Consider a glass of milk. It’s wholesome, nutritious, and quite satisfying. But try drinking an entire gallon in one sitting. The problem isn’t necessarily the milk. It’s the quantity and the insistence that you consume it all at once.
Each new Star Trek series fills me with anticipation that it will be as satisfying as the original. The premise of Starfleet Academy, of cadets progressing year by year, is fine. In fact, it offers considerable possibilities for adventure, rivalry, competition, personal growth, and the development of young people into competent Starfleet officers. I watched the entire season of Starfleet Academy and at some point, said to myself, “You’re Vulcan kidding me.” I was able to make it through the season largely because I’m a fanboy of Paul Giamatti.
The original Star Trek was progressive, particularly for its time. It challenged racial prejudice, explored social injustice, and imagined a future in which humanity had overcome many of its historical divisions. But it also gave us exploration, scientific curiosity, courage, duty, hierarchy, personal responsibility, and the occasional phaser fight. Its characters were expected to demonstrate competence, exercise judgment, and accept the consequences of their decisions. There was a sense of purpose and direction. There was meritocracy and a bit of humor from time to time. Kirk kissed Uhura. Fine, there is no issue there. Had Kirk kissed Sulu, George Takei’s famous “Oh my!” would have echoed across generations.
The original Star Trek could be progressive without making progressivism the protagonist.
Starfleet Academy, on the other hand, presents a rather different experience. Consider the distribution of authority and opposition. Women predominate among the identified teachers, occupy the three most prominent Academy and shipboard command roles, and provide much of the central institutional leadership. Men, meanwhile, predominate among the named characters who challenge Captain Ake through criminal activity, professional rivalry, diplomatic resistance, or personal hostility. They are, in fact, patriarchal foils utilized to promote a narrative, not a story. It may feel good to some progressives, but the illusion is tainted by the disproportion.
The issue isn’t that women command starships. That possibility was settled long ago, at least in the Star Trek universe. The more interesting observation is the apparent distribution of moral and institutional legitimacy. Women disproportionately represent enlightened leadership, while men disproportionately represent the attitudes, institutions, or threats that leadership must overcome. Even when male adversaries are rehabilitated, their narrative function has already served its purpose.
Any one of these choices might be unremarkable. Taken together, they begin to resemble a formula.
Then there is the gay Klingon, the lesbian alien relationship, the barefoot captain, and celebrity stunt-casting. Why not a transgender Klingon? Was that a bridge too far?
To be fair, some conservative viewers suffer from a sort of cultural lactose intolerance —reacting with immediate indigestion to the mere presence of diversity before a single line of dialogue is spoken. But before someone fires a phaser in my direction, let me emphasize that the existence of any one of these characters or relationships isn’t the problem. Nor must an identity-centered storyline interrupt the main plot to become noticeable. The issue is cumulative. At some point, the viewer begins recognizing the writers’ ideological choices more readily than the fictional world they are supposed to inhabit.
And what of meritocracy? The Academy ought to be a place where ability, discipline, competition, courage, and judgment are tested. Not everyone should be equally capable of commanding a starship simply because everyone deserves respect. Equality of human dignity and equality of competence are two very different propositions. Starfleet officers should earn their responsibilities, and the audience should see them do it. It was competency of each of the crews’ positions integrated with who they were as people that the original series exemplified.
In Starfleet Academy, those older concerns seem secondary to a different set of priorities. The result is less a sense of young officers preparing to meet an uncertain universe than a series anxious to reassure us of its own moral outlook. Which brings me back to the food analogy, and to something I would call Progressive Ideology Pornography.
Food porn isn’t simply a picture of food. It is food presented in a selectively intensified form, with exaggerated visual appeal, designed to stimulate rather than provide nourishment. Pornography, more generally, isolates and amplifies particular stimuli that produce a desired response. The experience is concentrated, immediate, and gratifying, while much of the complexity of ordinary human experience is stripped away.
PIP operates through a similar mechanism. Complex social realities are compressed into recognizable moral narratives. Virtue and victimhood are amplified, opponents are simplified, and expressions of ideological commitment become spectacles of moral affirmation. The viewer is invited to experience the satisfaction of recognizing the righteous position rather than being challenged to consider the full complexity of the issue.
The defining characteristic isn’t necessarily that the underlying progressive ideas are false. It’s that they are presented as an emotional product rather than propositions to be examined. Conservative, nationalist, and religious ideologies are equally capable of producing their own varieties of ideological pornography. No political persuasion enjoys a monopoly on self-gratification.
In Starfleet Academy, the issue is one of proportion and integration. PIP need not replace the storyline or interrupt an adventure to become conspicuous. It can operate through repeated choices about who exercises authority, who is morally credible, which relationships receive emphasis, and what qualities the narrative rewards. Individually, those choices may seem perfectly reasonable. Collectively, they can become predictable. In effect, the viewer is being asked to consume a gallon of milk each episode, and the viewer begins to expect it.
Once the viewer begins anticipating the ideological formula, the suspension of disbelief suffers. Instead of wondering what an unfamiliar civilization might be like, or how an inexperienced cadet might respond to danger, I find myself anticipating the next demonstration of the writers’ progressive sensibilities.
And that is where the pornography analogy becomes particularly relevant. The purpose of a story is to draw the audience into an imagined world. The purpose of an ideologically intensified presentation is to elicit a particular response. When the latter becomes too conspicuous, the audience may find itself responding to the stimulus rather than becoming absorbed in the story.
I wanted to watch cadets discover strange new worlds, confront difficult choices, and develop into officers worthy of the original series. Instead, I found myself increasingly aware of the people writing their adventures. Perhaps that’s the ultimate failure of proportion. The fictional universe becomes less interesting than the ideology being projected upon it.
A DEFTLY PLOTTED NEW NOVEL FROM RICHARD RUSSO
Star Trek once invited us to boldly go where no one had gone before. I would settle for a little more adventure and a little less assurance that the writers are on the right side of history.
Live long and prosper.
Andrew Moore is a small-business owner and author of the Primus Aeternus series.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
