" 'Suffer the death of thy neighbor,' is it, Spock? You wouldn't

wish that on us, would you?"

"It might have rendered your history a bit less bloody."

----McCoy to Spock

"The Immunity Syndrome"

Analysis of pop culture is useful as a means of understanding the times in which it occurs. Perhaps no segment of pop culture proves this more than Star Trek. Initially pitched to television executives as "Wagon Train to the Stars," the endlessly optimistic series confronted issues then current with television viewers: Vietnam, racism, and the loss of individualism through mechanization. It confronted these issues both through its casting and through its stories, which recast current issues in a non-threatening manner. By transplanting Vietnam, for example, onto an alien planet whose natural development is threatened not by the Communists but by the Klingons, Star Trek addressed the fears of a perpetual war in which there would be no winners, only losers. Through the lens of its half-alien First Officer, it discussed the paralyzing, and ultimately futile, consequences of racism. Through the actions of its captain, the show addressed the threat to human individualism that over-use of mechanization could present. And through the presence of the communications officer, an African-American woman at a time when black women on TV were either servants or portrayed through other racist stereotypes, Star Trek presented a view of the future in which civil rights for all would be assured.

From its very inception, Star Trek was different. The initial pilot, "The Cage," produced in 1964, initially featured an African female second-in-command. Described in the writer's guide as being "the captain's superior in knowledge in detailed knowledge of the departments, personnel, and equipment aboard the vessel," her groundbreaking role did not survive the first pilot. NBC executives, and test audiences, found the idea of a female second in command "completely unbelievable." There were other problems as well; the script was criticized as being "too cerebral" for television audiences.

NBC's main problem with "The Cage" dealt with an issue that Star Trek would confront frequently through its casting and its stories: racism. Specifically, the character of the half-alien, half-human science officer raised the specter of "race-mixing." Nichelle Nichols, who came to Star Trek as Lieutenant Uhura during the second pilot, recounts:

The character of Spock provided a gateway through which racism could be discussed and debated without much interference from network censors. He was, after all, an alien, not identifiably of any human race. At a distance safely removed from the average television viewer, Spock could comment on human prejudices and, occasionally, be the victim of racism himself. At a time when the first brutal images of Selma and Birmingham were just reaching television screens, viewers of Star Trek were confronting the issue of racism head-on, albeit in a suitably disguised form.

The utter stupidity of racism, as well as its capacity for causing waste and destruction, became one of the central themes of the series. During the 1966-67 season, one of the first episodes to deal with the issue of racism aired. "Balance of Terror" had all the hallmarks of a standard battle episode: a hidden enemy, destruction of innocent lives, a moral dilemma over whether to attack or withdraw. The Enterprise is sent to stop the incursions of a Romulan ship into Federation space. When it is discovered that the Romulans look much like Spock, open hostility flares on the bridge.

Styles: Give it to Spock.

Kirk: I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. What did you say?

Styles: Nothing, Sir.

Kirk: Repeat it.

Styles: I was suggesting that Mr Spock could probably translate it [the

Roddenberry's personal stance against racism also translated into the casting choices of Nichelle Nichols and George Takei as Lieutenant Uhura and Lieutenant Sulu, respectively. This was the result of a belief that "in the twenty-third century, intolerance will be improbable. If man is able to survive that long, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures." Unfortunately, this delight in difference was not one NBC executives shared. Although some of the early episodes feature Sulu and Uhura in larger roles, studio executives consistently opposed the further expansion of their roles.

It got to the point where I felt like somebody must be going through

a line of dialogue…I mean I just decided that I don't even need to read the

script. I know how to say "Hailing frequencies open."

Despite these kinds of pressures, the show continued to reflect the social issues of the time. Racism continued to be a major theme, particularly as shown in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." The episode concerns a conflict between two men, one of whom is white on the left and black on the right, and the other man, whose colors are reversed. Lokai is an escaped criminal and Bele is the officer sent out from his planet to apprehend him. When aboard the Enterprise, it is revealed that their battle is only the latest in a long-running war between the two groups, a war which was based solely on their racial differences. The dialogue between Lokai and Bele reveals the extent to which Star Trek was tied to the racial issues of the 1960s.

Bele: You were slaves but we freed you.

Lokai: Were we freed to be men? To be husbands, to be fathers? No,

we were freed only to be hunted.

The ultimate outcome of their conflict is tragic. When Lokai and Bele are returned to their planet, they find that the war between their peoples has utterly destroyed the planet. Racism has exacted its ultimate cost; it has destroyed a civilization. In spite of Kirk's pleas for them to halt their own war, the two men leave the ship. There is no place left for either man to go.

In "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," racism is equated with genocide. During the episode, images of the two men are superimposed over images of burning buildings, of death and destruction, images which, if they were not the actual footage of the race riots of the time, were certainly reminiscent of them. Star Trek made the point espoused by its creator:

The approach expresses the "message" basic to the series. We

must learn to live together or most certainly we will all soon die

together. Although Star Trek had to entertain or go off the air,

we believed our format was unique enough to allow us to

In the same way that Star Trek was used to discuss the dangers of racism, it was also used to discuss war in general and Vietnam specifically. The episode "Errand of Mercy" aired in 1967, just as the total numbers of American troops in Vietnam reached 385,000. The episode parallels the Cold War, with the Federation and the Klingon Empire as stand-ins for the United States and the Soviet Union, and the propensity for larger nations to use smaller nations as their battleground. Sent to the strategically important planet of Organia in the middle of a war with the Klingon Empire, a war which Kirk swears he does not want, the Enterprise is assigned to prevent the planet from falling into Klingon hands.

Initially, Kirk characterizes Organia as "another Armenia, another Belgium. The weak innocents always in the path of someone else's invasion." When he and Spock are stranded on the planet, Kirk is perplexed, then angered by the Organians' absolute refusal to defend themselves.

Gentlemen, I have no great love for you, your planet, or your culture.

Nevertheless, Mr. Spock and I are going to go out there in an attempt to

show you that there are some things worth dying for.

Even this display does not rouse the Organians to defend themselves. Finally, when the Klingon and Federation forces have surrounded the planet, the leader of the Organians, Ayelborne, takes a stand.

Ayelborne: I am going to put a stop to this insane war.

Kirk: You can't just stop the fleet! What gives you the right? We have

legitimate grievances against the Klingons. We have the right---

Ayelborne: To wage war? To destroy life on a planetary scale? Is this

what you're defending?

Kirk: No one wants war…but people have the right to handle their own

affairs.

Contrary to Kirk's belief, the Organians do indeed have the power to stop the war going on above their planet. Curiously, although Kirk is arguing for the "right" of the Federation to handle its own affairs, there is no sense that the Organians have an equal right to do the same. The Organians want only to be left in peace, but their planet is in the path of two competing powers eager to recast the Organians in their own mold. The parallels to Vietnam, in the increasing American involvement against forces armed with Soviet and Chinese weapons, in the American insistence in viewing Vietnam as a winnable war in the face of all available evidence to the contrary, is only too close.

The underlying ethos of Star Trek mandated that any war, no matter what it was fought for, was ultimately wrong because there was no other, more peaceful, way found. Nowhere is this more evident than in "Balance of Terror." Like Kirk in "Errand of Mercy," the Romulan Commander is ordered to fight in a war he does not want. Unlike Kirk, his mission is not to join an already existing battle. The Romulan Commander is ordered to start a war by crossing into Federation space.

Romulan Commander: No need to tell you what happens when we reach

The Romulan Commander does not succeed in his mission; there is no war between the Federation and the Romulans. At the end of the episode, with his ship nearly destroyed, the Romulan Commander says to Kirk, "We are much alike, you and I. In another reality, I could have called you friend." The tragedy of war, that it divides people who might have had far more in common than their conflict, is made manifest through this episode.

As a response to the US involvement in the Vietnam War, Star Trek writers began to develop a doctrine known as the Prime Directive, or the Non-Interference Directive. Its genesis was explained by D.C. Fontana, who was the story editor from 1966-1968, and who wrote five of the show's episodes:

The idea became that if you messed around in someone else's

The Prime Directive prohibited interference in the natural development of a planet. In the case of unnatural development, interference was allowed, but only so far as was necessary to restore the planet to its natural development. However, much like the American soldiers who could not reconcile images of a receptive Vietnamese people with the reality of Vietnamese who did not want an American presence, the definitions of "natural" were frequently contradictory and contested. In the episode "The Apple," the applicability of the Prime Directive is called into question in the case of a primitive society which is completely controlled by a computer. As was frequently the case, Spock argues for the "alien" perspective, the right of a culture to decide for itself how it should live.

Spock: Doctor, you insist on applying human standards to non-

human cultures. I remind you that humans are only a tiny

fraction of the universe.

McCoy: There are certain absolutes. One of them is the right

of humanoids to a free and unchained environment in conditions

It is McCoy's view which wins out in "The Apple." The computer is destroyed, and the people are told that the Federation will send advisors to help them out so that they can develop naturally. The similarities between the willingness of the United States to become involved in what was essentially an internal Vietnamese conflict and the Federation's willingness to aid other societies to develop "naturally" is uncanny. In both cases, it was the larger power who determined what was "natural." It was not natural that Vietnam might become Communist, just as it was not natural that a society could thrive under computer control. As was pointed out in Empires, Aliens and Conquest, too often, the Prime Directive meant the Federation could interfere in societies which were not democratic.

Aired during the battle at Khe Sahn, "A Private Little War" recast Vietnam as a conflict on a primitive planet valued for its strategic location. Once again, it is the Klingons and the Federation who are at odds. The Klingons have upset the balance of power between the two warring groups, arming one group with flintlocks, weaponry which is generations ahead of the spears of the other group. "A Private Little War" is the Prime Directive in reverse; Kirk cannot fail to intervene, since the normal course of development, the status quo between the villagers and the hill people, has been upset.

Kirk: If this planet is to develop as it should, we must equalize both

sides again.

McCoy: Jim, this means you're condemning this whole planet to a war

that may never end. It'll go on for century after century, massacre after

massacre…

Kirk: Bones, do you remember the 20^th century brushwars on the Asian

continent.? Two giant powers involved, much like ourselves and the

Klingons. Neither side felt they could pull out…the only solution is

what happened back then…a balance of power.

This episode, and Star Trek as a whole, mirrored the contradictions and social upheaval over the nature of military power in the larger society. Star Trek argues against war as wasteful, yet argues for an increase in weaponry to achieve a balance of power and military involvement to insure that societies develop according to standards imposed on them by the government.

It is interesting to note that when the tables are turned, when the Federation is being dictated to by a stronger power, the Federation does not submit as it asks less powerful planets to do. Kirk rails against the Organians in "Errand of Mercy" for stopping the war with the Klingons: "people have the right to handle their own affairs." When the Enterprise is invaded by a hate-producing entity in "The Day of the Dove," Spock argues the inefficacy of ordering the soldiers on the ship to stop fighting: "Those who hate and fight must stop themselves, or it is not stopped." And when the Enterprise is confronted with a superior group in the form of genetically enhanced "superhumans" in "Space Seed," the response is the same. In the face of overwhelming strength, the Enterprise will not submit as it, as a representative of the Federation, asks other planets to do. Clearly, no outside organization can be allowed to do what the Federation does on a regular basis: imposing through its will its view of normal society, albeit through largely peaceful means.

Concurrent with Star Trek's espoused need to "say something" is also the theme of the threat to individualism posed by mechanization, a theme which is common in science-fiction and was particularly relevant in an era when technology such as television and the development of the earliest computers was beginning to change the way Americans lived their lives. The apposition of mechanization and individualism in Star Trek takes various forms: the computer-controlled cultures of "The Apple" and "The Return of the Archons," the "space hippies" of "The Way to Eden," and the super-computers of "The Ultimate Computer" and "The Changeling." The theme of these episodes is clear. As Kirk says in "The Ultimate Computer," there are some things men must do to remain men.When a computer or any other form of mechanization threatens the individuality of men, then the mechanization must be destroyed or altered for the preservation of the human spirit.

In a way that seems to foretell the growth of computers within our own society, "The Ultimate Computer" deals with the issues of the consequences of mechanization. Starfleet (the military/exploratory branch of the Federation) is testing a computer system which, if successful, will ultimately cost Kirk his job. There will be no need for starship captains to go on dangerous exploratory missions when a computer can do the exploration much more efficiently than a human crew could. Not surprisingly, Kirk reacts to M-5, the computer, with antipathy:

Kirk: That thing is wrong, and I don't know why…Only a fool would

stand in the way of progress, if this is progress…Am I afraid of losing my

job to that thing?

McCoy: We've all seen the results of mechanization. After all, Daystrom

M-5 is initially effective in its trial runs. It makes course changes and targets weapons faster than any human crew. When asked for his assessment of the computer's performance, Spock puts human individualism, in this case the spirit of loyalty, above that of a computer's performance.

Practical, perhaps. But not desirable. Captain, computers make excellent

and efficient servants, but I have no desire to serve under them. A starship

also runs on loyalty to one man, to an idea, with nothing to replace him or

it.

Predictably, M-5 is not the best computer for the job. When it begins firing with real weapons at unarmed ships during war games, Kirk takes back the Enterprise, thus asserting the right of human individualism to control mechanization, not the other way around.

The theme is repeated again in "The Changeling," and once again, it is a computer, in this case a probe, which threatens the safety of the Enterprise. The probe's original programming to seek out new life has been replaced with a program to sterilize life, and the probe has concluded that the Enterprise is "infested" with biological organisms. The emphasis is clear: when mechanization is allowed to run rampant, the consequences for humans can be disastrous. The destruction of the computers of "The Apple" and "The Return of the Archons" is related to the same theme. Human individuality loses when mechanization gains the dominant hand. Computers may make excellent servants, but they can also be extremely dangerous when they are allowed to control human lives and human cultures.

There is no dominant machine in "The Way to Eden," but the rebellion against mechanization is clear nonetheless. The "space hippies" who come on board the ship are rebelling against a universe they feel is too mechanized, too controlled by machines. The hippies want to colonize a planet in order to form a world without computer controls. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is Spock who argues for their viewpoint. "They view themselves as aliens in a strange world. It is a viewpoint with which I am somewhat familiar." But the hippies go too far; they attempt to hijack the Enterprise to find their planet, and when they do eventually find their Eden, the plants and the very ground are poisonous. The technology of the Enterprise is what saves the hippies, not their dreams of a non-technical society. The implication, then, is that it is no longer possible to exist without technology, but the technology must be under human control at all times.

Of all the themes in Star Trek, racism has received perhaps the most critical attention. The contradictions of racism, as expressed during the 1960s, are readily apparent. Though Roddenberry was able to get an African-American woman and an Asian-American man on the show, their roles were strictly conscribed by studio executives who controlled the show's future, and thus could influence content. Yet the willingness of the series to confront racism and the subsequent realignment of relationships between blacks and whites, proved to be one of the series' most striking points. In "Charlie X," the black Uhura interacts with the half-human Spock in the Rec Room; there is no segregation there. Yet integration remained incomplete in the series as well as in real life; the visual depictions of the Klingons in the series bear a close resemblance to the stereotyped Chinese of the Fu Manchu movies. The Romulans, who made an appearance in "Balance of Terror" and "The Enterprise Incident," are made up in such a way as to emphasize their stereotypically "Asian" features. Yet even in these instances, Star Trek was able to transcend the stereotype. The Romulans do not act in the Hollywood stereotype of cunning Asians or subservient houseboys. The Romulan Commander of "Balance of Terror" questions the necessity of war, the other Romulan Commander from "The Enterprise Incident" is one of the few well-defined female characters in the series. And though brutality is the Klingons' reason for existence, they are also shown to be intelligent and courageous, as in the case of Mara, the Klingon woman from "The Day of the Dove," who convinces her husband to stop fighting.

The contradictions of Star Trek's stance on war, that it argued the necessity of peace even as it encouraged a balance of power, also bear a strong resemblance to the dilemmas facing the United States as involvement in Vietnam deepened. The question of how to reconcile national goals with idealism and practicality was a question which Star Trek considered frequently in such episodes as "Balance of Terror," "A Private Little War," and "Errand of Mercy." If the Federation bore a strong likeness to NATO or the United Nations, this was no accident. Star Trek was conceived both as a mirror of the "best" of ideals and as a lens through which the worst permutations of those ideals could be viewed, at a safe and comfortable distance from the viewer.

The apposition of individualism and mechanization was one of the series' more complex themes. Star Trek captured the tension between the preservation of the human spirit and individuality and the demands of an increasingly mechanized culture. In episodes like "The Apple," "Return of the Archons," "The Ultimate Computer," "The Changeling," and "The Way to Eden," the scripts addressed the ways in which humans could remain humans in the face of a computerized world. Machines cannot counterfeit a human mind; they cannot be permitted to rule a human culture. Only when humans rule computers, and not the other way around, can human individualism be maintained.

Star Trek, as a symbol of pop culture, was as much a part of the sixties as John Lennon, the flower children, and the Civil Rights movement. Its willingness to deal with racial issues, war, and the boundaries of individualism provides a lens through which the viewer can understand the extent to which these issues were dominating discussions during the sixties. Its many "firsts" (the first interracial, integrated crew, the first non-stereotypical African-American woman) are related directly to the insistence of one man that the show had to "mean something." In its optimism, its insistence that the future is not darkened by Y2K or some other cataclysmic event, Star Trek proves the sixties adage that one man can make a difference.