God and nonintervention

[scarfman]

Coupla interesting discussions going on in startrek today.

• The Prime Directive: Star Trek's biggest flaw
• Religion in Star Trek

I even had a new thought.

In the religion discussion, the LJer who made both initial posts suggested that Bread and Circuses is one of the few Star Trek episodes, any series, that promotes freedom of religion. In an earlier, but lower on the page, comment on this post, I had described Bread and Circuses as a, or the, episode which demonstrates that Kirk does indeed honor the Prime Directive, at least when his ship's not being threatened*. Now I wrote:

I don't really see that this episode either supports or maligns religion, or freedom of religion. Yes, Christianity is a religion, but when Kirk says, "Caesar - and Christ. They had both. But only now is the word beginning to spread," he's not thinking of it as a religion but as a historical force.

In fact, it occurs to me as I write, in that way this episode fails to be the pro-noninterference story which I applaud in my comment immediately below; because, even though Kirk abides by the rules, in the end - just like in any episode when Kirk does feel compelled to violate the noninterference directive - we're left with the subliminal message that these people will be all right because now they'll turn out Just Like Us. In fact, in this one, it's even more insidious because they'll do that without Kirk forcing it on them in self-defense.

Whoa. TOS: Still giving you new things to think about after forty years.

* In which case it's not a less advanced society anyway, is it?

Comments

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I can't watch Bread & Circuses without MST'ing Kirk's final lines: "Wouldn't it be something... to see it all... happen again?"

"Yeah, Jim. It sure would be. The Crusades, the Inquisition... Wow, do you really think that having automatic weapons, television and sports cars is going to let them skate by without THOSE parts 'happening again'?"

[(Anonymous)]

It's an obvious point, but Christianity spread quite peacefully through the homogenous culture of the Roman Empire, and even out to the barbarian Teutons and Slavs. The Crusades, after all, were a delayed and rather ineffectual response to the unremitting and savage warfare waged on Christendom first by the Arabs and Moors and then by the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks — the Mahometans had rolled over the Levant, the Province of Asia, North Africa, and Spain before the First Crusade was even thought of. Don't forget, it's nearly a thousand years from the battle of Tours, where Charles Martel gave the Moors their first major reverse, to the raising of the seige of Vienna by John III Sobiewski of Poland.

In the homogenous world culture implied by the setting of the episode, one would not expect the same kind of tensions to develop. Something similar can be said about the Inquisition, whose evils are mostly exaggerated by Anglophones.

On the other hand, the episode is not one of my favourites, and that owes much to the "just like us = OK" issue. I'd say that that is the unexamined assumption.

--publius--