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convenient-plot-device · 3 months

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An essay I wrote for school on Strange New Worlds' problems with ableism, complete with bibliography:

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has numerous problems, from its retooling of the Gorn into knockoff xenomorphs to its erasure of Spock’s Jewish roots to its overreliance on nostalgia, but its most glaring flaw is its painful undercurrent of ableism. The conflation of disability with death, the ignorance and tacit pardoning of eugenics, and the disposal of multiple disabled characters come together to weave a harmful and ignorant pattern in the show’s writing.

Christopher Pike’s character in Strange New Worlds is defined by disability. The dilemma he wrestles with in almost every episode is the looming specter of his future disability, which was revealed to him via time crystal in season two of Star Trek: Discovery. In the twelfth episode of season two, “Through The Valley of Shadows”, Pike must harvest a time crystal in order to send the life’s story of a dead alien to the future to protect it from an evil artificial intelligence intent on destroying all life in the galaxy. When Pike touches the crystal, he sees visions of his future, in which he is caught in a deadly radioactive explosion and left with severe burns and full body paralysis, able to move and communicate only through a specialized wheelchair. “The sequence ends with a final linked pair of nightmarish shots, a centred close-up of the older Pike’s face beginning to melt as he screams matched with the younger Pike’s own horrified scream as he falls backward into the present moment,” (Muredda, Angelo). As Muredda says later in the same article, this portrayal imagines disability as “a terminal point, something to scream about in terror, and the embodied sign of no liveable future at all.” The depiction of disability as a horrifying fate, and of the disabled body as an object of disgust and/or fear has a long history in the genres of horror and science fiction; previous and current Star Trek series are not immune to this. The Borg Queen, who appeared most recently in Picard, is missing most of her lower body and uses a robotic replacement to walk— her prosthetic spine is used as an object of horror and disgust when she first appears in First Contact (1996).

While Strange New Worlds had the opportunity to break this pattern and defy ableist stereotypes with Pike, they chose instead to follow the path Discovery had laid for them. Despite the fact that it is made very clear that Pike will be disabled, not killed, by the explosion he will be caught in in the future, every character within the narrative speaks of Pike’s fate as if he is going to die. Pike says, less than twenty minutes into the pilot: “I know how and when my life will end.” This writing decision mirrors the real-life belief that disabled peoples’ lives are akin to “a fate worse than death” or “not worth living,” a sentiment which has led to real deaths: “. . . [early in the pandemic] this belief — that we’re just surviving, not living, and thus have limited quality of life — lead to forced DNRs being put in the files of disabled people in the UK and lead directly to the death of a disabled man, Michael Hickson,” (Lloyd, Kelas). Hickson was denied treatment for pneumonia in Austin, Texas due to his doctor’s perception that he “didn’t have much of a quality of life.” He was put in hospice against his family’s wishes and died at the age of 46. (Shapiro, Joseph). For Strange New Worlds to equate Pike’s disability to the end of his life is irresponsible and reinforces the cultural biases that led to the death of Hickson and continue to impact the quality of treatment disabled people receive the world over.

Christopher Pike’s initial appearance in the original series episode “The Menagerie” was actually very progressive for the time; despite the limited communication of the blinking-light system in his wheelchair and his ending being living out the last of his life in a virtual reality where he could walk again, he was still a disabled person on television in a position of power.

When Pike first appeared, the Ugly Laws were still in place in much of the United States. Someone visibly disfigured/disabled was not to be seen in public spaces, at the risk of fines or jail . . . Captain Pike’s appearance in The Original Series was revolutionary. Here was not just a visibly disabled person, but they were someone Spock respected and cared about enough to risk his career for. [Disabled people] didn’t have a great existence, but they had one, and Pike was still valued as a person. (Lloyd, Kelas).

It would have been quite easy for the writers to modernize Pike’s portrayal to further disability representation in the way Pike first did: @hard-times-paramore has written an alternate ending (a mixed media series titled “The Captain’s Chair”) for Strange New Worlds in which Pike goes on to captain a new starship after becoming disabled, assisted by an interpreter, a caretaker, and futuristic medical technology. This alternate ending carries the message that disabled people are still people, who can and should be allowed a place in science fiction, as opposed to the current message sent by SNW, which is that significant disability is akin to a death sentence, even in a fantastical future.

However, there is more to Strange New Worlds’ portrayal of disability than just Captain Pike. The show is also very preoccupied with genetic augmentation and the Federation’s attitude toward it. While this is far from unique among Star Trek media, unlike other Trek properties which have covered this topic (Doctor Bashir, I Presume?, Chrysalis, Space Seed, Affliction/Divergence, etc) Strange New Worlds does not acknowledge the real-life equivalent to science fiction genetic augmentation: eugenics. SNW portrays genetic augmentation as a neutral practice targeted unjustly by the Federation because of outdated prejudices, with no examination of what genetic augmentation is a stand-in for. While the original series (in “Space Seed”) first introduced the Federation’s ban on genetic augmentation as a justified protective measure against the breeding of warlike “superior ambition” among men of “superior ability,” Strange New Worlds portrays genetic augmentation as an unjustly discriminated-against trait whose origin and consequences mean little to nothing.

Strange New Worlds’ main conduit for their genetic augmentation plotlines is Una Chin-Riley, the first officer of the Enterprise. She is a member of an alien species called Illyrians, who genetically modify themselves to suit the environments of planets they colonize. She herself was genetically modified as a baby, and is thus legally barred from joining Starfleet— however, she lied on her application to Starfleet Academy to get in. The plots revolving around her concern her arrest for violating Federation law and the subsequent trial, which is used as an extended metaphor for discrimination against, and the fight for civil rights for, marginalized groups. “Ad Astra Per Aspera,” the episode covering Una’s trial, is intentionally vague with its metaphor, to the point that just about any marginalized group could be represented by it. This episode is, on its face, fine. It argues against discrimination through allegory quite adeptly, discussing the concept of “passing” as part of a non-oppressed group and broaching the topic of systemic oppression. However, it has one glaring flaw in its base: the stand-in it chose for real-life oppression. Genetic modification, unlike other fantastical attributes that can be used to metaphorize oppression, has a bloody real-life history involving the deaths and sterilizations of millions of people. Strange New Worlds, however, appears ignorant of this fact: not once does the topic of eugenics come up in any of their episodes about genetic augmentation. Not once does the topic of disability come up, either. This is either an unwillingness to engage with the realities of what those who seek to change humanity’s genes have done and continue to do, a grave oversight, or mere ignorance. Whichever one it is, this omission of eugenics from the narrative of genetic augmentation is one that cannot be ignored. Its omission reads as a tacit endorsement of genetic augmentation at times, such as when Una and La’An say, in “Ghosts of Illyria”:

LA’AN: All my life I've hated augments. Hated what people thought of me because I was related to them. Understanding why they were outlawed in the Federation. The damage they did. They almost destroyed Earth.

UNA: [. . .] My people were never motivated by domination. Illyrians seek collaboration with nature. By bioengineering our bodies, we adapt to naturally-existing habitats. Instead of terraforming planets, we modify ourselves. And there's nothing wrong with that.

By ignoring the part eugenics plays in Star Trek’s portrayal of augmentation, and instead portraying the issue as a matter of prejudice based off of the fictional event of the Eugenics Wars— when augmented “supermen” became dictators and killed millions in conquest and war— Strange New Worlds completely fails to examine the real-life implications of their metaphor.

What makes this episode’s flaws worse is that another Star Trek series already portrayed the potential expulsion of a genetically augmented person from Starfleet, handling it with better understanding of the eugenic undertones of genetic augmentation, and it did so in 1997. In the season five episode of Deep Space Nine, “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?”, it is revealed that Julian Bashir, chief medical officer of Deep Space Nine, was illegally genetically modified by his parents as a small child and is in danger of being thrown out of Starfleet because of this revelation. Throughout the course of the episode, the audience learns that Bashir’s parents chose to modify him because he was intellectually disabled as a child. His mother believed that his life would be better if he were “normal,” while his father wanted a successful son and believed that intellectual disability was inimical to that end. The episode expresses, through Julian’s anger at his parents, that modifying a person to rid them of perceived “undesirable traits” is wrong, but that it is also wrong to unilaterally bar people from Starfleet based on a decision that was made for them by eugenicist parents. This message is far more clear than “Ad Astra Per Aspera”’s, especially on the subject of disability and eugenics. Strange New Worlds’ complete neutrality on and/or tacit approval of genetic augmentation/eugenics, in contrast to Deep Space Nine’s nuanced examination of the topic, is glaring.

The specific problem with Strange New Worlds’ neutrality on genetic modification is that for a species to be changed on a genetic level for any reason, traits must be eliminated. In a science fiction setting, this can be accomplished by simply changing the genetic structure of a consenting adult with a futuristic medical tool, rather than through violence as in our reality, but this, too, presents ethical problems. What is considered a problem to be cured? Who makes that decision? What happens to those who don’t want something modified out of them? What happens to any children they may have? Who gets to have control over technology with the power to eliminate or introduce genetic traits at will? What place do disabled people have in a society built off of achieving peak physical performance in a given environment? Strange New Worlds attempts to answer none of these questions. It acknowledges none of them. And this silence leaves disabled people out of the conversation completely by not even considering them. Today, in Denmark and Iceland, almost 100% of fetuses with Down Syndrome are aborted; the law in Iceland even specifically states that abortion is permitted after 16 weeks only if the fetus has a “deformity,” which Down Syndrome is specified to count as. (Quinones, Julian; Lajka, Arijeta). An entire anti-vaccine movement was begun in Britain because parents were so afraid of having a child with autism and chronic digestive disease, a child like me, that they risked their children dying of measles. This is what real-life genetic engineering looks like, and Strange New Worlds has failed to acknowledge that. I, at least, consider that a failure of writing, empathy, and allyship.

Strange New Worlds’ portrayal of disability is not relegated to Pike’s fate and Una’s augmentation, however. The show has several other characters who either are disabled or become disabled at one point. Rukiya, Dr. M’Benga’s daughter, is treated less as a character and more as an object for the emotional development of her father, a position many young disabled girls occupy in fiction. “[This story] centers Dr. M’Benga, and his pain, and his struggle, and doesn’t grapple with what Rukiya’s going through.” (Lloyd, Kelas). Rukiya has an untreatable terminal cancer, and is kept in a state of suspension in the transporter buffer by her father while he searches for a cure. Her story ends when the Enterprise enters a sentient telepathic nebula with the power to warp reality, and it offers to keep Rukiya within itself so that her disease will not progress and she will be able to grow up. M’Benga decides that this is the best option, and so relinquishes Rukiya to the nebula. She is never seen again. “She is disabled, and then she’s removed . . . The disabled person was put into [a] box and left behind, like so many disabled people have been put away in care homes and institutions and left behind.” (Lloyd, Kelas). Jax agreed, saying: “It just felt like she was poofed away for convenience. Like, ‘There! The problem is gone! The terminal illness or the girl? Both! Don’t worry about it!’”

The only other disabled main character on SNW is Hemmer, who is a member of a blind species called the Aenar. “While the Aenar cannot see, they believe that their telepathy gives them a ‘superior’ awareness of their surroundings compared to sighted people (Vrvilo, 2022). Because of this, the Aenar are highly criticized by the disability community as falling into the ‘magically disabled’ trope.” (Harris, Heather Rose). Bruce Horak, the actor who plays Hemmer, is blind himself, which is a genuinely good decision in terms of representation and support for the disabled community. However, Hemmer dies in the penultimate episode of season one. This decision was not received well by disabled fans: “It just kind of felt like a kick in the teeth. I finally found some good disability representation played by a disabled actor [who] isn’t a one off character, and they die in the first season.” (Jax). Both Hemmer and Rukiya are left behind by the narrative of Strange New Worlds, and with them, so too are disabled perspectives. The crew of the Enterprise is now entirely able-bodied, and the only remaining character whose story directly concerns disability is Pike, who repeatedly asserts that his life will end once he becomes disabled. This state of affairs is the embodiment of being spoken for, and being spoken over.

There is a saying in the disabled community: “Nothing about us without us.” This saying means that abled people should not attempt to help, treat, or speak about disabled people without involving disabled people in their efforts. Disabled people are often denied autonomy over their bodies, medical care, relationships, and lives; to deny them a part in operations meant to help them is to further deny them dignity and respect. This is what Strange New Worlds is doing by writing disabled stories with no disabled writers in the room— while they did well by casting Bruce Horak to play Hemmer, it is not enough to have disabled people in front of the camera. They must also play a part in writing, directing, planning, and all other work behind the scenes if Strange New Worlds wishes to tell their stories. In order for Strange New Worlds to rectify their pattern of ableism, they must listen to disabled voices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

#star trek #star trek: strange new worlds #star trek snw #snw #strange new worlds #ableism #media analysis #disability #snw critical #this one is my tag

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