Let’s talk about the Jews. When Gene Roddenberry created “Star Trek,” he laid out a future in which humanity would move beyond religion. Spock is Jew-ish, many would say. And we’ve got Theodore Bikel doing Worf’s adopted father in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” coded as a Jew, but not explicitly. But where are the full-on Jews in “Star Trek”? Is there room for a character that explicitly identifies with a religious-ethnic group?
It’s not just Jews who are absent; it’s any kind of explicitly religious characters. I can’t think of any explicitly Christian or Hindu or Muslim characters in “Star Trek.” We get Vulcan religion, Klingon religion and other [alien] religions, especially the Bajorans [on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”], sometimes discussions of godlike beings, but I don’t think the absence of Jews is significant in itself.
Roddenberry had a lot of rules for the future, many of which have been bent or broken over the years. Is there room for exploring the role of religion and spirituality in the human experience, or is that an immutable rule of “Star Trek”?
I don’t think any rules are immutable, but I’m not in the decision-making place on that. The best answer I can give is, I don’t really know. As you say, there does seem to be greater willingness over time. There began to be signs of deviation from the initial marching orders from “The Original Series” in all the subsequent series, but as a writer and someone who takes an interest in these topics, it would be interesting.
