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.