Workers in the 24th Century

Who cleans the bridge of the USS Enterprise? Is it a robot or a worker?*

This image is a meme that has circulated online for years that embodies the wrong side of this question - suggesting that there are undesirable jobs aboard a Federation starship, and vacuuming the bridge carpet is probably one of them (even though this is obviously a set cleaner working at Paramount.) It’s the wrong question because it automatically assumes that some jobs on the Enterprise are worth less than others, but this is not how the utopia of the 24th century is supposed to work. There should be no “menial” tasks on a starship, or tasks that an individual does not want to do. So what can we understand about workers in Star Trek and the ways that they understand the tasks they undertake in space?

There are workers everywhere in the Star Trek universe. Star Trek creators have been thinking about this nearly as long as the franchise has existed. Here’s a cleaner vacuuming at Starfleet headquarters in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Director Nicholas Meyer must have wondered who vacuums in Starfleet because there’s a worker vacuuming in the background as Spock and Kirk walk past.

And on the Enterprise D, the flagship of the United Federation of Planets, we constantly see a sizeable contingent of service workers on board. There are cleaners, barbers, waiters, and bartenders. For most of the series we don’t learn much about the wait staff, but we get to know the bartender pretty well.

Guinan is a semi-regular character in Star Trek: The Next Generation who is the ship’s bartender. She’s also a personal confidante to many of the senior officers, particularly Captain Picard. It’s always assumed that Guinan has a dynamic private reason for being aboard the Enterprise that extends beyond simply serving drinks, so she’s not our best example. We do know that she wants to be there and has chosen the role of bartender. Far more interesting to me are the Ten Forward civilian staff who don’t interact with the crew beyond their capacity as service workers and who are simply there to serve.

There’s just enough mystery around Guinan for the audience to believe she’s onboard the Enterprise serving drinks for personal reasons. She’s a traveler and a mystic. We never fully see the extent of her rich inner life but assume that it exists. If this is true, we should consider the same for every member of the enlisted service workers on the Enterprise. In a post-scarcity society, nobody is doing a job to earn a minimum wage for the reason of subsistence. Anyone working as a civilian aboard the Enterprise has chosen it.

The service workers are the most interesting to me. The Enterprise D carried barbers, waiters, kitchen staff, and cleaners. Their utility aboard a starship is obvious, but where do they fit in an ontological sense? How do we understand them?

Nineteenth-century utopian writers imagined a future that would be free of exploitation and struggle for survival that characterized waged labour in their century. Star Trek adopted some of this view in its construction of a fictional post-scarcity society, but not a society in which all labour was eliminated.

William Morris suggested a very adaptable view of labour and work that applies to Roddenberry’s 24th century. In an 1884 speech on art and labour, Morris wrote:

For the most part Star Trek avoids questions about regular work in favour of a more glamorous depiction of “duty” and “service” represented by both enlisted and commissioned members of Starfleet. But there are a few exceptions to this which allow us to think about labour in the 24th century and the meaning of what work contributes to a utopian society, even aboard the flagship of the Federation. It’s time to talk about Ben the Waiter.

Ben the Waiter was a character who appeared just once in The Next Generation: “Lower Decks,” a beloved episode from the series’ seventh season. “Lower Decks” shifts the perspective of a typical episode of Star Trek and focuses on a quartet of “lower deckers” - ensigns in Starfleet struggling to be noticed and advance their careers alongside the familiar senior officers on the bridge. We see life aboard the Enterprise from their perspective including their anxieties, doubts, and aspirations to succeed in Starfleet. Including amongst them is Ben, a civilian worker on the Enterprise who is posted to Ten Forward as a waiter and friends with the three Starfleet ensigns.

Why is Ben on the Enterprise? There are a few reasons that a civilian might sign up with Starfleet to work in this capacity. The Enterprise is exploring the uncharted regions of space where humans have never ventured. Exploration is a central value to 24th century humanity and so many civilians certainly enlisted in service for the same reasons as Starfleet members: for adventure and travel. But as an upside, Ben receives many of the benefits of space travel without the stressful downsides of the experience. He can live in the relative luxury of the Enterprise, work his shift, and the rest of his time is his own for self-expression or exploration. Because he’s not working for wages or survival, Ben is unperturbed by the worst elements of service work in the contemporary world. His labour is not being exploited. In a sense Ben isn’t working “for” anyone, he simply contributes to the larger mission of the Enterprise by filling a necessary role.

Ben’s relationships on the ship tell us something about the 24th century society depicted in Star Trek. “Lower Decks” never once shows Ben in a socially subservient way. He serves the Starfleet personnel, but it is clear from how they treat him that nobody regards Ben as their inferior. In earshot of his friends he calls Commander Riker, the second most senior officer on the ship, by his first name Will. The Starfleet ensigns can’t believe this, but Ben’s response suggests that because he is not Starfleet, outside of the hierarchical command structure on the ship he and Commander Riker are equals. He tells his friends, “when he’s in here, he wants to be treated like a civilian.” And this belief is not just rebellious defiance - Riker believes it too. He treats Ben completely different than he treats the young Starfleet ensigns under his command. They are his subordinates, but Ben is not. This is driven home a final time when Ben wraps up a poker game with the lower deckers and waltzes up to the officer quarters to join the officer’s game. They welcome him openly. Star Trek surprises sometimes by playing against type in our expectations of human behaviour as a broadside reminder that yes, they really did achieve a utopia that eliminated social stratification.

But more than this, Ben serves as a reminder that stepping outside of the hierarchy of Starfleet is not only possible but necessary to process the painful world of space travel in a healthy way. After Ensign Sito’s death on a special mission at the end of the episode, Ben goes to Worf and bridges the gap between the Worf and the grieving ensigns. Ben understands that they need to grieve together. The final shot of “Lower Decks” is Worf joining the young crew members to remember their fallen friend. An uncharacteristically sensitive moment for Worf.

A lot of fans wish that we had seen more of Ben the Waiter because he was so congenial and easy to be around. He exemplifies what Morris was talking about in his speeches to workingmen promising a better world and a release from the grip of labour for daily survival. Again, Morris wrote, “all work done with pleasure and worthy of praise produces art.” This art doesn’t have to be the craftwork that Morris might have intended - it can mean a fully realized life in which work kindles self-expression and development.

Ben’s work, though simple, allowed for an enormous world of adventure and exploration in the stars, even if it was different from how Captain Picard and the Starfleet crew experienced them. Fans responded to Ben because it was good to see a regular person living a rich life in the 24th century without needing to climb to the top of the social hierarchy. In Star Trek every worker is worthy of a good life too and the same truth can exist in our world if we fight for it.

*as a final note to the first line of this newsletter, the answer might be that nobody needs to clean the ship. In a TNG episode in which livestock is brought onboard the Enterprise the question comes up and Riker answers “the ship will clean itself.”

Thanks for reading. LLAP 🖖