Theme 4: Faith vs. Fear
- When faced with fear of people or faith in people, chose faith
- Fear makes it easy to justify immoral behavior and reject core principles based on temporary circumstances
David Milch (of NYPD Blue and Deadwood fame) says there are only two basic emotions that motivate behavior: faith or fear. He (and his TV shows) advocate always striving to act from a position of faith not fear, by which he means it is wiser to believe in the core goodness of people and that the universe bends toward justice rather than believe everyone is out to get you and failure is inevitable. It’s not that bad things won’t happen, but living in a state of fear darkens your perception of reality and closes you off to human connection.
Milch credits the contemporary poet Hubert Selby Jr. for the idea, though it is one of those universal themes of literature, especially of the Judeo-Christian variety.
Selby described it this way:
As I understand it, there are only two emotions a human being can experience—love or fear. And when you’re in a state of love, you can’t think of trying to get anything. You’re incapable of thinking that way. You just seem to experience the perfection of creation… So if I’m coming from anyplace else I’m coming from fear, and fear takes many, many, many forms to be effective. All kinds of forms. So, if I’m facing the demon of fear, love is always available, but what I have to do is be willing to surrender to it. Surrender … all those dreadful judgments that keep us in turmoil and ignorance and misery.
Sarek sums up this idea with a poetic logic: “For what greater source of peace exists than our ability to love our enemy. ”
DSC’s overarching theme in Season 1 is that we must resist the fear mindset and chose faith–faith in people, in our principles, even in our enemies.
The first iteration of this theme is Burnham’s decision to fire first on the Klingons at the Binary Stars. This decision was driven by fear. She had just been nearly killed by the Torchbearer, which provoked flashbacks to her childhood traumas, which all began when the Klingons murdered her parents. Her repeated justification for mutinying to bring about the attack shows that she was convinced they were all in mortal danger: ”I’m trying to save you… all of you.” Whether she was right or not–and it is debatable–is besides the point. Her actions were driven by fear alone, and she only used the pretense of logic (ie the Vulcan Hello) to make her actions seem reasonable. Georgiou on the other hand was more level headed. She was prepared to fight, but she was not going to make any rash decisions based on fear. It is debatable whether Georgiou’s approach would have avoided a wider war, but that debate does not mean Burnham’s approach was right. By the end of the season Burnham came to openly admit that she was wrong.
In the Ripper arc, we see fear causing not only poor judgment but immoral decisions. We have already discussed in Theme 1 how Landry saw Ripper as a killing machine. She was not physically afraid of the Tardigrade but she did see it through the lens of its most terrifying actions. Unlike Burnham, she was incapable of having faith (or Selby’s definition of love) that Ripper might be more than that. Landry was acting on orders of Lorca who is motivated by fear in his core, as we will see. Saru made his immoral decision regarding the Tardigrade out of actual fear when he ordered Stamets to use the weakened Ripper to make spore jumps. It was not a physical fear, but fear of losing his place in his society: fear of being a bad captain, of not measuring up, of damaging his reputation and future career in Starfleet. Fear of failure in the face of judgment from your peers, superiors and yourself can be even more debilitating than a physical threat. As with the Burnham’s decisions at the Binary Stars, it is debatable whether risking the life of the Tardigrade to save the captain was the right command decision, but there is no doubt he made it for the wrong reasons. And just as Burnham eventually realizes she was wrong, so does Saru when he admits to himself, “I know what I did.” He realizes that his mission aims may have been achieved, but by making the decision he did, he has not measuring up to the decorated captains he was hoping to emulate.
The third iteration of the theme of fear is Lorca and the Terrans. Once in the Mirror Universe, Burnham is quick to sniff out their true nature and she narrates it for the rest of us. She describes the all-pervasive sense of fear: “I can’t rest here, not really. My eyes open and it’s like waking from the worst nightmare I can imagine. Even the light is different. The cosmos has lost its brilliance, and everywhere I turn is fear.”
She is not saying that she is afraid. She is describing an environment where fear and its corollary hate is the predominate mindset. The Mirror Universe is less about fear as an emotion that causes hairs to stand on end and threat ganglia to sprout, but how fear affects decision-making and how it is used as a weapon by people in power. It would be hard to argue life is a picnic for even the Humans living in the Terran empire, but they are kept in line by their leaders through a steady diet of fear of non-Humans. The Emperor can always say: you may quibble with my domestic policies, but what do you think the Klingons and Vulcans will do to you if I am gone? This is also why she tells Burnham “your people are dangerous.” The Emperor lives in fear of her own people, so ideas of equality and freedom are terrifying to her. And everyone else in the chain of command lives in fear of the knife in the back. For Terrans, fear is a way of life, a governing philosophy in the same way logic is for Vulcans. It is their chosen belief system that guides their actions.
Not everyone in the Mirror Universe choses fear over faith. Mirror Voq is uncharacteristically magnanimous, even though Tyler tried to kill him. This is because the rebels have adopted a philosophy of faith and trust in opposition to the Terrans. This may seem counterintuitive but it is not. When facing an enemy there are two competing compulsions: to defeat them by being more like them, or to defeat them by being nothing like them–and more times than not the latter wins out. After mind-melding with Burnham, Mirror Sarek is amazed that a Human could have “a seemingly impossible depth of human compassion.” The rebels practice compassion because they know its value.
Burnham also makes a strong case the value of faith over fear as a leadership tool. When she bucks up Tilly who must pretend to be Captain Killy in the Mirror Universe, she says, “Terran strength is born out of pure necessity because they live in constant fear, always looking for the next knife aimed at their back. Their strength is painted rust. It’s a facade.” She tells Tilly that true strength and security is formed through trusting bonds with people: “You have the strength of an entire crew that believes in you. Fortify yourself with our faith in you. That’s what a real captain does.” In other words, you will have more success commanding through faith than fear.
This brings us to the season’s grand finale: the plot to blow up Kronos. From a thematic perspective, the point of spending so much of the season in the Mirror Universe, and of having Terran characters present for 13 out of 15 episodes, was to pose this question: What would happen if the Federation willfully chose to become the Terran Empire? When the Federation Council, acting on fear, chose to allow the Emperor to destroy Kronos they set in motion a history and culture-altering chain of events. Had the genocide happened, there would be no going back to “Federation principles” because all future leaders would know those principles are flexible. It might take a generation or two, but the moral decay and corruption would eventually assimilate the entire Federation more thoroughly than the Borg could dream of. This is what Burnham and the Discovery crew saved them from.
Two powerful but quiet climaxes dramatize this point. The first is when Burnham confronts Cornwell over the plan. When she calls it genocide Conrwell says, “Terms of atrocity are convenient after the fact. The Klingons are on the verge of wiping out the Federation.” When Burnham replies, “You know it’s not who we are,” Conrwell gives a quick and clear-eyed answer: “It very soon will be. We do not have the luxury of principle.” This Starfleet Admiral has made peace with the devil’s bargain I laid out above. She knows the cost but has accepted it for the sake of survival. Then Burnham gives her coup de grace: “That is all we have, Admiral. A year ago I stood alone. I believed that our survival was more important than our principles. I was wrong. Do we need a mutiny today to prove who we are?”
The second understated climax is the bomb handoff Burnham facilitates between the Emperor and L’Rell. She hands L’Rell the detonator saying, “Use the fate of Kronos to bend them to your will. Preserve your civilization rather than watch it be destroyed.” L’Rell is awed by the act. She can only respond, “But I am no one.” A happy ending ensues. There are a couple valid criticisms you could make at this point: that Burnham was empowering L’Rell and giving up Federation leverage without any guarantee of ending the war; that the solution was too simple and anti-climactic. Yes it could have ended with a big DS9-style bat’leth fight in that cave. Yes there are nagging real-politic questions about giving a super weapon to a nobody fanatic. I am only arguing that the resolution was consistent with the thematic arc of the season. It was the type of story the writers were trying to tell: the ultimate demonstration of faith over fear. Star Trek is full of pat resolutions meant to punctuate a theme. This is another entry, and a successful one.
At a panel discussion on DSC’s feminism, Mary Wiseman commented on how refreshing it was that the three powerful women in that cave–Burnham, L’Rell and the Emperor–did not break out into a nasty catfight. She described Burnham’s act as a reflection of her “huge generosity of spirit” that was “not easy.” The name of the episode sums up the theme well: Will you take my hand? The question mark implies risk and vulnerability, but also the promise of connection.
As they are saying goodbye, Tyler tells Burnham, “Your capacity to love literally saved my life.” Burnham’s capacity to chose love over fear also saved the Federation’s soul, and forged a bond with the Klingons that may lead to peace.
When I began this theme series, I noted that the themes of DSC were harder to parse because they did not get neatly summarized in a captain’s speech at the end of each episode. But by the end of the season Burnham takes on the mantle of all past Trek leads. Her speech is in her own unique voice: it’s quieter, less confident, but no less principled. The final episode of the season is book ended with a closing monologue that is Burnham’s speech to Starfleet Command. It concludes: “how do I defeat fear? The general’s answer: the only way to defat fear is to tell it no. No. We will not take shortcuts on the path to righteousness. No. We will not break the rules that protect us from our basest instincts. No. We will not allow desperation to destroy moral authority. I am guilty of all these things. Some say that in life there are no second chances. Experience tells me that this is true. But we can only look forward. We have to be torchbearers, casting the light so that we can see our path to lasting peace. We will continue exploring, discovering new words, new civilizations. Yes. That is the United Federation of Planets. Yes. That is Starfleet. Yes. That is who we are and who we will always be.”
More than most Trek speeches like this, be they from Kirk or Picard or Sisko or Janeway, we know precisely where Burnham’s wisdom came from. We saw what it took for her to earn it. This is because DSC’s writers place theme at the top of their storytelling priorities. Hopefully this will continue in future seasons as Burnham and her crew continue to explore–and discover–the human condition.