Race, Gender and Politics in Star Trek by Sal Creber

“People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things,” Picard says of the Federation-ized future in TNG’s “ The Neutral Zone.” “We’ve eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. The Federation has a number of Earthbound inspirations while its structure draws heavily from the League of Nations and the United Nations, there’s also some stuff in there from the United States.įrom Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country to Star Trek: Discovery, much of the best Trek examines not only the promise of the Federation, but the challenges it faces - along with the question of how a representative government might function if it wasn’t undermined by economic conflict and disparity. Originally conceived as the Coalition of Planets, it wasn’t long until diplomats from Earth, Vulcan, Tellar, and Andoria realized their relationship was getting serious - so they formed the United Federation of Planets, Trek’s optimistic vision of a powerful, peaceful, and multicultural democracy.

But regardless of fancy-pants words like “legislature” and “chancellor,” Klingons still really like to fight, so when it comes to succession, “peaceful and orderly elections” are less of a thing than “vicious, unmerciful combat to determine who’s the strongest.” Which, now that I think about it, isn’t that different from a representative democracy. Once ruled by a monarch, the Klingons now follow the dictates of the Klingon High Council, a legislature overseen by a chancellor. While some Klingon-centric episodes flirted with the weary trope of the “noble savage” - a concept that addresses how colonizers have historically ignored Indigenous peoples’ complex histories, and instead characterized them as proud but backwards warriors - later episodes imbued Klingon culture and government with significantly more depth. But as Trek progressed, so did its portrayal of Klingons. When Star Trek: The Original Series premiered in the midst of the Cold War, the brusque, imposing, and monolithic Klingons were analogues for the Russians, who, at the time, were characterized in American media as (you guessed it) brusque, imposing, and monolithic.

Race, Gender and Politics in Star Trek by Sal Creber