Where No Man Has Gone Before
I’m not even entirely sure what to say about this episode. It was a lot of talking and it was a lot of meh. Maybe if we had watched it a different week it wouldn’t have been so flat: it’s possible I just lacked the emotional energy to muster up a fuck about what was going on in the episode.
The past few weeks have been heavy. It’s impossible to fully grasp at one time the ways the world is hurting right now; the pain is too much, too crushing. Star Trek has often been a mental break from real life, a small pocket of idealism that things can get better and the past few weeks have been no exception. Gene Roddenberry once said, “Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. […] If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.” He modeled this entire universe off of the idea that we as humans could do better. We could be better. We could evolve beyond what we are to become more and united.
Maybe that’s the part to remember about this episode. At one point the doctor brings up that Gary could be a new evolution of humanity, a giant leap that could take millions of years to occur. And that brings up a couple of different points to think about.
Gene Roddenberry believed that humanity in his reality was already way better than it was in real time, but that it was going to also keep evolving and growing and changing. That although they were mature enough for space travel, there was still so much to learn and integrate.
Change can seem small and insignificant, each tiny step forward so grueling. But it’s only by moving forward, inching ahead, that you can look back at where you’ve come from. To take stock of the mistakes that have been made, learn from them, and continue forward. We can look at the mistakes that were made in the 60s and choose to not follow the same paths, just as Star Trek reboots chose to not make the same cultural mistakes.
So let’s all be a little more like Gene Roddenberry. “I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We’re still just a child creature. We’re still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We’re growing up, we’re moving into adolescence, now. When we grow up - man, we’re going to be something.”
Let’s go where no man has gone before. Let’s be something. Let’s be better.
- Carrie
PS. At the time of this posting, things have already changed wildly in terms of the best places to donate for the BLM movement and protests. So I figured rather than try to point out something that might no longer need donations or be defunct, I’d just point you towards the source. They know far better than I who and what resources they need. Black Lives Matter.
