Star Trek: The Next Generation

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Patrick Stewart and a multi-culti (in space terms) crew of people with questionable hair fly around the universe enforcing the doctrine of nonintervention by intervening all over the universe. The USS Enterprise appears to be a science ship but is routinely given the missions of a battleship by an admiralty who are both bastions of the Federation’s virtue and completely rotten with evil. We’re given this expansionist Earth-state to sympathise with, against a universe full of harshly, racially caricatured aliens, but in this context their dysfunction is frequently baffling.

Star Trek enthusiasts can argue that the message of the show is humanism, and that the Federation is utopic relative to its neighbors. On the other hand, who hasn’t heard that one from some feckless defender of America’s shoddy work? Change the names and the whole plot arc could be cold-eyed propaganda for any number of historical empires, including the Klingon and Romulan ones.

The average episode follows a fairly strict arc:

Because Picard (Stewart) is a brilliant captain, Enterprise is in perpetual peril. It begins as something fairly routine, like a diplomatic envoy with some cheapo aliens, or a period of leisure time planetside. Pretty soon, though, things get hairy and Picard has to convene his council.

These are a crew of jocular people who sit in a room and talk about the plot. All of the humans from Earth have a clear ethnic identity in terms of nations that existed in the 20th century, and they are accompanied by an android who can memorize the entire history of music at a glance but can’t read or emit body language. Eventually, one of them suggests the plot to the episode and the Captain says “make it so.”

By the end of the second part, they’ve figured out the real nature of the threat they’re facing: always either an unknown entity from space (spiritual in disposition, sciencey in exposition), agents of a foreign empire or the Borg. Their first solution fails miserably. Fortunately, the whole team bring winning ideas to the second meeting: the Klingon proposes hitting it; the woman proposes understanding it; the engineer proposes rerouting things; and the android solves the entire plot like some kind of machina for deus-ing ex of.

There is a tense confrontation and Picard wins it by strength of Shakespearean delivery, literally staring his foes down while admonishing them on Federation mores. Or, if it’s the Borg, attacking them like a bad infestation, though admittedly with as much success as the guy from Creepshow. In the end, Picard wins by being human (the single greatest out in the entire universe of Star Trek) and status quo is restored. “Together with dignity,” Picard adds peevishly. “And one hopes, some small measure of understanding.”

Star Trek: The Next Generation is a prime piece of 80’s anodyne TV – the past is nostalgic and the future assuredly progressive. It’s today, which is full of uncertainty, that is the source of evil. After all, eventually the Federation will have pacified and preserved the universe, and everything that’s now a danger will be a curiosity, strictly limited to its preserve of space. Earth will always have an Ireland, a Picardy, a South Korea, and people there will use correct 20th century accents. Eventually, the Federation will overcome its saboteurs and the specter of moral decay, and then that will be true of every planet in the universe, forever.