Space, The Final Frontier

Dan

4/6/2020

“Space…. the final frontier….” No more iconic word has been spoken on a television show than these. Anyone that has seen either Star Trek The Original Series or The Next Generation knows how the rest of this goes. The Star Trek Universe has been around for over 50 years, and it does not look like it is going to end anytime soon.

As a self-proclaimed Trekkie, I have a small obsession with the Star Trek universe. I have seen every episode of TOS, The Animated Series, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, and Picard, and I have seen all 13 movies multiple times. I guess to say I have a small obsession would be an understatement.

Gene Roddenberry’s vision for Star Trek was a utopian-esque feeling to it. There was no racism and no sexism. There wasn’t any discrimination, in Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, because of race, sex, national origin, species, or any other discerning attributes that might make someone look, talk, or act differently than another. It was hope for the human race in a time when racial tensions were at their peak, The Cold War was in full swing, and the Women’s Rights movement was going strong. It was a welcome escape from the turmoil going on in the country, and a strong political statement.

Here we are, over 50 years later, and everything that Gene Roddenberry was trying to fight against in his series, is still going strong. Racism still plagues this country, sexism is still a very real issue in the country, and diversity is still something that is fought against.

In the pilot episode of TNG, Encounter at Farpoint, Q (played by the great John De Lancie) quantified the human race perfectly. He called the human race a “grievously savage race”. In a sense, he is not wrong. We kill each other because of skin color, differences in belief of deities, differences in political opinions, and even what region of the world we come from. Very little has changed in the last 50 years.

We have the technology, knowledge, and information in today’s society to overcome these adversities that have plagued our world for centuries. We have a device that we carry around every day, that fits in our pockets, that has access to the entire human race’s worth of knowledge and what do we do with it? We look at porn, we take pictures of our food, we take pictures of ourselves looking like ducks, and we bully people to no end. We use this technology to continue the hatred and bigotry that has afflicted us for as long as we have been a species.

It is time for us, as an entire race, to put our hatred aside and work for the betterment of our species. There is so much that we can accomplish. If we just learn to work together, we can “boldly go where no one has gone before”.