Are We All Too Cynical for Star Trek?
The franchise’s evolution since the 1960s reflects disconcerting trends in American society.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF WE CAN’T even trust the institutions in our imagined utopias?
Starfleet, for those not also raised on Star Trek, is the exploratory, scientific, diplomatic, and military arm of the United Federation of Planets, the utopian interstellar alliance featured throughout Star Trek’s twelve TV shows, thirteen movies, and assorted video games, novels, and comic books. Starfleet’s exact role was left intentionally vague in the original series (1966–69); the writer’s guide for the original Star Trek explicitly encourages writers to “stay away from it as much as possible,” partly to avoid getting into the details of Earth’s future politics. But by the time of Star Trek’s heyday in the mid-1990s, Starfleet was established as an elite institution composed of brilliant and dedicated people (human and otherwise) who served in an organization resembling NASA, the Coast Guard, the Navy, and the Department of State all bundled together, with all of the opportunities for incoherence and mission creep that jumble implies.
But whatever else Starfleet is, it is good. Consider one of the most famous speeches in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–94), when Capt. Jean-Luc Picard berates Cadet Wesley Crusher for lying to a Starfleet inquiry by reminding him:
The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based, and if you can’t find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don’t deserve to wear that uniform.
In short, to wear a Starfleet uniform is to commit oneself to the highest standards of morality, professionalism, and duty. To be a Starfleet officer, one must be willing not only to die in defense of the Federation in war, but also to die in defense of its principles in peace. This is not to say that the ’90s shows never delved into the complexity and nuance of this ethos—indeed, playing at the edges of their internal morality was how they derived much of their interest. A number of Starfleet admirals throughout TNG are shown to be venal or corrupt. One of the greatest episodes of Deep Space Nine (1992–99), “In the Pale Moonlight,” is entirely about how, in times of crisis, moral compromise may be necessary, even for Starfleet. But such cases are treated as exceptional, unusual circumstances far beyond the norm; as a rule, Starfleet is good, and the best way to be a good servant of the true and just in the world of Star Trek is by being a good Starfleet officer. How does one be a good Starfleet officer? By doing one’s job, by being a professional, by following one’s duty.
THINGS ARE DIFFERENT IN modern Trek. By “modern Trek” I mean the five major TV shows that have aired since the franchise returned to the small screen in 2017: Discovery (2017–present), Picard (2020–23), Lower Decks (2020–present), Prodigy (2021–present), and Strange New Worlds (2022–present). Starfleet as an institution often plays a partially antagonistic role in each of these shows. By the time of Picard, the titular paragon has quit Starfleet in a huff because it no longer lives up to his principles, and in both seasons one and three it is revealed that Starfleet has been compromised by hostile alien agents and cannot be trusted. The first season of Discovery ends with Starfleet condoning genocide, only to be stopped by our heroic crew; Season 2’s villain was an out-of-control Starfleet AI that threatened all life in the galaxy; and Seasons 3 and 4 keep the crew in near-constant conflict with Starfleet and/or Federation brass. Lower Decks is centered on the adventures of a low-level officer who routinely defies Starfleet regulations to help nearby planets in ways that Starfleet would not condone. Even Strange New Worlds, the most archetypal of the modern shows, emphasizes how unjust some of Starfleet’s rules are: In the first episode of the second season, the crew is forced to steal the Starship Enterprise itself to rescue a comrade in defiance of Starfleet’s orders. (The three “AbramsTrek” films from 2009 to 2016 are essentially in a separate continuity and have a largely different production team, but they also frequently feature Starfleet as an antagonist.)
Modern Star Trek, much like older Star Trek, often presents its main characters as moral paragons, but whereas older Trek would usually depict them embodying Starfleet’s ideals in the presence of challenging aliens, modern Trek is more likely to establish their uprightness by contrast with the faceless and untrustworthy institution of Starfleet itself. Both eras do both things, at least occasionally, but the ratio has notably shifted.
Dylan Roth, writing for Fanbyte, suggested that as Star Trek has aged, it has “changed from a series about benign authority to one about stalwart heroes protecting an institution from moral decay.” This is true enough, but I also think there’s something else going on with the modern Trek shows. Namely, the atmosphere and philosophy of the shows is much less comfortable with the maxims of professionalism and duty that were foundational to pre-2017 Star Trek media.
Setting aside the cartoons (sorry—animated series), the characters in the core three modern shows—Discovery, Picard, and Strange New Worlds—are less concerned with professionalism and duty and more concerned with personal morality, authenticity, and teamwork.
In the Deep Space Nine episode “The Ship” (Season 5), Capt. Benjamin Sisko, trapped in a downed enemy warship with his senior staff, puts a stop to their bickering under pressure by shouting at them:
I said that’s enough! You’re Starfleet officers, now start acting like it! . . . Now I know it’s hot, we’re filthy, tired, and we’ve got ten isotons of explosives going off outside, but we will never get out of this if we don’t pull it together and start to act like professionals!
Embarrassed and chastened, his crew gets back to work.
Compare this with the Discovery episode “All is Possible” (Season 4), in which Lt. Sylvia Tilly crashes on a desolate moon while training cadets. To arrange rescue, she must, like Sisko, coax the bickering crew into cooperating. Her first decision is to make the cadets introduce themselves, icebreaker style, as if at an HR-mandated company retreat. As they face various obstacles, Tilly repeatedly encourages the cadets to work together as a team—but she never chastises them. In her final plea for them to work together, she asks them, “You gotta decide now—are we going to work together as a crew or not?” In response, one cadet announces that he doesn’t trust another because of, essentially, racism. “I hear you,” Tilly responds, before encouraging the other to share his own experiences. This leads to a kumbaya moment, bringing the cadets together, and they are finally able to work together and get rescued.
The only time Tilly ever reminds the cadets that they are in Starfleet is to encourage them to say “aye” instead of “yes.”
Note the differences here: Old-school Sisko reminds his crew of the expectations he has for them and unsubtly critiques their behavior as unbecoming of Starfleet officers. He acknowledges their difficulties (“I know it’s hot. . .”), but leaves no doubt that he expects them to perform their duties as professionals anyway. New-school Tilly motivates her command by making it clear that she sees and hears their concerns, and encourages them to work together by seeing the value in their unique life experiences.
There are, of course, in-text reasons for the different approaches here: Sisko is talking to experienced officers, whereas Tilly is talking to cadets. Also, Capt. Benjamin Lafayette Sisko is a fundamentally different sort of person from Lt. Tilly, and has a higher rank. But this difference in leadership style is everywhere between the two eras. The Strange New Worlds version of Capt. Christopher Pike has been repeatedly praised for being more collaborative than commanding (I struggle to remember a time he has ever raised his voice), whereas Capt. Sisko shouts at everyone, as only the great Avery Brooks can shout. Picard’s version of its title character trades all his twentieth-century grouchy gravitas for a more grandfatherly role; his inspirational speeches now seek to buoy his friends’ confidence rather than inspire subordinates to high achievement.
Compare how Lt. Cmdr. Data in the Next Generation episode “Gambit, Part II” and Lt. Cmdr. Paul Stamets in the Discovery episode “. . .But To Connect” handle subordinates who are not meeting their expectations. Data is confronted with a junior officer who is being insubordinate and undermining Data’s authority; Stamets is dealing with a sentient shipboard AI that is willfully concealing mission-critical information to prevent the crew from risking their lives. Data professionally but sternly takes Lt. Worf to task (“Lieutenant, I am dissatisfied with your performance as first officer”), informs him that he will transfer him to a different position if his performance does not improve, and only after the issue is resolved does he clarify how important their friendship is to him. Stamets, conversely, engages in what amounts to a lengthy therapy session before finally realizing that he and the AI need to arrive at a mutual understanding and come to trust each other, which will require work from both parties.
WHY THE CHANGE? Part of it probably has to do with the other material that Star Trek writers are drawing from. The ’60s and ’90s-era Trek writers either served in the military themselves or were drawing from science fiction written by people who had. (Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, and many of the great science-fiction authors of the mid-twentieth century, including Robert Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, and Walter M. Miller Jr., each served in some capacity in the World War II-era U.S. or British armed forces.) Obviously, modern Trek writers are far less likely to have served—but are far more likely to have worked in twenty-first-century corporate America, which has a rather different set of norms and concepts of professionalism.
But more fundamentally, popular science fiction today—as written by authors like N.K. Jemisin, Martha Wells, and Tamsyn Muir—is more likely to be concerned with questions of identity and combating imperialism. It is also more likely to be written from marginalized perspectives, which have valid reasons to distrust institutions and authority. For many of these writers, concepts like “professionalism” have questionable implications—see, for instance, the many ways that black women wearing their hair in a natural style have been labeled “unprofessional.” A leader who expects you to behave in a certain way and yells at you when you don’t is less likely to be understood as a benevolent-if-demanding aspirational figure than as one of the many petty tyrants who run storefronts around the country—more Edward Jellico or Terence Fletcher than Benjamin Sisko or Raymond Holt.
Besides, nobody likes any of America’s institutions anymore (and for all that Star Trek is ostensibly international, it is a fundamentally American franchise). Gallup’s polling about Americans’ faith in U.S. institutions shows it hovering at or near record-breaking lows, spawning a great deal of hand-wringing from people across the political spectrum. These apparently untrustworthy institutions range from purely political ones (the presidency, the Supreme Court, etc.) to “the church or organized religion” (whatever that means), “banks,” and “newspapers.” Although some of these institutions are doing better than others (Gallup shows a 65 percent approval rating for “small businesses,” whereas everybody hates Congress), all are down from historical averages.
What are professionalism and duty if not the suppression of individual quirks in service of some larger goal or institution? Duty overrides individual desires or assessments of right and wrong. If I say that it is my duty to do something, then I am saying that I have no choice in the matter, that the obligations I have accepted and commitments I have made override my personal desires entirely. I have abdicated my agency in service of some other power, and I must trust this other power more than even my own judgment. This is not to suggest that older Star Trek believed that blindly following orders was correct—the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, after all. Since at least “The Doomsday Machine,” originally broadcast in 1967, Star Trek has understood that the command structure is made up of fallible humans who must occasionally be disobeyed in the service of the greater good.
But older Trek nevertheless believed in duty, because it believed that Starfleet was a fundamentally good institution, even if it may be failed by individual bad or misguided actors. It elevated Starfleet’s regulations and codes of conduct almost to the status of holy writ. Sure, ’90s-era captains frequently bent these regulations when necessary, but always in service of Starfleet’s higher goals. To violate the Prime Directive (Starfleet’s first, standing order not to interfere with the natural development of any society) was the closest thing to blasphemy a Starfleet officer could imagine—and when they did, it was usually to serve a higher purpose, as when Capt. Picard revealed himself to a less-developed civilization for the sole purpose of convincing them he wasn’t a god.
But it is difficult to be seriously inspired by the notion of duties if one has a deep distrust of the institutions that assign such duties. If Starfleet is just another deeply flawed institution, prone to giving out as many self-serving and unethical orders as any other human construct, it is much harder to take the notion of duty seriously. Of course the characters written by twenty-first-century authors, who are animated by the same deep distrust of American institutions as the rest of us, are less likely to justify themselves with the language of duty than they are by reference to personal morality and authenticity. And of course they’re going to be skeptical of rank and hierarchy because they don’t believe these things are necessarily signs of actual merit or accomplishment any more than the rest of us do.
It is thus no surprise that, as Star Trek tries to change and stay relevant to a twenty-first-century audience, its preoccupations change too. And whatever one’s politics, there are plenty of things to criticize about specific choices associated with Starfleet throughout Star Trek’s 57-year run.
Yet I worry. If Star Trek is supposed to start from the assumption that Starfleet and the Federation are quasi-utopian, I worry about what it says about our collective imaginations if we can’t even let the institutions of that fictional utopia be utopian. If we can’t even trust Starfleet, who can we trust?
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