Humanism in Star Trek
Susan Sackett
July 14, 2024
Susan Sackett long worked as executive assistant to Gene Roddenberry, the mastermind of Star Trek; her talk being titled “Humanism in Star Trek,” posing the question, “Did it boldly go?” (A reference to the series epigram, “To boldly go,” exploring the cosmos.) Sackett was also on the American Humanist Association Board of Directors from 2006 to 2018 and a Board Member of Humanists International from 2011 to 2017.
Sackett explained that Roddenberry was a committed humanist, and used the shows to push that philosophy. She said it was encapsulated as “IDIC” — “infinite diversity in infinite combinations.”
This was illustrated in two Star Trek episodes, videos of which Sackett presented in abridged form.
One was “Return of the Archons,” depicting a world inhabited by placidly contented people — zombie-like, actually. Their minds being controlled by an authoritarian regime via a computer system, which Sackett cast as a metaphor for religion and belief in God. She also said this episode was intended to vent Roddenberry’s repugnance toward the then-nascent phenomenon of computer games taking over people’s minds. A key message here was that creativity is essential for human life.
The second episode was “Who Watches the Watchers?” Here, people on another planet are somehow persuaded to resurrect ancient beliefs they’d long since grown out of — now worshipping as a god the star ship’s own Captain Picard. Something of an accident from his standpoint, and he’s appalled. Yet the mission’s “prime directive” bars interfering with the current state of a planet, inhibiting his taking any action. But somehow he manages to smooge this dilemma, and disabuses the planet’s populace.
Sackett said this episode shows what happens when people get tainted by religion. It included the verbiage, “Dark ages of superstition, ignorance and fear.” Later, in the Q&A, there was discussion of what amounted to censorship, with the network squelching any problematic content. But apparently, Roddenberry & company got away with stuff like that “Dark ages” lingo by situating it on another planet. Nothing to do with us Earthlings.