A couple of weeks after the start of the Persian Gulf war, I was scheduled to preach at Sojourners Community's worship. The text I had chosen came from 1 Corinthians. For several weeks our sermons had focused on the Gulf crisis, so I decided I would preach on something else. By way of introduction, however, I wanted to demonstrate the slowness of communications in Paul's day, such as with our morning's epistle, compared to CNN's live telecasts of missiles exploding over Baghdad.
I took a break from my sermon preparations to watch an episode of Star Trek (created by Gene Roddenberry). Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation now come on 17 times each week in the Washington, DC area, so you can take a lot of breaks from sermons, or whatever else you're doing, to watch Star Trek.
To my delight one of my favorite episodes, "Bread and Circuses," was on. The Enterprise was investigating Planet 892-IV, an amazingly 20th-century, Earth-like planet where the Roman Empire never crumbled and televised gladiator fights appeared nightly in prime time, complete with advertisements for Jupiter cars and polls measuring audience ratings.
After Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (played by James Doohan) beamed them down to the planet's surface, Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner), First Officer Spock (as a pointed-eared Vulcan, played by Leonard Nimoy), and Chief Medical Officer Leonard "Bones" McCoy (played by DeForest Kelly) stumble across a band of revolutionary slaves who live communally and are plotting to overthrow the empire nonviolently. They are also worshipers of the "sun." Not until the end of the show, when they are back on the Enterprise, do the three realize that the slaves are actually worshipers of the Son. Kirk's closing remark: "Yes, of course, Christ and Caesar. Wouldn't it be amazing to see it happening all over again!"
I always love to see that episode, but this time it also made me glad that CNN wasn't around at the resurrection. I can just imagine Peter Arnett waiting outside the tomb to broadcast live Jesus' first words. Jesus might never have come out.
Back in our Chicago days, in the early 1970s, when the magazine and community were both in their infancy, we worshiped together on Sunday evenings. On Sunday mornings Jim Wallis, Bob Sabath, and I watched Star Trek unfailingly, and each of us identified with one of the characters. A certain unnamed editor always imagined himself as the courageous and unflinching Captain Kirk; Bob's strong intuitive side linked him with McCoy; and I proudly fancied myself as the studied and logical Mr. Spock, unencumbered by emotional distractions.
In real life, we were never as successful as our Star Trek counterparts, but we had fun imagining anyway. When the first Star Trek movie came out, Jim, Bob, and I were first in line for its Washington debut.
IT WAS 25 YEARS ago, on the evening of September 8, 1966, that the crew of the Enterprise launched a five-year mission "to boldly go where no man [sic] has gone before." Two years short of that goal and 78 episodes later, "Turnabout Intruder," the final program, aired. Never a critical, artistic, or ratings success, Star Trek left the airwaves never to be heard from again.
But, of course, a minor miracle happened. Star Trek was resurrected into wildly successful rerun syndication and then was followed by Star Trek conventions, "trekkies" galore, numerous novels and comic books, memorabilia of almost every kind, five (and soon to be six) movies, and a spin-off television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation -- which, with 99 episodes, has outlived its predecessor.
How has a 23rd-century galactic adventure series grabbed the attention and imagination of so many 20th-century Earth-bound creatures? Perhaps the clearest answer to that question is Star Trek's optimism: It saw a hopeful future for the human race. In the midst of a murderous and debilitating war in Vietnam, a global arms race out of control, racial strife and conflict at home and abroad, and a series of political assassinations, Star Trek's spirit was not cynical. It portrayed a way out for us. War, nuclear annihilation, and racial hatred were not the answers. Negotiation, diplomacy, and the elimination of all national and racial bigotry were the answers. We could get through our problems and survive. Life in the 23rd century was a possibility.
Star Trek, of course, had its weaknesses. Acting performances could not exactly be called stellar. Character development, while strong in certain roles, was generally insufficiently multidimensional. And the strength of the story line, from episode to episode, was far too uneven.
But there were two other glaring weaknesses. The treatment of women was horrendous. True, most episodes were completed before the feminist movement began making significant inroads. But script writers who were so ahead of their time in some areas should have done a better job here, too.
In addition to being almost always very scantily clad, women (who were usually called "girls") were constantly seen as being dominantly irrational, at any moment capable of being overcome by emotional tides or the romantic advances of a man. In "The Changeling" even the competent and dependable Lieutenant Uhuru (played by Nichelle Nichols), the ship's communications specialist, is scanned by a mobile robot and told that she is a mass of conflicting and bewildering emotions. And in "Mudd's Women" an odious merchant, who trades in the "wife-settling" business, gives "plain" women his Venus drug to make them "beautiful" for their future husbands.
The show's captivity to Cold War ideology was its other primary flaw. Members of the United Federation of Planets are portrayed as reasonable and peace-loving people who are always ready to come to the defense of the hapless victims of aggression. The Federation's main opponents, the Klingons and the Romulans, are on the other hand war-loving, aggressive, ruthless conquerors.
In "The Omega Glory," on the planet Omega IV, two races of people are in conflict, with the Kohms (read communists) holding the upper hand over the Yangs (read Yankees). As the story draws to a conclusion, the Yangs gain moral strength as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy help them understand the meaning of two relics of their lost history: a red, white, and blue star-spangled flag; and a document that begins, "We, the people ..."
Even with these weaknesses Star Trek dealt well with a number of prominent social problems, including balance-of-power arguments and the just use of violence. In "Errand of Mercy" the Organians appear to be a passive, backward society of people who need the protection of the Federation against imminent invasion by the Klingons. In spite of the Organians' insistence that they are in no danger, Kirk and Spock condescendingly vow to protect them, even at the cost of their own lives.
With war between the Federation and the Klingons about to begin, the Organians show their technological superiority by causing weapons on both sides to radiate at untouchably high temperatures so that they cannot be used. Both Kirk and Klingon commander Kor are incensed by this intrusion, with Kirk defending the Federation's peaceful use of violence vis-a-vis the Klingons. But the Organians also show their moral superiority by denouncing the self-righteous Kirk as really not all that different from Kor, and by showing that violence in any form is wrong and utterly repugnant.
TECHNOLOGICAL ACHIEVEMENT is usually championed, but always subjugated to human needs and control. In "A Taste of Armageddon" planets Eminiar 7 and Vendikar have been fighting computer wars for more than 500 years (military wars were entirely too messy). When computers showed an area of the planet being hit, the residents of that area voluntarily reported to destruction stations where they were painlessly killed as victims of war. Appalled by such technological barbarism, Kirk convinced the planets' leaders to end their computer wars and seek diplomatic, life-respecting solutions to their differences.
And in "The Ultimate Computer" Kirk himself falls victim to encroaching technology when a computer named M-5 takes over as captain of the Enterprise. Kirk's superior, Commodore Wesley, refers to Kirk as Captain Dunsel, because "dunsel" is a term used at the Space Academy for a useless part. In the end, M-5 cannot handle its responsibilities with human heart or intuition, and Kirk, of course, manages to save the day and retain his captaincy.
Perhaps the strongest positive social contribution Star Trek made involved its rich affirmation of racial and ethnic diversity. Key crew roles were played by a black woman (Uhuru), an Asian (Sulu, played by George Takei), and a Russian (Chekov, played by Walter Koenig). A host of other racial, ethnic, and extraterrestrial characters also had important occasional roles.
In one episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," two enemies from the planet Cheron, Bele and Lokai, make the Enterprise a battlefield for their mortal combat. The reason for their violent hostilities toward each other: Bele's face is black on the left side and white on the right while Lokai's is just the opposite. Unable to accept Kirk and Spock's arguments against their mutual racial hatred, Bele and Lokai return to Cheron, still at each other's throats, to find the planet decimated and without survivors, their final battlefield of bigotry.
Apparently Martin Luther King Jr. had a more-than-passing interest in Star Trek. In an interview Nichols once said that she considered quitting the show but changed her mind after talking with King, who encouraged her to stay on because the character Uhuru was a positive role model.
In spite of its weaknesses, Star Trek dominantly gave a sense of hope for humanity's future, dealt with many significant social issues, and did so with compelling and adventurous story lines.
THE STAR TREK MOVIES and spin-off series continued the saga with the same basic strengths as the original. At the same time, some of the early weaknesses were tackled, and the special effects were vastly improved.
The movies were very uneven. The first one, Star Trek: The Movie, was a takeoff from the original's episode, "The Changeling," and, frankly, the television version was better. And while it had potential, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was a disaster due to Shatner's script writing and directing incompetence.
But the Star Trek II, III, and IV movies were vintage Star Trek, all enthralling, adventurous, and humorous (especially in the case of IV, when the Enterprise returns to San Francisco circa 1968 to save humpback whales and the planet from ecological disaster).
The three movies built upon each other and, in turn, built upon an episode from the original series called "Space Seed," co-starring Ricardo Montalban (who reprised his role for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan). The original actors' physical appearances have, of course, changed in the intervening 20 years. (One reviewer not very kindly observed that Shatner had more swash around his buckle and Doohan had more girth to his beam.) But their acting, character development, and relational depth all improved.
The spin-off television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, is a surprising delight. I was fully prepared for it to fail, in spite of its creators' best intentions. How could there be a successful sequel to the original? But, in my opinion, there is.
The character mix, so crucial to the original show's success, is pulled off very well without attempting to copy previous formulae, and this time includes married couples and children. More women play more important roles and wear more clothing; and the new lead-in explains the Enterprise's mission this way: "to boldly go where no one has gone before ..." The preference for diplomatic rather than military solutions to conflicts between nations and planets is even stronger. (The Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans have worked out their differences without going to war with each other -- obviously George Bush is not a fan of Star Trek.) And racial, ethnic, and extraterrestrial diversity and equality are as central as ever.
In spite of a few weird trekkies and occasional gross commercialization, the Star Trek cultural phenomenon is well worth celebrating in this, its 25th anniversary year. Optimism for the future, the quest for racial equality, and the preference for nonviolent over violent solutions to crises are impulses our world desperately needs.
But perhaps more important, Star Trek inspires imagination -- the capacity to envision that kind of world, that kind of galaxy, that kind of universe.
Will the Star Trek phenomenon continue into the real 23rd century and beyond? Probably not. But if it dies in my lifetime, I will probably respond as Spock did in "Requiem for Methuselah" when he was told by Dr. McCoy that Flint (the methuselah) would soon die: "On that day I shall mourn." Live long and prosper, Star Trek.
Joe Roos was publisher of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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