optimism – Page 2 – Humanist Blog

I Have Seen the Future

Starfleet Academy:
“Ad astra per aspera” or “to the stars through difficulties.”

The future of our world — and particularly the Western world — feels increasingly precarious. Political divisions deepen, international conflicts unsettle long‑held assumptions about global stability, and social cohesion strains under the weight of competing identities and fears. It’s a moment defined by uncertainty, where headlines seem to offer little more than reminders of how fragile peace and unity can be. And yet, in the midst of this turbulence, I found an unexpected source of clarity: a single, understated episode of a Hollywood television series that dared to imagine a gentler, wiser, more cooperative humanity. That quiet vision of what we might become stood in stark contrast to the chaos of our present, and it has inspired me.

At its core, that quiet television moment resonated because it echoed something deeply humanistic — the belief that people, when given the chance, can grow toward empathy, cooperation, and understanding. Humanism has always asked us to imagine a world shaped not by fear or dominance, but by shared dignity and curiosity. Our arts and culture have traditionally been the vessels for that imagination: they challenge us, inspire us, and remind us of the better angels of our nature. Whether through literature, film, music, or the stories we tell around kitchen tables, culture has the power to lift our gaze beyond the immediate turmoil and invite us to picture a future where humanity chooses wisdom over conflict. That Hollywood TV episode did exactly that, offering a fragile but compelling glimpse of who we might yet become.

A World Pulled Toward Conflict and Colonialism

When we step back from the ideals that humanism and culture invite us to imagine, we’re confronted with a world that often seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Wars and regional conflicts continue to unsettle entire populations, reminding us how quickly fear can override cooperation. Even within nations long considered stable, political unrest has become a defining feature of public life. Nowhere is this more visible than in the United States, where deep ideological divides have reshaped communities and strained the social fabric. Some movements promote a worldview that elevates one nation, one identity, or one interpretation of history above all others — a mindset that wrongly suggests superiority rather than shared humanity. This posture, rooted in certainty and exclusion, stands in stark contrast to the betterment of all.

The United States has long projected two contradictory images into the world: a nation deeply entangled in global conflicts, and a nation that simultaneously imagines itself as a beacon of progress and possibility. Few cultural works embody this tension more clearly than the US franchise, Star Trek. Born in the midst of the Cold War and shaped by American anxieties and aspirations, the franchise offered a vision of a future defined by exploration, diplomacy, and scientific curiosity. Yet even this optimism carries the imprint of the culture that created it. The utopianism of Star Trek is often filtered through a distinctly American lens — one that has historically reflected its own limitations, from orientalist tropes to racial and gender imbalances among its central characters.

Even its attempts at inclusivity sometimes reflected the limits of its cultural vantage point. Characters presented as “diverse” were often African‑American or Asian‑American rather than people rooted in their own distinct cultures and histories, meaning that representation was still filtered through a US lens. This mattered because it subtly reinforced the idea that American identity was the default from which all other identities were interpreted. In doing so, the franchise unintentionally flattened global perspectives, offering diversity without fully embracing the richness of the world beyond its borders.

Since 1945, the United States has engaged in roughly a dozen major wars and more than a hundred military conflicts, a pattern that underscores how deeply its identity has been shaped by both idealism and interventionism. Likewise, the fictitious Starfleet has struggled to balance its militarism with its potential for peace, complete with a Prime Directive that is intended to prevent militarism and imperialism, but instead often ignores human rights abuse.

This is why recognising these limitations is so important. When a narrative claims universality while quietly centring one nation’s worldview, it shapes how audiences imagine the future — and who they imagine within it. Stories that unintentionally reproduce narrow cultural assumptions risk shrinking the possibilities of tomorrow to the boundaries of today. By acknowledging where these narratives fall short, we open space for futures that are genuinely global, genuinely inclusive, and genuinely reflective of the full spectrum of human experience.

The Future Arrives

This is why the moment in “Starfleet Academy” (episode 2: “Beta Test”) feels so striking. In the Betazoid resolution — where the Federation agrees to shift its institutional focus away from Earth and toward Betazed — the franchise quietly steps beyond its long‑standing US‑centric, Eurocentric, and Northern‑Hemisphere framing. It was still a flawed representation (the Betazoid world is still white, US-cultured, and patriarchal) but the symbolism of this handover is deep and meaningful. In a single gesture, the story acknowledges that the future of humanity cannot be anchored in one nation, one culture, or one hemisphere. It implicitly, symbolically opens the door to the global Southern Hemisphere, to Africa, Asia, South America, and the Pacific, to perspectives and identities that have historically been peripheral in the Star Trek universe.

In this episode, something shifts. Instead of exporting a narrow American self‑image as the destiny of the world, Star Trek tentatively gestures toward a broader, more pluralistic future — one that finally begins to imagine humanity as a genuinely global project.

I have noted the intensity of criticism directed at this latest iteration of Star Trek — complaints that the franchise has become “too diverse,” “too inclusive,” or “too political,” as though expanding the range of human experience on screen somehow threatens the legitimacy of those who once saw themselves as the default. These reactions echo a broader cultural anxiety: a fear among some groups that equality is only acceptable when it preserves their own centrality. Movements that resist diversity often frame themselves as defending tradition, but history shows that such positions rarely endure. Those who once defended slavery, racial segregation, or rigid gender hierarchies also believed they were protecting a natural order. Over time, those beliefs were rejected, not because change was easy, but because the moral arc of society gradually widened to include more people, more voices, and more truths.

In that sense, the backlash against inclusive storytelling feels less like a meaningful cultural stance and more like the fading echo of a worldview struggling to keep its footing. History is filled with beliefs that once seemed immovable — from segregation or heterosexism to rigid gender hierarchies — yet each eventually receded as society grew beyond them. The resistance to diversity will follow the same trajectory. These old perspectives persist for a time, but they gradually lose their force as the world expands around them, becoming relics of an era too narrow for the century ahead.

The youth of today — much like the cadets in Starfleet Academy — are growing up in a world where diversity is not a threat but a fact, and where cooperation across cultures is not an aspiration but a necessity. The Betazoid resolution in episode 2 captures this shift beautifully: a symbolic move away from a single cultural centre toward a future shaped by many voices. It is a reminder that the next generation is already imagining a world more expansive than the one they inherited, and that their vision, not the fears of those clinging to old hierarchies, will shape the future.

A Generation Ready to Imagine Something Larger

When this episode showed their arrival at San Francisco – to the tune of Scott Mackenzie’s old hippie classic “San Francisco” – I feared that the episode would once again reflect US-centric notions of liberalism and humanity. The episode concluded with an inspiring transcendence: the old hippie notion of inter-generational change was brought about by the youth of Starfleet and Betazed working together.

This shift matters because it brings us back to the heart of humanism: the belief that humanity’s future is not predetermined by the fears of the present, but shaped by our capacity to grow beyond them. When Starfleet Academy dares to move its symbolic center away from Earth — and by extension away from the cultural dominance that has defined so much of Western storytelling — it gestures toward a future in which no single nation or worldview claims ownership of humanity’s destiny. That is a profoundly humanistic act. It suggests that progress is not the property of one culture, but the shared work of many.

And this is where the generational parallel becomes impossible to ignore. The young characters in the series, like the young people in our world, are not burdened by the same anxieties that fuel backlash against diversity. They are growing up in a globalised environment where difference is normal, where collaboration across cultures is expected, and where identity is understood as expansive rather than fixed. Their instinct is not to retreat into hierarchy but to reach outward. The Betazoid resolution captures this beautifully: a moment where the future is no longer imagined through the narrow lens of a single hemisphere, but through the collective imagination of many worlds. It mirrors the way today’s youth are already redefining what community, equality, and belonging mean.

This is why the criticisms of newer Star Trek — the complaints about “wokeness” or the discomfort with diverse characters — feel increasingly out of step with the world that is emerging. Such reactions echo older systems of exclusion that once seemed immovable but ultimately collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions. Just as societies eventually rejected slavery, segregation, and rigid gender hierarchies, so too will the resistance to inclusion fade. These worldviews persist for a time, but they do not endure. They cannot. They are too small for the world we are becoming.

What endures instead is the quiet, steady expansion of the human story. The recognition that no single culture, nation, or ideology can speak for all of us. The understanding that the future will be shaped not by those who cling to old hierarchies, but by those who imagine something larger. In this sense, the hopeful moment in Starfleet Academy is more than a narrative choice — it is a cultural signal. It reflects a world where young people are already building connections across borders, already challenging inherited assumptions, already envisioning futures that are more inclusive, more global, and more humane than anything that came before.

I look forward to a future for the franchise that draws from the full richness of humanity rather than a narrow cultural lens. This would be Star Trek at its finest — finally living out its own ideal of “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations” in both story and spirit. Even more than that, I look forward to the real world that such a future implies: a world where our shared imagination is shaped by many voices, many perspectives, and many voices working together to build something larger than any one of us.

And perhaps that is the real lesson: even in a time of conflict, division, and uncertainty, the seeds of a broader, more generous future are already being planted. The youth of today — like the cadets of tomorrow — are not waiting for permission to imagine a better world. They are already doing it, quietly and confidently, in ways that transcend the boundaries of the past. In that small moment when the youth of Starfleet stood alongside the youth of Betazed, I realised I had seen the future — the same future that emerges whenever young Israelis and Palestinians reach for understanding, when young Russians and Ukrainians dream of rebuilding instead of destroying, when the children of Yemen or Sudan or Congo imagine peace in place of war. Not in the stars alone, but in the courage of a new generation willing to imagine differently.

I have seen the future.

Earthlight

Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first liquid-fueled rocket launch.

I walk the grey dust where their footprints remain,
Pressed into silence, preserved without rain.
The shadows lie long in this airless light,
Yet something familiar steadies me tonight.

Apollo came first with a single nation’s pride,
A Roman name carried on a Cold War tide.
Its courage was real, but its vision was small,
A triumph for some, not a future for all.

Artemis rises with a broader aim,
Not conquest, not rivalry, not glory or fame.
A mission shaped by many voices and views,
A future imagined by all we include.

And we follow the dreamers who gazed from below,
Who saw in that lantern a place we might go.
They pictured its valleys, imagined its plains,
Gave substance to longing that language constrains.

From poets who whispered of journeys untold,
To thinkers who mapped it in silver and gold,
To children who pointed and claimed it as ours,
Their visions still rise with the dust of these hours.

We walk in the footsteps of those who first dreamed flight,
From watchers of tides to keepers of ancient night.
From minds who traced how the planets would roam,
To builders of engines that carried us from home.

The ones who saw futures in fire and flight,
Their courage and craft shape our path through this light.
Their questions became the foundations we use,
A legacy guiding the journey we choose.

The Earth hangs distant, a fragile sphere,
A reminder of everything we hold dear.
Borders vanish when seen from this place,
Revealing one planet, one human race.

We walk by knowledge that time cannot sever,
By lessons learned from Apollo’s endeavour.
Their boldness lit the path we now choose,
A path where no one is asked to lose.

This dust recalls the stories we share,
From Africa’s first watchers of the night air,
Reading the heavens in patterns of fire and stone,
Long before empires claimed the sky as their own.

Here too, we adapt, we endure, we belong,
Sometimes in silence, sometimes in song.
A chorus of humans beneath a stark sun,
Continuing a journey the first steps begun.

Let shadows drift freely across the old regolith;
Earthlight will guide us far better than myth.
Its glow is a promise no darkness can shun:
That we shape our tomorrow by standing as one.

Author’s Note: this poem is companion to A Distant Sun.

This blog ©2026 Geoff Allshorn, with some editorial and artistic assistance from Deep AI and CoPilot AI. I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared.

To Boldly Go

“These are the voyages of our ‘starship’ enterprise. Its ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no-one has gone before!”

Creating A Future History

Decades later, the church building is still there, but the adjoining church hall, where Austrek held its first public meetings – forty-nine years ago today – has long since been demolished and replaced with shop fronts. The infrastructure may change, but its echo endures. In this busy street in a northern suburb of Melbourne, traces remain of past times, when a sanctuary for those seeking shelter in the past also offered shelter for those seeking consolation in the future. Of the six main public spaces where Austrek has met over the last five decades, four of them have been church halls, demonstrating the intersection between community spaces and collective belonging.

The World That Was

You may be old enough to remember a world before the digital age, when connection meant conversation, not clicks. This was a world without the Internet, mobile phones or streaming services. No instant communication or digital information. If you wanted social media, you went out and met others in real life. Instead of googling, you read a book, or headed to the library to consult encyclopaedias.

For news, you relied on the evening TV news bulletin or picked up a newspaper, knowing that the headlines were already at least a day old. I recall the Apollo 13 Moon mission, when the front page of a Melbourne newspaper was overprinted with a daily 3am “Stop Press” notice in red ink – an otherwise unthinkable notion for something as inviolate and sacrosanct as a newspaper. These were our closest to instant communication and worldly wisdom: many Star Trek fans collected scrap books full of news clippings like they were collecting holy relics.

These were the times before streaming and YouTube, before DVDs and videocassettes – even before modern marketing made copyright issues ubiquitous and inviolate. Fans of TV programs took recordings of their favourite programs on audio cassettes, for their own personal use, and replayed them endlessly until they were word perfect on the script. They photographed their favourite shows off the TV screen. Decades before mobile phones and their inbuilt cameras, photography was more of an effort and an art. Commercial photos and souvenirs were largely unavailable.

Fandom Begins with Persistence

Photos required patience: you bought a roll of film, used a camera, then handed the film over to the local pharmacy, waiting a week for your memories to be developed and printed.

In my tweens during the early 1970s, my rapt attendance at a local movie theatre to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey while university-aged couples necked, led to my attending the theatre one weekend with my pocket camera and some rolls of film so I could take photos of the spaceships. After snap-snap-snapping during the movie, I took my rolls of film to my local pharmacy and impatiently waited the obligatory week for my photos to return. I was disappointed to find that – due to the darkness within the theatre – none of my photos had come out. The pharmacist felt sorry for me and gave me a free roll of film.

Kodak Pocket Instamatic and flash cubes

“Two rolls of film, one bruised ego, and a carry bag of flash cubes — proof that fandom begins with persistence.”

Undeterred, I returned the following weekend with my camera, more rolls of film, and a carry bag full of flash cubes — determined to photograph the wondrous spaceships. This time, my attempts at photography – flashes and all – caused consternation, likely misunderstandings, and mayhem in the theatre. After surviving being nearly strangled by local university-aged boys in the audience (their girlfriends told them to “leave the boy alone”), I finished my photos and once again (rather smugly this time) presented my films to the pharmacy, waiting another agonising week — only to find that these photos had also not come out. I explained what had happened to the pharmacist, and this time he sternly told me off.

Sadly, I gave up any further attempts to photograph these filmic images — only to joyously find later that the Space Age Bookshop in Melbourne was selling slides of these exact same fictional spaceships. My amateur and failed attempts to deepen my connection with my interest in things science fictional were finally starting to be anticipated and met by rudimentary professional marketing enterprises.

Phones of that era were firmly fixed on walls or situated on shelves. Wireless phones only existed in SF programs. Most homes had a single handset connected by wires, and long-distance calls meant booking ahead through an operator. If you were out and about, you found a TARDIS-shaped phone booth on a street corner and dialled home.

Phone booths were great places to shelter from the harsh weather as you made private calls to friends that you dared not make at home (on the family phone in the living room). They were also great places for Clark Kent to change into his Superman underwear – and those phone directories! In the days before modern privacy laws, these phone books comprised hundreds of pages containing the names, addresses and phone numbers of many thousands of people; I knew fans who had fun skimming through the directory pages to find the names of their favourite fictional characters – not to ring them, of course, but just because it was fun to see fictitious names in print in the “real” world.

This was the world a generation ago: awed by the space age and watching men walking on the Moon, but still stuck in an era before space age technology had trickled down to the everyday. It would take another twenty years before the Internet or mobile phones started making public appearances, another decade after that before home computers brought the Internet into our homes, and another two decades again before AI became commonplace.

Television in those days was a box in your living room, connected to small rabbit-ears antennae that sat on top of your TV set, or connected via wires to an antenna on your roof. Reception was limited to a handful of local TV stations that were accessible via your antenna; and if you wanted to watch a TV program, you were totally reliant upon the whims of the programmers at those local TV stations. In the days before streaming or DVDs or videotapes, when your favourite TV show was taken off the air, you had no guarantee that you would ever see it again. (And if you wanted to see a movie, go to a movie theatre).

And then, as if someone flipped a switch, the future began to arrive… not all at once, but in colour.

Future Echoes

On 1 March 1975, Australia officially turned on colour television – although colour test transmissions had commenced some months beforehand, hinting at a rainbow of multicoloured diversity in our formerly monotone black-and-white TV services. In those early days of colour TV, the colour palette was turned up high, so everything appeared almost fluorescent. This was especially breathtaking, for example, when seeing that cricket matches were played on the MCG grass field that was blindingly green.

It was not a smooth transition. The National Library of Australia notes:

“The [television] sets cost more than $1,000, the equivalent of approximately $8,800 in today’s money. The many who could not afford to upgrade their sets continued to watch in black and white.”

As a result of colour TV, local stations pulled many old programs out of their archives and repeated them – now in living colour. Star Trek was one of these programs, airing in a G-rated (suitable for children) timeslot for about three months on Saturday afternoons.. maybe fifteen episodes. For nerdy SF-starved teens, it was wondrous.

I remember sitting around the dining table for our family’s traditional Saturday evening dinner, and at my pleading they allowed me to have the television turned on so I could watch while we ate. Upon hearing the opening narration: “Space: The Final Frontier…” my father laughed and commented that space was the infinite frontier. Having been suitably chastened for the gall to watch television during family tea-time, I was allowed to watch the rest of the episode without critical commentary, although I was compelled to ignore my mother and sisters rolling their eyes in patronising amusement. Within my 14 year-old brain, I felt the thrill of space-age adventure mixed with deference to a nostalgic program that dated from the Apollo space era. I was hooked. Over subsequent weeks, in between the TV episodes on Saturday afternoons, I turned to reading Star Trek books, especially when the series was withdrawn from that timeslot, and later appeared in erratic late night “graveyard shift” timeslots.

This was an era when Australian Star Trek viewers were totally dependent upon the whims of Channel 9 programmers – who took the show on and off, often late at night. I even recall late night viewing of one episode, “Amok Time”, containing a scene in which Kirk and Spock face off against each other, ready to fight to the death. Snip! A Channel 9 film editor suddenly cuts out the subsequent five minutes of action – and Kirk went from standing courageously to lying apparently dead in front of Spock. As I sat there stupefied and puzzled, the reason for this edit suddenly became clear: the scene was ended quickly, in order to make way for another five minutes of advertising Saba and Franco Cozzo furniture.

Fans became frantic for more Star Trek, a hunger which Channel 9 seemed reluctant to satiate, despite our phone calls, letters and petitions (I recall being told by one Channel Nine Programming Manager that they had enough problems in their workplace without having to worry about giving fans what they wanted). Into this vacuum stepped a local film theatre manager.

A portion of a Ritz theatre flyer, with the bottom half of the page advertising the first Star Trek Marathon on 27 November 1976

Bob Johnston was a local film enthusiast who had collected many films and ran a small theatre – the Ritz – in a hired theatrette in Errol Street, North Melbourne (his Sydney operations were likewise run out of ANZAC House). Out of curiosity, he threw a couple Star Trek episodes into a theatre night, and the audience response was so positive that he decided to run a Star Trek Marathon featuring Star Trek episodes running “from dusk ’til dawn”, and for the first time ever, he had to open the theatrette balcony in order to accommodate the audience. Naturally, this meant that the Marathons became a regular feature in both his Melbourne and Sydney theatres.

My teenager friends and I were already running an amateur student science club, the Melbourne Amateur Science Club (MASC), and we excitedly attended this first Star Trek Marathon. We even took some photocopied flyers advertising Austrek (a subsection of MASC), and these were snapped up by Marathon audience members and caused us to be overwhelmed with immediate sign-ups for new memberships (an annual membership initially costing $1, although postage costs for our newsletter forced us to quickly increase that to $2.50). We quickly concluded that we did not have the resources to run both our school children’s science club and the fledgling Austrek (which in one night had received more enthusiastic memberships than MASC had received in its years of operation), so we closed down MASC and dedicated our limited teenage time and efforts to Austrek. That first Star Trek Marathon on 27 November 1976 was retrospectively assigned as being the date of our club’s public launch. We even met a lovely young lady, a school teacher named Diane, who encouraged us to run our new club.

Science fiction fans have traditionally been voracious readers, and local fans were no exception. Concurrent to the aforementioned media activities, we had previously sought Star Trek-related material via a scarce number of books. British author James Blish had novelised the Star Trek episodes, and US author Alan Dean Foster had done the same for the Star Trek animated series. Beyond that, such books were rare. We started watching Star Trek on TV, fell in love with its magic, and scoured bookshops for more.

There were two books that particularly made a difference in the early club. Star Trek Lives! introduced us to the concept of fan clubs and fandom. We learned that there were others like us: keen and enthusiastic for Star Trek and space age excitement; running fan clubs and conventions; writing fan fiction and publishing fanzines. This book had probably helped inspire us to start Austrek as a sub-section of our humble little schoolkids science club, MASC, and begin to consider expanding that subsection into something more (the Star Trek Marathons helped that option take off like a rocket).

The second book to impact our lives was I Am Not Spock, an autobiographical account by actor Leonard Nimoy. He complained that any time anyone wrote a letter and addressed the envelope to “Mr Spock, Hollywood, California”, the Post Office delivered it to him. Encouraged by this, we did something that I would now recommend that nobody ever do: we wrote to him using that very method. Dozens of us signed a letter asking if we could officially start a Star Trek fan club, and we posted it with teenaged-sized bravery, wondering if we would ever get a reply. To our surprise, we did – but not from the man himself.

It turns out that there was an organisation called the Star Trek Welcommittee (STW) – a Star Trek volunteer-based information exchange network, based in the USA. In the days before the digital communications, they wrote a snail mail reply to us, recommending that we contact a mysterious “D. Marchant” who lived in Melbourne (but in far-away Mordialloc, a southern suburb – too far for us to visit in the days before we were old enough to own or drive our own cars). With some fear and trembling, I dialled my home phone’s rotary dial and called this mysterious “D. Marchant”. To my astonishment, my new friend – Diane from the Star Trek Marathons – answered the phone. It turned out that she was the world STW representative for every country outside the USA.

Diane mentored, encouraged and assisted us with everything from contacting local fans, to posting out our first real newsletter (she donated the stamps for us to afford the postage costs). It was full-steam ahead.

A portion of page 1 of the first Captain’s Log

The following months were a mix of frantic and exciting, especially balancing schoolwork and homework against building Austrek infrastructure. We published our first Austrek newsletter, titled Trekkie Talk, and then changed the name after Diane gently explained how the word “trekkie” was seen as a negative by many Star Trek fans at that time; leading to the newsletter being relaunched as The Captain’s Log.

Our first public meeting took place in the abovementioned church hall in Fairfield on 27 February 1977. The pastor was annoyed when I asked for a receipt for the hall hire cost: the princely sum of five dollars. He hand-wrote a receipt, making sure to exaggerate the receipt number as #1 (the 1 being preceded by a ridiculous number of zeroes) as his gentle protest.

The meeting was attended by Diane and her mother Jessie, by many of the teenage club members, and a mix of new members who had joined since the first Marathon. One teenage boy dressed as Darth Vader, managing to go to the milk bar next to the church and trying to buy a Star Wars icy pole, getting flustered, and tripping over the Twisties stand. But our youth and enthusiasm were infectious: our club sped ahead into new activities over the coming months, not being held back by wisdom or caution. We had never tried anything before, and we had no idea what was possible or impossible, so we generally went ahead and did it anyway. Any time we had an idea, we anticipated the later Star Trek mantra of Make It So, and we did. Our human adventure was just beginning.

Austrek has organised many activities: including club meetings, car rallies, birthday parties, weddings, Christmas events, weekend events at private homes, New Year’s Day events, trivial pursuit nights, camps, fan fiction, fanzines, newsletters, collating parties, conventions, fan films, art displays, costume competitions,’courts martial’ and ‘ambassadors’ banquets’ and other cosplay events, formal debates, letter campaigns to help NASA or medical causes, charities, banquets, movie nights, sold out theatre bookings for virtually every Star Trek movie premiere, museum displays, filk songs, radio programs, Moomba floats, media interviews, medical and personal interventions, picnics to Hanging Rock, merchandise including T-shirts and cups and stickers and playing cards and lanyards, contributions to books and magazines, assisting the start of many other SF media clubs, assisting fan authors and fan artists to become professionals, providing a welcoming sanctuary for many people facing issues of diversity, isolation and difference, introducing women to science fiction and science fiction to women… the sky was our limit. Whether creative activities borne of need in the early days to find more Star Trek inspiration amidst the cultural desert; or more recent consumerist activities to accommodate the wide range of franchise material now available, the club has learnt and adapted to suit changing commercial and copyright and cultural interests.

As for me, I will never forget the many people who have told me (over the last five decades) how Austrek literally saved their lives by providing supportive social networks.

We may not have changed the world overnight, but we have changed it one life at a time. After half a century, our journey – our legacy – continues.

And the rest is history.

“Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits.”
– Picard, Measure of A Man, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This blog ©2026 Geoff Allshorn, with some editorial and layout assistance from CoPilot AI. I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared.

From Trek to Trump

‘Star Trek’ was an attempt to say 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 lifeforms.”
– Gene Roddenberry

When Star Trek VI came out in 1991, its background story echoed the contemporaneous collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Glasnost. Fans and critics alike praised the movie for its courage to be edgy and unafraid to explore contemporary social issues. A generation later, a small faction of fan critics for the newest Star Trek series (Starfleet Academy) complain about its wokeness, and they demonstrate a fear of the social evolution and change to which it appears to allude.

What I want to explore here is this attitudinal change as an example of populist cultural collapse that is currently underway in the United States of America and some other parts of the western world.

Star Trek – Back to School

I will be honest: for all the obvious reasons, I have not yet seen the three episodes of Starfleet Academy that have been shown publicly. I am unable to comment on the show itself, nor provide a valid critique. I do believe that much of Star Trek since the reboot films (2009 – 2016) has been somewhat deficient because it often comes across as poor science and poor fiction – just generally sub-par writing (I am glad to say that many Star Trek fans disagree with me – and each other – and have energetic debates about this material). In all fairness, I will withhold airing my personal opinion of the new Starfleet Academy series until after I actually get to watch it.

The problem is that some fans appear to reject the new material outright – not primarily because of anything related to the perceived quality of the writing, but because these fans appear unwilling or unable to cope with new characterisations of sexuality, gender or gender identity, race and social evolution. I saw the same thing happen in 2017, when Doctor Who was recast as a woman; then again when a queer Rwandan-Scottish actor played the part. Many fans went hysterical. Straight white men proclaimed that they were suddenly being victimised and excluded; as though their previous fifty years of privilege had mysteriously disappeared. Similarly, when Star Trek Discovery first appeared on television that same year (2017), some fans bewailed the appearance of strong, non-white women; and a mixed-race gay male couple. Once again these armchair warriors wailed, “Why are straight white men being excluded”? Overall, they came across as a bunch of Sad Puppies.

Most recently, the idea of a new Star Trek series featuring a young cast in Starfleet Academy – possibly analogous to young people entering college (university) and for the first time leaving home, becoming independent adults, exploring their new surroundings and friendships and a mix of strange, new cultures – seems inspiring and fresh and potentially exciting. They live in a world 1000 years from now, where alien cultures (formerly enemies) have evidently reconciled and interbred; where new societal norms have swept aside old prejudices and bigotries. What could possibly go wrong?

Welcome Aboard the NCC 90210

“Star Trek” has always touted its desire to explore strange new worlds; what “Starfleet Academy” supposes is, what if college is the strangest world of all?”
– Clint Worthington

Recontextualising material to suit the romance literature market or the youth/teen market is not necessarily problematic. How many people complained back in the 12th century, when Arthurian stories were rebooted as medieval romance literature, changing Camelot forever from Dark Age “fall of the Roman Empire” mythology to romantic medieval chivalric code? How many Shakespeare fans have ever complained that the Bard himself rewrote earlier story versions of Romeo and Juliet, plagiarising it as fan fiction and adding extra depth of teen romance angst? Star Trek itself was rescued from being a failed television series in the late 1960s, recast as a multi-billion dollar franchise, in no small part because predominantly female fans (many of them being teens or post-teens) rewrote the material into thousands of fan fiction stories featuring “slash” material (same sex romance between Kirk and Spock).

Literature evolves to fit changing cultural norms and consumer demand. Star Trek will undoubtedly remain a science fiction franchise, but its stories must continue to follow the code of social evolution: adapt or die. In fitting with its long-time policy of incorporating “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”, it will continue to fulfil the vision of creator Gene Roddenberry that diversity should not just be tolerated – it should be celebrated. Bring on Starfleet Academy, youth culture and all.

Accordingly, I heartily recommend you seek out mainstream reviews of the series – most of which are balanced, rational, fair, and celebratory of diversity.

There are also reviews on social media, some of them extremely critical, such as this one, who complains at 17:30 that men apparently aren’t getting a fair representation (really, after nearly 60 years of male-dominated franchise?); and this one (who tries to rationally debate the criticisms of others about “wokeness”); and this one (who also complains about male representation) – perhaps no surprise that all of these reviews are created by men. But they do make an effort to analyse the material critically and fairly, and their comments align with fan comments I have heard about the soap opera nature of this program: a Dawson’s Creek or CW in space, with a ship that should be labelled NCC-90210.

I do not have a problem with fan reviews that express dislike of obsessive youth culture or other story elements – please wait until I see the material for myself and we can have a wonderful debate about the undoubted strengths and weaknesses of the script material – but my problem is with those fan critics who barely touch upon literary criticism and instead bewail the wrongs (real or imagined) inflicted upon them by woke warriors.

Stories can be freely criticised as being weak or garbage – but characters, and the existence of the minority groups they represent, should not.

Gay Klingons And Other Catastrophes To Befall Humanity

One British fan critic begins his review, “Window Lickers in Spaaaaaaaace!! ” with an attempt to analyse what he sees as the shortcomings of the material, although his references to the show as a “bowel movement” (0:03) and “science retardation” (4:03) suggest that his analysis is an emotional as much as a literary response. He continues to refer to “retards” (eg. 18:20) even makes a vague reference that appears to invoke (or it is to satirise?) Trump racism: “Immigrants going to Earth to steal. Wait, is this 2020?” (5:04). He adds a dismissively homophobic comment about characters: “Also, they’re gay. Probably… it’s Kurtsman Trek.” (11: 20).

He later discusses a scene in which a young black man defeats some armed guards (a trope in media science fiction since forever) but suggests that it is an example of inverse racism because the guards are all white (13:02). He even makes a comment mocking gender equality:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I bring to you the flaw in that logic that will stay here until the day everybody dies: Heavy lifting. Where’s the women? Oh, it’s the men. It’s the men doing the heavy lifting. The sexes are equal right up to heavy lifting.” (47:44)

He continues this vein in another review, within which he mocks female body image as portrayed by the show’s “robust women” (3:58 and 8:34), and summarises his criticism of the new series – not with literary analysis of its perceived script weaknesses, but with the following complaint:

“As expected, it has got nothing to do with Star Trek. It is just another far-left ideological spurge that takes a brand, a franchise name, and just puts its own messaging and inclusion and diversity into it.”(0:14)

The Vulcan “IDIC” symbol from Star Trek, representing Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

He chooses to forget that Star Trek has always aspired towards (but did not always achieve) inclusion, and the promotion of, “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”. Instead, this critic denies any historic wokeness in the franchise, dismissing such claims as, “absolute, utter bullshit” (7:17). His perspective can be further seen in his tendency to dismiss those with whom he disagrees as simply having Trump Derangement Syndrome, or to disparage the physique of men on the show (conveniently forgetting that Star Trek used to shamelessly demean women as sex objects): “Is it rules for thee, but not for me?” (4:30).

His extremist conservative nature can be intuited when he complains that people from the planet Cheron should be extinct (because the original Star Trek series revealed that last two survivors from that planet had both been male) and yet descendants have apparently been shown in this newest series, set a thousand years later. The reappearance of such people – once shown to lead to their own potential extinction because of racist hatred – could fictionally and metaphorically demonstrate that even the most doomed of intolerant characters might somehow survive and grow. Appearing to overlook this symbolism, and ignoring obvious scientific and scientifictional possibilities surrounding this situation – including time travel to rescue other inhabitants, genetic engineering, alternative universes or timelines, or just simply more survivors later being found somewhere across the galaxy (any of these possibilities providing the possible basis for a background story in any episode) – this critic chooses a homophobic rant instead:

“So unless the show is insinuating that the only last two remaining Cheron males managed to bum themselves a whole new population, then this race should be extinct. But actually thinking about what I just said and the people that are running Star Trek nowadays, I probably think that they feel that that’s a viable thing that they could do. “(3:30)

Viewers might be forgiven for wondering whether this gentleman is really simply whingeing that conservative, straight white guys – for most of the last fifty years having enjoyed privileged status in the franchise – are now finding the portrayal of equality with others to somehow threaten their privilege? (see for example 9:26) Ironically, he projects his own narrow perspective onto those people whom he criticises:

“[This new Star Trek] represents a broken bubble, a broken shell of comic Californian wankers who think the world revolves around them… it doesn’t represent Star Trek and it certainly doesn’t represent humanity and people…” (16:47)

Really? So a series that portrays diversity and new forms of inclusion – new species, new characters descended from a mix of races previously portrayed as enemies, characters who break out of stereotypes and boldly explore a strange new world that they are creating… these people don’t represent the highest aspirations of a utopian future?

Lesbians with Cats?

Jones and Ripley in Alien (Wikipedia image)

Another male fan critic spends very little time actually analysing the story and most of his time complaining about the “woke chain” (4:35) and a “lesbian relationship” (4:58) and “the gay Klingon” (5:02) and “the woke degenerate crazy thing” (5:07) and “the feminism” (7:02) and “a bunch of retards just running around” (10:43) and bewailing the possibility that viewers might (shock! Horror!) be forced to watch “the lesbians going at it… full tilt” (10:58), He complains about the injustice of a changing room scene where the men are somewhat unclothed while the women are not – implying that the men are victims of exploitation by Hollywood and suggesting that sexual harassment lawsuits may be on the way (conveniently forgetting Star Trek’s long tradition of sexually exploiting female bodies over the last half century). He even manages to refer to polyamory as “degenerate stuff” (13:00) and praise one episode ever-so-slightly because “at least it wasn’t gay” (15:32) while expressing relief that he wasn’t forced to endure a lesbian romance scene (15:55).

He repeatedly refers to Star Trek writers as 40 year-old women who sip wine and have cats, blaming them for both promoting lesbianism and for the gratuitous male nudity (without seeing any irony in the paradox of allegedly promoting both at the same time); thereby managing to mix his misogyny and homophobia together while also insinuating that the franchise needs straight white guys like him to mansplain non-degenerate perspectives to delusional woke lefties.

Queer Cringe

You get the idea: instead of attempting a balanced, rational review like this one or this one, varied reviews are homophobic, reactionary, or otherwise bigoted, like this one or this one (reviewed by a right-wing woman of colour who appears to promote white supremacist racism by blaming immigrants and their children for crime – see 5:00). Even this one, which attempts to present rational analysis, still manages to disparage the gay and lesbian characters, while this one attempts some analysis under the heading of “Star Woke” as though wokeness is itself a negative. Such unbalanced reviews may, ultimately, still be statistically insignificant, but their rise and empowerment is a cause for concern.

Perhaps the ultimate criticism has come from Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff; and Nazi sympathiser Elon Musk; who have both criticised Starfleet Academy for being woke. In response, former Star Trek actor Whoopi Goldberg has criticised their comments as deliberate attempts to distract audiences from the state of the world that these men are actively creating:

“Why are you concentrating on a television show when people are being shot and killed, when people are going hungry, when farmers are losing their farms, kids can’t get meals at school? Why are you paying attention to this?”

This is probably Star Trek’s greatest message, as explored by generations of fan fiction writers exploring same sex relationships (known as “slash”) and other progressive concepts, and other fan activists promoting charity and change: taking Star Trek ideals and “making it so”. Detractors want to return to earlier times and use it as a distraction rather than as inspiration.

Loving the poorly educated

As people who allegedly align themselves with an ongoing franchise (that must, like all literature, adapt to the times or die), they seem remarkably devoid of understanding or empathy regarding inclusion and diversity, or of understanding disadvantage and disempowerment; instead inverting the Star Trek trope of “The needs of the one [themselves] outweigh the needs of the few… or the many [others, especially disempowered or disadvantaged groups]”. They resist the impulse towards self-education through asking questions and accommodating change; they instead prefer past times or privilege and inequality, yearning for past attitudes within which they feel most comfortable.

In doing this, they display the perspectives of extremists such as white Christian nationalists, who perceive the world and culture through a narrow fish-eyed lens:

“Rooted in a long history of American exceptionalism, it fuses white identity politics with a specific brand of fundamentalist Protestant Christianity to create a racist form of a national identity.”

Similarly, these so-called fans, who deny (or disparage as “woke”) the inadequate but sincere attempts at historic progressive inclusion within this franchise, are happy to rewrite or reinterpret the franchise in order to exclude those whom they hate. Some demonstrate a celebratory mood at news that the series may be cancelled early due to their efforts; one fan comment suggests that they would rather see the franchise die than be woke. Thus they take a franchise that seeks to promote utopian ideals, and drag it – and our world – backwards to more regressive values.

Trump and Tradition

While some may see the USA’s cultural and political turmoil as being caused by Trump and his regime, I see Trump as a symptom of a larger malaise. Swathes of US citizens actively deny and oppose their nation’s advances in vaccine and epidemiology, and scientific advances such as the 1960s space program that triggered history’s greatest technological peacetime advances. Moon landings – and their fictional counterparts, Starfleet Academy – are rejected by those who seek to deny the potential greatness and aspirations of their own country and culture; they seek to rewrite history and culture to suit their personal perspectives – as maybe so do we all. The difference is that their view of knowledge is that ignorance is equivalent to world-class expertise; their cosmos is a metaphoric flat earth instead of a rich tapestry of galactic stars and diverse cultures. Unlike them, I look forward to living long enough to having my values and perspectives challenged and educated by those who follow – that’s the value of being woke rather than asleep.

From cardassians to crucifixion, we see the same call for cultural compliance in populist fundamentalist religion having been hijacked by fascism, just as these Star Trek fans seek to rewrite and reboot their favourite quasi-religious franchise in their own image. They revel in creating division and dissent rather than social cohesion.

They are symptomatic of the potential cultural, scientific, social, educational and economic collapse of an empire:

The Archaeologist lists the decline of social cohesion as one factor creating the fall of empires:

“Social Cohesion: A strong sense of shared identity and purpose is essential for a society to thrive. If social divisions deepen and trust breaks down, a society can become vulnerable to internal conflict.”

Instead, we should view literature as an attempt to unite and contribute to our society and our world, in line with humanist values that include an appreciation and involvement in literature and culture:

“We value great works of art, music, literature and architecture regardless of their origin, and respect culturally significant landscapes, geological formations and artifacts. We support their preservation and believe in fair, equitable and culturally sensitive access for all.”

Star Trek – Back to The Future?

“Leave any bigotry in your quarters. There’s no room for it on the Bridge.
Do I make myself clear?” – Kirk, Balance of Terror (1969)

I grew up watching and loving the original series of Star Trek, which boasted a progressive attitude in its portrayal of African-Americans during the US Civil Rights era. I recall reading a quote from one African-American actor, who later recalled how powerful was the impact of his character, a visiting Black Starfleet Commodore, to whom the white hero James Kirk deferred and called “sir” in an an era where civil rights activists were being murdered in real life. In one episode, racial hatred was even shown as potentially destroying a planetary civilisation (the aforementioned Cheron). Star Trek tried its best within the limits of its commercial constraints for the time, even (wrongly) boasting of featuring television’s first interracial kiss (that kiss is problematic for many reasons) – although the appearance of an African-American woman on the Bridge was certainly groundbreaking for this same era.

Star Trek didn’t get everything right, particularly its early portrayals of women, and its exclusion of LGBT+ characters, but encouraged by its largely female fandom (fully inclusive of LGBT+ and neurodivergent fans) Star Trek evolved with the times, always implying the equality it frequently failed to show. So although I understand why some modern fans bewail the appearance of sexualities or racial realities that previously were never shown – only implied – I do think they need to understand the spirit of the series as much as its stories. Was Star Trek ever woke? Hell yes, ever since 1964.

Whether or not Starfleet Academy is great literature or a great disappointment, it deserves in-depth analysis and appreciation of its values, aspirations and its potential to inspire. Straight white men have enjoyed more than their fair share of representation in the franchise for sixty years; it is time for us all to explore strange new worlds and seek out new life – learning about these others and glimpsing who we ourselves might become as an inclusive species in the future. Gay Klingons, married lesbians, and strong women should be celebrated, not dismissed as evil or deviant or disgusting because some timid people fear what is outside of their traditional life experiences. Those fans who disparage this series because of personality politics have themselves failed the Starfleet Academy entrance exam. They are free to ignore the series and enjoy other literature – or to quote Bob Dylan:

“Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times, they are a-changin’.”
– Bob Dylan

Inclusion is for Everyone

This does not mean we should reject these problematic fans outright: one cure for White Christian Nationalism or other forms of cognitively dissonant extremism is providing a safe space for such people after they face their own disillusionment, disengagement and deradicalisation:

“Hospitality communicates ‘You are welcome here.’ When a person is ready to leave American Christian nationalism, they need a place to land, a genuine community of safe, loving people.”

Starfleet Academy is a victim of its times: an exploration of the future being opposed by luddites and reactionaries. If it has offended those who resist change, and enables them to ultimately question and grow, then it will have done its job. Otherwise, the fan critics who disparage the material are guilty of seeking to revisit and enshrine old times and old attitudes, to divide and destroy our social fabric, and to destroy our opportunities to grow as individuals and as a collective. They are the opposite of traditional fandom, where fans used slash and other diversity to promote a healthy culture of life and growth; these people today promote cultural stagnation and death. Such is symptomatic of a country and a culture that seeks to drag humanity backwards; to “make great again” a mythical concept marrying white elitism, heterosexism, misogyny, racism, authoritarianism and social regression – and even fascism. Star Trek and the future of humanity demand more. It is up to the rest of us to bring these people back from the edge.

©2026 Geoff Allshorn. Edits made on 7 February to clarify some material. I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared.