Why Star Trek Worked

                                                                Why Star Trek Worked

  A topic to be sure that has been hashed to death by Trekkies the world over. Most will tell you its because of the positive spin the series put on the future of man on Earth. In the Federation, men and women live and work as equals regardless of race. Want has been abolished. We evidently will solve our energy crisis and over population (we can just send the excess somewhere else!). And here on Earth at least we all live as one big happy Americanized family.

  All that is true, I guess. Unlike movies like Blade Runner where the future looks quite dreary, or Alien where we seem to have been taken over by one large business conglomerate...likewise in Avatar...Star Trek makes the future look positively bright and hopeful. After all it is what science has been promising us all along---that they can answer all our questions and solve all of our problems eventually as long as we continue to pour our hard earned cash into it. There's is also a promise to stay one step ahead of their equal propensity for coming up with devices that can make us all extinct in one fell swoop.

  Anyway, what worked for me about Star Trek is something I don't see discussed quite as much. It was the dynamics between Kirk, Spock, and Bones. Spock represents the rational, scientific aspect of man devoid of emotion and those dreaded feelings. With Logic and a slide rule (computer) Spock intends to measure the universe and our place in it. Every action and every move has to be measured against the backdrop of pure logic. Bones aka Dr. McCoy, on the other hand, represents emotions and feelings. "Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor, not an engineer." Logic does not guide Bones. Feelings are all important. What do you feel and how would you feel in his shoes are the principal questions that guide his every move. There's no place for the rational, logical world view of Spock in McCoy's eyes and vice versa.

  James Tiberius Kirk on the other hand represented the perfect blending of the two (except when he let his libido take control). Captain Kirk always approached every decision logically but balanced that logic against his own very human feelings and ultimately did what felt right. Therein lies the lesson of Star Trek. If we veer too far off the course and embrace one or the other extremes of the things that make us human, we might just find ourselves adrift like a ship with no sail or rudder. This same dynamic played out on Captain Picard's Enterprise as well with Data (logic), Counselor Troy (Feelings/Emotions) and Picard (blending of the two).

  In this day and ever increasing secular age, I worry that we may be drifting ever so slowly towards a modern man that will be too much Spock and not enough Dr. McCoy. I for one think that, if that day ever comes, where we go too far in that direction, mankind will be lost. There will definitely be no place in such a world for poets and dreamers like you and me.