Over at Catholic Exchange, Mark Shea discusses one of the most important questions of our day: the underlying philosophy of Star Trek. In an article entitled “The Stupid Prime Directive“, Mark addresses why warp technology will turn our race into a bunch of “leotard-clad UN conflict resolution counselors” and other vital issues. These are important topics and I urge everyone to read his article.

Now, I must admit: as a child, I loved Star Trek. The original series would run every night on a local station (in repeats) and I got to the point where I knew what episode it was from the first 30 seconds of the show. Whereas I never became a “Trekker” (I have never owned any pointy ears and I haven’t tried to learn the Klingon language), the idea of space travel and meeting aliens of all types fascinated me, as it did many young people of my era (especially young boys).

As I got older, I continued to watch the later Star Trek shows, such as The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. I lost interest with Voyager and then the latest incarnation, Enterprise, didn’t appeal to me at all.

The more I watched the show, however, the more I began to question some of the fundamental assumptions behind it. How was it that humanity had overcome some of its base vices, such as greed? (There is no money in the 24th century, after all). How was it possible that the show revolved around conflict of some kind – including conflict between individual humans – yet humanity had somehow achieved peace and harmony on a macro scale? And then when the show tried to explain when this harmony broke out – with the advent of warp technology – I couldn’t help but laugh, for here was a truly modern religion: there is no Fall and it will be technology that will save us.

Although I still enjoy sometimes watching Star Trek (at least TNG and DS9), I have come to see its underlying assumptions about humanity to be more fantastic than the idea of warp travel and thousands of other alien races.