"Ethics, morality, conscience, funny how they all go out the airlock when we need something."
-From the Star Trek Voyager episode "Nothing Human"
I've been thinking a lot recently about whether the hours in my life that I've spent watching Star Trek were/are at all beneficial. I don't get to see it a lot now that we don't have cable, but I used to watch it almost every day on Spike (and I own a few of the movies). This boils down to the simple question: Is it at all uplifting or beneficial to watch a completely fictitious television show?
The quote I have at the beginning is from a Star Trek Voyager episode that really captured my imagination and my thoughts...the question posed throughout the episode was: is it worth ending one beings life to save thousands? Or as the famous Spock saying goes "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". Questions like these are not always answered in the show, we are left hanging a lot in Voyager forced to make our own conclusions, and after the movie in which Spock says his famous line his crew risks their lives to save his, reversing the saying to "the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many". The fact that hours after watching "Nothing Human" I was still thinking, pondering the ethical quandary's presented, I believe gives me an answer to my first question.
Watching Star Trek is worthwhile at least because of the moral lessons embedded within it. Sometimes the show doesn't answer a moral question the same way I would, in that situation I am forced to defend my own beliefs by solidifying how I would have dealt with a certain situation. In the movie Star Trek: Generations we are asked: Is eternal pleasure worth the death of millions? A man has a chance to live forever happy, surrounded by the people and places he loves, but to get himself to that place he would have to destroy a heavily populated planet.
The most recent episodes of Star Trek I've seen are mostly from Voyager, which wrestles a lot with moral and ethical questions throughout the series, and like I said, they don't always answer the question.
This conversation between the Captain and Seven is fascinating. Janeway was trying to decide whether to rewrite the doctors programming, erasing some of his memories...his identity, for his own good. Because if he kept his identity there was a good chance he would die. Janeway: If one of my crew chose to put a phaser to his own head, should I let him? Seven: It would depend on the situation. Janeway: It always depends on the situation.
-Later Janeway decides that she would rather have the Doctor's personality, who he is, intact, then have him live a different man. In that same episode The Doctor struggles with the ethics of two patients with the same chance of dying, which one to choose? He chooses his friend over the Ensign he barely knew, and then struggles with his ethics-personality-subroutine, was it right?
So many questions are raised when I watch these types of episodes. Questions of morality, ethics, what is right and wrong? What should matter more? Who makes the decisions? Or, like the Original Series Episode title asks, "Who Watches the Watchers"?
-This is one of the main reasons I'll continue to watch Star Trek: It makes me think. Solidify my beliefs. The best movies and television shows always do. It's like the movie "The Life of David Gale" I wondered and thought about the questions asked within it for days after watching it. A movie or show that stays with you, that helps you to understand both your own and others worldviews is worth watching.
There's a lot more I could talk about like when The Doctor said: "Revisionist history...it's such a comfort". Or how Spock and Data are forever trying to change who they are. Or the question: Would you save a loved one, if it messes with the time continuum, possibly killing thousands? (Ask me about that Original Series episode some time, it's a real quandary!)
And there are of course the occasional episodes filled with humour, not necessarily asking a deep question, or philosophizing, but providing laughter, which as we all know is the best medicine!
I prefer not to prescribe to some of the fundamentals of Star Trek, like Evolution, but like I used to say in my Expos: "I don't regret too much of what I've seen, though the acting may be cheesy, and the sets cardboard-like I've learned a lot about humanity, even from some of the alien characters." There are more reasons for watching Star Trek I can't even go into here, I hope I've been able to illuminate just a few of my personal reasons for you.
On a side note: I qualified for Nationals. I still can't believe it, but I really did. Mostly I am excited about seeing everyone I know that will be there. God is simply amazing.
