Someone asked the other day how I, if given the chance, would decolonize Star Trek. I can't say no to that challenge. This is gonna be long, though, and probably posted in sections over a few days. I've been thinking about this for far too long.

First, I haven't watched any of the newest Treks because I don't want to sign up for any new streaming services.
Second, if you're not convinced that Trek NEEDS decolonizing, this is not the thread for that. I recommend the Metis in Space podcast for that http://www.metisinspace.com 

The goal of this thread is not to point out what's wrong with Trek (although that's unavoidable), but to suggest some ways to fix it. My thesis is in three parts. Chapter one is on the primary tool of Trek colonialism, the Prime Directive. In short, it's got to go.

The PD has been a feature of every Trek, but imo the Next Generation explained it the most thoroughly. I believe the authors intended for it to be a fix for colonialism. You can't commit genocide if you're not allowed to "interfere" in primitive societies, right?

This despite the several planets that Picard had to break the PD in order to save them from extinction. I have another thesis in me on why the PD isn't anti-colonialist but rather neoliberal (let the free market decide which planets live or die).

But as it's written, there isn't a way to MAKE the prime directive anti-colonial, because there's no room in anti-colonialism for the idea that there IS such a thing as primitive and advanced peoples. Warp drive does not make one great, or better, or smarter, or more advanced.

Imagine if instead of this single rule that No Federationer Shall Speak to a Pre-warp Person, the primary law of their society was instead to Treat Every Alien as a Full Person with Agency? Imagine how complicated it would be for the Enterprise crew to...

visit a planet with a subsistence culture, and have to deal with the micro-politics of village life, inter-family strife, etc., etc., while being attached to this massive space nation that's largely invisible to the people they talk to?

Like, they've been assigned by Starfleet to exchange ambassadors* with this planet, but they have to find a way to do it that doesn't give advantage to one family over another, or the community changes its mind and they have to take back their ambassador...

which makes an admiral angry, but what can you do the primary law says the village is allowed to kick him out no questions asked, he shouldn't have looked straight into the eyes of the chief and now the border with the Romulans is in jeopardy... That's an episode I would watch.

*Trading ambassadors with absolutely everyone is a great idea, btw. It solves the problem of what do you do when (inevitably) a Federation citizen lands uninvited on an alien planet and starts NOT treating the people who live there as people with agency.

They can call the ambassador, who calls in the fleet, and they can come collect him. Imagine Starfleet ships ferrying around alien ambassadors who have never gone faster than walking before, so planets can also exchange ambassadors with each other. Again, I would SO watch that.

I also want to see the episode where the village elder demands to meet the president of the Federation, because that is her right, & the captain has no grounds to say no, so now their whole mission plan is in disarray, & basically this is all the president ever does now all day.

In conclusion (of this part), I think an anti-colonial Trek can still have humans moving in to uninhabited planets. it's not colonialism if the planet is ACTUALLY empty. But that imagery in a scifi show is absolutely colonialist if you don't contrast it with how they deal...

with PEOPLE when they meet them on other planets. I want to see those meetings as meetings of equals, people who have different cultures, different scales, and different adaptations to their environments, but NEVER one where one group is in constant danger of being overpowered.

The idea that that power imbalance can ONLY lead to harm, and that it's even LIKELY that every alien planet will inevitably "evolve" until it invents warp drive, is extremely colonialist. We could have a Trek without it. It would be a good Trek.

I just want to add a footnote, because the only reason to care about whether or not a TV show has colonial subtext is that it, metaphorically, tells you things about the real world and it matters if what it says is true or not.

While it's true that there are communities in the Amazon & the Andaman Islands you're not allowed to visit, it's not true that they are "uncontacted," & the reason you can't visit isn't (only) because the governments of India and Brazil say you can't. There's no prime directive.

THOSE PEOPLE decided you're not welcome, and India and Brazil are only (when they bother to) respecting their wishes. They don't want you there precisely because they are NOT uncontacted. They remember meeting you, even if you don't remember meeting them, and it did not go well.

Leaving them alone is not, as is often stated, a case of a greater power acting in their best interest, but a rare case of people from a small-scale society being treated as having agency. They needed a few murders to make their point, unfortunately, but it did work.

Trek is full of stories of people without technology mistaking people with tech for gods, & other lies. Here in the real world, when you read accounts of colonized people, they always knew their colonizers were people with agency. It's only the reverse view that couldn't see it.