The idea of a better future is a powerful antidote to the present. Part of what makes Star Trek so compelling is that it promises a better trajectory for humanity – charting a path from our troubled present to a future that overcomes the horrors of Earth history and a future for humanity in the stars.

This hope for an alternative history of our future is an old idea that can understand as “utopian.” A utopia is an idea of a better place or a better future. Utopianism is the prescription for how we can get there. I believe that the Star Trek universe can be understood within the utopian tradition. Seeing it in this history is important because it gives us a geography in which to place Star Trek, to understand it relative other art, literature, history, and social theory. If we take seriously the utopian possibilities of the ideas at the centre of Star Trek we can see it as more than television, more than science fiction. This requires optimism and hope and the willingness to imagine a different trajectory for humanity.

One of the most famous quotes about utopianism appears in Oscar Wilde’s 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” Wilde wrote, “a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias.”

Star Trek features no such stirring declaration of its utopian aspirations. Can we consider it utopian? The Original Series became famously associated with the speech delivered by William Shatner at the start of each episode’s theme song:

Space: The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

We can imagine that Star Trek’s final frontier shares the spirit of Wilde’s search for utopia. But the rest of the famous introductory text dissembles this idea and moves Star Trek quickly into the territory of colonial expansion and exploration that shares more with early American imperialism than utopianism. There are many claims about the source of the text, from an American government space program brochure in the late 1950s to much earlier expressions of seafaring exploration. If we leave colonialism and the frontier of the wild west out of things, the final frontier can be read in a more general way about an expression of hope – the country at which humanity is always landing. And landing there, humanity sets off again. So while Star Trek is about exploration and frontiers and some of the negatives that these pursuits entail, it can also be read as a hope for aspiration and human progress. There’s a lot to criticize and also aspire to.

When Star Trek was revived with The Motion Picture in 1979, the film ended with text on the screen reading “The human adventure is just beginning” (it was also the tagline on some versions of the movie poster.) This was a very Gene Roddenberry statement, a vague and compelling expression of his belief that we (or the crew of the Enterprise 300 years from now) are only at the start of understanding human potential. It is an inherently utopian idea. Ruth Levitas wrote about utopia as “the desire for a better way of being, the utopia is an aspect of the education of desire.” Can Star Trek teach us how to dream about our future in the same way as utopian literature or social theory?

The Origins of Utopia

The word “utopia” originates from a work of fictional political philosophy written by Thomas More in 1516. More’s work of political satire imagines an island with idealized social customs including communal property, and equality amongst citizens. But the document is inherently tied to the 16th century - it is a pre-Enlightenment view of a better society that still inherently reflects More’s social realties. Utopia’s fictional and fantastical society allowed More to criticize contemporary Europe and the Catholic Church. The book created a model for imagining what a perfect society might look like and exploring it in explicit detail. More’s Utopia is regarded as the first in a new genre of fiction and commentary that would become utopian literature.

There are three different types of utopianism that I’m going to discuss: literary utopianism, which appears in fiction and literature; utopian practice, which involves real-world attempts to create utopian communities; and utopian social theory, which explores the philosophical and theoretical foundations of utopian ideas. The literary has the most relevance to utopian science fiction and its direct relationship to Star Trek. But utopianism in both theory and practice still matter, both for how they contribute to dreams about the future or for their influence. Some utopian visions cross into all three areas. One brief example of this that I’ll return to later is utopian socialism which is expressed in literary forms such as William Morris’ News From Nowhere (1890), in limited practice in the 19th and 20th centuries, and as an ongoing question and subject of critique in social theory.

Ruth Levitas writes about three different aspects of utopia that are important to understand: content, form and function. Content is what utopia might look like. Form is the way that utopian ideas are expressed, which could be art, literature, or social theory. And function is understanding what utopia can do, everything from giving society a goal to work towards to giving us a way to think about ourselves.

Utopianism is a philosophy of hope. This is at the root of what it shares with Star Trek and the starting point for considering Trek as a part of the utopian tradition. There are a lot of different topics to explore here and in introducing them I feel like I’m still getting this newsletter underway and promising what is on the horizon. There are different ways that Star Trek reflects the utopian tradition. These include: its faith in humanity expressed as Roddenberry’s humanist philosophy; Star Trek’s optimism about discovery and technology to propel humanity forward; Star Trek’s inherent individualism; The social organization of Star Trek’s alternative history of the future - what Roddenberry and other creators imagined human society might look like in the 23rd and 24th centuries. All of these aspects of utopia connect back to a central idea that better is possible if we are able to overcome the challenges that constrain and oppress humanity. Star Trek is not just about having arrived that that place but the struggle to get there and defend what humanity has achieved by the 23rd century.

And like most utopian literature and art, Star Trek’s utopianism points back at ourselves. This gets us to the task of discussing why Star Trek made some of the choices that it did and the ways these reflect society of the 1960s, the 1990s, or today. Star Trek has a function beyond fantasy, beyond fandom if we choose to look for it.

What’s the Catch?

The shorthand that Star Trek often uses to define its utopian vision is to bring Earth society (represented by either the United Federation of Planets or Starfleet) into conflict with alien cultures. These “strange new worlds” provide the necessary contrast to allow for both self-definition and allegory about contemporary society.

One of my favourite devices that accomplishes this is when a Starfleet crew encounters a seemingly perfect or utopian society. In the episode teaser (the 4-7 minutes before the series theme music and staring titles) the crew will marvel at the society they have encountered before a conflict is introduced - a catch that complicates or casts doubt on the utopian society. We can also find this “catch” in many utopian visions of the past as we look at them with modern eyes. Thomas More’s utopia described a society defined by leisure and comfort but also reliant upon slave labour.

An early episode of The Next Generation called “Justice” (Season 1, Episode 8) had the crew of the Enterprise visit the planet Rubicun III, populated by extremely attractive and well-proportioned humans who are engaged only in the pursuit of art or pleasure. The crew enjoys the idyllic experience for a while before ultimately learning that order is kept on the planet by the imposition of brutal criminal penalties for any transgression, no matter how minor. Teenaged Wesley Crusher unknowingly tramples some flowers and is immediately sentenced to death. The catch – paradise is maintained by a horrifying system of deterrence. The story was deepened after a rewrite by Gene Roddenberry that added the presence of a godlike entity watching over the inhabitants of the planet and is revealed as the source of their uncompromising legal codes. Captain Picard must attempt to reason with the entity to make it see that justice without the possibility of exception or flexibility cannot be considered just. Thankfully, he succeeds and Wesley is not put to death.

The Original Series also used this device in several stories. In “The Cloud Minders” the crew of the Enterprise visits a utopian society on the planet Ardana. Some citizens live in a luxurious city in the clouds called Stratos where they pursue art as their primary occupation. This lifestyle is made possible by the labour of a lesser race called the Troglytes (subtle!) who labour below on the planet surface mining the necessary resources for the city. There is the catch - the utopian vision of the Stragos residents is made possible only through a stark class division and exploitation of half the population. The Enterprise also requires this resource, a mineral called Zenite, to prevent a disaster on another world. Kirk and Spock are drawn into a conflict between the Troglytes and the citizens of Stratos

Kirk’s objective is to solve this conflict only in the service of obtaining the necessary minerals. His ultimate solution is slightly half-baked - he succeeds in the end in obtaining masks which would end the Troglytes mental impairment due to zenite poisoning. It is left to Spock to identify the inherent injustice of the stark divisions that underly Ardana society. In a voiceover, Spock reflects,

“This troubled planet is a place of the most violent contrasts. Those who receive the rewards are totally separated from those who shoulder the burdens. It is not wise leadership.”

This is a passage to return to in a future newsletter where I want to talk about class division and revolution on the way to utopia. For now, it helps to illustrate Star Trek’s tendency to contrast false utopias on top of the presumed superior society created by the Federation by the 23rd century. It gives us an answer to the question what’s the use of utopia? There are several when we are considering their literary construction.

Imperfect utopias like Ardena or Rubicun III are simple allegories for the failures of our own society. We cannot achieve utopian outcomes if we can’t see past class division or inflexible understandings of justice. Other episodes of Star Trek accomplish this with more complexity than the two examples here, but their simplicity illustrates the purpose of the device. In exploring the catch or flaws in each utopian society the writers can emphasize both our own flaws and their true utopian vision achieved by the crew of the Enterprise and the larger Federation society.

What this device does not do is turn the lens on the society of the 23rd century itself. It is not self-critical, it’s up to us to evaluate what the creators of Star Trek held up as their vision of a future utopia. This is particularly true of The Original Series and The Next Generation which were most invested in portraying the Enterprise crews as the best of humanity. In contrast, Deep Space Nine allowed more human flaws to creep in.

These flaws are necessary for a clearer vision of the possibilities of utopian thinking. While Thomas More wrote the first truly utopian literature, the original seed of the idea can be traced back as far as Plato’s Republic. In his vision of a perfect society, Plato details the organization of classes in a city state in which everyone will be perfectly fitted to their vocation. But the important thing about his vision is that it is self-critical and contains a duality in which Plato prescribes a solution yet admits that corruption and human imperfection make it impossible to achieve. He argues that any society created by humans can only be a poor reflection of the ideal and must fail. There can be no perfect society.

Star Trek doesn’t work with this as a foundational understanding of utopia. It requires optimism and faith that humanity can do better and achieve the impossible. From the introduction to Star Trek Lives, the editors wrote “the deepest conviction of the creators of Star Trek was, and is, that triumph is possible, that we can win.”

Main Viewscreen

In each newsletter I include a few highlights from the Star Trek universe that stood out to me as I watch for this project or just for fun.

The past two weeks I have been watching episodes from season 1 of The Original Series with an eye towards utopian themes. A big one that stands out is the idea of the great man or superman used to contrast Roddenberry’s idea of a utopic humanity. Two episodes that use this device are “Charlie X” and “Space Seed”

“Charlie X” is just the second episode of Star Trek after the pilot. The Enterprise picks up a teenaged Charlie Evans from a cargo ship, seemingly eager to hand him off to Starfleet control. Charlie has lived on his own since the age of three, stranded on a planet by a crash on Colony Alpha 5. While Charlie struggles with teenaged lust for Yeoman Rand and his difficulty understanding social cues, the Enterprise crew begins to notice strange occurrences throughout the ship.

Charlie is connected to the Thasians, a race of super-powerful beings with psychokinetic abilities. He was born human but granted their powers after his crash. Unable to tame his teenaged emotions or temper amongst other humans for the first time, Charlie uses his extraordinary power to take control of the Enterprise and threaten its destruction.

There are two really interesting things about this for me. The first is the response of Kirk and Spock to a human with superior abilities. The presumption is that Charlie’s powers must lead to his ruin - both because he is a mere adolescent but also in the more general sense that no human can hope to harness such power. The crew of the Enterprise seem to understand instinctually that Charlie cannot process his connection or responsibilities to other people.

The second interesting bit of this episode is the conclusion where the Thasians materialize to collect Charlie and relieve The Enterprise from his dangerous tantrum. The Thasians apologize, and explain that Charlie can never live amongst his own people - he will return to Thasusd with them. Charlie begs to stay, pleading that the Thasians cannot touch or love and the trauma of his upbringing among them becomes evident. He becomes a child begging for help. We see a brief moment of inner struggle in Kirk, but he has no choices before him; the Thasians will take Charlie if they choose it and his time on the Enterprise comes to an end. It’s a strangely devastating finish with an explanation provided as to why the events have taken place but with no moral resolution to the story. The crew seems shaken by Charlie’s fate, particularly the object of his affection, Yoeman Rand.

The larger idea that I want to explore here in a future newsletter is that Star Trek often suggests that humanity must live within certain limits. Star Trek would explore the same idea in multiple stories through the themes of eugenics, artificial intelligence, ultra-powerful or omnipotent beings like the Thasians or the Q Collective. The one other instance that I will finish on is the first appearance of Khan Noonian Singh in “Space Seed”

“Space Seed” contains some interesting Star Trek future history. It depicts the 1990s as an era of the last world war on earth, fought by genetically enhanced supermen who had become tyrant princes. One was exiled on a crude spacecraft and traveled in suspended animation for 200 years until he was discovered by the Enterprise. Khan briefly gains control of the Enterprise, and the story sets up a struggle between Kirk, a normal human of the 23rd century and a superman from the 20th. Here is another commentary on the limits that human potential can safely endure before the worst of our nature overpowers the best of humanity.

Before they realize he must be defeated, Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Spock discuss Earth history and Khan’s rule as a dictator - “the last of the tyrants to be overthrown.” Scotty wistfully admits he’s always had a sneaking admiration for Khan. Kirk agrees - “he was the best of the tyrants, and the most dangerous…they were supermen in a sense; stronger, braver, certainly more daring.” Spock is incredulous about their romanticism for a ruthless dictator. “We can be against him and admire him all at the same time,” says Kirk, and Spock concludes, “illogical.”

This is such a strange scene. Spock acts as the voice of reason amongst humans warmly paying tribute to an Earth tyrant who would soon attempt to murder them all - and Khan would get another chance fifteen years later in the motion picture sequel to this episode! The next time I teach the Star Trek class I’m going to show both “Space Seed” and The Wrath of Khan to work through this idea about superhumans in the Star Trek universe in some more depth.

In the next newsletter I’m going to spend some more time on the “optimism effect” in Star Trek, linking the necessary optimism for a utopian future with Gene Roddenberry’s worldviews about humanity. Thanks for reading. LLAP.