Star Trek's Greatest Failure

As the hype for the new season of various Star Trek TV shows accelerates, I don’t want to let the last season pass without comment, particularly what I regard as the greatest failure of the year, which may well turn out to be Star Trek's greatest failure, period.

 The first season of  Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was in most respects an invigorating triumph.  The second season of Star Trek: Picard featured wonderful acting, production and scene writing and dialogue.  But both series involved the 21^st century on Earth, to a lesser or greater extent.  Both had the opportunity to add relevant information to the little that has been established about this century.  The importance of what they said or didn’t say happens to be greater than ever, for the simple fact that we are living on Earth in the 21^st century.  These programs are being made and exhibited in that 21^st century.  And we face problems that threaten our present and the future.

 In the all-important opening episode of Strange New Worlds, Captain Pike tried to dissuade the citizens of an alien culture from using weapons of mass destruction on a catastrophic level. He did so by illustrating a brief history of Earth’s 21^st century.  Pike mentions the Eugenics War and the horrific destruction of World War III, both part of the established “future history” of the Star Trek universe. But he began by referring to the “second Civil War” breaking out (presumably in the U.S.),  accompanied by images of the actual assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.  This was new, bold and extremely relevant.

 Yet in even a brief catalog of challenges to the Earth in the 21^st century, he did not mention the climate crisis—a stunning omission, particularly after the obvious effects the world has suffered in recent years. There is little doubt that climate distortion and disruption will be the single most consequential factor in the lives of human beings, at least by the second half of this century.

 Moreover, if there is a World War III, effects of climate distortion are likely to be principal causes.  For at least the past decade, the Pentagon has regarded the climate crisis as the greatest security threat on the planet.  A committee that included civilian experts published a report saying so.

 Climate distortion effects don’t just constitute a potential threat to the peace, but is already a major factor in ongoing wars (including in Ukraine) and conflicts (including civil wars and political disturbances) of the recent past. Droughts, lack of food, and mass migrations resulting from climate distortions have been and are major factors in warfare in Africa and elsewhere.  These are growing factors in political around the world, especially as they contribute to the hostilities surrounding immigration in many countries. They play a role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with its food and energy resources, just as the climate crisis underlies anxieties reflected in U.S. political warfare.

  Put simply, climate distortion is the most likely potential cause of a World War III.  Yet we remain willfully blind to this element of the crisis, let alone the more obvious violence of weather and growing tragedies resulting from climate distortion, such as the poisoning of the oceans and climate’s contributions to onrushing extinctions.  Star Trek had an opportunity to at least show an unmet climate crisis as the threat that it is. Given Trek’s credibility and its vast popular audience, it might have brought this home.

 Strange New Worlds presented the 21^st century only in a few minutes of images. But Star Trek: Picard spent a major part of its second season in the 21^st century. Though some climate distortion effects were in the background, the climate crisis was never directly referenced.

 In this mystifying omission, Star Trek is hardly alone.According to a recent survey, less that 3% of TV shows and films shown between 2016 and 2020 mentioned the climate crisis, or any of the key words associated with it. Whether it is perceived corporate pressure or squeamishness in the writers room, our storytellers are sticking their heads in the increasingly hot sand.

  Star Trek’s own tradition of identifying crucial issues in its stories holds this saga to a higher standard.  Star Trek continues to champion diversity, individuality within community, service and ethical behavior.  But it has failed to address a vital issue that we in the audience, approaching the end of the first quarter of the 21^st century, are experiencing through violent storms, intense firestorms, more extreme and longer heat waves, persistent droughts, depleted wildlife, rising sea level and other less obvious strains and manifestations. It gave itself the opportunity to do so by revisiting the 21^st century. It failed to do so. 

Some sort of environmental crisis is apparently behind the action in Star Trek: Picard’s 21^st century, though Picard’s mission is to see that a spaceship bound for the moon Europa succeeds, piloted by a Picard ancestor.  When Picard returns to his present (2401, the beginning of the 25^th century), he learns from Guinan that an alien microbe discovered on this voyage was later developed to save Earth’s oceans.  This is as close as the narrative gets to addressing 21^st century environmental crises, though its “happily-ever-after” feeling neglects to deal with the otherwise established fact that World War III begins shortly after that Europa mission.

 Apart from suggesting another technological miracle that functions as a deus ex machina to save humanity, the climate crisis and the ongoing mass extinction event are not seriously addressed.  They aren’t even named. 

 Yet it is increasingly clear that unless the 21^st century successfully addresses the causes and effects of the climate crisis, as well as the related mass extinction event, it is unlikely that our civilization will have a future.

 Other TV shows and movies have begun to incorporate climate crisis issues, and there are apparently some  in development or slated for the near future that do address the climate crisis future. Such stories have power to reach people emotionally, to connect them (surveys show that Americans feel their climate crisis concerns are not shared as widely as they are) and to lead to action, to motivate career choices and commitments by the young (as Star Trek has often done.) With its emphasis on a diversity of minds and hearts working together to solve problems, and because of its tradition of modeling a better future that is part of its soul, Star Trek would seem to be a natural storytelling universe in which to address the climate crisis.

Star Trek has dealt with important issues through metaphor and allegory (arguably including the climate crisis, in the TNG episode "Force of Nature"), but these Star Trek shows this past season gave themselves the golden opportunity to potentially make a difference in the real world by dealing with these transcendent realities of our 21st century as they threaten the future.  They failed to make it so.