These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.
But sadly, not for this short essay…
“I know you all believed that I killed myself because of what I came face-to-face with after making a record number of jumps to interstellar space.” Lots of nods, more wide-eyed-amazement. There were even faces that displayed sheer horror. I nodded to Tiananmen. “I didn’t kill myself. I faked my death in order to talk with Felix and Grandpa about the future of Jax Lunar Lumber and the exploration of Strange New Worlds.” She shot me a look. We both had come to enjoy a century-old flattie “television program”, re-engineered in full-immersive ThreeDee.”
Ever since watching Star Trek: The Original Series, I wanted SO BADLY TO LIVE IN THAT WORLD!
My wife and I have been watching STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds and after several episodes where my fondest dream of being able to live in the Federation Universe kept getting fed. I SO wanted to live in the days of the USS Enterprise (Original through G (which is, in case you don’t know, a Time Ship!).
Then, some…interesting episodes of SNW started to crop up. Perhaps the most startling and revealing was also the BLOODIEST ST I had ever seen and references something that has only been noted in vague hints: The Klingon/Federation War.
While I’m the father of an Army soldier who was stationed in several of the world’s hot-spots during his 11-year hitch whose MOS was 94 Sierra. If you’re really interested, do some digging. That’s all I’ll say.
He related a few incidents that were hard for me to hear as his Dad. I’ll leave it at that, but use it to introduce the ST:SNW episode, “Under the Cloak of War”. I grew up with the slightly rough-and-tumble Universe of ST:TOS and ST:TNG rather than the more refined universe of PICARD (which has brutal issues of its own, but has more to chew on intellectually.) Seeing “Cloak”, my child-like vision of the FUN of space travel was cruelly tempered by what I saw on television every night when, crashing into adolescence, I was faced with the possibility of getting DRAFTED when I turned 18. Initiated in 1948, the US drafted its last soldier (at the time, all soldiers had been male) in 1972 and closed finally in 1973. While I was “just a kid” – I was fifteen and absolutely aware of the Vietnam War.
So, with that background and build up, let’s go back to my fondest dream as a kid watching Star Trek with Dad: circa 1966-1969 (9-12 years old). I wanted to live in the universe of Star Trek and “boldly go where no man (at the time) has gone before”! I wanted to live in a world of transporters, talking computers, food replicators, amazing medical care, and a seemingly clean, sweet world that spent its time “exploring strange new worlds”.
But the Federation didn’t have a very smooth beginning and went back and forth as some civilizations sought expansion, and others chose to vanish. The small slice of Federation history during STRANGE NEW WORLDS was almost as violent as our own time.
So, would I want to REALLY inhabit the Federation of this time? Worf would NOT have existed during the time – in fact, the Federation and the Klingon Empire were busy slaughtering each other. I can no easily imagine a Federation being “all good” and the Klingons being “all bad” than I can imagine all Americans being good and all Chinese being bad. Governments do nasty things – but the scarier part of that is that “government” isn’t visible. It’s RESULTS are apparent, but I can’t point and say, “Look! There’s America!” It’s an entity that has, “as of mid-2025, (has an) estimated total population of the United States and its territories (of) approximately 345.5 million people. This figure includes the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the five main inhabited U.S. territories.”
It's full of people truly nasty, truly wonderful, and truly ciphers (or invisible if you prefer). Times for different parts of the world are horrific: “Sudan, the Occupied Palestinian Territory (specifically Gaza), Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).” Check whatever your news source is and these places will usually be prominently displayed.
Now, finally: If I lived in the United Federation of Planets during the time of SNW, there would still be atrocities perpetrated by “aliens” as they are perpetrated by the Humans of this place and time. The faces would be different, but there would STILL be my favorite Star Trek aliens like the Vulcans, the Bajorans, the Iconians, Q, the Horta, and others.
And there would be war, and that’s why “Cloak” brought home to me; even Gene Roddenberry had to invent violent aliens in order to drive the storylines; clearly recognizing that WE AS HUMANS prefer things…(to be mild and polite), SPICY. Not entirely dull and boring which has always been the problem with writing about utopias – no one wanted to read about them because THEY WERE BORING. Violence is what we LIKE, even a romantic comedy would fall flat on its face if there wasn’t CONFLICT (even of the humorous and romantic type).
After reflecting and writing about my childhood dream of living in a STAR TREK world, I find that it really wouldn’t be all that different than the world I live in today (maybe with a couple fun pieces of tech like TRANSPORTERS and STARSHIPS!
Reference: “Under the Cloak of War”, detailed discussion and insights - https://musingsofamiddleagedgeek.blog/2023/07/31/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-s2-8-under-the-cloak-of-war-commits-a-few-atrocities/
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