Star Trek Utopianism

by Joshua Fagan

Discussions of speculative fiction are inevitably discussions of utopia. Of course, not all speculative-fiction works are utopian in nature, and many deconstruct or even undermine the very idea of a utopian world. Still, speculative fiction is inevitably intertwined with questions of other ways of constructing a society: in the words of William Morris, with how we live and how we might live. In fantasy, such speculations concern the idea of a locus amoenus, or pleasant place, a kind of idyllic Arcadia. In science fiction, these speculations often focus on a future society, whether on Earth or another planet. These are inevitably genres concerned with considering how society could be, not what it currently is. Sixty years onward, there is perhaps no more graceful and ardent exemplar of such a tendency than Star Trek.

The basic ethos of Star Trek has not changed significantly since Star Trek: The Original Series, which aired from 1966 to 1969. As Matthew Yglesias wrote in Slate, “the now-anachronistic spirit of midcentury optimism has remained at the heart of the franchise throughout.” That ethos has been qualified or constrained in the decades since, and perhaps too often it has endured the kind of gritty “realism” treatment from people who seem to believe that the only worthwhile sides of human existence are gloom, ennui, and cynicism. Nonetheless, that ethos is so fundamental to the franchise that basically every variation of Trek has to at least gesture to that ethos or risk being seen as un-Trek. There are three basic elements of this ethos: a devotion to exploration, a universalistic multiculturalism, and above all a sincerely held optimism about the long-term future of humanity.

This commitment to exploration is evidenced right in the oft-cited preface of the original show, of the mission to “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Importantly, this is a vision of exploration that is not simply rooted in technological discoveries, nor is it about simply visiting exotic places to collect souvenirs or pictures, and it is certainly not grounded primarily in the pursuit of profit or productivity. Trek’s winsome appreciation for traveling to new places and seeing new cultures is about the chance to leave behind the familiar and quotidian and reach a broadened sense of understanding and experience. It owes to the dreams of H.G. Wells and other science-fiction writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it also owes as much to the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain. Gene Roddenbury was a veteran of Western shows before making Star Trek, and that emphasis is clear: the focus on daring and exciting exploits in an unknown land is a cornerstone of many Westerns because it is a cornerstone of adventure romance as a form.

Still, a common accusation made against the Western as a genre is that of triumphalism and American exceptionalism, celebrating the often violent victory of American settlers over the natural environment and the Native population. This is an oversimplistic reading of a genre that has always contained significantly more nuance and range than many of its critics care to understand, but in any case, the original Star Trek differentiated itself from much of the other programming in all genres in its time through its sincere commitment to diversity and multiculturalism. Whether it succeeds by the standards of modern-day progressivism is not a particularly interesting or worthwhile question. What matters is that the show committed to a future of space travel and exploration that featured people of all races and nationalities, and that it did not portray such a future as shocking or subversive but as merely natural. The starship Enterprise, imagined in the 1960s, included not just James T. Kirk but the Black Uhura, the Asian Sulu and the Russian Chekhov. Even the half-human, half-Vulcan Spock was played by Leonard Nimoy, a man of Jewish Ukrainian descent. In the 2020s, such a diverse cast is nice but not uncommon; in the 1960s, it was a utopian leap of faith, a prayer that the future would at least somewhat overcome the biases of the past.

Importantly, this is a diversity that emerges from a belief in the universal unity and oneness of humanity. It does not emerge from a belief that different groups of people inevitably cannot understand each other’s experiences, that neutrality is a lie or charade and that racial discrimination is eternally a part of everyday existence that can only be somewhat ameliorated with constant, lacerating introspection. Star Trek has in its core DNA a belief that it is good and worthwhile to hope and fight for a world where racial and national differences do not significantly affect how people are treated and do not matter in the way they mattered in Earth of the 1960s. Such a belief does not mean that cultural differences are meaningless; part of the show’s interest in exploration reflects a deep interest in different cultures and civilizations. Still, the show’s acceptance of diversity and belief in peace and unity comes from a conviction that there is a sense of commonality that extends beyond these differences. Love, sorrow, yearning, a desire to live in harmony and to seek prosperity: these are a part of living in the world. They are the common property of not just all the races of mankind but all the races of the universe.

From this combination of a deep love for the variety of cultures and a steadfast, universalistic belief in the fundamental oneness of them all comes an organic optimism for the long-term future of humanity. The original Trek is at its core a product of the Space Age, the time of the Apollo missions and the World’s Fairs in Seattle and New York. A retro-futuristic chic surrounds this bygone image of the world to come, but so does a wistfulness, because this future was not simply chrome and spaceships and sleek outfits but internationalism and community. It mixed together social progress with technological progress in a way that may seem overly idealistic today but did not seem sentimental or merely naïve to people at the time. Buildings like the Unisphere in New York and the International Fountain and Space Needle did not praise the United States but rather the future of mankind, a time when racial and national boundaries would fade and everyone would see each other as brothers and sisters in the common destiny of humanity. This is a vision that saw the Apollo moon landing not simply as the United States triumphing over the Russians but as a unifying event for mankind, a milestone in the progression of humanity from petty tribal divisions to a sense of oneness and solidarity. This is also the vision of the United Federation of Planets. That this future did not come to pass in the way that Roddenberry and many others of his age hoped does not make that future any less beautiful or inspirational.

Star Trek changed with the times, in ways good and ill. A good change, for instance, is the greater nuance with which the show started treating species like the Klingon, who are more or less antagonists in the original series before becoming incorporated into the main cast starting with The Next Generation and especially Deep Space Nine. A less good change is the relative dimming of that optimistic vision of the future. Modern Trek is at its best when it manages to balance an acknowledgement of the difficulty of realistically pursuing the core ideals of the franchise with a sustained belief that those ideals are nonetheless worthwhile. Simply because a utopia is not directly, easily replicable in the world does not make it superficial. What makes Star Trek endure is that it deeply, earnestly believes in its ideals of selfless exploration, universalist multiculturalism, and humanistic optimism and depicts imperfect but heroic people striving to fulfill those ideals. There will and should always be space for more art like that.

Joshua Fagan is a writer and academic currently residing in Seattle. His creative work has previously been published in venues including Daily Science Fiction, The Fantastic Other, and Star*Line. As an academic, his work focuses on the intersection of literature and science, particularly the interpretation of evolutionary thinking in the aftermath of Darwin, and he has published a variety of articles on Anglophone writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as William Morris, H.G. Wells, and Robert Frost. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the literary speculative-fiction publication Orion’s Belt.