Chapter 18: Make It So: Why Jean-Luc Picard Is The Hero We Need Right Now

         If you’re like me, this week has been particularly distressing if you’ve tuned in to the world news. After 20+ years in Afghanistan, the United States has pulled out completely. While I am not fully versed on the politics and history of the Middle East, especially as it pertains to the involvement of the United States over the last fifty years or so, I have seen enough of this week’s headlines and news blurbs from the Daily Wire and the Federalist (the only sources of news that I trust to give me the truth) to know that President Biden and his administration utterly botched the withdrawal operation. As I write this, the Taliban are slaughtering both native and American citizens – many of them Christians – in the aftermath of the Afghan president completely abdicating his seat and running like a coward. If I’m also understanding the tweets from Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh correctly, the Taliban are also in possession of several Black Hawk helicopters as well as a goodly sized stockpile of American made weapons and ammo. Not only that, most of the people aboard the planes that successfully made it out of Afghanistan earlier this week were Afghan men; very few women and children and almost no American citizens and soldiers. The very people who should be standing their ground against the Taliban were among the first to flee.
        I am not here to explain or debate the details of this withdrawal, nor am I really interested in a discourse on the current state of world politics and the absolute mess that we all are drowning in just now – both here at home and in the world abroad. My reason for this post today is to offer a source of comfort that I have found in the last few months as I have watched the world continue on its mad trek to Hell. And yes, the greatest comfort has been reminding myself of the assurance that God is still on His throne, and he is still guiding and directing everything that is happening is this sinful, broken world.
            But, in addition to that solace, I have found another escape from the Wonderland lunacy that we are all currently living in. This year marks the 55th anniversary of Star Trek. On September 8, 1966, Gene Rodenberry’s sci-fi masterpiece was launched with the episode titled Where No Man Has Gone Before. Since that date, the Star Trek franchise has spawned a total of nine separate and distinct TV series (including the recent additions of Discovery, Picard, and the animated Lower Decks), as well as a grand total of thirteen major motion pictures (including the recent JJ Abrams’ produced Kelvin timeline series starring Chris Pine). Nerds today fall into one of two camps: Star Trek or Star Wars. Friendships – and marriages – have been won or lost on this one divide. The quickest way to one’s death in a crowded convention hall is to ask, “Is Yoda the Vulcan with that weird hand salute?” Or, “Was the Enterprise that one rocket ship in that one show?” (For the record, I am firmly ensconced in the Star Trek camp. And the Enterprise is a starship.)
            Those of you that know me know that I have been a Star Trek fan ever since watching the premiere episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Encounter At Farpoint, with my mom on September 28, 1987. My love of sci-fi – and Star Trek in particular – was inherited from my mother, she having enjoyed the adventures of Kirk, Spock and McCoy when they first aired in the late sixties. I had watched a few of those old episodes with her when she happened to catch them while channel flipping. I remember being thoroughly unimpressed by the terribly cheesy special effects, and I was too young to appreciate the well written comradery between the characters of Kirk, Spock and McCoy.
            Star Trek: The Next Generation, however, (hereafter referred to as “TNG”) instantly captured my nine year old imagination. Not only was this show radically different in both look and feel from its 1966 predecessor, it was thoroughly entertaining. I was still too young to grasp all the literary nuances and philosophical themes of the Picard/Q dialogue and debates, but there was enough in that two hour premier that I did grasp that made me want to keep watching every week. It was all perfectly encapsulated in the last line of the episode, when Captain Picard leaned forward in his command chair, his face alight with eagerness and excitement, his dark eyes shining with an explorer’s gleam, as he said, “Let’s see what’s out there!” The final shot was of the Enterprise warping into the unknown depths of space, disappearing in a flash of light.
            But it wasn’t just the sci-fi adventure that kept me parked in front of the TV in our living room every Saturday night. There was something about the crew of this grand and magnificent starship, these nine people who were from diverse and varied backgrounds, all working together as a family to explore the unknown. As I’ve explained in earlier posts, I was a nerd long before it was cool to be one. I wasn’t like the other kids, the ones who would rather be out on the soccer field playing a game at recess or playing house with their dolls in one corner of the playground. I was under a tree, by myself, lost in the pages of an Encyclopedia Brown mystery, or a Ralph S Mouse adventure. Some days I would go off by myself to the other end of the soccer field that was unoccupied and pretend I was on an away mission from the Enterprise, scouting the landscape of an alien world with the tricorder I had constructed out of LEGOS. (And who am I kidding? Some days, yes, I joined the girls with their dolls on the playground. That’s the other reason I didn’t always fit in socially and normally among my peers.)
            All of this, of course, earned me no end of derision and ridicule from my classmates – mainly the boys – and I endured most of it with the usual defenses that we construct in our childhoods when we don’t always fit in or aren’t popular with the “in” crowd. I either learned to ignore the teasing or I lashed out in ways that landed me in the principal’s office. Most of the time, though, I didn’t really care. Yes, it hurt, but I learned to ignore the emotional pain by taking solace in the lives of the fictional characters created by Beverly Cleary and Franklin W Dixon. (It also didn’t help matters any that I performed at least two grades ahead of my peers in reading, writing and math for almost of all of my elementary years. I suppose, looking back now, that was probably intimidating to most of my classmates.)
             So you can see why the fictional world of a diverse yet harmonious crew of humans and aliens on a starship cruising through the uncharted depths of outer space would be appealing to a socially awkward, introverted, didn’t-realize-yet-that-he-was-gay nine year old nerd. By the fall of 1990, as TNG launched its 3rd season, I had developed a thoroughly unhealthy devotion to that show and its central philosophy of humanism and hope. I had turned twelve earlier that summer, I was starting 6th grade that fall, and puberty had slammed me with all its ugly glory. As with my academics, my body decided to start changing well ahead of those of my male peers. My voice was cracking all over the place, I had peach fuzz on my upper lip, and I was growing hair in all kinds of places. And, because of my distinct aversion to all organized sports – well, physical activity of any kind, really – I was a few pounds overweight. If elementary kids can be cruel and vicious, pre-teens and teenagers are downright ruthless.
            I became even more obsessed with Star Trek. I was not only devouring the weekly TV episodes, I was also locking myself away in my room to read the latest issue of the comic book series or the latest novel released in the Pocket Books lineup. (Thanks to Amazon, I have, in the last few years, been able to regather all the old issues of that original comic book collection that was put out by DC comics from 1989-97. I have both the original Star Trek issues as well as the TNG series). I brought my Galoob action figures of Picard, Riker, Geordi and Worf to school to play with by myself at recess, and both my parents and teachers were starting to get understandably worried about me. (Again, thanks to Amazon, that entire line of action figures, still in their original packaging, now hangs on the wall in my dining room.) Through various birthday parties and other such forced social functions, I was starting to make friends with the same boys that had teased me when I was younger, and I did enjoy going to their houses for the usual slumber parties and play dates. (That’s how I was introduced to a strange, wonderful video game called Super Mario Bros 3 that fall of 1990.)
            But even though I enjoyed all the usual group activities that twelve year old boys do – shooting BB guns on the canyon rim, riding our bikes to the mall, prank calling the girls in our class on a Friday night, (have I sufficiently dated myself yet?), I still felt like an outcast. I never quite connected to my fellow humans the way that they seemed to do so effortlessly with each other, and they never fully understood my obsession with a dumb TV show. (I distinctly remember Brett Biers making fun of my dark blue lunch box whose lid was a glossy photo of the whole Enterprise crew beneath the starship against the bejeweled background of outer space. “They look like they’re all wearing pajamas!” he scoffed.)
         (And, by the way, if anyone can locate that 1987 lunch box for me, with its matching thermos, I would owe you my life.)
          Star Trek: TNG ended its seven season run in the spring of 1994. I was a freshman in high school, fully aware of my abnormal sexuality, pretending every day to be something I wasn’t, and devoted more than ever to the whole Star Trek franchise. I had seen all the movies with the original crew (the 1979 motion picture remains my favorite) and I was very much enjoying the new spinoff show, Deep Space Nine. I wasn’t that interested in church, God, my parents, my brothers, my friends or school. All of that was mere distraction from something that, for me, was turning into a religion. By the time I finished high school, I was an out-and-proud nerd, I didn’t care who knew it, and I was done trying to please everyone else. I also decided I was an Atheist, and, like Gene Rodenberry, I believed in the best of humanity, that we didn’t need a “god” to tell us how to be moral and just.
         You all know the rest of the story. I’ve come a long way since the days of that socially inept, introverted, nerdy, naïve teenager. Yes, I’m a Christian. No, I’m not ashamed of that, and I also fully recognize the errors and misconceptions of my youth. But I’m also still a nerd. And I still love that little show called Star Trek: TNG. For all of my adult life, I have come back to this show many times, and I have always found a welcome solace in the familiar stories and characters.
          Especially now.
         When Star Trek premiered in 1966, the United States – and the world at large – was embroiled in many conflicts and upheavals. Social unrest, race riots, global terrorism, inflation, the feminist movement, civil rights marches – to name a few. Here at home, the National Guard was firing into a unarmed crowd of college students, black students entering non-segregated schools for the first time were bullied and/or outright attacked by their peers, Martin Luther King was preaching from the Washington Memorial, and a second man with the last name Kennedy was assassinated only a few years after his older brother. The United States pulled out of Vietnam in 1969, turning that country over to a radial terrorist regime that began murdering innocent civilians while preaching hate against America and the west. In the midst of all of that turmoil and strife, this little sci-fi show about a racially diverse crew of humans and aliens exploring the galaxy, seeking out new life and new civilizations, boldly going “…where no one had gone before”, offered a radical new vision at a time when present day humanity needed it the most. It showed a future of hope, of eternal optimism, of the endless possibilities of mankind if we could all just learn to put aside our differences, celebrate that which we have in common, and work together for a greater good.
           Star Trek did not catch on with most of the general public in its initial three season run, hence its short life of only 79 episodes. But in reruns and syndication, despite the crappy special effects and the sometimes terrible plot lines and dialogue, the core of Gene Rodenberry’s philosophy – that humanity was worth saving, and that we could all hope for a better, brighter tomorrow, no matter what our present day might look like – eventually caught on. Star Trek spawned a fan base that spread like wildfire throughout America and the world.
           In 1985, after the commercial success of the first three major motion pictures, and as Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home began production, Paramount came knocking on Gene’s door once again, asking for another TV series. But Gene said no. One of the biggest problems of the original series was his constant battle with the network. He wanted to write and produce a cerebral show, a show that would force its audience to think, to question and ponder the state of humanity, to look at current social and political issues in a new way. The network wanted the exact opposite: a dumbed down, action adventure series that required very little – if any – real thought or focus from the audience. What was eventually shown on screen was a compromise that somehow, miraculously, allowed Gene’s true vision and philosophy to shine through just enough to capture the hearts and minds of a fan base large enough to spawn a pop culture phenomenon.
          Hence Paramount’s desire to launch a second Star Trek series. After Gene said no to the initial offer, Paramount came back with a counter offer. They promised him that his new series would be sold straight into syndication, meaning that it would not air in prime time during the week. That meant very few battles with the network since the core TV demographic – adults between the ages of 18 and 35 – didn’t watch much TV on the weekends. In other words, Gene would have pretty much free reign to write and produce whatever stories he wanted. After some more lengthy negotiation – Gene was still reluctant to return to the minefield of TV work – he finally consented and signed a production agreement with Paramount and CBS.
           Star Trek: The Next Generation launched on September 28, 1987, and while it wasn’t an instant success with the Star Trek fan base or the average TV audience, Paramount didn’t cancel the series right away. They were true to their word. The first two seasons weren’t that great, but from its 3rd season on – especially after the riveting, nail-biting cliffhanger that ended that year, the show was hailed by fans as a worthy successor to the Star Trek name. It even rose to the top ten of the Nielsen ratings during its fourth season in 1991-92, beating most of the prime time shows of that TV season. That was no small feat for a sci-fi show whose only time slot was Saturday nights in syndication!
          Flash forward about three decades. The United States – and the world at large – is in great upheaval. Social, political and civil unrest is everywhere. Race riots, global terrorism, inflation, and the feminist movement are just a few of the current headlines. There’s also the LGBTQ+ movement, a global pandemic, and now, as the U.S. pulls its presence from a foreign country, a radical religious terrorist group takes control and initiates a mass wave of murder, rape and pillage that makes the Middle Ages look like the Renaissance.
          Any of that sound familiar?
        Yes, history is repeating itself. And, once again, I have found comfort in Gene’s vision of a brighter, hopeful future. No, that future will never come to be. I recognize what my twelve year old self didn’t: man is broken and sinful. He will never rise above that sin nature, no matter what century is on the calendar.
         But that doesn’t mean that I can’t escape to a world where all that is great about Western Civilization is not only admired and respected, it is outright demanded of its people. Whether Gene intended it or not, he created something truly unique in the character of Jean-Luc Picard. In that one man, Gene presented everything that is good and noble and great about Western Civilization: its values, its politics, its art, its literature, its very soul, in fact, that birthed our modern nation whose founding fathers took all of that and combined it into the only form of government that would work for a broken and sinful mankind.
         Captain Picard was a student of Shakespeare, Homer and Plato. He knew the lessons of humanity well enough to stand toe to toe with Q – a god-like alien who was always judging Picard and his crew, blaming them for humanity’s faults. Picard defended humanity, reminding Q time and again that, while human history was fraught with setbacks caused by the worst of our qualities, that same history was also marked with the best that is within us – the constant desire for justice, morality, goodness, and equality for all.
          Picard was a genuine male hero, the kind of hero that inhabits all the greatest epics of Greek and Roman mythology. Not only did he possess the book smarts of a college professor, he was also traditionally masculine, skillfully wielding an epée during a fencing session on the holodeck, or seizing a phaser to defend the bridge alongside his crew during a Borg attack on the Enterprise. He was a shrewd tactician, an experienced strategist who never lost his cool in a showdown with the Romulans. He could even be romantic when he wanted to, showing his inner, vulnerable self at just the right moments with someone he truly cared for.
         In my current binge of this show, which I began about three months ago, I am marveling once again at the character of Captain Picard. I never noticed all of that before, and I probably wouldn’t have paid attention to it if the very foundation of Western Civilization wasn’t under such heavy attack just now. Our current cancel culture would like to erase everything that once made us great. They claim the “toxic masculinity” of Homer and the Greeks is poisoning our male youth. Men today should be sissies, showing their hearts on their sleeves, denying chivalry, and shouldn’t celebrate in any way the fact they are physically masculine. In fact, there’s no real gender. It’s all just a social construct, and old writers like Shakespeare and the Bronte sisters were fools. All of that ancient literature should be thrown out – and, in fact, many of our once-great universities like Harvard and Yale are doing just that – in favor of modern work that celebrates identity politics such as “gender theory” and “critical race theory” and “postmodern feminism”.
       Captain Picard would tolerate none of that hogwash and claptrap! And, in fact, not a single episode of TNG dismisses, derides or makes fun of the intellectuals, the art lovers, the bookworms or the classical musicians. Western literature and art in all its heady, cerebral, masculine, feminine, and emotional glory is always celebrated and presented as something worthy of our time and study. I recently watched the 5th season episode, Darmok, where Picard is trapped on an unknown planet with an equally unknown alien commander, a Tamarian, who is trying to communicate with Picard. By the end of the episode, Picard figures out that this particular alien race speaks to one another in only metaphor, citing specific characters, places, and events from their mythology and folklore to explain ideas, concepts, emotional states, desires, etc. As the alien commander lays dying from a brutal attack by a fierce creature which inhabits that planet, Picard tells him the epic of Gilgamesh. Later, after the ordeal is over, as the Enterprise is on its way to its next assignment, Picard explains to a questioning Riker why he’s rereading the Homeric hymns (in the original Greek, no less). “More familiarity with our own mythology might help us better relate to theirs,” Picard explains, referring to the Tamarians.
          That advice is extremely timely for our current political and social state of 2021. We Americans, specifically, have lost connection with our roots. Our modern civilization sprung from the Greeks and the Romans. All that is great and good in our society came from that ancient wellspring, and our leaders today want to utterly erase the past. They want to cut off that spring, pour cement over it, and, instead, have us all drink from a fountain of empty, useless, modernism where everything is relative. There are no absolutes, no ideals, no true “right” or “wrong”. Everything is a “theory” or a “new construct”, and we can all better ourselves by making sure we don’t offend anyone around us for any reason because everyone is special and unique and all viewpoints and opinions are the correct ones. There is no wrong answer, and everyone gets a participation award.
          I’m not saying that we should worship humanity the way Gene Rodenberry did. There was plenty about the Greek and Roman societies that wasn’t good or moral or just, but there was much of it that was good and right. The Greeks, especially, desired to work together for something greater than themselves. They admired and respected – and even cultivated – a desire in all their citizens to be the absolute best, productive member of society as possible. They aspired to a true form of justice and morality, of right and wrong, even if they didn’t ground those beliefs in a worship of the one, true God and His holy word. They still desired to make a better society by improving the individual and carefully balancing the needs of the many – society – against the needs of each person in that society.
        Today, we have it completely backwards. Our current generation is so selfish that we have made Queen Antoinette look like Mother Teresa. All you hear and read in today’s headlines is how important everyone’s rights are. Everybody’s rights are equally – or more important – than everyone else’s. The state and society are being sacrificed so that we don’t dare offend or trample on the rights of individuals or (perceived) minority groups. The only end to this road we’re now on is utter political and social ruin.
         In the last year, in addition to joining online communities such as Young Heretics as well as becoming part of a new church family here in Las Vegas, I have taken great comfort in escaping to a universe where the old values and morals are still the norm. The stories and characters of TNG are timeless. Many of those episodes, in fact, feel as fresh and original as if they had been written yesterday. If you don’t believe me, go spend a few hours with almost all the episodes from the 3rd and 4th seasons. In particular, The High Ground, The Ensigns of Command, The Offspring, Sarek, and Family are just a few notables. Also, the 2nd season episode, The Measure of a Man, written in 1988, is especially profound and prescient given how close we are today to developing truly sentient AI.
          As part of my new walk with Christ, I have embarked on a mission of self-improvement in all areas of my life. I have been spending more time at the gym in an effort to be in better shape and improve my overall health. (I will also freely admit I want to look buff and swole in order to celebrate toxic masculinity just to make the cancel culture retards furious.) In addition to reading my Bible daily, I have added more classical works to the library shelves in my office. That includes the writings of Plato, Shakespeare, Cicero, Homer and Dante. I have also been spending more time with my friends, cultivating and deepening my personal relationships with those in my life right now who are important to me.
          I do all of that because I found a new desire last year to start living. Not just existing, wasting oxygen, but actually, truly living! That means turning off the TV, getting off my ass, working out my body and my mind, and being the best person that I can be for the honor and glory of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Along the way, I have enjoyed returning to the bridge of the starship Enterprise, to lose myself in the grand and epic adventures of heroes who embody everything that I desire to be in my own, humble life.
         I encourage you to do the same! If you’re not a Star Trek fan, that’s ok. Nobody’s perfect. But find that piece of art, that work of greatness that embodies the values that are good and right and just, and hold on to that like priceless treasure. Because, really, in this day and age, it is. Celebrate it, cherish it, savor it. Study it. Learn from it.
          As Picard himself would say, “Make it so.”