The original Destiny storyline opened following the collapse of a vast Terran civilization at the hands of an invading, amorphous Darkness and its various alien accomplices - an advance stymied only by a benevolent Big Dumb Object known as the Traveller. It cast you as an ancient warrior, resurrected by a flying robot to reclaim humankind's old dominions together with their antique, storied weapons and gear. So much of its appeal for me, back in 2014, was the mystique of that reclamation process, bolstered by alternately zany, obnoxious, fragmentary and/or intriguing writing that expanded upon the viral mythological element in Halo.
Strange New Worlds season 2 shows how far Star Trek has come
11.08.2023 - 13:57 / polygon.com / New
Star Trek shows a vision of humanity’s future, but it’s always really about the present.
The Original Series was a portrait of optimism, the now-iconic narration beckoning to John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier” speech. The Next Generation aired during the end of the Cold War, when many Americans felt they were at the “end of history.” So TNG showed a utopian future, reflecting viewers’ sense of security but urging them to aspire for more. Then Enterprise, the first post-9/11 Star Trek, shifted to something more paranoid — the entire third season was about the crew hunting the alien Xindi after they attacked Earth.
Which brings us to Strange New Worlds, the ongoing Trek prequel set a decade or so before The Original Series. The series, which concluded its second season on Thursday, purposefully uses the familiar Star Trekformula: episodic, message-based storytelling about the Enterprise charting the unknown. In the era of serialized streaming, that kind of storytelling can feel as alien as a Klingon or a Vulcan.
But not everything about Strange New Worlds is a throwback. Its social commentary is very 2020s, focusing on institutionalized discrimination, civil unrest, and PTSD. While the episode narratives are classical, the innovation of Strange New Worlds is taking the messages from those old episodes and reframing them with a modern lens.
One of the most famous message episodes of Star Trekis “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” when the Enterprise visits the planet Cheron. The inhabitants discriminate against each other because one half is white-skinned on their right side and black-skinned on their left. For the other half, it’s the other way around. It’s an antiracist message for sure, but one that paints racism as only foolish and advocates colorblindness.
By contrast, Strange New Worlds’ handling of Una’s heritage in episode 2 of this season has a more 21st-century view of discrimination. When the Federation discovers she is an Illyrian, an alien race that practices genetic engineering, she (and her identity) are put on trial. Whether you take this story as an allegory about racism or queer identity and gender-affirming medicine, the impact of the story is the same.
Here, discrimination is insidiously woven into the system the heroes live under, and they have to look past their privilege to understand others’ experiences. This would’ve been far too radical a perspective to broadcast back in the 1960s; indeed, queer issues weren’t even on the radar of The Original Series. Now, though, we’ve reached a level of understanding such that “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” doesn’t cut it. “Good” doesn’t come easy on Strange New Worlds.
The empathy of Strange New Worlds doesn’t end with the Illyrians.
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