles in comparison to the men, and, of course, were always eventually revealed to be attracted to Captain Kirk.
Despite the earnest attempt by Gene Roddenberry to depict a truly tolerant and egalitarian society, the show, likely heavily influenced by the network, illustrates that tolerance may be subject to an insular worldview. That being said, Star Trek is a franchise that has continuously evolved with the times, even despite its turbulent beginnings. Space is, after all, the final frontier.