Character, courage and redemption. These manifestations of virtue are not the moral preserve of any institution, including the Church. They are manifested by the human heart. And nowhere is that manifestation repeatedly better illustrated than by the influence of Gene Rodenberry in popular culture in Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was about half-way through its seven-season run when Rodenberry, the Southern Baptist-turned humanist, died in 1991.
In “The Enduring Lessons of ‘Star Trek,’” Manu Saadia, a contributor for The New Yorker, wrote for the magazine two years ago, “Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of science fiction. The first uses the trappings of the future to explore the present, suggesting to its audience that the existence of starships, aliens, and (to stray into that other sci-fi franchise) lightsabres doesn’t meaningfully change the experience of the human condition. The second uses the same sorts of artifice for the opposite purpose – to imagine foreign, even utopian, futures.”
Wrote Saadia in a 50th anniversary piece to mark the debut of the franchise on Sept. 8, 1966: “Tellingly, the original series was at its best when its cast engaged in good, old-fashioned time travel. ‘The City on the Edge of Forever,’ penned by Harlan Ellison, threw the dynamic trio of Kirk, Bones, and Spock into nineteen-thirties New York. They were familiar characters dropped into a familiar setting, tasked with a familiar, if daunting, mission: save the world. (By a series of unlucky coincidences, their arrival in New York had altered the future, leading to Nazi Germany winning the Second World War. This had to be corrected.)”
By contrast, “It is hard to overstate how much of a departure the ‘Star Trek’ franchise’s eighties-and-nineties-straddling incarnation, ‘The Next Generation,’ was from the original series” wrote Saadia. “It retained much of the nomenclature and established codes (the inscrutable techno-scientific babble, the ship’s name, the naval ranks, the canonical alien species) but swung almost entirely toward the second, more cerebral form of science fiction. It had no anchor in the present, nor did it genuflect before America’s frontier myths. ‘The Next Generation’ was wholesale utopia, a thought experiment on how humans would behave under terminally improved material circumstances. Civilization, and the future, had won.”
A perfect illustration of this is “Lower Decks,” the 167th episode of the series and the 15th episode of the seventh and final season, which originally aired on Feb. 7, 1994.
Ensign Sito Jaxa is a Bajoran Starfleet officer serving aboard the USS Enterprise. Two years earlier while in Starfleet Academy in 2368, she was a member of Nova Squadron, along with Wesley Crusher. Under the direction of Cadet Nicholas Locarno, Nova Squadron attempted the dangerous Kolvoord Starburst maneuver during a flight exercise – an action that resulted in a collision and death of fellow cadet Joshua Albert. Jaxa and her fellow cadets lied about their flying of the illegal maneuver to a board of inquiry.
Character, courage and redemption.
Now serving on the USS Enterprise, after being handpicked by Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, Jaxa was to assist a Cardassian defector, Joret Dal, return to Cardassia Prime by posing as a Bajoran prisoner captured as part of a bounty hunt, which would allow Dal to cross the border without difficulty. She would then be returned to Federation space in an escape pod, after Dal reached Cardassian territory.
Jaxa freely volunteered for the mission, and was surgically altered to appear as if Dal had abused her in his custody Dal was shocked that she was so young, but was grateful that she risked her life in order for the mission to succeed. The Enterprise-D waited more than 32 hours for her to return before Picard orders a probe to be launched into Cardassian space, despite being warned that doing so could be considered a treaty violation, but the probe only detected debris 200,000 kilometres inside Cardassian space consistent with that of a destroyed escape pod. Eventually, a Cardassian communique was intercepted indicating that the escape pod was detected and destroyed after escaping.
And then with remarkable simplicity and brevity, these five sentences from Picard in a ship-wide address from the captain’s ready room off the bridge:
“To all Starfleet personnel, this is the Captain. It is my sad duty to inform you that a member of the crew, Ensign Sito Jaxa, has been lost in the line of duty. She was the finest example of a Starfleet officer, and a young woman of remarkable courage and strength of character. Her loss will be deeply felt by all who knew her. Picard out.”
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