10 Reasons To Greenlight Star Trek: United NOW

3. Politics Versus Preaching

Here’s the thing about Star Trek that sometimes gets lost in conversations: Gene Roddenberry didn’t create it for the cool starship battles. He created it because he had things to say, about race, war, nationalism, and power. Network television in 1966 wouldn’t let him say those things openly on TV, which led to his first series, The Lieutenant, being airlocked after just one season. 

Roddenberry set his next show in outer space. Vietnam became the planet Neural. The Russians became Klingons. The Yangs and Kohms had their own copy of the U.S. Constitution. We never said that Roddenberry was always subtle.

That’s always been Trek’s superpower: telling political stories in its own unique language. And it’s a tradition United would strive to embrace. Perhaps one may be familiar with the quote 'If you have a message, call Western Union' (which has been attributed to Samuel Goldwyn, Moss Hart, and Humphrey Bogart, depending on the source). Roddenberry’s genius was finding a way to send the message anyway, wrapped in gold velour and aluminium foil so nobody noticed until the credits rolled. 

United needs to do the same. The proof of concept already exists, though it was told a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Andor showed that science-fiction audiences are hungry for dramatic depth and moral complexity. If that worked for Star Wars fans, imagine what it could do for Trekkers who’ve been asking for exactly this kind of nuanced storytelling for decades.