The Future Sucks

At least, if Star Trek has anything to say about. Oh sure, it claims to present a revolutionary view of the future, where racism, sexism, war, poverty, and money have all been eliminated. It claims to offer hope for a better future. But that's not the reality, is it?

It's interesting to me that such a popular American show can have certain ideals that seem so blatantly not American. They live in basically a socialist dream society, where money has been unlimited and no one is either rich or poor, but rather all are on an equal social level. In fact, the only capitalists who really appear in the show - most notably the Ferengi - are demonized, villain-ized, or both. It's not that I disagree with this vision of the future. A world without poverty does sound nice, but I can't help but be surprised this didn't bother more people.

Maybe it's because, despite all their pontificating about social justice and equality, the show didn't really manage to achieve much of that. For the forward thinking and prescience they touted about like a badge of honor, some of their faults seem incredibly glaring, particularly in the original show. The Enterprise crew had no hesitation to refer to Spock by low pejoratives, particularly from McCoy. You can argue this is counterbalanced by them being friends, but that doesn't really erase the litany of expletives the doctor hurls at the Vulcan race in general.

Then worst of all is the treatment of women. The gain some degree of reasonable accomplishments in the later series, but in the original? They served as nothing more than secretaries and servants. Even Uhura, a main character, was actually little more than a glorified receptionist. Her job on the ship, in a very real sense, was answering the phone and making calls. That's it. She didn't even have the xenolinguistic skills she would be given in the reboot movie that gives her an actual purpose on the ship. She was the most prominent and advanced female on the ship, possibly in all of starfleet. And she was a glorified receptionist. Just. Wow.

I mean, really? Really? In a show were the writers make a point of taking current trends to logical conclusions in order to create events for episodes in a future more than 200 years in the future, and all these "brilliant" people couldn't see the growing trend of women in the work force leading to a time when women became leaders of humanity? Not only do they fail to spot the trend, but they actually directly deny it, on multiple occasions! I don't know if I've ever seen a more sexist show, in fact. Take the final episode of the original series, "Turnabout Intruder," in which they not only deny one woman's ability to Captain the ship, they declare no woman is level-headed enough to EVER pilot ANY starship. Ever.

Really?

I mean... Really?

Women aren't level-headed enough? They're too prone to emotional outbursts? Really? Like Kirk was never prone to emotional outbursts? Like even fucking Spock never did something purely as an emotional reaction? Are you fucking kidding me? There is no excuse for this. No excuse for this. A forward thinking show, one that wanted to present a future of equality and justice should have known better. There is no reason why they wouldn't. But this is what's bound to happen, I guess, when you're show is spearheaded by a flagrant womanizer like Gene Roddenberry (though with a name like Rod and Berries what else can he really be?) who saw women as little more than sexual objects to be enjoyed but otherwise ignored.

More recently, J. Michael Straczynski and Bryce Zabel had given a proposal to reboot the universe in order to draw back fans. Among other ideas, they put forth the possibility of changing Chief Engineer Scotty, my personal favorite character from the original series, into a woman in an effort to "prove" that women can be good at math as well. Woopdedoo. What a leap forward. Or sideways. Maybe more of a step, really. Granted, I realize this wasn't an idea they were exactly pushing, but still. If you want to go about arbitrarily transforming main characters into female counterparts, why not correct a glaringly offensive problem from the original series and make Kirk female? Prove a woman can helm a starship after all. I know we've already had Janeway, but that show had a female Chief Engineer too. If nothing else, it would make for a particularly uncomfortable moment when Spock enters Pon Farr and his best friend is now a woman. Fan fiction could have a field day with that one. That's right, I mentioned pon farr. I have actually watched the shows. What, you thought I was bullshitting you?

Pon farr, bitches.