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SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT: STAR TREK.
THE TROUBLE WITH STAR TREK
By Mary Ann Tetreault
Department of Political Science and Geography
Old Dominion University
For the millions of persons all over the world who count themselves among the "trekkies," the passionate fans of the Star Trek television series, it might be hard to imagine that there could possibly be anything wrong with their video icon. Star Trek reflected almost perfectly the assumptions and ideals of most Americans in the 1960s. Its episodes mirrored our faith that intervention by great powers in the affairs of tiny worlds was only undertaken to keep them safe from homegrown and imported troubles and troublemakers. It also reflected our assumption that the rapid pace of social and technological change characteristic of our time would continue into the future. Our optimistic assessment of the benevolence of such trends was rooted in that brief era when social justice was a preoccupation of many in American society and our faith in technology, undimmed by fears of hydrogen bombs, had not yet been tried by the dilemmas generated by test-tube babies and patented genes.
For most of those who escaped war service because they were women, or were men who reached draft age after Korea and before Viet Nam, Star Trek was our chief collective experience of military life. Its idealism was focused on the ideals and achievements of the Federation, and yet was altruistic as well. Officers continually risked their lives to save one another or members of their crew. Star TRek showed us grace under fire, week after week, in the context of peace-keeping rather than war-making. Sometimes an episode would transcend the cliches of space opera to make us aware of the conflicts between love, honor, and duty in the lives of men. And there's the problem: "the lives of men." Star Trek was terribly sexist.
It didn't start out to be that way. The pilot film of the series featured a woman, Number One, as second in command under the male captain, Christopher Pike. The show's plot hinged on the attempted seduction of Pike by a human woman, held captive on a planet whose inhabitants wanted to breed her. Worried at Pike's silence once he had beamed down to the planet, Number...