Elements of the geeky internet awoke yesterday when the ironically name conservative writer David Marcus (Also the name of the fictional son of Trek’s James T. Kirk) accused the new slate of shows of going where it has never gone before ‘woke’ politics.
Now many have already leapt into the conversation with numerous examples od how Star Trek from its very inception had always displayed a more liberal political viewpoint. However, I think that there is more interesting facet to examine in Marcus’ factually wrong essay that displays his own quite strong inherent bias.
First let’s look at a blatant factual inaccuracy. Marcus writes.
“Since its creation in 1966 the franchise has had myriad iterations on big screen and small, basically invented the sci-fi convention, and has charmed audiences across every generation.”
This might be true of Media conventions but there were 29 World Science Fiction Conventions dispensing coveted award before the first large Star Trek convention. (Setting aside a smaller gather in a library conference room.) It is clear that the author has very little practical knowledge of fandom or its history.
Next Marcus takes issues with the casting of politician Stacey Abrams as the President of the United Federation of Planets in the streaming series Picard. Stunt casting is a long and stories tradition in Hollywood, when Babylon 5 moved to TNT there was pressure to cast some the networks wrestling stars in the series for cross promotion and Star Trek in its original 60’s incarnation cast famed celebrity lawyer Melvin Belli as a corrupting alien ghost. Star Trek: The Next Generation saw the casting of real-life astronaut Mae Jemison. This sort of stunt casting is hardly new and not at all new to Trek.
But apparently what set this essay in motion for Marcus, and that’s my opinion from reading the piece, is the brief video from the 2021 insurrection and riot at the US Capitol.
Again, from Marcus’ piece.
The second was a weird plot twist in the pilot of new show, Strange New Worlds in which the 2020 capitol riot is depicted and blamed for starting a Second American Civil War and the destruction of the planet. To put it more succinctly, Orange man bad.
It is illuminating that Marcus see it in this light when in the actual text of the show the character narrating the events is hopes of preventing an alien culture from engaging in a global extinction
CBS Ventures (Screen Cap)
level war describe the start as a ‘fight for freedoms,’ makes no mention who started what, or assigns any blame. Only that the fight grew and grew and grew until it nearly destroyed humanity. And there’s not even a the barest of refences to any currently politician.
The video footage from the insurrection lasts a total of six seconds. From this bit of lifted archival footage Marcus constructs an alternate reality worthy of the Daniels’ multiverse where humanity has hotdogs for fingers. He sees the shows creative team putting all the blame for Trek’sWorld War 3 cannon firmly on the conservative shoulders when the text makes nothing like that argument.
Why does he jump so readily to that conclusion?
To me the answer is plain but is to be fair conjecture. It is because he knows that the violence and death are the product of the modern conservative culture. He desperately wishes it were not so, he desperately, like all of us, wants to be the hero and not the villain. Facts are stubborn things, and the facts are clear it was conservatives that stormed the capitol with murderous intent unwilling to accept the legal, fair, and democratic process that had defeated them. It is far more soothing to the ego to point fingers, accuse others of propaganda, and play the victim than to look into the mirror recognize that you are the evil man.
Marcus’ histrionic response to six seconds of archival footage reveals that he is aware that his faction are the villains, and his response is deep and deadly denial.
