Brian Aldiss:
"The media have a great grip in the States, and so you get hogwash like STAR TREK, with its bright -- well, it's not very bright, actually -- this tinsel view of the future, and the galaxy, which has to be optimistic. I did once manage to see an episode all the way through, and at the end Captain Kirk says to the -- the chap with the ears -- 'Well, this proves that the galaxy's too small for white men and green men to fight one another,' and Spock nods and says, 'That's right,' and they clap each other on the shoulder, and up comes the music. Well, what Spock should have said was, 'Why the fuck shouldn't white men and green men fight together? Of course there's plenty of room.' Liberal platitudes do distress me. And yet I remember having this argument with some quite high-powered chaps, and they said, "That's a very subversive point of view, you may think these are platitudes, but they actually do a lot of good.' But I still think that science fiction should be subversive, it shouldn't be in the game of consolations, it should shake people up, I suppose because that's what it did to me when I started reading it, and that was valuable. It should question things."
[From DREAM MAKERS: SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY WRITERS AT WORK. New and Revised Profiles by Charles Platt. Ungar, New York, 1987.]
Joanna Russ:
"STAR TREK addresses itself to... desires, ones often explicitly stated in the series itself. They are: worthwhile goals, a clear conscience, peers whom one can respect, love, and be loyal to, a chance to exercise one's skills, self-respect, a code of conduct which can be followed without disaster -- and excitement and self-importance. All these good things are to be gained by self-control and adherence to a morality which, although fairly simple, still transcends the official code handed down by Starship Command. I believe that the issue of ego control is central to the series; time and again the crew's fragile but valuable system of command and self-command is undermined by something coming from outside the ship, only to be re-established by somebody's heroic personal efforts (often Captain Kirk's) just before the drama ends.... The moments fans cite with greatest pleasure are not special effects, but rather moments of character-revelation, especially moments of deep emotion between the characters. The series was mildly liberal, mildly feminist (within narrower limits than Gene Roddenberry wished, if one can trust the pilot film...), internationalist, with at least some non-white characters (e.g. Uhura and Sulu), and it presented its characters as adults with explicitly limited powers, not fourteen-year-olds presented as rulers of the universe.
"STAR TREK is a very muddled and partial utopia. Yet it is utopian and I believe that if anything lifts the show out of the class of purely addictive culture, it is the series' utopian longing and the consequent sense of profound tragedy that hovers just under the surface of that longing....
"In STAR TREK the need is for community and morality; the means offered to achieve these ends are self-control and adherence to a fairly simple established morality. Anybody looking at the real world can tell that these means do not work (I have heard the show called 'Civics 101'). Viewers know it; otherwise they would not have to keep watching the same inadequate solution played out again and again."
[From SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, Volume 5, Number 16, 1978.]
Although I can understand and share the perspective of Brian Aldiss, I find myself, at middle-age, marooned in a world increasingly illiberal, authoritarian, anti-intellectual, anti-empathic, and poised on the edge of global suicide. This makes me lean towards the views of Russ.
The STAR TREK universe was never believable. Given the barrier of interstellar distances, the limitations of light-speed and energy, starships are unlikely in whatever future we might have; given, as well, the capacity of a technological species for self-destruction, the concept of a galaxy full of civilizations ready for contact also becomes a dream of wish-fulfillment.
Yet I refuse to toss away the utopian impulse. Despite all of the odds against humanity, despite all of our failings, I feel that we need a mythology of hope in the future, if only to give us a bearable existence in the present. If we believe in tomorrow, then life can become more focused today; if we believe that human beings can grow and learn, then we might be compelled, as individuals, to grow and learn as far as we can. Even during a time of selfishness and self-destruction, of stifling ideological purity and corporate atomization, of genocide and Western cheerleaders for genocide, stories of compassion and striving can prompt us to live as if compassion and striving could save us all.
Such things are more than "liberal platitudes," they are impossible goals that we strive to make possible, because in striving, we live as fully as we can.
Trapped within a dying civilization in a threatened biosphere, I still have to agree with Oscar Wilde:
"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias."
[From "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," 1891.]
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