The Sanctuary: A Star Trek Politics and Economics Podcast

Captains & Leaders

Is there something to the idea that the leaders in Star Trek, the men and women sitting in the Captain's or Commander's chairs, are either designed to or by default, represent our leaders in society beyond the series?

James T. Kirk was born in the Johnson Administration of the mid-1960's but his swaggering, all-American masculine brio and liberal values track with the idealised image of the late John F. Kennedy. Jean-Luc Picard represents a stability within the late 1980's and early 1990's as perhaps befitting the so-called 'End of History'. Benjamin Sisko prefigures the arrival of Barack Obama over a decade later as the first black President of the United States, but who exactly influenced whom? The list goes on and there are some fascinating comparisons to be made across each series in the franchise between leaders fictional and real.

Your host Tony Black & guest Mac Boyle ask whether, through Star Trek, we are able to map politically the eras and characters of the Western world's often divisive and complex points of leadership?

Host / Editor:

Tony Black

Guest

Mac Boyle

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Theme (c) Michael Gehrmann.

The Outcast, Rejoined and LGBTQ Representation.

For Pride month in June, Jessie Earl's Nerd Out show for Pride.com called 'Star Trek's Accidental Transgender Episode' talked about TNG Season 5's 'The Outcast', in which Will Riker falls in love with Soren, a member of the androgynous J'nai species who the Enterprise arrives to help in the potentially dangerous scientific discovery of 'null space'. Jeri Taylor's script subsequently explores pronouns, gender distinctions, trans issues and the thorny topic of conversion therapy some years before these conversations would enter the mainstream.

Earl's episode gets into the positives and negatives of an episode which was never intended by Taylor to cover transgender issues and rather depict homosexuality in Star Trek for, perhaps, the first time ever. Jonathan Frakes commented at the time that by having Soren played by a woman, actress Melinda Culea, it undercut the homosexual relationship intended. With hindsight, however, 'The Outcast' appears to be ahead of the curve in the conversations around being part of the LGBTQ community that are still being debated today.

Your host, Tony Black, is joined by Star Trek fans and member of the trans community, Orion Armstrong, to discuss just how has Star Trek approached LGTBQ issues and the community since the 1990's when these ideas first began to be explored within the franchise and the fandom? How do they align with the political standpoint of Gene Roddenberry's utopian future? And ultimately, is fiction's most progressive futurism progressive enough on this issue?

Host / Editor

Tony Black

Guest

Orion Armstrong

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The Dominion War and the Gulf War.

In early 1990, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime launched a ground invasion on the sovereign state of Kuwait which was quickly condemned in an almost unilateral international response, led by the United States of America, leading to Operation Desert Storm - the first ground war in history given rolling media coverage, which led to Iraqi defeat and Kuwaiti liberation within a manner of weeks. This became known as the Gulf War, and the first of several conflicts across the next three decades that have ripped the Middle East apart. It came just a few years before Star Trek: Deep Space Nine would engage in the Dominion War, a quadrant-wide conflict led by the Federation to prevent the all-powerful Dominion invading and conquering the Alpha Quadrant, which dominated DS9's narrative across its final few seasons.

In this episode, host Tony Black is joined by guest Isaac Gooch to discuss how the Dominion War in DS9 relates to the conflict in the Gulf, and how the preconditions of both wars hold a certain connection. Was the Dominion conflict stoked by the shapeshifter's agents such as the Vorta in the manner Republican politicians encouraged the use of force against the Iraqi regime? Can we draw a parallel between the use of the Jem'Hadar's drug dependency with the exposure of American soldiers to chemicals on the battlefield? And on a broader context, what does the Dominion War say about the Federation, and Star Trek as a series', need for a level of conflict at the so-called End of History?

Host / Editor

Tony Black

Guest

Issac Gooch

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Smithian & Marxian Star Trek & economics.

In the late 18th century, British thinker Adam Smith cemented himself in history as the first true 'economist', developing theories about personal capital that helped define the Industrial Revolution and the Western world's steady march toward a capitalist society. A century later, Karl Marx prescribed a different solution to human capital, one that spawned an entire economic 'religion' that morphed, at different times and different places, into forms of communism and socialism as we approached the age Star Trek was born. By the time the series launched, Smith & Marx's theories had shaped much of the 20th century.

In this episode, host Tony Black is joined by Jason Barr, a professor of economics at Rutgers University in Newark, and the writer of an article for StarTrek.com called 'Smith, Marx, and... Picard?: Star Trek and Our Economic Future', which breaks down the key principles of how Smith and Marx influenced so-called 'Trekonomics' and Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future where money does not exist. We expand on his piece, discussing key principles of how Star Trek engages with capitalist ideals.

What exactly *is* economics? How does Star Trek exist as a 'post-scarcity' society? And how far are we away from such a future in 2020?

Host / Editor

Tony Black

Guest

Jason Barr

Jason's article: https://intl.startrek.com/news/smith-marx-and-picard-star-trek-and-our-economic-future
Jason's website: https://buildingtheskyline.org

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Far Beyond the Stars, George Floyd & American racial politics

Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, a Minnesotan police officer named Derek Chauvin arrested George Floyd, a 46 year old black man who was carrying a counterfeit twenty dollar bill, kneeling on his head long enough to cause injuries so severe Mr Floyd later died in hospital. After a viral video of the incident, showing George declaring "I can't breathe!" spread across the world, protests led by the Black Lives Matter organisation spread like wildfire across not just the US but the Western world, prompting brutal clashes with the police and the kind of civil unrest not seen since the Martin Luther King. Jr led civil rights movement of the late 1960's.

In an episode recorded amidst the protests, host Tony Black invites on guest David Majors, host of the Promenade Merchants podcast and a black American man, to get his perspective on what is happening to America right now in relation to Deep Space Nine's classic 1998 Season Six episode 'Far Beyond the Stars', which sees Avery Brooks play Benny Russell, a science-fiction writer in 1950's New York who dreams of a better future.

The simple question they ask is... how can we still live in a society where police brutality against black people exists? How does Far Beyond the Stars still carry weight and impact 20 years on? And how can Star Trek help us in these dark times imagine a future without racial fault lines and ingrained prejudice?

Host / Editor

Tony Black

Guest

David Majors

Information/education: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10iIz_pFB8DzPkwddc8dcmJdJ0ZMITfTs7lvs4uyusZk/mobilebasic

Ways to support: https://www.adhoc.fm/post/black-lives-matter-resources-and-funds/

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Promenade Merchants podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/promenade-merchants-a-star-trek-podcast/id1502165777

Welcome to the first episode of THE SANCTUARY, a Star Trek Politics & Economics Podcast.

Star Trek: The Original Series debuted in 1966 amidst a decade that served as a powder keg of political and racial tension, much of the former built around US intervention in Vietnam, with the country drawn into a bloody, intractable conflict which raged for a decade.

In this premiere episode of The Sanctuary, host Tony Black is joined by guest, author & critic Darren Mooney, to discuss how TOS engages with Vietnam through the prism of four key episodes from the 1960's: City on the Edge of Forever, A Private Little War, The Omega Glory & Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, to try and understand how the series reflects and tries to understand the Vietnam War in context with American politics and society.

Host / Editor

Tony Black

Guest

Darren Mooney

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