Star Trek 3 Plot: 10 Moral Dilemmas From The Show That Could Be Resurrected

Let's help the screenwriters with some potential plot dilemmas for Star Trek 3...

By John K Kirk /

Science fiction literature/entertainment is rife with all sorts of controversy or moral dilemmas; Star Trek is not immune to this type of plot generation. Only its longevity has spawned dozens of all sorts of moral choices that have made its thousands of loyal fans constantly debate about what the right choice should have been. The re-booted Star Trek franchise is bound to resurrect some of these scenarios, or if it doesn€™t, then it should and the question that begs to be asked is: which ones are they going to dig up? With the script for Star Trek 3 currently being written for a probable release in 2016, the writers would be wise to tackle these moral dilemmas once again...

10. Artificial Life €“ Or, Simply Put: Creation

This is a doozy. It€™s a good one to start off with. My all-time favourite movie from the classic movies is Star Trek II €“ the Wrath of Khan. It€™s funny, because it starts off resting on the foundations of a moral dilemma Kirk was forced to make in the original series (€œSpace Seed€). We€™ll come back to that one, but there€™s a bigger dilemma in this film that just seems to have been glossed over. You see, Spock€™s death (Sorry €“ was that a spoiler for anyone?), Ricardo Montalban€™s rippling pectorals and the discovery that Kirk has a son all seem to overshadow the fact that the United Federation of Planets knows how to build a freaking planet and create life on other worlds. Forget about seeking out strange new worlds, now they can put them in their own backyard. This is huge and while there was the occasional nod to the level of technology involved in this process, there really wasn€™t a recognition of the amount of morality involved in the decision making process of this new science. In fact, the writers of this story just projected the demise of the Almighty to some point in the middle of the 23rd century. That€™s right € God now has an expiry date. Will J.D. Payne re-visit Genesis? If so, will there be any inclusion of the back-story behind it? I mean, Carol Marcus does show up in Star Trek: Into Darkness and all we got in STWOK was the fact that Captain Kirk used to have a fling with the lead scientist on the project that resulted in his status as an absent father, but this is pure gold that simply can€™t be ignored. Hey €“ maybe they can re-build Vulcan with it? Just a thought...