"Star Trek" has died

Star Trek" has died. \nLast Saturday the cast and crew of "Enterprise," the latest spin-off of the original "Star Trek," filmed its last episode. Paramount Studios canceled the show after only four seasons because the ratings were horrible. The ratings were horrible because the writing was horrible. And the writing was horrible because people evidently just don't care anymore. \n"Star Trek," in all of its incarnations, has been around for almost 40 years. The original series ran in the late '60s, and "Next Generation" started up in the late '80s. For the past 20 years there has been at least one series of "Star Trek" running, and at some times, two different spin-offs were running at once. \nWhy such a prolific existence? Because it owned, man. It owned. \n"Star Trek" had nothing to do with space. OK, it had a little to do with space, given that it was, you know, in space, but that certainly wasn't the most important part. The show could just have easily been on Earth with ships of wood instead of metal and foreign human civilizations instead of aliens. While the plot content rarely depended on the space aspect, "Star Trek" could use its guise of sci-fi silliness to comment on the real world, and its writers made good use of this shield. \nIn an original series episode, two aliens -- one white on the left side and black on the right, the other alien with reversed colors -- come on board the ship and begin battling. When asked the cause of their mutual hatred, one notes that he is black on the right side, while the other is white. He claims that race of people is categorically evil, and needs to be killed. The crew thinks this is stupid. Progressive attitudes toward racial issues: good to see.\nIn an episode of" Deep Space Nine," the ship's doctor turns out to have been illegally genetically engineered at age seven, making him the genius that he is. The captain says, "You're not a fraud ... Genetic recoding can't give you ambition or a personality or compassion or any of the other things that make a person truly human." This episode which aired a few weeks after Dolly, the cloned sheep, entered the media, promoted gene therapy and argued clones would be people, too. \nWhile some fans might think otherwise, there was nothing magical about the setting of "Star Trek" itself. The mere fact that it was fantasy meant it could talk about things too bold for the ordinary world, simply because it was "fake."\nBut the latest series, "Enterprise," completely failed. In the episode "Impulse," the captain and his squad have to fight their way off a ship of crazed Vulcan zombies. Crazed Vulcan zombies! Forty minutes of phaser-fire and seared alien flesh. Not exactly a stirring commentary on socialism, is it? Without the writing, the universe of "Star Trek" is just dull, so Paramount canceled it.\nGiven the controversial nature of the Bush administration, there are plenty of hot topics for "Star Trek," such as foreign policy and same-sex marriage. So why the sudden lapse in creative energy for the writers? Whatever the reason, the loss of this venue of social discussion is a hit to our pop culture and a depressing sign that maybe we just don't care anymore. \nAmerican citizens are generally questioning less and blindly accepting more. TV shows that make you think about your life aren't "in" anymore. In a time where half the country is ideologically pitted against the other, it's sad to see the death of an institution that has facilitated discussion for longer than most Indiana Daily Student readers have been alive. Today was not a good day to die, "Star Trek"