Star Trek: Into Darkness

------- Message From Friend --------
Jon, 

I watched Star Trek Into Darkness tonight

I felt I should share this with you.

Apparently, I am a Trekkie <sp>... I hate being a nerd but apparently I am a nerd/dork at heart. 

I wanted to share I have watched/loved Star Trek since I was six. But tonight I watched Star Trek "Into The Darkness" tonight I realized that Star Trek is a extremely politically charged. 

During the war we lost in Vietnam, the women's lib movement, the cold war, and the war against terror. Star Trek has conveyed the foreign policy of the United States in an entertaining fashion.......

Conveyed policy in 1966, Peace... but calming the bigger violent threats.

Then the Cold war, (next generation)

the vast period of peace under Clinton, (star Trek Voyager, Deep Space 9)

the terrorism threat... (Star Trek Enterprise)

and the threat we have now from our own trained assets under the current situation. (current Movies)

I wanna know your thoughts... I would much rather take a walk around the block or have a glass of scotch next to your canal... but Facebook is the only means of comms I have with anyone in the US.

----------- My Thoughts Below -----------------


Embrace the inner nerd. I wish i had embraced my inner nerd earlier than I did. As page one in Proverbs by King Solomon says "Knowledge Is Thy Life".

You are correct about Star Trek being politically charged. The Spock/Kirk juxtaposition is very politically charged. Spock spoke lines directly out of Das Capital and Communist Manifesto near the beginning of the film in the volcano scene. Kirk represents what was once the American man: Common sense smart, shooting from the hip/gut instinct, not intellectual, not perfect - but just, defiant towards structure, and ambitious, natural leader.

I've never heard the angle to the Star Trek series you presented, but when I was watching Star Trek Into Darkness at the MOSI IMAX Dome Theater in Tampa, Florida across from USF (the one with the Recyclosaurus) I had similar thoughts and felt like I was experiencing a different film than everyone else in the theater, but apparently similar to yours. 

Starfleet Admiral Alexander Marcus to me, represented the Neo-Conservative Agenda of the early 21st Century outlined in their publication "Rebuilding America's Defenses" found on www.newamericancentury.org. I can't quite give a parallel for him teaming up with Khan except that Khan's philosophy represented Social Darwinism, a popular ideology at the turn of the 20th Century.

Khan's interaction with Spock represented Game Theory, and was (in my opinion) the highlight of the film.

The largest metaphor to Star Trek is Captain Kirk and Mr Spock's duality. At the end Captain Kirk became more like Spock and Spock became more like Captain Kirk. Politically, this means Capitalists became more like the Communists/Socialists, and The Communists/Socialists became more like the Capitalists. (We can point to USA/China as a comparison.

Then they threw in references to Nibiru in the movie. Nibiru in UFO folklore is the planet the Annunaki came from and they are the ones who seeded the Earth with humans as commodities/slaves to mine for gold to bring back to their planet (also known by the Sumerians as "The 12th Planet" but referred more to in modern day as Planet X - and this is credited as why Gold has such a sought after value, and why up until August 15, 1971, money was backed by Gold.

The Star Trek crew and philosophy represents what Americans think our military is for, as well as our place in the world as a beacon of Good. Starfleet Admiral Alexander Marcus and Khan is "what we have become." Similar to "The Comedian"'s character in The Watchmen when they were in the future shooting up the place being the world police. "This is the American Dream!"

Khan's character was the strongest character in the film. I think realistically he would've conquered them all. I'm fascinated with the truth behind Social Darwinism. I've been recently having William Graham Sumner's ideology (Social Darwinism) showing up in many of the college lectures i listen to in the car show up un-solicited. I think he was Ayn Rand's teacher. 

The movie became non-believable and borderline ridiculous near the end when the battle arrived on Earth.

There was much to be explored and paralleled with the torpedos to be launched at the planet and where the blame would go. It was also interesting that without Khan, the Star Trek crew would have met certain doom on the planet. The amount of allegory going on is worth volumes of discussion. I might need to see the movie again.

I'm going off of my memory from 3 months ago, and have seen quite a few movies in that time span which is causing my memory to be overwritten to have a clear memory of what I saw.


I will now re-examine Star Trek with the new lens you've provided. (i've always played Nerd-Party-Politics with Star Wars, and was on the The Jedi's side, but have found that there is much to be appreciated from Star Trek and from learning the Philosophy of The Sith as well.)