Brexistential Angst: I Blame Star Trek

Friday dawned surreal as the UK referendum votes were tallied against the UK remaining in the European Union.

I don’t live in the UK. The Danish Prime Minister was quick to say that Denmark is not the UK, and is not considering anything like the UK referendum. So, technically, I’ve got little say in the matter and not much to gripe about.

But I do feel a loss. I spent Friday in a semi-productive fog, my head spinning, following comments on Social Media and feeling for the Brits.

But, really, the damage goes far beyond these borders and spans beyond this brief moment in time.

Friday was the requiem of a dream. Many are still lighting fairy candles in memory of the deceased.

I blame Star Trek for my grief.

That kitschy show with all its aspirational values and grandstanding on the importance of unity is a farce.

Of course, we know it is. The swoosh doors didn’t slide on their own. The teleporter defies physics. The characters are comical.

There’s a repressed man with pointy ears who pretends to be phased by nothing yet feels everything much too intensely. There’s a captain with gender relations issues and less eloquence than HAL. There’s an irritable physician unable to heal himself.

Star Trek has host of supporting characters, each flawed in some way or another. But each flaw only adds beauty and nuance to this fiction of a multi-cultural, multi-species, interplanetary bliss.

Oh, sure there are big problems. Just ask the third man sent on any mission.

There are conflicts with Klingons and Romulans and Ricardo Montalban.

And..Can I point out that the one time they put a woman in charge she got lost in deep space almost forever? So Star Trek’s not really all that politically correct “equally sequelly” is it?

Still, from as far back as I had access to American television..endless reruns helping me learn English..I absorbed the notion that the world would one day be bigger than itself.

No one lost their national identity. Kirk was still very much American. Picard was not. And Scottie..possibly more caricature than character. Some were Europeans. Technically, Picard was French.

Everybody (mostly) got along. Flags were less important in a Starfleet universe than the notion of maintaining a united front against the vast darkness of space.

This is what. The future. Was. Supposed. To look like. Dammit! (read in Kirk voice).

Well, forget it.

At least for the 21st century — which is looking very much like the 20th century (with new gadgets) right now.

It took a long time for someone to dream up the notion of a European Union and for people to start working towards that aim.

Putting Humpty-Dumpty together again — if it ever happens — could take as long or longer.

But Europe is so much more than a dream for Europeans.

It represents the notion that we should be making progress towards a new global-mindset: collaborating and accepting each other, warts and all.

Now it’s less Europe-y. Less globally. More a fib than a future.

Let’s face it — the proud island nation has always played a key role in Europe. For all of its on/off isolationist or imperialistic character through the centuries, Albion or Britain or England or the UK or whatevs, has been attached to Europe with an umbilical cord for a very, very long time.

What happens when you cut that cord? You bleed. You tie it up. You get a little hole in your belly. You dress it up with jewellery, perhaps. It’s sexy, you say.

It is also a permanent reminder that you were once inside a mother who will now go on with her life, with or without you.

Right now, the UK’s belly button is bloody, crusty, and clamped. It will heal. Outie or Inny, the button will be sexy again.

But Europe’s leaders seem ready and willing to wean. Morning after regrets aside, there’s no getting back in the womb.

This could all be political grandstanding, but we’ll have to see.

At the end of the day, the UK has an indisputable right to decide what is best for the UK. The people have voted and that vote should be respected. It was their decision to make.

I just would have liked to see humanity prove we’re evolving beyond a nationalist mindset.

I would have liked a vote of confidence in a unified future — not just for Europe but for the world.

But that’s all Star Trek’s fault.

If I’d never seen the program — if Roddenberry had kept his optimism to himself — I might not feel any loss after Friday at all.

As it stands, I am reminded that Q showed up en route to Farpoint Station, that in his WWIII kangaroo court Troi said to Picard, “Careful, sir. This is not an illusion or a dream.”

In this fairy tale, the crew managed to argue the case for humanity. Starfleet values survived. The dream lived on.

Meh.

Damn Roddenberry and his progressive bullshit.

You only have to watch the news to know the real world is too many light years away from the stars.