Speaking of important things on the internet, as most of you are no doubt already aware, the name of my fantasy football team is The Starfleet Commanders.
As the team’s owner and head coach, it behooves me to keep up on all the latest Star Trek articles. Below I've pasted a few excerpts of a recent and very entertaining one.
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| (A candid shot from our recent championship season) |
It's authored as only a high-quality (it really is - click the link) article for the internet should be authored, by an anonymous person who calls himself “Rimjob." That alone makes it worthy of a link. But it’s also quite… fascinating.
by Rimjob
The first time I ever really watched an episode of "Star Trek" was on a weekend I was stuck at home sick. I was a little kid, William Shatner & Leonard Nimoy were hosting a "Star Trek" marathon, and I tuned in just as "The Devil In The Dark" came on. That episode contains almost every element that makes Trek... Trek.
In that episode, there's the dynamic between Kirk, Spock & McCoy, but also the episode goes a long way in differentiating Trek's values from those of most Sci-Fi. I once read an article that compared Trek to most other science fiction franchises. In almost anything else, the Horta would be the "monster of the week" that gets killed off at the end of the story by the triumphant hero. However in "Trek" the Horta is ultimately an entity to be understood & given compassion, with Starfleet finding a way for everyone to live together.
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From a paper published in the journal Sociology of Religion:
The appeal of "Star Trek" is not for a kind of personal salvation, but for the future of the "Star Trek" collective …."I" will not live until the twenty-fourth century, but "we" certainly will, according to the "Star Trek" future. It is hope for ourselves as a society, a myth about where we have come and where we are going. Fans want to be part of forming that destiny.
Gene Roddenberry, Gene Coon (the other executive producer of the original "Star Trek" who created many of the defining elements of the show, including the Klingons, the Prime Directive, and naming the Federation and Starfleet), and others that worked on "The Original Series" infused the show with a secular humanist philosophy that truly believes in "Man" as a species. That we, as human beings, are not only the product of biological evolution, but are also capable of social evolution to be better than what we are through compassion, tolerance, logic, science, and boldly going where no one else has gone before.
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As depicted in the various TV series & films, by the 23rd century humanity exists in a virtual paradise. On Earth, there is no poverty, crime, sexism, racism, or war. Earth is the capital of the United Federation of Planets, with humanity seeming to have great influence as the backbone of Starfleet.
Troi: Poverty was eliminated on Earth a long time ago. And a lot of other things disappeared with it: hopelessness...despair...cruelty...
Samuel Clemens: Young lady, I come from a time when men achieved power and wealth by standing on the backs of the poor....where prejudice and intolerance are commonplace...and power is an end unto itself...And you’re telling me...that isn’t how it is anymore?
Troi: That's right.
Samuel Clemens: Hmph. Maybe it's worth giving up cigars for, after all.
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