10 Times Star Trek Showed Us That There Is A Chance At A Progressive Future
Star Trek was designed to use its voice to tell morality plays. But which of these stand out today?
Star Trek was conceived of by Gene Roddenberry to show the world a brighter future. Poverty, war and hunger would all become things of the past. As the show was created in the '60s, these were three elements that the human race had all too much experience of.
Class divides, race divides and gender divides all were tackled in his morality plays, depicted on-screen through science fiction. While we may have seen a Klingon battling a Starfleet officer, really behind the masks, the USSR was facing off against the USA. The world was at the height of the Cold War and, despite this, a Russian officer sat on the bridge of the Federation flagship.
While Star Trek has not always managed to do the messages it tried to teach justice, it has always been a franchise dedicated to moving past the evils that haunt the world of the 20th and early 21st centuries. It is enjoying a resurgence at the moment, though the troubles of the modern age have seeped into the storytelling that's on offer.
Star Trek's examples of a progressive universe are many. This list comprises only some of them.
10. The Way I See It, You Hew-Mons Used To Be A Lot Like Ferengi: Greedy, Acquisitive...We're A Reminder
When Star Trek Deep Space Nine wanted to make a point, it often went straight for jugular. In the second season finale, The Jem'hadar, Sisko is taken prisoner along with Quark. Up to this point, Sisko and Quark have shared very little time together - there's really not much cause for the station's commander and the station's barkeep to converse much!
This, in part, has fed into the prejudice that Sisko has about Ferengi, something that Quark sees through quickly. While the viewers sympathies may be set up to side with Sisko, in a scene later in the episode, Quark manages to take Sisko to task.
He questions Sisko on what his opinion of Ferengi is, and Sisko dodges the question. He asks how he would feel if Jake were to bring a Ferengi woman home, to which Sisko says he hasn't thought about it. Quark grimly points out that this proves it, that the 'hew-mon' view of Ferengi is one of distain, because of a) how alike they are and b) the fact that hew-mons have committed far worse atrocities in their history than the Ferengi have.
Quark finishes with the point that the greedy, misogynistic, profit-driven Ferengi may not be like hew-mons after all.
They're better than them.