Lessons from the Enterprise

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about two episodes of Star Trek. They carry lessons for us all, IMO.

The first one, from the original series, is “Day of the Dove”. In it, the Enterprise and a Klingon ship are lured to a planet inhabited by an entity that feeds off of anger, hostility and violence. To ensure a continuous source of energy, the entity implants false memories in both Federation and Klingon crew members, and it heals physical wounds quickly so that the victims can resume combat.

What ends this destructive cycle? When the opposing forces join together to laugh at the entity.

I’ve thought about this since 2016—this is what people should have done from the first moment that the Kleptocrat swanned down an escalator and declared his candidacy. Every time he opened his mouth, he should have been greeted by gales of laughter drowning out his puerile posturing and racist hyperbole. Just like that ST entity, nothing saps that bloviating liar’s power more than being laughed at.

It's not too late—I mean, it is very late, but his inflated ego is more fragile than a soap bubble, and laughter aimed at him will render him flaccid in every respect before everyone. C'mon, guys—we can do this.

The second episode is from The Next Generation, and it’s more prophetic than prescriptive. “The Inner Light” focuses on Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who is struck on the bridge of the Enterprise by an alien probe and rendered unconscious. During the time he is out—a few minutes for the rest of the crew—he spends 40 years on a non-Federation planet. Over the course of his lifetime there, he has a family and a vocation as a scientist whose research reveals that the planet is dying. Throughout the episode, as he ages, the environment’s drought and the power of the unrelenting sun proceed to extinction.

It turns out that the planet’s leaders knew about the coming end, but kept the truth from most of the people because they did not have the technology to save them, and panic would do no one any good. They launched the probe with all their memories embedded in it in hopes of finding someone who could tell their history to the universe.

Picard exclaims, “Oh—it’s me, isn’t it? I’m the someone… I’m the one it finds!”

And then he awakens in the Enterprise bridge.

In the ST:TNG case, the planet’s destruction isn’t humanoid-caused, but clearly the path we Earthers are on is of our own building. As most of the eastern part of the US stews under a heat dome this week, I keep thinking that—if we can’t be arsed to do anything about global warming, at least we ought to start collecting memories and sending off probes into the alpha quadrant.

 

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