Star Trek, RIP

Clut stud journal Flow finds a way to
argue in high brow terms that the end of "Star Trek" is a devastating loss for television in an engaging piece by Montana State's Walter Metz. He admits, "I find these series' Gene Roddenberry-inspired utopianisms thoroughly unpalatable. I see little evidence that the dysfunctional United Nations might serve as a model for interplanetary politics, even in the very distant future. I also find the racial allegorizing of most of the series completely impotent: the representation of discrimination against aliens does not necessarily engage real-world racism because people's racist impulses on Earth are founded on misguided interpretations of their surroundings."

But he adds, "Of all the Star Trek shows, I liked Enterprise the best. It muddied the utopianism of Roddenberry's Star Trek by making our intrepid human explorers thoroughly incompetent and outgunned at every turn. Furthermore, the Vulcans, those Mr. Spock-like rationalists praised by Roddenberry's system, are revealed as scheming hypocrites. What is important about this is that the ever-expanding Star Trek televisual universe requires radical alterations to the basic premise of the franchise to keep it alive. Enterprise accomplished this radical modulation with virtuosity."

Meanwhile, unscholarly but equally engaging Mutant Reviewers is devoting the first week of June to Stars Wars and Trek. Should be a treat.