Example: Star Trek
Note: This article will be as spoiler-free as possible, but it will be diving into this story quite deeply.
This was likely not where most of you anticipated a conversation of covert Christian storytelling would end up. An oddly godless utopia, with humanism in abundance, where the theory of evolution is codified into reality and half of the characters toy with hedonism of various kinds. However, there is very good reason to include the incredibly secular Star Trek franchise in a discussion of covert messaging. That is because it does so very, very well.
This article will focus specifically on Star Trek: The Next Generation, as it has a lot to offer in terms of escapism and delight. It imagines a well-ordered utopia placed in the center of a rich, lively galaxy with new wonders at every turn. It has an episode for everyone from the murder mysteries to love triangles to high-stakes adventures to political peril and turmoil. Overtly, it focuses on virtues such as honor, courage, duty, kindness, mercy, self-sacrifice, and so on and so forth. Covertly, however, under the guise of alien cultures and far-flung star systems, it comments on personal rights and freedoms, sexual freedom, cultural clashes, classism, the right to life, slavery, misogyny, misandry, digital love, personhood, and a myriad of other heavy and controversial topics. However, it is possible to watch Star Trek and miss or ignore all of these discussions. To sit down and enjoy the adventures of the Enterprise NCC-1701-D without giving a second thought to what each episode is really trying to say.
This is due to four main strategies that allowed Star Trek to discuss weighty topics without burdening the story, described below:
The message made perfect sense to the story. Each of the above topics fit into something that was relevant to the characters, the plot, or the greater Star Trek universe as a whole. Commentary on personhood, for example, were typically led by Commander Data — an android. The questions of his sentience, his right to independence, and his place in the wider, cultural context of the Federation can be applied to any person in the real world, trying to find their identity and place in the world. Those discussions of rights made perfect sense to have with Data as a character and furthered his own character growth and arc. The audience was engaged with the story — most cheering on his successes and mourning his failures — through Data.
It was removed from the audience. While the daily life and adventures contained within The Next Generation did have moments relatable to the real world, the majority of it was foreign enough to create a distance between the story and the audience. Food came out of replicators, broken bones were mended in a matter of minutes, humans travelled at the speed of light. Psychologically, this allows for a gap between the reality of the show — and, by extension, it’s message — and the the audience’s reality. This, in turn, allows the audience to take the story’s message in without getting their guard up or having the impression that the story is berating or preaching to them directly for something. It provided something of a glass window, which allowed the audience to observe, but not take offense (unless they chose to).
Set dressing. Sometimes the most straightforward way to disguise a story’s message is to simply…obscure it. In the case of Star Trek, this was usually done by slapping a pair of rubber ears and some outrageous shoulder pads on an actor and giving them a title fitting for a Roman Imperial soldier. Need an episode discussing the evils of an overbearing, spycraft-happy government? Enter stage right, the Romulans. This operates much like the point above, in that it removes the story’s message from reality. It’s not a commentary on the government; it’s a commentary on the Romulan government. That is an incredibly thin veil to cover over the message when the audience actually sits down to think about it, but that does not make it any less effective. Importantly, these kinds of thin disguises all fit into the worldbuilding rules and style of the Star Trek universe, meaning the audience’s suspension of disbelief — a key factor to covert messaging — is preserved.
There was always an overt message. There are two ways to answer what Star Trek was all about and both are entirely accurate. The first answer most people give is actually the covert messaging; the social justice, the discussions of rights and freedoms, so on and so forth. This is in part due to the creator, Gene Roddenberry, who never hid the fact he was trying to discuss these heavier topics. Despite this, however, those topics are the show’s covert messages. They are what is hidden under layers of makeup, set dressing, and foreign worlds. Star Trek also had, however, overt messages, which reached out towards the audience more directly. The concepts of duty, honor, self-sacrifice, mercy, kindness, generosity, etcetera, where most of the overt messages given to the audience. These virtues drove the characters’ actions and reactions more than the heavy, covert topics. Often times, one of these virtues was the overt message, obscuring or walking hand-in-hand with the covert message, and these virtues were carried throughout the entire series.
In essence, hiding a covert message within a story is about carefully crafted misdirection, distraction, and distancing the message from the audience’s daily life. Star Trek: The Next Generation does all of these things masterfully, creating not only a good story, but one that is enjoyable to watch regardless of whether or not the audience has picked up on the heavier commentary it is making. On it surface, it is a high-flying adventure filled with peril, romance, exploration, and the wonders of a lively universe, and that is all it has to be. It does its best not to reach through the screen and grab the audience by the collar, but leaves the weightier topics to be uncovered at their discretion.
