Star Trek Dystopia

Star Trek: Utopia or Dystopia?

Star Trek has always been described, by both its producers and its fans, as a remarkably hopeful, positive, optimistic vision of the future. This, if it is indeed true, would make the Star Trekfranchise unique among much of contemporary science fiction, which tends to depict the future in very dark, scary, negative, pessimistic terms. Star Trek, it is asserted, presents a different vision: in the Star Trek’s future world, humanity has finally overcome many of the obstacles that it faces today and has gone on to achieve bigger and better things, such as the construction of a fleet of starships with which to explore the galaxy, as well as the creation of an interstellar federation of planets made up of dozens of alien races united in their common interest. The Star Trek future is generally described as being one of peace, tolerance, equality, and social enlightenment. It is often held up as an ideal to which all people should aspire. 

In truth, however, the United Federation of Planets—the government under which Earth and Starfleet are managed in the Star Trek universe—has a great deal in common with the dystopian future societies seen in much of contemporary science fiction. As is the case in many dystopias, political dissent is virtually absent in the Federation, despite numerous examples of widespread political corruption. Also, like many dystopias, the Federation maintains a secret police force, Section 31, to neutralize threats to its interests, both foreign and domestic. Furthermore, many of the social problems that Star Trek claims have been solved by the time in which the series is set—such as war, crime, racism, and disease—do in fact still exist, but they have been transposed to a galactic scale rather than a planetary one. Additionally, various episodes of Star Trek, and most notably the feature film Star Trek: First Contact (1996), make it clear that Star Trek's "utopian" future civilization is clearly built on top of the ashes of modern civilization, which is said to have been destroyed by nuclear war. In these respects, Star Trek has a great deal in common with the dystopian science fiction films like 1984, Brazil, Mad Max and Logan’s Run.

One aspect of the Star Trek universe, however, defines it as a dystopia more than any other: in the Star Trek universe, individual rights are considered subordinate to the interests of the state. The core philosophy of Star Trek is most concisely summarized by Spock in the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982): “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” While on one level, this phrase could be interpreted to advocate the rightness of self-sacrifice for the greater good (which is how the film intended for it to be interpreted, with Spock sacrificing himself at the end in order to save the Enterprise from destruction), on another level this axiom is dangerous and could be used to justify any number of atrocities committed against minority ethnic and religious groups throughout history. Saying that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one is, after all, basically the same as saying that the needs of the majority outweigh the needs of the minority, or of the individual. Throughout history, ethnic cleansing, forced relocations, slavery, and political persecution have been justified on the basis of their being done for "the greater good”; in other words, it was necessary for the few to suffer so that the many could prosper. Communism, a system of government responsible for more death and misery than any other in the last century, operates on precisely those principles. It is perhaps the greatest inherent flaw of democracy: majority rule can and does often lead to majority oppression.

While the actual phrase itself has rarely been quoted in the franchise (and indeed, the film’s follow-up, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), took the exact opposite attitude), the idea that individual rights take a backseat to the larger interests of the majority or of the state, is consistent throughout the entire Star Trek franchise. The Federation systematically and frequently suppresses individual and minority rights in a number of ways, starting with its economic policy and eventually extending into its foreign policy as well. 

Economics

In the Original Series episode “The Cloud Minders,” the Enterprise visits the planet Ardana, whose inhabitants are sharply divided into two segregated classes: the inhabitants of the city of Stratos, who are literally floating in the clouds above the planet, and the Troglytes, who toil in the mines on the surface below. The Troglytes kidnap Captain Kirk and force him to endure their harsh lifestyle, thereby acquiring his sympathy and prompting him to force the planet’s leaders to change their society.  The Enterprise leaves the planet having caused a kind of revolution, in which the formerly oppressed workers gain control over the means of production and are now on an equal footing with their former overlords. 

Setting aside the episode’s clearly Marxist themes (with the Troglytes and the Stratos dwellers obviously representing the “proletariat” and the “bourgeoisie” respectively), in hindsight “The Cloud Minders” represents a pivotal moment in Star Trekhistory. From that point on, the Prime Directive, a Starfleet regulation forbidding involvement in the internal affairs of alien worlds, no longer seemed to apply to planets that were actually members of the United Federation of Planets. As a result, the power of the Federation’s central government was greatly aggrandized, and the importance of individual rights in the Federation was greatly diminished. 

No Star Trek episode or feature film has ever explained exactly how the economic system of the United Federation of Planets works. The franchise makes it clear however on multiple occasions that the system is radically different from that which exists in the United States at the beginning of the 21st Century. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, designed the Federation to resemble a communist utopia, under which neither the private ownership of property nor the acquisition of wealth is allowed. Additionally, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) establishes that by the 23rd Century money no longer exists. This is re-affirmed in Star Trek: First Contact, in which Captain Jean-Luc Picard explains that Starfleet officers do not get paid for the work that they perform, because the accumulation of wealth is no longer the driving force in people’s lives. Instead, Picard claims, “[citizens of the Federation] work to better [them]selves and the rest of humanity.” 

Picard’s words certainly sound very noble, but in reality the economic system that he is describing does not function in the way that Star Trek intends for it to. It is important to note that Kirk and Picard are not describing a society in which there is an equal distribution of wealth; they are describing a society in which there is no wealth of any kind. Even under a socialist model, people expect to be paid for their labor. Workers who do not receive compensation for their labor are generally considered to be slaves under any economic system. People who find joy or personal fulfillment in their work might not consider themselves to be enslaved, but not every job provides personal fulfillment. There will always be jobs that people may not necessarily want to do but nevertheless need to be done by someone in order for civilization to function. A society that chooses not to pay workers to perform these jobs must either use propaganda to persuade its entire population that working without pay is their civic obligation, or it must—as did the Stratos dwellers—create a slave race to perform the work necessary to keep civilization running. 

In the Star Trek universe, artificial life forms act as the enslaved underclass that keeps the Federation’s communist economic system running while the Federation’s citizens are free to engage in more noble, intellectual pursuits. Several episodes of the Original Star Trek Series (1966-69), including “I, Mudd” and “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” show Federation scientists experimenting with the creation of at least partially sentient, humanoid androids with the implication that they are to be used to perform the jobs that no one in the Federation wants to do. By the mid 24th Century, these experiments have been abandoned, but at least one sentient android remains in existence: Data, the chief science officer of the Enterprise-D. Despite his status as a commissioned Starfleet officer, Data’s rights as a person are thrown into question numerous times throughout the course of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94), most notably in the second season episode “The Measure of a Man.” In that episode, a Starfleet scientist, Commander Maddox, comes aboard the Enterprise with the intention of disassembling and possibly destroying Data in order to learn how to build more androids like him. Maddox, who considers Data to be the property of Starfleet, hopes to create a disposable race of Data-like androids to be used in situations too dangerous for humans. Though Captain Picard ultimately stops Maddox from forcing Data to comply, the situation nearly repeats itself two years later in the episode “The Offspring,” in which a Starfleet admiral comes to the Enterprise intending to take away Data’s android daughter, Lal, for basically the same reasons. At the time of Data’s death in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), the question of android rights in the Federation remained unresolved.

Data is not the only artificial life form to have his rights as a person challenged by the Federation. The Star Trek: Voyager(1994-2001) episode “Life Line” reveals that after failing to create a slave race of sentient androids, the Federation resorted to creating a slave race of holograms instead. In “Life Line,” Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram, commonly known as “the Doctor,” discovers that Starfleet has deemed other holograms of the same design as himself to be inferior and obsolete, and that they have been assigned to perform menial tasks such as scraping plasma conduits and mining dilithium ore. This revelation inspires the Doctor, who himself has struggled for equality among the crew of Voyager ever since he was first activated, to become a crusader for the rights of artificial life forms. In a later episode, “Author Author,” the Doctor creates a holographic novel to address the issue of holographic rights. In a somewhat ironic twist, however, he discovers when he attempts to publish the novel that Federation copyright law does not extend intellectual property rights to holograms. The Doctor is then forced into an intense legal battle with his publisher, who compares the Doctor to a replicator (a type of machine) and refuses to recognize his rights as a person. The Doctor ultimately wins his case with the assistance of Captain Kathryn Janeway, but, as with androids, the issue of holographic rights remains unresolved at the end of the episode. The Doctor’s novel is, however, distributed to his enslaved brethren in the Federation, with the implication that it will eventually spark some kind of holographic revolution.

A society that operates by basically enslaving part or all of its population, despite how many other social problems it claims to have solved, is neither enlightened nor evolved as characters on Star Trek frequently claim the Federation is. The Federation’s policies towards artificial life forms, combined with the fact that the Federation is ostensibly a democracy, demonstrate an immense hypocrisy and lack of moral character amongst the majority of the Federation people. A nation with moral character does not create a race of servants to do for free the work that its citizens are too lazy and decadent to do even for a price. For this reason alone, the Federation should be classified as a dystopia rather than a utopia. However, the Federation’s dystopian characteristics extend far beyond economics.

Religion

One of the most striking and disturbing differences between the Star Trek future and contemporary civilization is that religion is virtually absent on Earth and appears to be frowned upon throughout the Federation. This is deliberate and completely by the design of Gene Roddenberry, who, as a committed atheist, went out of his way on the Original Series to denigrate, ridicule, and “disprove” religion whenever possible. Roddenberry’s views on religion were carried on by his successors, who usually portrayed religious followers as backwards, ignorant, blindly obsequious, and often violent. Entities that are worshipped as God by others are almost always revealed to be imposters, and the atheistic Federation characters will frequently fight and destroy whatever entity the aliens worship as God, in spite of the prohibitions seemingly imposed by the Prime Directive. With the notable exception of the U.S.S. Voyager’s Indigenous American first officer, Commander Chakotay, no human Star Trek character has ever been openly religious, and those non-human characters that do practice a religion typically conform to religious stereotypes or are made the objects of ridicule. 

The later Star Trek series, made after Gene Roddenberry’s death, take a somewhat more conciliatory attitude towards religion, but the Federation’s own intolerance towards religion remains constant throughout the entire franchise. The deeply spiritual Bajorans, for example, play a very important role on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1992-99). Their gods, the Prophets, play a prominent role in the series, though most non-Bajoran characters tend to think of them simply as noncorporeal “wormhole aliens” rather than as deities. Captain Benjamin Sisko acts as a religious icon to the Bajoran people, who consider him to be the Prophets’ Emissary. Sisko is very uncomfortable in this role, and his superiors in Starfleet Command also disapprove of him performing any functions as the Emissary (except when it serves their political interests). 

The conflict over religion between Bajor and the Federation comes to a head in the episode “In the Hands of the Prophets,” in which Keiko O’Brien—wife of Miles O’Brien, Deep Space Nine’s chief of operations—establishes a school on the station and tries to teach the secular view of the Prophets to the Bajoran children there. Vedek Winn, a Bajoran religious leader, comes to the station and denounces Keiko, accusing her of teaching heresy and trying to pull the Bajoran children away from their faith. Soon the children’s parents begin refusing to send their children to the school, and the O’Briens find themselves ostracized from the crowd. The situation ultimately turns violent when the school is blown up by a terrorist; in typical Star Trek fashion, the religious characters are villainized, and the episode’s sympathies ultimately lay with the Federation. The school remains open, continuing to teach the secular position on the Prophets without respecting or even acknowledging the Bajorans’ spiritual beliefs.

Sisko’s ultimate mission on Deep Space Nine is to assist in preparing Bajor for membership in the Federation. The Bajoran religion is the biggest obstacle to that happening, since many religious Bajorans object to the Federation’s atheist stance. Therefore, in order to acquire control of the Bajoran sector, the Federation must first destroy the Bajoran faith. Very few Bajorans are members of Starfleet, and those who are allowed to join face constant discrimination and ridicule for their beliefs. In at least one episode (“Ensign Ro,” TNG), a Bajoran serving in Starfleet was forced by her superior officer to remove a piece of jewelry signifying her religious beliefs, indicating at least a desire by Starfleet to impose non-religious conformity upon its members, if not a larger anti-religious agenda by the Federation government. 

In addition to the Federation’s discriminatory policies towards Bajorans, the fact that Starfleet officers, so frequently exalted as ideal human beings and model Federation citizens, are typically intolerant of religion of any kind—combined with the fact that the Federation is a democratic society whose policies are determined by the values of its citizens—suggests that the Federation itself is also intolerant of religion as a matter of policy. The fact that no Star Trek episode or film has ever shown religion being practiced on Earth or by humans in Starfleet also suggests widespread, systematic repression of religious expression, since it is unlikely that institutions that have existed for thousands of years would simply cease to exist within a few hundred. Furthermore, as previously explained, Federation’s political system is modeled after communism, and communist societies have a tendency to be extremely hostile towards religion of any kind. The producers of Star Trek would probably portray the Federation’s hostility towards religion more openly if they could, but the mainstream American public would most likely deem such intolerance unacceptable.

Hostility towards religion is another trait frequently embodied by dystopias in science fiction, though it appears more frequently in print than in film (largely due to Hollywood’s own anti-religious prejudices). If the Federation is indeed intolerant of those who believe in a power higher than itself, as is likely given the evidence thus far presented, then its status as a dystopia is only further cemented. 

Foreign Policy

Besides the implied intolerance of the Federation people, there are many cases throughout the various Star Trek series and films in which the Federation government itself disregards the needs or the rights of a small number of people in order to serve what it considers to be the greater good. Although the Prime Directive is often described—even by its very name—as being the single most important principle by which Federation policy must abide, in practice the Federation frequently disregards the Prime Directive whenever it feels that “the needs of the many” require it to do so.

The first instance in which the Federation violates the Prime Directive as a matter of policy occurs in the Original Series episode “Errand of Mercy,” in which the Federation attempts to strong-arm the inhabitants of the planet Organia into an alliance against the Klingon Empire. At first Captain Kirk offers the Organians advanced Federation technology in exchange for their allegiance, which in itself is a violation of the Prime Directive. The Organians reject Kirk’s offer and ultimately decide to ally themselves with the Klingons. In response, Kirk begins using terrorism to try to force the Klingons out, prompting the Organians to finally reveal themselves as super-evolved beings capable of destroying the Enterprise at will. The Organians then force both the Federation and the Klingons to sign a treaty, resulting in the creation of a Neutral Zone separating the two empires.

Within the context of a cold war, the Federation’s actions may seem justified to some. Nevertheless, the Federation’s disrespect for the sovereign rights of the Organians, who initially seemed primitive and helpless, demonstrates its hypocrisy when it comes to respecting individual rights. Such actions, however, are not confined solely to people whom the Federation considers to be aliens. As demonstrated in the later series, the Federation is also willing to do the same and more to its own citizens, if it feels that doing so will serve the greater good.

In the Next Generation episode “Journey’s End,” a corrupt Starfleet admiral named Alynna Nechayev comes to the Enterprise and orders Picard to forcibly relocate the inhabitants of Dorvan V, a Federation colony. The Federation has signed a treaty with the Cardassian Empire, one of its neighbors, under the terms of which Dorvan V as well as various other Federation colonies within the Demilitarized Zone, an area separating Federation and Cardassian space, are to be evacuated and handed over to the Cardassian government. The Federation has done this without consulting the people actually living on those colonies, expecting them to be willing to give up their homes without any compensation for their loss whatsoever. 

The inhabitants of Dorvan V, descendants of Indigenous Americans who themselves were once the victims of a forced relocation, refuse to leave their homes and start a rebellion when Cardassian forces begin arriving on the planet. In order to prevent the outbreak of a wider war, the Federation signs a new agreement with the Cardassians allowing the colonists living in the Demilitarized Zone to remain there—but forcing them to live under Cardassian rule and give up all rights and protection that they have as Federation citizens. 

Before long, the Cardassians begin persecuting the Federation colonists living within their territory. In response, the colonists band together to form a military force known as the Maquis, whom the Federation and the Cardassians both consider to be terrorists. The conflict between the Maquis, the Cardassians, and the Federation, depicted in several episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, ultimately ends with the Maquis being slaughtered by the Jem’Hadar—footsoldiers of the Cardassians’ new allies, the Dominion—while the Federation, after years of itself hunting down the Maquis, turns a blind eye, invoking the Prime Directive to justify its inaction.

Michael Eddington, one of the leaders of the Maquis, explains the Federation’s motivations for persecuting and ultimately abandoning the Maquis in “For the Cause,” an episode of Deep Space Nine, during a conversation with Captain Benjamin Sisko:

“Open your eyes, Captain; why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis? We’ve never harmed you. And yet we’re constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands, and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we’ve left the Federation, and that’s the one thing you can’t accept. No one leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation…. You know in some ways, you’re even worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You’re more insidious. You assimilate people…and they don’t even know it.”

Eddington’s comparison of the Federation to the Borg, a race of cybernetic beings who forcibly assimilate others into their collective, is ironic considering that the Borg are one of the Federation’s worst enemies. In the Next Generation episode “The Best of Both Worlds,” Captain Picard tells the Borg that it would be impossible for them to ever assimilate the human race, because “our culture is based on individuality and self-determination.” While Picard’s patriotism is admirable, and though he himself demonstrates great respect for individual rights on various occasions, the truth is that the Federation is more like the Borg than Picard would care to admit. The Federation’s policies, both foreign and domestic, frequently disregard the rights of individuals in favor of serving the collective. In practice, the goal of the Federation people, which Picard claims is “to better themselves and the rest of humanity,” is not very different from the goal of the Borg, which is to attain perfection. The only substantial difference between the Federation and the Borg is in the methods they employ, with the Borg opting for a more direct and open method of acquisition and control in contrast to the Federation’s more subtle cultural and economic imperialism.

In no situation does the Federation resemble the Borg more than it does in the feature film Star Trek: Insurrection (1998). The Federation has discovered a planet whose rings give off a strange form of radiation that reverses the aging process and promises eternal youth. The planet, however, is inhabited by a small race of humanoid aliens known as the Bak’u. In order to be able to exploit the planet’s valuable resource, the Federation forms an alliance with another alien race, the Son’a, and conspires with them to secretly kidnap the Bak’u using holographic technology and relocate them to another world. The crew of the Enterprise discover the Federation plot and violate their orders to prevent the relocation from happening (Picard’s actions in Insurrection are in some ways a penance for his actions in “Journey’s End,” when he reluctantly chose obey Nechayev’s orders). In the end, the Starfleet admiral responsible for implementing the plan, Dougherty, is killed, and with their plan now exposed to the entire galaxy, the Federation Council is forced to reconsider its actions. 

Admiral Dougherty, like so many corrupt Federation officials before him, justifies the Federation’s actions to Picard using the principles behind Spock’s axiom. He claims that billions of people will benefit from the Federation using the regenerative properties of the Ba’ku planet’s rings’ radiation to reverse aging and cure diseases, and he dismisses the needs and the rights of the Ba’ku themselves because, in his words, “we’re only moving six hundred people.” Picard, however, does not accept Dougherty’s justification:

“We are betraying the principles upon which the Federation was founded. It’s an attack upon its very soul. And it will destroy the Ba’ku—just as cultures have been destroyed in every other forced relocation throughout history…. How many people does it take, Admiral, before it becomes wrong? A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million? How many people does it take, Admiral?” 

Picard is certainly right to stand up to Dougherty and the Federation in this instance, but his claim that the Federation’s actions are a violation of the principles upon which it was founded is not accurate. Picard is referring of course to the Prime Directive, but the Prime Directive is not a founding principle of the Federation, since according to the Original Series episode “A Piece of the Action” the Prime Directive was not instituted until several decades after the Federation came into existence. Spock’s axiom, on the other hand, is a principle around which the Federation has operated since its inception, even before Spock actually quoted those words. Dougherty’s actions are perfectly consistent with the idea that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; in this case, the Ba’ku are simply on the losing side of that equation. Picard is only able to succeed in stopping Dougherty by violating the Federation’s own core principles, and instead placing the needs of a few hundred over the needs of several billion. 

The fact that the core philosophy of Star Trek is so utilitarian has likely contributed greatly to the decline of the series’ popularity in recent years, at least within the United States, where rugged individualism is a core component of the value system upon which the society is based. Whether one believes that Star Trek's vision of the future is a positive or a negative one is largely dependant on whether or not that person agrees with the idea that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” For someone who does agree with that philosophy, Star Trek is indeed the perfect vision of the future. However, if someone disagrees with that philosophy and instead thinks that individual and minority rights must also be respected in a free society, Star Trek's vision of the future becomes positively dystopian.