2 Ups And 7 Downs From Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.7 — What Is Starfleet?

8. DOWN — They Shoot Space Horses, Don't They?

Star Trek Strange New Worlds What Is Starfleet Enterprise Weapons
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There is supposed to be a metaphor, a message, in there somewhere, and we already knew Pike liked horses. As well as lassoing, Starfleet's job is also to put the odd space bronco out of its misery from time to time. That is, only if it has taken time out from being an evil warmonger that shoots first and redacts the number of dead later. Doing the right, the humane, thing is for when the horse falls down. Thank goodness! Now, Beto had a happier, sad conclusion for his video essay.

Star Trek has always been a piece of theatre — the famous 'morality play in space'. However, it has typically — traditionally — never sought to teach its viewers a lesson that they couldn't otherwise learn by themselves. The double fault of What Is Starfleet? was that it couldn't even make the fault of telling us what, or how, to think. On the contrary, its moral message, its metaphor, if there was one, was lost in the mess of a framing device and a confused plot.

Contributor
Contributor

Jack has been a content creator for TrekCulture since 2022, and a Star Trek fan for as long as he can remember. He has authored over 170 articles, including one of TrekCulture's longest, and has appeared several times on the TrekCulture podcast. He holds a first-class honours degree in French from the University of Sussex, a master's with distinction in Language, Culture and History: French and Francophone Studies and a PhD in French from University College London (UCL). He has previously worked in the field of translation. His interests extend to science-fiction television and film more widely. His favourite series is Star Trek: Voyager, followed closely by Stargate SG-1.