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Purpose: Science fiction analogies have been shown to be an effective vehicle for disseminating scientific knowledge and building a better understanding of scientific principles. Toward this end, this study aims to use the Star Trek universe as a lens in an effort to remove barriers to understanding the science of service research. Design/methodology/approach: This study synthesizes research on using science fiction narratives in sparking dialogue within and beyond scientific communities, draws parallels between the Star Trek universe and the service research domain and uses these insights to identify pertinent ways forward. Findings: In the service research domain, science fiction analogies and dramaturgical metaphors can challenge researchers to reflect beyond the domain's traditional boundaries. In fact, the Star Trek universe lends itself as visionary backdrop to assess leadership principles, understand the evolution of scientific paradigms and inspire future service research. Originality/value: This article contributes to the service research literature by introducing the notion of drawing on science fiction analogies to facilitate key dialogues in a scientific context and demonstrates how such analogies can be used to provide guidance in moving the service research discipline forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 1989, both Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and the James Bond film Licence to Kill were released in theatres within days of each other. This study analyzes how story elements in both films were directly inspired by recent televangelist scandals in the United States. The Star Trek film was also intended to have a deeper examination of the nature of God and the Devil. Nonetheless, both films were also intended to appeal to a mass audience. To that end, these films' explorations of religious issues were watered down to avoid offending Christian denominations or churches (though not necessarily those of other religions, such as the Otomi in Mexico). Ironically, the films' neutered portrayals of religion may have made them less compelling than otherwise may have been the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Star Trek Deep Space Nine's episode "Far Beyond the Stars" positions Captain Benjamin Sisko and his alter ego Benny Russell as Black prophetic voices. Star Trek Deep Space Nine engages Black visions for the future in the form of Benjamin Sisko's role as the Emissary to the Prophets. Sisko/Russell's prophetic presence calls to mind the ancient Hebrew prophets, the book of Revelation, and the prophetic vision of life beyond oppression. Science fiction as prophetic imagination has the potential to show us better worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suggesting a curious comparison between the Victorian séance and the contemporary world of immersive virtual environments, Mike Phillips, Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at the University of Plymouth, and Director of Research at i‐DAT.org, describes the new capabilities of the fulldome, which uses notions of the automatic movements of the planchette, the wooden token that traverses the alphanumeric surface of the notorious Ouija board, as a model for the development of a quasi‐participatory audience interface he dubs the 'phage'. Clusters of phage can be manipulated by the viewer‐occupiers of the dome to instigate all manner of formal, scalar and conceptual transpositionings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between sf and narratives of technological progress through a reading of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–94), examining the series within the historical context of the growing use of home Internet during the late 1980s and 1990s. I argue that TNG highlights the ways in which narratives about the Internet and its use were structured by neoconservative "family values" and by ideas about technological development rooted in Enlightenment narratives of historical evolution, and shaped by heteronormative, patriarchal, and Eurocentric power relations. TNG's construction of familial relationships within the series is partially organized by this heteronormative logic, which dominated discourses around the family and Internet technology during the era, while simultaneously subverting this logic and illuminating the utopian potential of queer kinship. Particularly central to the logic undergirding discussions about the promise and threat of home Internet was the figure of the child. Building on Lee Edelman's (2004) notion of "reproductive futurity," I mobilize the concept of "reproductive techno-futurity" to explore how TNG, through the character of Lt. Cmdr. Data (Brent Spiner), highlights the inter-articulation of reproductive futurity with evolutionary concepts of technological progress while also gesturing to the limits of these figurations through queer re-imaginings of the technological child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Star Trek: Voyager's Ensign Harry Kim, portrayed by Taiwanese American actor Garrett Wang, remains the character of East Asian descent with the most on-screen time in the Star Trek franchise, the Kim character remains under-examined by scholars, often reduced to his widely lamented exclusions from professional advancement and durable heterosexual romance. By assembling a trans-media archive including Wang's previous work in Asian American theater and the Kim character's queer Asian American reception, this paper instead reads Kim and Wang for their experiments in alternative forms of ethical response to vexed dynamics attending Asian American masculinity, extending dialogues between feminist and queer currents in sf and Asian American studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethical issues are at the core of Star Trek: The Next Generation (CBS, 1987-1994). The starship Enterprise, led by Captain Jean-Luc Picard, explores the galaxy, guided by the principles of the Prime Directive, although this does not prevent the crew from being confronted with tough choices. Almost each episode introduces a new planet, prompting anthropological debate on the universality of ethics. Imbalances in the hierarchical order (abduction of the captain, conflicts between crew members) are essential to both the rhythm of the plot and to social considerations: these imbalances being partially re-established but forgotten in the following episode, their temporary resolution allows the mission to continue indefinitely. And yet, a deus ex machina does indeed make this space expedition a series of of ethical trials, appearing in the pilot and coming back in the finale: the judgment of the humans by Q, Captain Picard’s nemesis. Q can be seen as both the orchestrator and arbiter of all incidents faced by the crew: in the pilot, he warns that humans will be judged on the basis of their conduct during the mission. Ethically speaking, Q is both judge and prosecutor, but from a narrative point of view, he could also be considered a « covert narrator ». This hidden, deferred and forgotten dimension of the trial of the humans and the archinarrator in Star Trek: TNG is what will be examined in this contribution.

There is more than just human intelligence out there, and we must now get to grips with the end of human uniqueness. Our accelerating dexterity with biology of all sorts, digital software and hardware, pharmacology and a myriad other interventionist or evolutionary technologies is leading to the design of architectures/bodies/ systems that are fundamentally intelligently entangled. Harvard Graduate School of Design's Andrew Witt explains this ongoing synthesis and its cultural and social ramifications for today and deeper into tomorrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Star Trek franchise's depiction of artificial intelligence (AI) and affiliated technologies—namely, supercomputers, androids, and holograms—evokes common themes and motifs from the myths of the ancient Mediterranean. This article analyzes the mythological underpinnings of Star Trek's historical treatment and approach to AI, from The Original Series to The Next Generation and up through the newest additions to the canon, Short Treks, and Picard. AI in Star Trek, like Data, the Doctor, and Zora, expresses qualities associated with divinity: superhuman strength, intelligence, and agelessness. These very qualities distinguish them from humans and bar them from considerations of personhood. Like the Greek gods of myth, AI can present as immortal, which fundamentally distinguishes it from mortal humans, as seen in the tensions between gods and humans in Homer's Odyssey and the Homeric Hymns. The ancient tension between mortal and immortal is manifested in the combative relationship between organic creator and artificial creation, a common sci-fi trope, that can lead to a cycle of fear and hostility evocative of the divine generational warfare in Hesiod's Theogony. The artificial–organic tension resonates with the contemporary audience's conflicted experiences with evolving technologies and problematizes the show's presentation of the evolution of humanity into a posthuman existence. Just as mythology is used to consider humanity relative to the divine, narratives about AI are fertile ground to analyze what it means to be human and establish parameters for what is decidedly not human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, posthuman, AI-based characters have become fairly common in the Star Trek franchise, and the very question of their ontological status and of their relationship with the various human, humanoid or alien crews they work with is explored and evolves within the different series. My contention here is that this questioning can be seen as a mise en abyme of the concept of character in a posthumanist culture and lead to “a renewed interrogation of character” (Anderson, Felski and Moi 14). I shall concentrate on two of these main recurrent “characters,” the android officer Lt. Commander Data in The Next Generation and the holographic Doctor in Voyager. After a brief examination of some of the most thought-provoking societal and ethical issues dealt with in the franchise from its very beginning through human characters such as Lieutenant Uhura in the original series, I shall analyse how, from the late 1980s, with the rapid spread of AI in all fields of society, non- humanoid characters like Data and then the Doctor have incarnated (so to speak!) the passionate debate notably in posthumanism studies about “the measure of a character,” a take on the title of one of the most famous episodes of The Next Generation.

The relevance of collective memory analysis comes from the increasing role of memorization in social processes, which are currently acquiring increasingly significant conflict potential. The author analyses visual material of the popular science fiction series The Orville, which represents a segment of American political culture, as one of the cultural mechanisms for the assimilation of ideology and politics in mass cultural discourse. It is presumed that The Orville parodies the classic epics Star Trek and Babylon 5 and thus is part of the processes of deconstructing the historical collective memory of modern American society. This study intends to establish how a formally parody series not only mocks and imitates, but also constructs its own versions of memorial culture. The article aims: 1) to describe the universal tactics of deconstruction as a form of revision of existing memorial cultures; 2) to clarify the possibilities and boundaries of describing memorial culture through the prism of visual mass culture, using the example of a science fiction series; 3) to analyze the modes of updating political and social contradictions in American society on the example of the TV series The Orville; 4) to consider the specificity of the transformation of mass consciousness by constructing a new version of identity in the light of a radical revision of the narratives of classic science fiction series; 5) to analyze the political and ideological dimensions of the memory wars presented in the clash of traditional and liberal values of the characters in the series. Methodology of the article bases on the principles of the memorial turn and the analysis of the politics of memory within the paradigm of cultural and intellectual history and includes the methods of discourse analysis and intent analysis. The novelty of the study lies in determining the directions and specificities of the assimilation of the political, limited by the problems of collective memory, cultural, religious and gender identity along with military and ideological confrontation in modern mass culture of historical memory within the visual space of the science fiction series The Orville. The series is analyzed as an attempt to deconstruct the cultural experience and legacy of Star Trek, which actualized science fiction series as one of the sources of cultural and social meanings for modern consumer society. The author also analyzes the contribution of the series to the development of the collective memory of US society; the transformation of the concepts of Self and Otherness through the prism of specifying cultural, religious and gender roles. Revision of the past in popular culture as an alternative space for the functioning of collective historical memory is investigated. As a result of the study, it is presumed that The Orville actualizes modern American laughter culture and inspires attempts to rethink collective memory, the collective historical experience of trauma and represents an attempt to abandon the strategies of historical amnesia and ignoring politically inconvenient experiences.

Guest‐Editor Mark Garcia takes us on a spatial journey through some of the notions and precedents of spaceships and spacecraft, their fictive and architectural precursors and current conceptual preoccupations. The contexts these new posthuman architectures and posthumans will have to occupy, endure and travel through are mind‐boggling in their varied complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asserts that the original Star Trek films (1979–91) have importance for the study of memory and media in the digital era. I advance several interrelated arguments, with a special emphasis on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. First, I address how Star Trek: The Motion Picture's treatment of memory corresponds to scientific models of human recollection and theories of archives and databases. Notably, the first Star Trek film expresses anxiety about the mutability of memory and potential ramifications of digitalization. Such elements anticipate major strands of scholarship on memory, digitalization, and franchises from subsequent decades. Second, I introduce the concept of "franchise recall," which highlights the memory-driven nature of media franchises. Franchise recall manifests through self-reflexive commentary on cross-medium adaptation and/or through the use of recycled footage within installments. By mapping franchise recall across the initial six Star Trek films, I expose an underlying interconnectedness comparable to the associative operations of memory. Throughout the article, I also show how Star Trek: The Motion Picture's narrative and aesthetics resemble slow cinema. Overall, I demonstrate the surprising prescience and continued relevance of the original Star Trek films for grappling with the parameters and intersections of human and technological recall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the classroom use of the Star Trek American science fiction television franchise to teach critical and emotional geographies to undergraduates specializing in science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM). Both science fiction and STEM education are ambivalent and contradictory scenes of social reproduction, extending a promise of social transformation, but often maintaining complicity in heteropatriarchy, racial capitalism, and empire. Enlivening students to what Ashon T. Crawley calls the "otherwise possibilities" immanent to both science fiction and STEM education is necessarily difficult emotional work. Reflecting on teacher shame and anxiety and student resistance to course material, I turn to psychoanalysis, particularly the work of Donald W. Winnicott, to argue that Star Trek offers a richly contradictory "transitional object" for students to play with otherwise possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the language of men and women in Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Discovery through corpus analysis. To that end, the transcripts of 13 episodes of The Original Series and five episodes of Discovery were analyzed. More specifically, this paper focuses on clause types, particularly interrogatives and imperatives, as well as interruptions and certain recurring phrases. Results indicate that the language of men and women is indicative of more gender equality in Discovery than in The Original Series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on emblems to date has not drawn on corpus methods that use public data. In this paper, we use corpus methods to explore the use of original fictional gestures in the real world. We look at two examples from popular science fiction, the Vulcan salute from Star Trek and the three-finger salute from The Hunger Games. First, a Twitter corpus of the Vulcan salute emoji shows that it is used to represent Star Trek fandom and wider nerd culture, alongside its use as a greeting. Second, a global news corpus shows the three-finger salute has come to be used as a pro-democracy protest gesture across political and cultural boundaries in South East Asia. These corpus studies show different trajectories for the two gestures, with the three-finger salute escaping the confines of its fictional world, while the Vulcan salute has come to stand in as a reference to the media it originated from. We conclude with a reflection on the opportunities, challenges, and limitations of bringing corpus methods to gesture studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"To boldly go where no man has gone before", popularized by the science fiction series Star Trek, has provided an iconic example for the use of split infinitives. From its introduction, the series may have paved the way for the broader use of split infinitives in contemporary, informal English in spite of prescriptive grammars shunning the structure. The current qualitative and quantitative study is based on the general diachronic Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and a specific telecinematic corpus (TV Corpus). It aims to trace genre influence in the use of split infinitives in sci-fi and television discourses. It asks whether the use of split infinitives in informal genres can be correlated with its prominent use in the Star Trek series. The current study finds that both raw and relative frequencies increase in the wake of Star Trek, as well as the probability of choice. Yet the clearest influence from Star Trek stems from the spread of the iconic to boldly go phrase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Characters in science fiction TV have to move through the universe at the speed which the plot necessitates. In Star Trek, characters can beam from one location to another in an instant. In the visual modality, there is no continuous path of motion between the source and the goal, which would technically disqualify beam from most linguistic definitions of motion. This study aims to map out the usage patterns of beam and investigate whether or not it is linguistically construed as motion within the show. The study is based on a section of the TV Corpus (Davies, Mark. 2019. The TV Corpus. https://www.english-corpora.org/tv/ (accessed 28 May 2022)) consisting of all available episodes of all Star Trek TV series between 1966 and 2005 and uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The study found that beam is indeed used as a motion verb within the series. Its usage is also quite varied, denoting motion of many different figures in many different directions. The fact that we conceive of beaming as motion even though there is no continuous path might be partly explained by the etymology of beam, and partly by the embodied nature of language. Our current register makes it is hard to imagine transportation without movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the relationship between the spontaneity of chemical reactions and time travel, drawing parallels between the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the irreversible nature of chemical transformations. By discussing entropy, Gibbs free energy, and chemical potential, the text delves into the thermodynamic principles that govern the direction of reactions and the impossibility of time travel into the past. Through a detailed analysis of Gibbs free energy changes and the equilibrium state of reactions, the article provides a scientific perspective on the connection between chemistry and the laws of physics, using Star Trek references to illustrate complex concepts. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the concept of the "six voices of logue" in qualitative inquiry, discussing the importance of reflecting on subjectivity and positionality in research. It delves into the different voices, such as prologue, monologue, dialogue, polylogue, metalogue, and epilogue, and their relevance in understanding our experiences during the pandemic and the impact of technology. The author encourages readers to critically evaluate and incorporate these voices into their own inquiries, emphasizing the significance of relationships, relevance, and rigor in facilitating meaningful and transformative conversations. The article also mentions the books "Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Mental Process" by S. (1978) and "Writing up Qualitative Research" by H.F. Wolcott (2009), as well as provides a brief biography of James A. Bernauer, a retired University Professor. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the symbiotic relationship of the Trill species in Star Trek from nonbinary, trans*, and queer ecological perspectives. The Trill's unique physiology allows them to enter into a symbiotic relationship with a symbiont, leading to nonheterosexual, nonbinary, and androgynous features. By examining the trans metaphor represented by Jadzia Dax, a Trill character in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the article highlights the ways in which the Trill challenge traditional notions of gender, biology, and symbiosis by introducing queerness. Furthermore, the article argues that symbiosis, when viewed through the lens of queer ecology, posthumanism, and more-than-humanisms, reveals that all living beings engage in queering, emphasizing the interconnectedness of life and the absence of living without symbiosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author analyzes Star Trek and Babylon 5 series as segments of American political culture and collective memory. The purpose of the article is to analyze how American popular culture, represented by the TV series, actualizes and visualizes the problems of the admissibility / inadmissibility of external influence / non-influence of more developed societies on less developed ones and demonstrates the features of collective memory developments. The author studies the assimilation of the political in the visual discourses of mass culture. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles proposed in the memorial turn and the analysis of the politics of memory within the paradigm of intellectual history. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of common and unique features and directions of assimilation of the political, reduced to the problems of interference / nonintervention, in modern mass culture and historical memory. The article considers 1) the modes of actualization of political and social differences between societies in Star Trek and Babylon 5 TV series; 2) the political and ideological dimensions of intervention through the prism of mass culture and aspects of the functioning of various memorial cultures; 3) the problems of memory as the trauma received during the forced interaction of imagined societies with different identities in the contexts of the development of collective memories and the uncomfortable past revision through the formation of a compromise memorial canon. The article shows the contribution of the series as elements of mass cultural discourse to the development of Western political culture and of Selfness and Otherness concepts, and indicates their role in the revision of the past in popular culture. The results of the study suggest that the assimilation of the political in mass cultural discourse became both an incentive for ideological modifications and transformations of modern society, and a form of promoting the principles of political correctness and tolerance as its systemic characteristics. Moreover, it can be viewed as an attempt to revise the memorial canon and to enhance it by alternative visions of history, based on the revitalization of marginalized collective memories.

The article takes the claim that the economy of the Federation in Star Trek represents a pop-cultural reception of Karl Marx’s higher phase of communism as its starting point. This assertion will be put to test. In order to do this, Marx’s thoughts about the higher phase of communism as well as descriptions of Star Trek’s economy will be summarized as a first step. Since both the higher phase of communism and the Federation’s economy describe an economic state in which the basic material needs are met, they can both be conceived as material utopias. This is the common ground that explains why it makes sense to draw parallels between Marx and Star Trek. Subsequently, a typology of material utopias is presented. The central distinguishing feature between different kinds of material utopias is the recommended strategy to establish a state of frugality. Here, a striking difference becomes apparent: According to Marx, the higher phase of communism, depends on unleashing the productive forces, while Star Trek focuses on changing the people’s minds regarding economic matters. Therefore, Marx’s higher phase of communism should be regarded as a technical utopia, whereas the economy of the Federation is best considered to be an ethical utopia.Die

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This paper compares the development of fictional ship schematics for the original Star Trek’s Enterprise to the scribal schematics of the Temple in two key biblical passages (1 Kings 6 and Ezekiel 40-44) and a Talmudic discussion of the Hall of the Hearth. By centralizing spatial construction over narrative or historicity, we can see some features of fan creative activity that are distinctive to spatiality. While a connection between these documents and actual structures (temple, spaceship) is both possible but not-currently-real, I argue that such passages have a similar blending of basic concepts, real structures, and sheer imaginal elaboration. As with the fan’s engagement with ship schematics, the scribe or exegete’s activity in Temple schematics finds a significant part of its value in the imaginal activity itself, which demands a deep attentiveness and opens on to imaginal independence from “real” places.

The theme of this paper is the relationship to „others“ – other civilizations and cultures in the history of Earth, and other species and different forms of life in science fiction. The analysis of Star Trek series and films shows that, despite considerable endeavor to adopt „multiculturalism“ as a principle, and despite a conscious effort to respect and celebrate diversity, „colonial narrative“ remains in force in the popular science fiction visions of the future. Fear and/or violence are typical reactions that (un)hiddenly repeats the pattern of our thinking of otherness and treatment of different ones whenever it comes to aliens, whether they are foreigners or extraterrestrials.

Niniejszy tekst stanowi propozycję biopolitycznej interpretacji fanowskiego gatekeepingu jako formy immunizacji, która ma na celu obronę tożsamości grupy przed prawdziwymi bądź wyimaginowanymi zagrożeniami niesionymi przez nowych fanów. Praktyka zostaje omówiona na przykładzie środowiska w rozważaniach nad gatekeepingiem zazwyczaj ignorowanego – fandomu transformującego (transformative fandom), a szczególnie najsilniej sfeminizowanego środowiska twórczyń i czytelniczek fanfikcji. Mechanizmy immunizacyjne omówione zostają na przykładzie reakcji zgromadzonego na platformie LiveJournal fandomu Star Treka w 2009 roku, kiedy to po premierze rebootu franczyzy doszło do masowego napływu nowych fanek. W artykule przywołana jest historia fandomu Star Treka jako wyłonionego w wyniku gatekeepingu oraz przeanalizowana zostaje działalność dyskursywna fanek dłużej znajdujących się w środowisku, które stawiały nowicjuszkom wymagania niekiedy niemożliwe do zrealizowania. W końcowej części tekstu zmiana paradygmatu gatekeepingu (od dopuszczania bądź odmawiania publikacji do kontroli populacji fandomu) zostaje powiązana z rozpowszechnieniem technologii Web 2.0, która umożliwiła publikację wszystkim użytkownikom.