10 Most Meta Star Trek Moments
What reminded you were watching TV?
Science fiction can and should be used to turn the lens of media against real-world events and historical facts. That these should find their way into Star Trek is no surprise, though sometimes the manner in which they do tend to stand out.
Some moments certainly do work, balancing the message with the delivery, but others are less successful, ramming a point home where they should have offered it up gently.
The franchise has always been about depicting a brighter, better future, except of course for all of the times when it hasn't been about that at all. Yet even the newer, darker iterations of Star Trek have reflected the modern world around it, much to some viewers' dismay.
This list offers a breakdown of several of those times when Star Trek has shown on-screen what is there for anyone and everyone to see, using the lens of fiction to do it.
They may not all be pretty but then again, neither is the real world.
10. Irish Reunification
In The High Ground, the Enterprise-D travels to Rutia IV where the crew finds themselves thrown into the middle of a civil war. The terrorist faction, the Ansata, use technology that allows them to move between dimensions, meaning they can appear and disappear anywhere at will. The Ansata are separatists, believing that Rutian authorities are working with Starfleet to gain the upper hand in the conflict.
During the episode, Data asks Picard about the nature of violent insurrection, citing several occasions on when it proved effective. One such example is 'the Irish reunification of 2024' which, while probably feeling like a harmless line in an American writer's room, proved to be so controversial across the Atlantic that the episode to be censored or simply banned from the BBC.
The history of the Troubles in Nothern Ireland and of terrorist activity by the IRA was the inspiration for the line in the episode, yet it was too hot of a topic to be broadcast safely at that time. The BBC refused to air the episode, while Irish broadcaster RTÉ simply cut the line when it was being shown. As of this articles' writing, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland remain separate states on the one island.