A Star Trek’s prime directive is to tell a good story that has something to say about the human condition or the state of today’s society. Star Trek: Discovery (DSC) Season 1 has accepted that challenge more than any recent Trek series since DS9. Unlike all previous Treks, which were limited to 42 minute morality tales, DSC has a much wider canvas. Like some “prestige” modern serialized TV shows, DSC’s themes are complex and woven throughout all the of episodes in subtle ways. This theme series will pull the threads together so we can better understand exactly what DSC is trying to say in its first season. I count four primary themes, and will analyze each one in a blog post.
- Xenophobia vs. Inclusion
- Perception vs. Identity (Nature vs. Nurture)
- Might vs. Right & Fate vs. Agency
- Faith vs. Fear
Theme 1: Xenophobia vs. Inclusion
- Fear of other cultures is a poisonous ideology that can be easy to succumb to, but lasting security comes from inclusion.
- It is easier to accept inclusion with outsiders only after members of a society have achieved unity.
Let’s review all the cases where DSC Season 1 depicted xenophobia or bigotry and the struggle to overcome that with the ideal of inclusion. The problem of xenophobia is laid out in the first lines of the first episode by T’Kuvma: “They are coming. Atom by atom, they will coil around us and take all that we are.” This is textbook fear mongering from a fanatical bigot. The most notable thing about how it is handled in the two-part season opener is that T’Kuvma’s views are not commented upon within the episode in oldschool Trek moralizing fashion. The Klingon characters are allowed to spew their racism while the writers keep an anthropological distance, leading viewers to wonder if we are supposed to think T’Kuvma might have a point somewhere in all his speechifying. The Starfleet characters are set up merely as a contrast to this bigotry: being helpful to the bug-like aliens in the teaser; Burnham being awed by the beauty of the Klingon ship; Admiral Anderson not being able to even comprehend the Klingons’ murderous hatred even while his ship is being cleaved in two. It is not until the end of the season when a character finally declares, “T’Kuvma was an ignorant fool.” Because DSC is serialized, this season opener could not wrap up this theme in the final act with a captain’s speech like always happened in previous series. Instead it establishes a question: what happens when you use xenophobia as a tool to forge one type of unity (the Klingon houses) at the expense of the more expansive unity of peaceful coexistence with neighbors? By the end of the two-parter we don’t know exactly how the show will try to answer this question.
The theme is further developed in the next three episodes, although without the Klingons. The Ripper arc depicts the discovery and capture of the Tardigrade, the exploitation and near death of the creature to make the Spore Drive work, and Burnham’s insight about its true nature, which leads to her decision to set it free. The rest of the crew saw this sentient being as something to be feared, and once it was contained, as a mere animal that was expected to give its life to serve human needs. This view was prevalent over the three episodes, and even Saru succumbed to it. With the first five episodes of the series failing to take a firm moral stand on this theme right up until the last few minutes, it is no wonder that many fans were beginning to question whether DSC was ‘true Star Trek.’
But Burnham did take a stand. By putting herself in Ripper’s position, imagining how it thinks and feels, she practiced the one way to break the spell of xenophobia: empathy. Stamets sacrificing himself to save Ripper’s life is another important stand. When he injects himself with its DNA, making himself a little less Human, he shows that he does not share T’Kuvma’s fear of being changed “atom by atom” through unity with an alien, but that he embraces the opportunity.
What’s more, empathy and inclusivity wins the day: the ship’s mission is successful, and Ripper gets to go home. Everyone gets some of what they need.
Once Ripper zips off to parts unknown, the xenophobia theme moves to Vulcan where we meet a member of an extremist group that believes Vulcans dilute their culture by being members of the Federation.
Speaking lines similar to T’kuvma, V’Latak says Sarek’s mission “does not reflect true Vulcan ideology,” and that his “fascination with humans can no longer be tolerated” because his “obsession” has blinded him to the fact that “Humans are inferior.” He calls the Federation a “failed experiment.” Like T’Kuvma, V’Latak martyrs himself for his cause. The episode shows that his views are commonly held by less fanatical Vulcans. As with the real world we all live in, there are strong political and social currents that inspire a minority to violence but cause many mainstream Vulcans to hold bigoted views of Humans. The Director of the Vulcan Expeditionary Group and others view Sarek as a threat because his family is a literal mixture of Human and Vulcan. He even calls it an “experiment,” which was V’Latak’s word for the Federation. Not a family, not a home of bonded people, but an ill-advised science project that should be shut down.
In this episode, Sarek becomes a much more heroic Star Trek character than he already was. It is the narrative equivalent of a white man marrying a black woman during segregation, having an interracial child together, and then adopting a black daughter… and then being forced to chose how much he should lie to her to protect her from the pain of the bigotry being directed at them all… and then both of them being nearly killed by terrorists in two separate attacks years apart. We still do not know what motivated Sarek to build the type of family he did, but we know now how radical that decision was. And we know that Sarek is a strong believer in the power of unity and intermingling that the Federation exemplifies.
Here too unity is a strength, not a weakness. Burnham explains that she “shares part of his Katra, his eternal life force.” They are intertwined at a level beyond DNA and smaller than atoms. Sarek’s psychic bond with Burnham saved her life when she was nearly killed as a girl, and she used it to save his life when the terrorists came for him.
Once in the Mirror Universe, our crew is dropped into a xenophobic culture that would make the Klingons blush. Emperor Georgiou tells Burnham, “your people are dangerous” because of Federation values like “equality, freedom, cooperation.” Lorca is able to inspire a coup with the message: “I’ve watched for years as you let alien races spill over the borders and flourish in our backyard, and have the gall to cite rebellion. Terrans need a leader who will preserve our way of life, our race.”
Part of DSC’s message is that this worldview provides only the illusion of strength. Terrans may have firepower, but they do not have much in the way of security and stability or even operational success. They are too busy backstabbing one another and fomenting coups to be effective (see also the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).
The same is true of the Klingons. T’Kuvma was killed almost immediately after he began his crusade, and his followers were easily co-opted by Kol. The only Klingon to succeed is L’Rell, and only because she bonded with Cornwall and cooperated with the Discovery crew. Landry is another example of someone whose inability to empathize drove her to make stupid and fatal mistakes.
Burnham inherently understands that true strength and security will come from the trust that is built out of diversity and inclusion. When in the Mirror Universe she strives to understand how the Klingons, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites have been able to find unity and form what she calls a “coalition of hope” in such a dark place. She wants to take the answer back to her own universe and use it to help the Klingons forge peace with the Federation. So she risks the mission and the lives of her crew to meet with the Fire Wolf. What did she learn? Below are the key lines from their long exchange:
Burnham to Fire Wolf: You lead this group of vastly different species… I need to know how, how have you come to compromise and embrace each other.
Fire Wolf: A Teran enemy is a Klingon friend.
Burnham: Does that union not contradict your drive to defend the Klingon honor at all cost?
Fire Wolf: Klingons stand together and strong. It is only with our own houses in order that we can begin to invite others in.
Burnham: Thank you for your wisdom.
The Fire Wolf expresses the political reality that a fractured society is going to be insecure in itself, suspicious of opposing groups, fearful. Such a society is in no mood to court the complex social dance with outsiders, having no way to predict how those interactions will exacerbate existing internal divisions. One contemporary example is fear that Hispanic and Latin immigrants will drive changes in “traditional” American society and benefit one political party over another. Fortunately in America we have the tradition of pluralism that allows different groups of people to tolerate one another just enough that we can live and work together. Our balanced electoral system allows us to feel secure enough that we adhere into one nation. Despite our divisions we are able to “stand together and strong” when we have to. The Federation is like this: a framework that allows vastly different species to unify around a common identity. As we have seen before, your species must itself be unified in order to join. And members who have joined or considered joining have sometimes complained about a homogenized effect the Federation has over a species–“a Homo Sapiens only club.” The pull of nationalism (or speciesism) will always be strong in people, whether you are a member of the European Union who feels your cultural heritage has been diluted in the name of abstract international principles, or a Vulcan who feels you people’s way of life is being eroded by proximity to people who think differently than you do. These are real concerns, but pro-Federation partisans like Burnham or Kirk or Picard would argue that the alternatives of retrenchment, isolation and conflict are worse.
The Fire Wolf is expressing a much more basic motivation that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but he still makes the point that all the Klingon houses had to come together before they reached that conclusion and opened their arms to other species. This insight is the reason Burnham gives L’Rell the power to unify the Klingon houses, because only then would there be a chance for lasting peace with the Federation. Time will tell if DSC’s Season 2 depicts the second phase of this theme: cooperation, mutual respect, and empathy between Humans and Klingons. Since the Klingon storyline will be led in part by a Human-Klingon hybrid, it is likely this theme will continue to be explored. But we already know that the Klingon unification that comes at the end of the DSC/TOS era–the evacuation of Kronos–does bring about lasting peace with the Federation.
True unity and lasting security can only come from acceptance, or if that’s too much, at least toleration of the differences between us. We must get our own house in order before we can join with others, and the benefits of doing so are vast, and sometimes life saving. This may not seem very profound, but in the current political environment where some of our leaders teach that empathy is weakness and trust of outsiders is a foolish, potentially fatal mistake, it is true to Star Trek’s tradition to provide a counter argument. DSC Season 1 makes a strong one.