The Return of Liberals in Space in the Age of "Space Force"

Patrick Stewart checks on the vines in "Picard."

Star Trek has given us feature-length films, books, video games, animated TV series, TV shorts and content of all forms, but it is best known for giving us television series: the original of 1966-'69, "The Next Generation," "Deep Space 9," "Voyager," "Enterprise," "Discovery" and now "Picard." These series give us mostly self-contained one-hour stories in which the heroes win not so much through their military might and skill in battle (see Captain Kirk's infamous fighting techniques) but through their intelligence, creativity, openness to new ideas and determination to do the right thing for as many people as possible.

It's a recognizably American trope: The plucky, good-natured, optimistic hero wins in the end through persistence, creativity and generosity. What's more, the ideals the franchise espouses: multi-culturalism, tolerance, non-interference, etc., overlay neatly with American liberal politics.

For years, I have annoyed my friends and family by talking about my "Liberals in Space" theory of Star Trek. I have written about it a couple times here on this blog, most recently when I examined the first season of "Star Trek: Discovery."

Liberals in Space

To summarize: Every time a new Star Trek television series comes along, it explores the current state of American liberal politics at the time. The characters may be seeking out new worlds, new civilizations and boldly going where no one has been before, in a setting that's hundreds of years from now, but the issues they face are very much the issues that we face here in the present.

It's not just me talking here. This was more or less what the show's creator Gene Roddenberry said he wanted to do when Star Trek first aired in the 1960s, when it returned as a cartoon in the 1970s, when the movies came along in the 1980s and when "Star Trek: The Next Generation" aired in the 1990s.

As the decades went on, this formula started to look old-fashioned. When I was a kid, reruns of the original series were pretty much the only sci-fi I regularly saw on TV -- all five channels of it. Today, we are increasingly spoiled for choices in space-based sci-fi and fantasy entertainment on all kinds of screens. Star Trek has to compete in a crowded market, and in a world where audiences are accustomed to expensive computer-generated effects, as well as the dark, complex storytelling of "Game of Thrones" and the "extended universe" approach to interconnected stories of Marvel and DC entertainment.

After Roddenberry's death, the writers of "The Next Generation" and subsequent iterations of the franchise began testing their limits. Their characters became more complex and flawed. They portrayed Starfleet as a big, bureaucratic institution with a dark side.

All of this made Star Trek more believable in some ways, but it also threatened to undermine the basis for the whole franchise. Do we want stories about a Starfleet that isn't a force for good in the galaxy? Do we want a Star Trek that shows us that, 300 years into the future, humanity will not escape its own worst instincts before setting off into space at warp speed? If not, maybe we'll just watch "The Mandalorian."

Engage

I don't like everything about "Picard," and Season 2 of "Discovery" was kind of a mess, but when I watched them recently I was struck by how the shows balance the competing interests of making their heroes more complex while maintaining the franchise's ideals.

You could see this clearly in the character of Captain Pike, who becomes a major character in the second season of "Discovery." Nerds like me will remember Pike was the captain of the Starship Enterprise in the original, unaired pilot for the first Star Trek series. This was the pilot that was rejected by CBS for being "too cerebral." After the series began airing on NBC with an almost entirely new cast, the producers reused some of the footage for a two-part episode that brought back the character of Pike. Now he was portrayed as the former captain of the Enterprise that he had been disabled and hideously scarred in an accident.

The first season of "Discovery" ended with the eponymous starship making a rendezvous with Starfleet's flagship, the Enterprise. In Season 2, Pike (in a yellow shirt that resembles the uniform Kirk wore in the original series, with a bit of new detail suited for the era of HD television) joins the Discovery as its temporary commander and wins over the crew with his professionalism, smarts, open-mindedness and dedication to his compatriots. More than once, another character refers to him as the best that Starfleet has to offer.

This is a big deal because, as in its first season, the drama in the second season of "Discovery" comes from mutiny. There's a lot of overwrought talk about family in "Discovery," and a fair amount of time-travel silliness in Season 2, but it's mostly a show about liberals in space trying to be good space liberals even as their institutions fail to live up to their own ideals.

The crew of the Discovery constantly clash with the bureaucracy and the nefarious Starfleet Intelligence (identified by their black badges). Much of the season is spent with the Discovery disobeying Starfleet orders as the crew tracks down none other than Spock, Capt. Pike's first officer and Michael Burnham's brother, who has been institutionalized as insane and is accused of murder. What? Not our Spock! Who will stand up for justice and get to the truth of the matter?

Once More Into the Breach

A similar dynamic animates the action in "Picard." In the new series, partly written by Michael Chabon, Patrick Stewart reprises his role as the beloved Captain Jean-Luc Picard. As the action begins, the great leader is now long retired from Starfleet and living on his vineyard in France with a Romulan couple, who appear devoted to him.

As the first episode unfolds, we learn a complicated backstory about a supernova destroying the Romulan homeworld and an android uprising on Mars. Androids, like the now dead Commander Data, are now banned in the Federation of Planets. Picard, angry about this "synth ban" and Starfleet's failure to provide more help for the desperate Romulans, resigned his commission. When a reporter asks him why he quit Starfleet, he angrily replies, "Because it was no longer Starfleet!"

Soon, Picard meets a beautiful young woman who is pursued by mysterious assassins. For reasons she herself doesn't understand, she is caught up in a conspiracy involving a Romulan prophecy, an enemy mole in Starfleet leadership, a secret synth-making facility and, somehow, the long-gone android Commander Data.

By the third episode, Picard has defied his doctor's orders, the foulmouthed orders of Starfleet's top brass and the admonitions of his Romulan friend Laris, who is played by the magnificent Irish actress Orla Brady, who is sadly only in the first few episodes. He heads off into space on a rogue starship, piloted by a handsome rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold captain, a rogue ex-Starfleet officer friend, a scientist with a secret, a young Romulan swordsman-monk and two lovable droids.

Star What?

No, I'm just kidding about the droids, but the whole thing seems very Star Wars, doesn't it? I haven't even got to the part where this motley crew -- somehow in the vastness of the galaxy -- bumps into Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), the ex-Borg who rocked that skintight silver suit in "Star Trek: Voyager." She too has gone rogue. Now she calls herself a ranger, and spends her time patrolling a lawless sector of the galaxy.

Lawless sector of the galaxy, warrior monks -- this is not just Star Wars, this is recent "Star Wars." It's "The Mandalorian," "Rogue One" and "Solo." I like those Star Wars stories well enough, but I'm not really a Star Wars guy. I'm a Star Trek guy. 

There's also a hunky Romulan secret agent who keeps getting visited by his sexy sister, who is either trying to reaffirm his commitment to their shared cause or lure him into bed. They're basically Jaime and Cersei Lannister with pointy ears.

In fact, there are big chunks of "Picard" that don't seem very "Star Trek" at all, but the world it is set in is recognizable. Once again, we see a hero who embodies the best of Starfleet even as he defies the institution itself to do what's right.

As for the plot: It's all a bit much, but it's a fun adventure. The show gives a lot of room (too much, in my opinion) to the new characters, but it also lets us see familiar faces like Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) and, in flashbacks and other tricks, Data (Brent Spiner). Longtime fans will recognize some less familiar characters too, like Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco) the ex-Borg who taught the Enterprise crew in "The Next Generation" that there were once real people beneath all that Borg hardware.

Keep the Faith

In the end, "Picard" tells yet another story about a Starfleet rebel who ends up representing Starfleet better than the top brass. Maybe at this point, this formula is getting a little too familiar, but if my theory holds true, and every new Star Trek series is about our current American politics, then it's not too hard to see why the story still works in 2020: A lot of us are trying to hold onto our ideals of a multicultural, altruistic, peaceful and science-based world today even as our democratic institutions crumble, our leaders fail us and much of our public seems to have lost faith in science.

Of course, maybe all that cultural/political commentary is beside the point. This is Patrick Stewart playing Jean-Luc Picard. I would watch him do anything.

There's a part early on in the series where Picard says he feels he has been wasting his life since retirement. I heard that and looked at his beautiful vineyard and charming house and I thought, "What is he talking about?" I enjoyed "Picard" quite a lot, but I think I would have preferred 10 episodes of Jean-Luc bickering with his Romulan friend Laris about the year's grape harvest.