Rebroadcast • Ethics of the Final Frontier

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Hello and welcome to listeners of both the Superhero Ethics and Star Wars Generations podcast. This is Matthew your host for both of those. I'm sorry to say that this has been a really crazy week, and just this morning we found out that my grandfather had passed away, my spouse's grandfather, but he'd been a grandfather to me as well.

I'm good. Yeah, that's all I got. I'm good, yeah, okay, and very propose.

Also joining me is another guest who I've recorded a podcast with already. We had audio problems. They may get rescued, but I'm really glad to have back again. Professor Matthew Cappell. Matthew is a professor of American Studies in Anthropology at

For as many episodes as we could. We have a lot of.

Star Wars contact coming out now, so I said, hey, what can we do other than Star Wars? And he mentioned the Star Wars Star Trek because we can do both of them, Star Trek and the Frontier. And I thought this would be a fantastic topic. So Matthew, so good have you with us? Say hello, Hello?

Just to be clear, it was a it was a fan letter, and I was not giving you suggestion.

I think you mentioned something like this is a cool like somehow we got into the conversation. I will say that a lot of people have sent me fan letters and they've turned into unknown solicitations to be on the podcast. But I'm very glad that you've done. I'm joining all of our conversations. I think this is gonna be a great one. So let me just kind of start by

Sure, so, I'm a historian and anthropologist, though my doctorate's in American studies, and I've done a lot of books in my career on science fiction film.

And the reason I.

Like science fiction film is because it's basically myth. It's the way we tell myth today. If you want to talk about any kind of myth, you have to start with Batman. You can't start with SEUs, right, And in that context, my PhD thesis had an entire chapter on the frontier in Star Trek, and that's why I brought it up with you. And it's very much a topic that has got ethical issues all around it, but as most of Star Trek does so generally, I'm kind of

Nice, Nice, Well, I'm glad it's such a great topic.

I think I mentioned the other time we try to record a podcast that the first time I thought seriously about Star Wars beyond just you know, being I love the laser sort of fights and things like that. Was watching the Peter Campbell, you know, and George Lucas talking about the power the power of myth and Star Wars, and since then I've come to understand that there's a lot more to those ideas than what those two gentlemen

American acceptionism and all that talk about.

What what does the frontier mean as a concept in American mythology.

Well, I think the easy place to start is to point out that for three or four generations, historians thought the frontier was a real thing that they were talking about as a historical artifact. But when the nineteen sixties were older around and people stopped thinking about history as the history of white men only, we came to the conclusion pretty quickly that our notion of the frontier was highly flawed. Not in terms of the frontier is bad,

The Great West.

Year.

It is the existence of an area of free land. It's continuous recession and the advance of American settlement westward. Explain American development. That's eighteen ninety three in Chicago. We can take it apart right at free Land. There was nobody there free land. It's this continuing colonization of this free land from the time of the Mayflower to eighteen

And to hear you say that, I can see what to mean about how it is such a dangerous part of the American kind of mythology. You know, it's up there with the like pulled up by your own bootstraps of you know, as Americans, it's our job not only to continually conquer the new frontier, to bring the American goodness to the West, and then going to the Spanish lands and then going you know, you can see how

Show off by mentioning it.

I remember reading that in history class, so it's one of the only things I can remember from American history.

And the fact that.

The fact that you've read it is problematic because we stopped making students read it in a like nineteen sixty.

So so I want to go.

I want to go find your guy and tell her and that this was this.

Was a mistake.

But anyway, unlus it was read within a context that was like aware of yes, which is possible.

Yeah, yeah, there was a.

Kind of historiography aspect to it. But yeah, Jeffrey Gunn, if you're listening, I have some questions. Have been an essay I wrote on a mid term and now another professor is backing me up. So yeah, Paul, what for you, like, do you have memories this kind of idea of the frontier just kind of think something you've thought about in general and your many praises of America that I know you're so fond of.

Yeah, yeah, I would say that, you know, for all the failings of the education system that.

You know, I was incarcerated in for my youth, I think that actually the first school that I went to Bank Street from like age five until thirteen or fourteen, I think did a good job of being like, no, there were native people here, and first you're going to learn about that, and then you're going to learn about you know, people showing up from the Netherlands and then people showing up from England and et cetera, et cetera,

But that's it's interesting.

You know, you're talking about space and you know space, the final Frontier and all that, like space actually there you know, the word kind of says a lot of it, like there there actually is space out there, right, there are many, many, many uninhabited planets. Earth is inhabited, It has been inhabited.

All over for a very long time.

And so the idea of this frontier, it's like there were people there, right, There's animals there, like there were trees like and all of which you know, many got got killed, right, Whereas the idea of something like colonizing Mars, for instance, it's like, well, maybe just everyone should move to Mars.

Like it's like there's there's I mean, as far as.

We know, there's not life there, right, So if you were to go to that frontier, you know, into space, granted at some point I think you probably would run into some form of life, and probably some form of intelligent life that maybe wouldn't regard humans as particularly intelligent life.

The meme I keep getting is the how you know, Star Trek was written by white guys and it's going where no one was going before, and there's always people there.

Yeah, I think that that's kind of what I was going to say, is that, Yeah, you're right, like actual space would make sense for this frontier mythology. One of the things I think is that I think we define can talk about is it in Star Trek it feels very much that same idea of the undiscovered Country, which is the name of actually one of the better Star

Correct.

Yeah, I've seen maybe like five to eight of the movies of different eras, and then I've seen some episodes here and there of various different shows and like halves of a bunch of episodes, but I haven't like sat down and watched a whole series of the television or like all the movies in.

Order, right, So, which is good.

I always like having someone who doesn't necessarily know the source material we're talking about it as much just to kind of bring in that perspective in the conversation. So for you, when I when I mentioned that the idea that we're talking about of like Star Trek and the Frontier, what comes to mind to you about like that, what that entails and what Star Trek and Frontiers have to do with each other?

Yeah, I mean it seems to me like it is kind of an allegory for the mythology of the West, and it is about you know, as far as I can tell, it's about the enterprise going out and stumbling upon different cultures that are already there and then not interfering, but interfering but like I don't know, they have some directives and it seems to me like, yeah, it's not a bunch of just like open space really right, It's like there's a lot out there, and then you know,

And movies or whatever however you want to describe it.

A universe that would probably appeal to a lot of my sensibilities, perhaps more than like Star Wars does. But it doesn't have laser swords, so you know, it just I don't know, I never super grabbed onto it. But the idea of I mean, the idea of frontiers, like it's perspective.

Right, like it's it's it doesn't have to be just like white men.

It could be like the Klingons could have what they regarded as a frontier. And I mean, I think is there something in the Star Wars, I mean the Star Trek like I don't know if you call it mythology, but of like that a bunch of other species were aware of humanity but was sort of like, no, we'll just leave them alone because like they're not quite like ready to interact with other like other cultures and species. Yet is that a thing in one of them? Somewhere?

There are a couple of episodes that play with that, but they never really folded into the overarching story very much, but like, here's a massively superior alien intelligence who's like, maybe when you're ready, we'll talk to you.

Right, Yeah, there's a small version of it in that

I kind of look at these two things together.

Okay, so I'm going to say like two things because Paul had this really good point. Maybe the Klingons have a frontier. Right before Americans talk about the frontier, frontier was a different kind of word. There was a frontier between France and Germany, and what they meant was this area that's not quite French and not quite German, and there's a cultural competition going on to see what it's going to be.

The tyrannies rane or the parodies. My ancestors were from there, so you.

Could have grown up speaking French, you could have grown up speaking German.

And that's what frontiers were.

Actually, the Doctors without Borders was founded in Paris. Their actual name is French, and it's not Doctors without Borders, it's Medicine frontier. And that kind of frontier is a different kind of frontier than we mean. The kind of frontier Americans talk about is the kind of frontier where we go and we we discover an economic opportunity and

Right, And but it's true.

So yes, so there has to be like this idea of a frontier that's between us, the Federation and Klingons, as well as the frontier of empty space. I wish there was more empty space. Then again, I wish there was warp.

Still.

Okay, here's here's another quote I brought because here's the Star Trek doesn't want to do this thing, but they were do it. There's this great book from the eighteen thirties called Westward ho and it is by a guy whose name is James Kirk Pauling.

That name has some significance in a Star Trek kind of way.

It kind of does. And here's what he says about traveling west.

He says, no.

Matter where he goes, you know, Eastern European males, no matter where he goes to whatever region, he carries within his destiny, which is to civilize the world and to rule it afterwards. That is American frontier racism in a nutshell. Righty is perfect and it's James Kirk.

There is falling. Yeah, and yes, please go.

Well, it's funny because I know that like when Geene Roddenberry was marketing the show and trying to get people to buy into it. Like the phrase that he used is now quite famous. He is, it's wagon trained to the stars, and so it's meant to be like a

But it's the same idea carrying that out to everyone.

And it's funny because in that way, and as a historian you can tell me if I'm wrong here, it does feel like in that extent America is exceptional in

Yeah, I mean the French for a while thought Lgiers was part of France, right, But yeah, go back to the Northwest Ordinance. But the United States did shortly after the beginning of the constitutional period, was say, here's this new area that goes all the way to where you're at Matthew, Minnesota, north of the Ohio, and here's how they can create new states, and those states, when they're admitted to the Union, will be entirely and completely equal to the existing states.

That was the new thing.

So it was a mistake with Ohio, but every place else they're like, okay, Indiana, you are just as good as Massachusetts, right, And that was that was relatively unique. The other thing that was really unique about it was they said, when you create townships, you have to sell

Yeah, it's this specific thing about America's exceptionally Yeah, and that last part. When I lived in Wisconsin, they like to point out the land grant thing because the main historical result of that, at least according to people in Wisconsin, where this is very important, is Big ten college football.

You know, another thing, but let's pull it back to go ahead.

I just want to respond, as a trivia enthusiast, do you know what country actually has the most time zones?

Of Russia? France?

France has something like thirteen time zones because actually all of those places are regarded as part of France.

French shamoa like that.

So they might not actually be, you know, conceptualized that way, but certainly in a legal sense, they are actually France, and thus it has like thirteen time zones or something absurd compared to like China's one, which which is a.

Kind of like with a British empire, for example, Like they were always very clear like this is all British territory, but it is not great breakin right, right exactly.

It's different that way Russia is the largest contiguous number of time zones or something like that, right, that makes sense on France actually thirteen.

So all right.

Pulling it back to Star Trek though, Yeah, it's interesting though, especially because and I think in many ways Star Trek is I think, for good reason, often regarded as being a fairly progressive show for its time always, but like you know, today, there's a lot of stuff on the more modern Star Trek shows have characters of color, and women characters and transgender characters all in very important roles.

It's baked into America.

Well, yeah too.

Maybe maybe the strength of Star Trek is not that they just wholeheartedly accepted the idea of the frontier, but that they tried to take it and twist it to the own ends. That was a much more woke version of the frontier. Right, you can't get rid of pick a world's religion, but you can change the way we

So, what do you think of how start is kind of very broad question.

We get more specifics, but kind of taken overall, how do you feel like Star Trek has wrestled with the concept of the frontier?

Okay, so.

Poorly fair, but increasingly, not so initially. The original Star Trek, which I watched when I was writing my PhD but just because I had to, is very is very liberal in many wonderful ways, but it also still has many skirts, right. It's a product of its time. Nobody says Napoleon was a bad general because he didn't have an air force.

And now I don't even know what to call it now.

It's very much not about a historical narrative. They try to avoid it in any way they can. I guess the New One Strange New Worlds is less like that. But they are fully aware now that if they talk about the frontier too much, they're going to come off bad. So instead they try to avoid talking about the frontier, except for the voiceover at the beginning. We've got these new people, and aren't they great. It's like middle school

I think there's room for basically like confronting it more head on within the sort of mythology of Star Trek of having more more nuance.

Yes, I think there is. I don't think they're going to do so. I don't think. I don't think it's a salable script, right all right. I totally think that the current group of creators are would.

Be very capable of doing it.

I don't but they but they are totally professionals who would like to get renewed.

Yeah.

Yeah, Well it's interesting because I do think that in some ways, especially some of the newer stuff. And we're gonna have spoilers here for all the seasons of Discovery. I have not watched straight New Worlds yet, but if you need to spoil that, go right ahead. You know, there is more and more of the we have met someone else and realized that they are superior to us

But you're right, it's not connected to it at all.

Then no one ever says that that, you know, no one ever uses that language of exploring to find where we're different or to find something else. It's just that language of the frontier has gone away entirely.

Yes, very much. I think that's okay.

So it's best not to be overly explicit. You're not going to make a show that is so very American as Star Trek without being American. To me, the concern is the more popular Star Trek becomes internationally, I think it's the more americanized the planet. And that's problematic. Right when when people in Bali are really excited for the new Star Trek, I'm.

Terrified because you think it's another way of sort of spreading frontier propaganda.

Yeah, you know, we might as well be selling them Genes and.

Elvis Presley, which is already happening, right.

Yeah, it's like.

Any other element in that right, But it's but I do think there's there's something to be said for like selling the mythology as opposed to just like the goods kind of right, like and I don't know, I mean, do you think that's something that comes with the like the material things as well, Like when a McDonald's goes somewhere or a Walmart open somewhere, that that kind of brings some of the sort of like American mythology as much as just like you know, the deforestation based hamburgers

You know, Yeah, definitely.

I mean there's a reason one of the biggest employers of anthropologists in the world is Target Corporation.

Wow, really yeah. Interesting.

They do everything from figuring out what to put on end caps by watching people behave in stores to figuring out I guess there's like three target layouts, figuring out how those target layouts work for areas, for specific subcultures. So yeah, that's that's what anthropology has become.

So then can you learn about a place by looking at its target I know, I'm like way off the you know it.

Yes you can.

I my doctorate overseas, and so there were there were no targets, and I got there shortly after I guess Woolworths had gone out of business, so there was not a warl Worths, not that I'd never been to one. So they had their local stores, and I learned more about the city I lived in from the stores I had to go buy sheets at, and a very like in the in my guts kind of way, right.

I don't know if this is still true, but I know for a while the Wall Street Journal had as one of the things that considered a leading like sign of foreign economic activity was based on the price of a big mac in the capital city of every country in the world, Because there is MacDonald's in the capital city of almost every country in the world. Yeah, we're exploring the frontier of this topic, which is why it's okay they're kind of wandering off on tangents.

Tangents are now the frontier.

And Yeah, I think it's such anangining question because it's it's something like Star Trek.

I think there is this like.

One of the things that comes up a lot in the kind of media criticism that we do on this podcast is this idea of how do you wrestle with you know, know, stuff that is, you know, where there's you feel there's a lot of good things in a story or an actor or whatever, but that parts that are also problematic, and what do you do with you know, all the feelings about this.

I feel like Star Trek is.

It creates sort of a new version of this problem because what Star Trek is doing is trying to keep alive the story of something that was originally told now I'm bad at math sixty years ago, and it continues and like the writers are clearly aware of the problem of it originally. Like I think if you started a new Star Trek today, like without using the word Star Trek, a new version of it, you'd maybe want to like

So how do we change that?

How do we maybe not have to be all white people who are in command and all this stuff? But you're still beholden to the past. And as you said that, the Frontier is so integral to Star Trek. So I think it's just really interesting there about how the show has tried to kind of like be aware of that, will also not entirely cutting itself off from its past.

I would agree with that.

I think it's important to defend Star Trek from the simple perspective that you can't avoid the frontier if you want to talk about something that's americanly cultural. Right. Another anthropologist, a guy named Conrad Kotek, used to write in his intro textbook that Star Trek was a retelling of the Thanksgiving Men. It was a multicultural get together in one

Like when people look back at stories that are told today that people think of as like some of the more enlightened stories, you know, or things that are certainly trying hard to be to like understand the world as it is and to be considerate of all different sorts of people and you know, maybe animals usually not like I think people will look back and be like, oh, well, you know, they tried, you know, and they did better

And it's not saying you shouldn't do that, but it's.

Like, I don't know, I'd just like to see more like new media that's like, oh, I had an idea, let's make this story, you know, and then maybe not have a thousand piece expanded universe, you know. I say this while podcasting on like Star Wars Universe podcast, and I you know, commenting on things like that, but I think it's something that is hard to get away from when like there are roots in some story. It's like it's you know, it's in there, and I don't know.

I think with Star Wars Star Trek, now, though I'm saying we shouldn't have more Star Trek or more Batman, is the same thing as saying we shouldn't have another Lawyer show me right, It's a genre to itself.

At this point. There.

You know, let's be clear, much of Star Trek sucks, much of Batman suck, most of bat Man stuck.

Sorry.

But also another point to make is you can tell me this is an inappropriate way of putting it, but we're essentially three mostly white, mostly American, mostly inculturated male guys.

Talking about Starkrek.

But I noticed with a bunch of my friends when Michelle Nichols died, they all showed the same image from an episode of the original series on their feeds, And it had never occurred to me that this was an important moment.

There's a moment in one.

Of the episodes where somebody gets called away from the bridge and Michelle Nichols character is told to like sit down at the navigator's pose, and to this day, Black American nerds freak out about that one moment because it's so inconsequentially normal when it happened, and I don't think we would have noticed it that way. So, yeah, it's important to remember that perhaps our perspective is.

Narrow in that content, right.

But it's also the thing Paul said that's really key is maybe we're not We were not in a place to look back at Star Trek and Go. They're not as good as they could have been if it hadn't been for Star Trek pushing us in the Red director.

Yeah, I mean, I've recently been reading Jane Austen and what are to say, what I sound more culture than I am. I've been watching a lot of adaptations of Jane Austen stuff and they're wonderful. And clearly she was for her time or even for today, making incredibly needed

So you know, there's some there's always that.

But I think the point about perspective that you make is also so important, and it is one where I do think Star Trek is also really pushing things forward. Is that.

And some of the other things we're doing this is too.

Certainly Marvel, I think is getting better at this, and I want DC to get better at as well. He is trying to say, Okay, well, let's take that same story of the Frontier, or let's take the same story of the billionaire or wherever it is, but let's tell it from a new not only tell it, tell it about new people, but have new people tell the story.

You know, and I know the I don't.

My understanding is that the writer's room for discovery has been much more diverse than it has been in the past. Certainly a lot of the kind of Marvel stuff and the getting women writers, women writers of color, queer writers,

But I think the idea of a frontier is.

This is a metaphorical way of talking about opportunity, and the new frontier is to extend opportunities of broader classes for people.

I think that's a.

Part of it was supposed to be doing.

What I more mean is the thing is like The Orville, which I was ible to my dying day to fend the idea that The Orville is a Star Trek show. It is not officially licensed by Star Trek, but it is moree hundred percent a love letter to it. For those who don't like sethm falland humor. There's a lot less of that after the first season. But that show is one thing I think that that show is doing so well. That's that Star Trek did so well for

I guess that was more.

What I meant is the idea of saying, like, can we push new ideas in new ways and like ask us to think about the concepts in our own world differently by showing us the possibility of something that that's fundamentally different. But of those some questions and maybe that's not a frontier at all, Maybe that's something entirely different.

Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I have like three or four things lodged in my brain that I'm trying to like be like, Okay, I wanted to say this and this and.

This to to this point.

I think, you know, I mean like knowledge is a frontier, right, but it's also like it's a frontier from a perspective because like that information theoretically maybe exists, or like somebody knows something, you know, but like maybe you don't. So that's like your own sort of frontier of discovery. But but yeah, I mean it does seem like it's kind of just a metaphor you know, it's like the undiscovered

Now than there used to be.

You know. Also, I wanted to clarify I wasn't saying like I don't think there should be any more Batman stories. I don't think there should be any more Star Trek stories. I think there should be a lower percentage of stories that are based on previously existing media.

I think there still.

Should be some You make a great character, fine, keep making new stories with that character.

Cool, no problem, But.

Like also makes some more new characters more frequently, you know, and invest in those characters as well.

You know. It's not like it doesn't happen.

It just happens less than I think would be you know, ideal, And I think when you do, like then you have more people have the opportunity to create their own characters as opposed to trying to adapt some other character.

To their sort of view.

I also wanted to mention what Buffy Bot said in the chat, which was kind of similar to what you're talking about. The Michelle Nichols, who played Huro in the original Star Trek and recently died, was apparently she was thinking of leaving after the first season, and she was like talking to Martin Luther King, who was like, look, you know, this role might not seem like a huge deal to you, but like it's a big deal to

I Woibie Goldberg has talked off in about how the first time she thought of becoming an actress was when she was a young child and saw the show and she talked to her mother because was the first time she had ever seen a black woman on TV or on screen who wasn't a maid, and that really meant a lot to her. But yeah, but at the same time, there's some great creators I was reading recently Black Black Women creators talking about how the character was.

It was fantastic to see a black woman in that role.

But in terms of like it was a woman surrounded by men basically as the secretary, the glorified secretary, you know,

Right.

Well, so here's the thing.

When we talk about science fiction, we're really just talking about American science fiction, because everything we think of is science fiction is really just an American science fiction. Even Jules Hearn was not particularly frontier. So more and more science fiction creators are working to ignore the traditions of American science fiction. But there's others that just never got exposed to it. Really, there's a huge wealth of stuff

In fact that there is a frontier.

It's really dangerous, and we have to do everything we can to make sure nobody notices us, as they will come into dry us. And that's the final summation of the.

Story that they give.

The aliens find us, they will come and kill us. That's why we never hear people when we're searching for extradress intelligence, because no actual integral interstellar intelligence is going to let us survive because they know it's a threat to them that they do.

So everybody gets killed.

And that is so not American science fiction. It's kind of ridiculous, right, because American science fiction is so tied up in the frontier and it always has been. I don't know, the John Carter movie was pretty not.

As bad as people said that.

The books it was based on from the early twentieth century, of these great little Edgar Rice Burroughs books. You know, they're like Tarzan on Mars, and they're just fantastic, and they have red people and they have green people and they talk about them in completely racist and sexist ways because it's, you know, nineteen twenty, but it's very American. It's very much the Virginian goes to Mars. No Chinese science fiction is like that. No afro futurist science fiction is.

Really like that. And we have American.

Science fiction writers who refuse to deal with frontier ideology based reviews, and.

They're writing much better stuff.

And Kay Jennison three years in a row for writing essentially books about African myth put in a science fiction copy.

It's fine there. I'm embarrassed.

I can't remember that of the person who traditionally Otavia Butler wrote Parable of the Sewer, Right, Okay, so I did remember. Yeah, I mean those books are some of my favorite science fiction, and yeah, I didn't even thought on the track. They're very much about turning inward to community and community building and what that looks like instead of this idea of sort of pushing outward into a frontier mythology.

I feel like, oh.

I was just gonna say, like, I feel like what I know of like Japanese science fiction from animation is doesn't seem particularly frontier related, Like even Cowboy Bebop, which is, you know, it's not all it's not on Earth. It's like it's you know, it's in the Solar System, and it's not about encountering new races of people or new species or new cultures. It's about you know, I mean, they are literally colonizing the various different planets in the

Like it's everywhere definitely right, Yeah, how would be bought science fiction that that seems like it's very much just about the same kind of stories we're telling now, except now instead of getaway cars, we've got getaway spaceships and some laser guns every now and then. But it's very similar kind of storytelling.

But it does something that is also really cool, which is it decides which things from American sci fi it wants to use, and it uses them no way it wants to, and it just takes them and uses them. It doesn't take them and you use them without thinking about them. It examines them carefully and definitely system.

Do you have any specific example we talked about general terms, any specific examples of Star Trek movies or TV episodes that you think are kind of a particular illustration of either positive or negative uses of or negative positive or negative interactions with his frontier idea.

Well, if you, in a general context, think about how many times people in Star Trek.

Have to deal with the nineteenth century somehow.

There's an episode of the original series where they after we fight the Okay Corral by there there's an episode with Abraham Lincoln. There's a number of episodes of Next Generation that take place in the nineteenth century. They go meet Mark Dwayne at one point.

Is played by the guy who played Data, and he does a much better It does a good jobs as a pretty good actor.

Yes, cetera goes to other times, you know, they say Wales and whatnot, but they go to the nineteenth century a lot because the nineteenth century is where the frontier is and it just it fits. So when I think about refighting the Okay Corral or going to Mark Twain in the Next Generation, I think that's very Star Trek.

Because they become more human.

The New Serious Strange and Wilves is doing the same thing with the porn the lizard people.

That Kirk fights.

They're completely incomprehensible and that's why they're interested. But at least I think the New Serious Strange and the Rules understands what it's doing. Paul, you're going to say something.

Is that a problem that you feel the writers are attempting to solve, or that the characters are attempting to solve within the context of the story, or not really a problem, but something that the writers are then kind of going away from after doing this interesting thing to try to make it easier for the viewers.

I don't think.

I think we have to put it in capitalistic terms again. Right, So you invent this great villain, and this villain is great, and everybody loves this villain, so you got to write another story with this villain, but you've got to have more of the villain for the viewer to get.

So.

So the Borg and the first time you meet them is like for four minutes and they're just like automatons. And now when we talk.

About the Borg, were like they're led by a queen.

It's a hierarchical society because every new episode that teach of them had to make them more understandable. Otherwise there was no story to tell. And in the telling of Storage, you're.

Always going to make them more understandable.

But it's the frontier is really about cannot be understood org originally, but it's hard to tell a story about something that is out of your context. And so yeah, they give it the Borg queen and by the way, she's sexy and seductive and like that. It's fun watcher flirt with data. But to me it took away a lot of the mystery of the Borg and a similar thing I was thinking about this way back. But like to me, one of the fundamental problems Star Wars has always had.

In some ways, it's a.

Star I'm going to mix up Star Wars and Star Trek. I do what I'm talking about Star Wars, so it goes both ways at least, you know. Star Trek in theory is about this completely moneyless society. But the writers keep realizing how much of the conflict in our own world, in our media, in our narratives, is about money. If you take money completely off the table. It's really hard to find stories to tell. So now there's stories about, well,

And that's kind of the tension I think that you get there a lot.

Yeah, right, well, hm, that's why they have to break their prime directive so much.

You've got to have conflicts somehow, and if it's not going to be money, it's going to be something else. And all of all of our narratives are about money. Although that's why Bruslayne is a billion.

I went back and did some check.

He's not a billionaire in the original cons a millionaire, so inflation, that's right.

Go on, yeah he's a millionaire.

Yeah, a million dollars.

He'll have to be a trillionaire in Batman Beyond.

Then, in much the same way that Star Trek can escape the Frontier stories from Star Trek or all science fiction can escape capitalism. It's the same thing. It's the same idea. The Frontier was about opportunity to make money, and Star Trek has never been able.

To avoid that problem. Right.

So Kayla Gwinn has that famous quote. She was at the National Book Awards in a room full of like amazonic sects getting an award, and she said about capitalism, she said, you can't imagine a world about capitalism. Remember two centuries ago, nobody could remember imagine a world without the divine right of kings. And but Star Trek still has not imagined the world about capitalism because they can't. Because then there's the problem with Star Trek has always

I do feel like there are so many conflicts that people find a way to have though with one another. You know, it's but that is challenge of especially like a TV show, right, a movie You're like, Okay, I'm going to make this one movie. I'm going to come up with a conflict. We're going to build the whole

It's it's doable, you know.

But I do think Hollywood and a lot of storytelling is addicted to conflict and just money is what people know, right, And and it's like, I think writers and viewers and executives have such a hard time being like, okay, let's let go of just totally put away this one sort of like vector of conflict, and then then we have to think about what's left right, and and it's if you're trying to do twenty some episodes a year, it's like that's it's pretty hard.

But like, I don't know, I feel like you could do it. But maybe maybe if they did.

Like globalization or media gives me something to do it a little.

I think you're right right now, Hollywood is not going to take some you know, Ugandan or Paraguayan you know author and give them five hundred million dollars to make a story about a science fiction story written that outside of the American context. But we're seeing more and more TV shows strut Tour really explore those things.

One of my partner, Mary, has.

Really gotten into a TV show I believe it's called Untamed, but it's basically is an epic fantasy story with you know, like different warring houses and sword fighting and magic set in China, and it's told by you know, it's made by Chinese creators, and it's you know about China. The way like Lord of the Rings is kind of very much like, you know, drawn out of Western you know, German and English mythology. This is very much drawn out

It's not that I think.

I think at the end point, I'm never going to end up saying, Okay, this is better because it doesn't have the Frontier. But I think the more we get to watch TV science fiction that doesn't have the frontier, it allows us to see how much the frontier is a part of Star Trek and that's necessarily bad. Like I love Star Trek and I think Star Trek has

Yeah, I think like Netflix actually has done a good job of broadening their sort of sourcing of of shows right at least and maybe movies as well, where they're I mean, I watch most of what I watch is from Spain or Mexico, you know, and like because I like to watch my fiction in Spanish because then I

One of an Americans. One of the things that you never know. It's funny because it's the apps. You hardly noticed at the times, but the writers have said they were very explicit about this. You know, the main one of the main characters is gay, and gay romance is

Yeah.

And it's not even that you can like never tell the story. It's just like, don't always tell the story. Whatever the story is, like tell different stories. And like when there's something that's such a low hanging source of conflict, it's like, you know, it's like, oh, should we do that one?

Yeah, let's do that one.

You know.

I mean there's a reason that there's like websites about like TV tropes, right, and it's like, oh, it's this trope. Oh, it's that trope, like there's just like you know, a list to say, oh, we'll do one of those episodes that like, you know, we'll do one of the episodes where somebody gets like one volume of the encyclopedia and then then all the words that start with a V or a P or whatever, like you know. I mean, there's a lot of ideas, there's a lot of sources of conflict.

You don't always have to.

Go to the like really low hanging ones, particularly when they're ones that like you know, echo traumatic events that many people have experienced, right, like maybe back away from those completely for a while, and then you can sprinkle them in occasionally if you want, but doing it in a conscious way, but like just not not always the thing. Whatever the thing is, whether the thing's the frontier definitely, or you know, homophobia or violence or anything like that, or criminal law.

Or criminal law exactly exactly.

I mean, if there's a American shows tendathy or you can do forty two minutes in any of them show about two people not communicating effectively of the first time.

I mean, if you if you hang out how you say so and then talk about media.

One of the first things that will come out of the show.

I think a lot of people monogamous or anything can be sick of the love trying a trope, but hang out with polyamorous people and talk about love triangles and the like, why doesn't she just date both of them? Is a concept you're going to hear a lot, you know, because Yeah, I think I think especially when you're those tropes feel all the worse when you're you're sort of living out that, Like, it doesn't have to be this way.

What's been a fantastic conversation.

I want to kind of give both everyone a chance to kind of say last words and start to wrap up. Matthews, any kind of big parts of this we haven't covered, or any kind of quotes or other points you wanted to make before we start to wrap up.

Hey, you know what, I actually do have a quote.

Okay.

So nineteen sixty Kennedy gets elected and he's going to send people to the new He doesn't know he's going to do it. He's going to be inaugurated in the end of January sixty one. He gets a science advisor. He's the first president to get a science advisor. A guy named Jerome Weisner, who's the president of that night, the engineer, I get an entire committee report on what we should do in the space program, and one of the things he said was, you know, probably, no matter what,

My mother was very much a sixties hippie.

I wanted to say that it makes it the.

Best way to understand the fundamental hopefulness of the nineteen sixties is to watch Star Trek, because especially she would say this as we were watching the next generation the nineties, which is very positive and I think has hope in it, but it doesn't have that fundamental the sense of like science is going to make everything better that it does.

And I think you.

Could like probably do an interesting sociology class in America in the sixties versus America in the nineties just by excoose me looking at those two shows.

So yeah, yeah, that's.

Very true living through chemistry.

We're going to do the sports ethics one. We'll get to that promise. You can have. Barry Bonds is your hero moment.

That's right.

There you go, there you go. He took a super serum, that's for sure.

I didn't say he's by heros he there's a difference.

He did.

Yeah, So I've really enjoyed this. I don't know a ton about Star Trek. I hadn't really thought about the frontier in this exact manner, and I enjoyed getting to explore that with the two of you and and the perspective you're bringing.

I did see the Borg movie.

H there was there's a movie right where they're like, the main antagonist is the Borg, and.

I enjoyed it.

It felt kind of more like a horror movie than like what I expect out of Star Trek a little bit because they're like a little bit of the.

Z will be assimilated.

And I just I've always wanted to make well for the last five or six years. A teacher that says resistance is futile, the only solution is revolution. That's all I got, like a nont like a quiet revolution.

It is a common play on the that's not like it's never me.

There does money that Star Wars has, and probably the two most successful I think the two most successful movie is Our Next Our First Contact, which, like you're right, is very much it has a lot of Star Trek themes but still as many as a horror movie, and Wrath of Khan, which has very little to do with the normal Star Trek themes of like exploration and encountering the new and ethical challenges. It's basically just a submarine movie, like if you watch a World War two submarine movie

So the first season of.

Next Generation, all of the like lower ranked officers are in miniskirts, including the men.

It's just like sure, yeah, just.

Yeah, never a new character have a fun little like why not like this is just this how the people dress.

I feel like the phrase like you know, who wears the pants on this spaceship or something.

I don't think you can exactly know when ratings week was loading. I'm not sure for Next Generation by looking at when they go to the planet where the people have some very cultural anthropological reason for not wearing clothing, but it.

Was almost always during ratings week.

You know.

Matthew had a last comment to make.

M hmm, Well, you know, say what you want.

The other things when we say to her, like we think about like her kissing Kirk shouldn't be a big deal, and whatever else you say about her character. Numerous TV stations in the South wouldn't play that episode, so clearly it was a like real groundbreaker, and I love the way that, Like I don't love the J J Airams star Trek very much, but I think one thing he did was he said, Okay, let's take over his character and make her much more badass, and he gives her

To an extent.

This is the people recently have been saying bad things about the News Star Trek, and they're saying, you know, it was never so political and it was never so woke. And the reason they're saying that is because the stuff that they were being political and woke about.

Is just normal enough. So they won. They won.

The fact that I kind of would love to see that, Like, you know, if you could ever talk to forced ghost jack ugg about and have him deal with the fact that Marvel is all of a sudden woke, you know, this night the Jew in nineteen forty one, before we're in World War Two, writing a story about literally Jews creating a golam to go and punch Hitler. You know, you could tell him that we want. I think he'd still want to punch everybody who thinks Marvel is now

Matthew.

We're definite going to have you back on. But in the meantime, for people who are really intrigued they want to read some stuff you've written or find other stuff you're doing, where can they look.

I try to avoid being online. You know, I have a Facebook that is about it.

But if you just go to my web page, which is Matthew Kapell dot com, you can see the stuff I've done, which you know, there's a couple of books on Star Trek that I'd rather have that are listen there.

I so appreciate professor saying that, but.

You can also always get used, right, and.

Yeah, I have to.

I have to assign one of my own books this coming semester.

I'm the class.

I had a professor who would because the books are in grad school. They were reprinted every year, and they would like change the pit pit pagination a bit so that it would hard to figure out. And so she would say, like, I want you to read pages twenty through twenty seven in the twenty fifteen version, but that would be pages twenty two through twenty nine and the tooth like she just would do that to like help out.

But what is the z mad Man up to? Yeah, like a lot.

Of chess lately, like and which you know, I've been looking at chess books and they're they're you know, they're actually somewhat reasonably priced.

I was I was.

Looking at like the Mi T Open coursewear a lot of times because I think, oh, maybe i'll study this, maybe I'll study that, And it's like it's great that all these things are free online. But at the same time, then you look at the books you're supposed to get and you're like, oh, my goodness, Like you know, but yeah, so I think it's great to promote your own used books as well.

Yeah, I'm I don't know.

I'm tweeting, I'm playing chess, I'm playing poker, I'm doing things on various I haven't.

Been making well.

Thank you about so much, I say to a listener wrote ins and great feedback Thor movie. I am going to read your feedback, Paul, as I understand has not yet seen the Thorn movie, so I just want to wait until that happens. But it should be going to the Disney Plus fairly soon September eighth. Okay, cool, So we will get this because we did a great episode on Thor and the Odyssey with a rabbi that I.

Really am the November eight. Oh thank you.

I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and I give him a plug again pop culture Rabbi on Great check Out. But of course, so we will get to that listener content and we love more. So let us know what you think. What do you think of this whole concept that we're talked about. Are you a Star Trek fan? Do you hate Star Trek? Is this new ideas of this stuff you've been thinking about before?

Let us know.

You can find all the ways to contact us by going to the Ethical Panda dot Com. There, of course, you'll also find all the other podcasts that I do, including Star Wars Universe podcast, which Paul is a frequent guest on. We're going to get Matthew on there as well. We're going to Right now, we're doing some stuff with the books and continuing our coverage of the TV show. So Rebels were getting really excited for and Or. And

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