Roddenberry's Politics and the Trekverse's Fabric

[Irishman]

It's well-known that Gene was of a leftist leaning back in his time. KirkTrekModeller back in another thread suggested that "The Way to Eden" was an indictment of hippies, thus Gene wasn't as left-leaning as one might suppose.

The only problem with that argument is that the indictment wasn't written by Gene - far from it. It was due to Arthur Heinemann and Dorothy Fontana collaborating on the story. THEY indicted hippies, not Gene.

Does anyone else have any instances of Gene's politics showing through and influencing the way Trek looked in TOS, TAS, TMP and TNG?

 

[FalTorPan]

The examples most often cited seem to be TNG's "Who Watches the Watchers?", with its view of religion, and TNG's "Where Silence Has Lease," with its view of death and the "afterlife."

Of course, these are social issues... D'oh.

 

[Irishman]

Political and social issues often overlap. I'd consider that valid.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

My take has always been that GR liked to consider himself a liberal, but was at heart a fairly conservative fellow in many of his attitudes. Of course definitions of easy political labels drift, become muddled and change. Liberal/conservative in the 1930s was not quite the same as the 1960s is not quite the same as the 1980s is not quite the same as 2007. I'm a fairly conservative middle-of-the-road fellow for 2007, but transport me back in time to my grandfather's era of the 1940/50s (when my grandfather was the same age I am now) and he'd think I was a "pinko Commie loon."

And as has been pointed out, many of the episodes that contain overt political statements were not written by GR. His friend Don Ingalls was irate when Roddenberry softened some of the anti-Vietnam War parallels in "A Private Little War," and substituted the pseudonym Jud Crucis, which Ingalls said (in an old "Starlog" interview) was meant to suggest "Jesus Crucified," i. e. he felt GR had crucified his script.

Sir Rhosis

 

[Outpost4]

I don't see this at all. GR probably was a Democrat. Most of Hollywood, especially back then, were/are Democrats. But you're trying to make 1966 politics conform to 2007.

In 1966 there was no popular counterculture. The Beatles were recording Revolver but San Francisco was only for beatniks and social outcasts (and for folks who love really good Italian restaurants ). The Jefferson Airplane hadn't released Surrealistic Pillow. There was no mainstream conservatism. Barry Goldwater got trounced in 1964. A progressive, liberal attitude was standard. A Republican, the party of Lincoln, could have written Let This Be Your Last Battlefield. Conversely, Senator Scoop Jackson, a conservative Democrat, could have penned The Omega Glory. Conservatives did exist even if they were on the run, but after '64, they were mostly silent. Everyone else, from Republican Senator Everett Dirkson to Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey, were what today would be called left of center. We're only debating how far left of center.

And those damn leftists? The best of them hated Communism with a passion. They were hawks. This is my basic point. Politics was different back then. Less divisive. More consensus. More middle class and mainstream. Hell, Republican Richard Nixon opened up China.

I realize I'm not addressing your point, Irishman, that GR did not write these episodes. Please except this diversion. I guess I just don't accept the premise that Star Trek was a liberal show. If it was, it was only because it was trying to be popular.

 

[Herald]

I remember reading an article in TV Guide prior to TNG's premier. In it, Gene declared, that the series was going to deal with all sorts of contraversial subject matter. Things that are "right" with communism for example. The Ferengi were created to show the evils of capitalism.

 

[Outpost4]

And yet I see Return of the Archons as both Orwellian and anti-Communist, especially in the brainwashing fears that were going around in the '60s. We were scared that the Communist Chinese would brainwash folks into betraying the United States. The Manchurian Candidate (the original with Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury) was about that fear.

I think GR was more anti-authoritarian more than anything.

 

[Herald]

Outpost4 said:
And yet I see Return of the Archons as both Orwellian and anti-Communist, especially in the brainwashing fears that were going around in the '60s. We were scared that the Communist Chinese would brainwash folks into betraying the United States. The Manchurian Candidate (the original with Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury) was about that fear.

I think GR was more anti-authoritarian more than anything.

You can see the episodes in any light you wish. However, the article quotes pure, unvarnished, Roddenberry. Freed from the constraints of 60's politics, his socialist underpinnings showed thru.

 

[Outpost4]

I'd like to see the source, not your memory of the source.

 

[Herald]

Unfortunately, that issue has long since entered the trash cycle. That was 20 years ago. T.V. Guide was not some obscure publication. I'm sure that others on this board, of sufficient age, must have read that article as well.

 

[Kegek]

Hi, Irishman. Want to hear from an Irishman? Read on then...

I think it's obvious that TNG shows a more obviously communistic society. It's also true Roddenberry had far less sensor restrictions. An obvious example of bending to the censors during TOS, for instance, is in this line from "Who Mourns for Adonais?": "Mankind has no need for gods." Thanks to the censors, Kirk adds: "We find the one quite sufficent." Roddenberry would pretty much get to outline his views and idea of society most fully within a Trek show during the first season of TNG... but as this is the TOS forum, the rest of the conversation will focus on that.

"Return of the Archons" is definately anti-authoritarian, but then, one must remember a quirk of the era that went back to the 1930s: There were plenty of anti-authoritarians in the West were Communists, or had Communist sympathies. Trotskyists would be an obvious example, but even those who adhered to the party line from Moscow wouldn't have believe, or chosen not to believe, that Soviet Russia was as repressive as their old Nazi enemies. Thus a hatred of Nazis, and medieval represssion in general, was part and parcel for this world view. With "Return of the Archons" having a society ruled in absolute fear of a God who enforces morality it's more clearly a critique of conservative authoritarianism than socialist authoritarianism. This is a recurrent theme in his work, sometimes with stronger religious connotations - as in "The Apple" and "This Side of Paradise", where they force the exit from Eden, taking a role it is explicitly mentioned in the first of the two as belonging to Satan. Clearly, the message is that Gene did not only dislike theocracy, but would turn down their mythical paradises even if offered it.

As for Gene Roddenberry's political opinions? I'm not sure. Progressive, certainly - he had his black women and Asian men working alongside, in harmony, with Caucasians. In a crew that already included an old enemy of the USA - the Japanese - and a marginalized minority - the black - he made a point, at the start of season two, to introduce their current enemy as well; in the Russian Chekov. Ironically, Chekov served as the most obvious critique of the Soviet Russians on the show, with his inadequate and overly pro-Russian memory of history being a satire of the USSR's self-serving propaganda inculcated worldview.

But other analogies to the Cold War would mainly include the Klingons, especially "Errand of Mercy", "A Private Little War" and "The Day of the Dove". With the exception of "A Private Little War", which seems to acknowledge the Vietnam War as an inevitable, unpleasant, but necessary action, these episodes insist that the world would be a much better place if these two great powers co-operated and put their diferences aside. This need to do so is percipitated by a third, non-corporeal alien, who either forces them to come to peace as that is it's objective, or forces them to work together because it literally feeds on their hate. These episodes did reflect a liberal trend that was, if not Communist, not anti-Communist either - a desire to end the threat to the world by reaching out and negotiating. It's true Gene had left the show by the time of "The Day of the Dove", but it shares its sentiments with "Errand of Mercy", and thus I thought worth noting.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Kegek said:
An obvious example of bending to the sensors during TOS, for instance, is in this line from "Who Mourns for Adonais?": "Mankind has no need for gods." Thanks to the sensors, Kirk adds: "We find the one quite sufficent."

"Censors". In any event, it could be argued - if one considers the subject matter of the episode - that Kirk was actually referring to the spherical, eternal, cosmological god proposed by Xenophanes of Colophon as a direct challenge to the questionable (i.e., all too human) behavior of the Greek Pantheon. One may say that Apollo's antics as depicted in WMfA would most definitely be a sterling example of what Xenophanes objected to.

TGT

 

[Kegek]

True. But the episode played fast and loose with the mythical Apollo anyway - he seemed very concerned that Caroline love him. His Greek counterpart was content if he could get close enough to rape his quarry, provided they didn't do anything inconvenient like sprout roots and become trees...

The God Thing said:
"Censors".

That glitch has been corrected. Never let a dyslexic post before he's had his morning caffeine...