One thing that Star Trek is always about is difference. From the Original Series in the 1960s to the streaming access only newest prequel Discovery, the Other of identity theory is always encoded into the Federation, the difference between Us and Them being the main struggle for many if not most of the main characters. Spock, caught between his Vulcan and Human heritage. Data, the machine who would be flesh; Worf, a Klingon raised by humans, discovering his aggressive, defiant culture later in life. Kira Nerys, an officer on Deep Space Nine, a rebel insurgent from a culture once colonized by a superior force, on the precipice of Federation alliance. Jadzia/Ezri and their hybrid personalities. All stranded in territories and battlegrounds both internal and external, metaphorical and literal, depending on the character and the starship where their drama takes place.
Voyager played around with the chess pieces in a cautious way, with new characters like B’Elanna (half-human, half-Klingon) running Engineering; Neelix an alien seeking asylum, as was Kes and even Seven. No coincidence that one of its most poignant episodes involved a transporter accident that fused two extremely distinct characters, the empathic and sentimental Neelix with the full Vulcan Tuvok. Tuvix was doomed from the start, and accident that shouldn’t be, yet also an inevitable case of hybridity.
The enemies of the Voyager crew were wide-ranging, from their own Maquis rebels to the Kazon, the Vidiians, the Hirogen, Species 8472, eventually the Borg Queen. Enterprise, always looking back, literalized the “wagon train to the stars” originating concept, but could never quite decide on a consistent native force for the cowboys to oppose. Was it the shape-changing Suliban, the racial alliance of the Xindi, the psychic Andorians? Ultimately, their consistent foe was probably the Vulcans, the allied race in the process of inviting humans to the Federation, but imposing rules and regulations like parents with unruly children. Like most Trek oppositions, the ultimate effect was alteration and education on both sides, as the Vulcans of that time abandoned their heretofore unexpected conservatism and humans learned to fight the power alongside visionaries like T’Pau.
But maybe it hasn’t ever been the martial front that mattered the most, but the personal one. Star Trek is about who we are are in society, but that means what we’re allowed to do and be as individuals. The best-known moment of TOS was the interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura, a symbol of the Civil Rights movement and of the universal theme of integration that symbolized the show’s ideals. Opposites don’t have to fight to understand each other, and while the male characters showed interest in love (serially like Kirk, or more monogamously like Spock’s doomed affairs of the heart), the distaff members of the crew brought most of the melodrama.
Uhura, Nurse Chapel and Yeoman Rand were our first named Space Babes, sirens of the stars who worked alongside the male characters on separate but equal terms. Uhura was competent, brave and artistically gifted. Chapel was a caregiver doomed to an unrequited passion for Spock. Rand had a more juvenile crush on the Captain, but the few episodes that featured her showed her wisdom in dealing with upstart kids, and like Uhura fearful of losing her looks with age. TOS women knew how to handle themselves, nowhere more evident than the time Uhura found herself impersonating her Mirror counterpart and sliding out a hidden knife to protect herself from her own crew with convincing ease. Starfleet didn’t issue standard knives to its female officers, but you can bet they all knew how to fire their phasers.
Next Generation continued to put females in ostensibly caregiver and assistant roles, but Counselor Troi and Dr. Crusher did so from within positions of greater authority. Troi was Bridge Crew, able to provide valuable input to diplomacy and the personal problems of a crew who traveled with their families through space. Crusher was as expert as McCoy, and privy to a mature and complex history with the Captain. Tasha Yar wasn’t around long, but her legacy was carried on by an adult daughter (half-Romulan) and characters like Ensign Ro who wore their Federation uniforms uneasily.
It was Deep Space Nine that really started to complicate the roles of both male and female cast members. Everyone was caught between various loyalties. Odo was a Changeling who loved a human and had served the Cardassians as he now worked with Starfleet. Kira was a freedom fighter trying to broker an uneasy peace and forgive past grudges. Sisko was a Starfleet Captain but also a religious icon to a whole planet. Jadzia was literally both male and female, old and young, married and single, the symbiont identity within her having a long history in other bodies to the extent that gender and biology were a fluid concept for her and all the people included in her intimate life.
Voyager took tentative steps towards alternative values in the 1990s. A female Captain and head of Engineering. Science and warrior roles filled as needed by Seven of Nine when she joined the cast. B’Elanna, Janeway and Seven were the most interesting members of the crew, more conflicted and thus more exciting than failed rebels Tom and Chakotay, or the bland Harry Kim. The Doctor stood in for patriarchy in the manner of Dr. McCoy but was literally programmed to have a lot more authoritative bark than bite. In action, he was always willing to improve the lives around him. Rather fitting that their best foe was the Borg Queen, as this was a show about women who get things done, despite competing ideologies and loyalties.
Enterprise was a conservative backlash in many ways, with Bakula playing against type as John Wayne in space (he’s better when he’s more earnest than stern) and T’Pol belying her every Vulcan word with her catsuits and heels. Maybe it deserved its epitaph as a boring holo-reel viewed as a curio by Riker and Troi. The struggle not to be xenophobic may have been prescient after 9/11, but it was far from Trek’s future history of idealism.
Discovery brings new energy and cinematic urgency to the franchise, and despite being a prequel like Enterprise it has pushed all the identity politics of previous eras to the forefront. Michael (no accident her androgynous name) is a human raised by Vulcans, whose reckless actions started a war and led to the death of her own captain. While close to her Vulcan family, she’s even more conflicted than her foster brother Spock. Ash, her romantic entanglement, is literally a Klingon grafted into a human body in an act of violation and espionage. Their roles are reversed from those sexy dynamics traditional in the 1960s. Michael craves action and excitement, while Ash is vulnerable, confused, and an emotional mess most of the time. We did get some brotherly bonding between him and Lorca when they both ended up in a Klingon prison, but Ash the Warrior didn’t and still doesn’t know who he’s fighting for – a pretty big problem.
We’ve also got (or had) an actual gay couple without any metaphors (at last) in Paul and Hugh. Male leadership is a dicey (but not uninteresting) prospect on the show, with season one offering a very Bad Daddy (from of the Mirror Universe — definitely time for that again) in Lorca, and then turning to the cautious (but discerning) Saru as an alternative. Somewhat motherly Michelle Yeoh was traded out for her Mirror counterpart, a warrior queen with a surprising knack for survival and an unknown potential in her new universe. For that motherly, caregiving tone we might go to Tilly (but she’s more like girl next door, socially awkward but competent and creative as she pursues a command role), but the only place it really appears is in Amanda, Michael’s foster mom.
The original series scored a major casting coup when it brought on Jane Wyatt (one of the 1950s iconic Nuclear TV Family moms) to be Spock’s space parent. More recent iterations by Winona Ryder and Mia Kirshner don’t quite channel the same archetypal presence (thought Kirshner was Elena’s always compromised mother Isobel on Vampire Diaries for several shock and awe appearances), but her sensitive Amanda still represents the human quality of empathy and understanding. And since Spock is returning in this new season, one wonders how she helped her son and her foster daughter get used to each other. We know Spock’s childhood found him estranged from his father, viewed by fellow Vulcans as a misfit, starting a career in Starfleet as a way to assert his independence from all judgements other than success on his own terms.
So how must it have felt to the little boy when his obviously human-loving father brought an actual human home to be a second child? And how did or didn’t Michael bridge that gap between her human emotions and the Vulcan need for rational discipline? Amanda presumably was already an adult when she moved to Vulcan, and Sarek must be described as unusually tolerant of difference and diversity throughout his professional career as a diplomat and in his unconventional personal life. Burnham and Sarek maintain a closeness during the time of Discovery that goes so far as allowing either to literally call on the other psychically in times of great need.
I don’t think with this youngest Spock we’re going to get his journey to embrace his human side (through that classic bromance) all over again. This isn’t about Kirk anymore. Bringing Pike back was a brilliant move, but we know his ultimate fate is one outside of Starfleet. Instead, we’re going to see how Vulcans and humans learn to love each other as equal but opposite astronaut explorers. On Trek, of course, it’s not really about the answers. What matters is the journey.