It's hilarious how far the 90s shows go out of their way to show the Federation as a secular liberal utopia, flawless and intellectual, moral to a fault. And meanwhile you can't turn on anything made after 2014 that doesn't cast the Federation as a corrupt, meddling bureaucracy of impotent white men torturing aliens in secret rooms.
If Trek was always the fictionalization of liberal fantasies, it's interesting that the Boomer fantasy was the achievement of a secular liberal science utopia, and the Current Year fantasy is that this utopia was always corrupt, compromised and racist to its core.
Looks like someone might have created a monster...
It starts to get closer to that real sense of alienness and postulates the two extremes. One where the aliens are so much more advanced than us and the other where they are so much more primal than us. In either case, we end up being merely their prey.
For the other extreme, I do enjoy CS Lewis' Space Trilogy which really does suppose an alien life way more advanced that ours... morally. And so it is THEM that needs to be protected from us in trying to exploit them. (Of course being more morally advanced, the aliens have their guardian angels on speed dial so the protection from man is... most effective.)
But I have often wondered if the vast distances in the universe are there for our protections - or others'.
I always felt the Maquis were right if you watch the show from the outside. But wrong if you are immersed.
I mean, if you buy into the premise that the federation has solved all the major problems (on Earth at least). No poverty, no hunger, no war, etc. Then Eddington and the Maquis are idiots for wanting to leave paradise.
But when you look at it from the outside and know that The Federation's Utopia is left wing fan fiction, the Eddington's critique is no longer aimed at the Federation, but at the writers.
"How is it that a show that prides itself on the commentary of the human condition also states in its very first episode that our humanity is effectively extinct, that what we’re witnessing is a bizarre post-humanity that coincidentally happens to wear our faces?"
I think that while it’s a well-put argument, it misses the way the show is usually constructed; ironically the humans in Star Trek are among the least “human”, flaws and all, of all presented species, and I think this is definitely intentional when you consider that most of the aliens they encounter represent in their primary natures the very human flaws that the leftist fantasy would do away with. I don’t think it’s a world-shattering contradiction for the show, honestly. It just makes me think of the framing differently.
"The funny thing is, Star Trek: First Contact is not actually about first contact. Very few movies concerning this trope are actually about encountering foreign life insofar as analyzing what alien actually means. If you want a good fiction book that takes the subject seriously, I happily recommend Sphere by Michael Crichton. It’s the best treatment I’ve read thus far, and it’s ironically debatable whether or not aliens even appear in that story."
They did examine that in an episode of TNG titled - ironically - First Contact.
But yeah, Sphere is actually my favorite Crichton book and a great examination of encountering intelligent life. (Andromeda Strain would be about just finding life elsewhere, period.)
"The charge was over violence, accusing the crew of the Enterprise that they did not know how to use violence correctly."
Was that the charge? Given your thesis that Trek's writers always seem to given themselves antagonists and foils with the same worldview as them, it seems more that Q is the ultimate transcendent post-human, the elite liberal alien accusing the Enterprise of being unevolved. They merely have to prove they hold the same simplistic moral framework as Q, and the test they are given doesn't challenge either of their preconceptions.
In other words, the test couldn't be "When is it correct to use violence?" since within the simplistic moral framework of Q, the Federation, and the show's writers, there IS no correct time to use violence. And because the writer is never going to present a situation where violence IS justified, none of the fictional ideologues will have their conception of utopian thinking threatened.
Ok so I could almost write a whole reply to this part:
"Now this is not saying the characters of Star Trek are evil for doing so, but it gets at the most fundamental and glaring inconsistency in the franchise. We’re supposed to view the violence of the past as backward, primitive. But it’s also totally justified when we do it. Because when we do it, it’s for the right reasons, and it’s to stop the bad people. Violence is okay when we do it because we’re the only ones in history who are smart enough to wield it properly for a good end."
Because part of the issue with this is that the franchise is so old and has been written for so long. At least some of what you bring up in Encounter at Farpoint is very much Gene Roddenberry's vision of things. There's strong arguments to be made that his most pure vision of Star Trek are the first 2 seasons of TNG. After which he was "kicked upstairs" and new writers started coming in. There is a lot of material out there about "Gene's box" and how the writers were constrained and frustrated by it. And that's where part of the contradiction you bring up here is actually different writers in the series essentially arguing with each other through the series itself.
Now I'll have to sit down to do an autistic count to be sure, but off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure almost every conflict and issue in the original first two seasons are expressly solved NOT with violence. Even the episode "Arsenal of Freedom" where they find an old weapons etsy-shop on a planet that troubles the cast is stopped in the end with clever thinking instead of just blowing them up (though some are blown up in the process). Datalore... would kind of be on the line there. I could see both sides make a compelling case that the day was solved with violence or without it. It would depend on how one defines "violence" and how one defines "solve."
But I won't bother unless you really want me to, then I could prep a post and do a quick episode analysis for you.
Oh and it is even more ironic then that the first episode of S3? "Ensigns of Command" (first episode produced, IIRC it wasn't the first episode aired) expressly has Data win the day with an arguably violent solution (it's the episode where Picard wins the day with a very legal & logical solution so it kind of balances out).
Yeah, to to treat Star Trek as this one monolithic thing is certainly in the wrong direction. There's a part where I mention that the politics Star Trek puts forward are very much in conflict with what would make interesting storylines. Was trying to get at that dynamic. But in terms of guiding principles, I think what I said is broadly accurate. Trying to nail down what Star Trek is, even on its own internal moral claims, is difficult to say the least.
Totally fair point. It would probably be easiest to divide Star Trek into eras. I think you could mark it as the Roddenberry era - the post-Roddenberry era - and the moder/woke era. (Or the Gold/Silver/Bronze ages if you want) Then a lot of the discussion would make sense. "Oh during the gold era there was this view on violence while the silver era had this view..."
By far the funniest part though is how many quotes from writers who literally worked on the show and wrote the scripts actually agreeing with you. A lot of them infamously hated the "roddenberry box" wanted to get out from it to write compelling dramas.
If anything I would almost say it has the problem of all art - there is the pure vision the artist has of their world/work, butting up against the reality that artists need to eat too. So if they want to appeal to the masses, they have compromise on their vision in some ways. Likewise there is the version of Star Trek that Gene had in his mind and it was always struggling against the need to make the show popular enough to get made and earn money.
I checked but didn't see it. Surprised you didn't outright quote Troi's line from First Contact.
COCHRANE: Alien? You mean extra-terrestrials. More bad guys?
TROI: Good guys. They're on a survey mission. They have no interest in Earth. Too primitive.
COCHRANE: Oh!
RIKER: Doctor, tomorrow morning when they detect the warp signature from your ship and realise that humans have discovered how to travel faster than light, they decide to alter their course and make first contact with Earth, right here.
COCHRANE: Here?
LAFORGE: Uh actually over there.
RIKER: It is one of the pivotal moments in human history, Doctor. You get to make first contact with an alien race, and after you do, everything begins to change.
LAFORGE: Your theories on warp drive allow fleets of starships to be built and mankind to start exploring the Galaxy.
TROI: It unites humanity in a way no one ever thought possible when they realize they're not alone in the universe. Poverty, disease, war. They'll all be gone within the next fifty years.
(Even though I've always been a trekkie, even I thought it was silly to think poverty and disease would vanish in the face of aliens.)
In my headcanon, Khan is really a King Arthur figure, a man who awakens from his long slumber to discover the only world he ever called home in peril. A man who for all his eugenically-concocted abilities is far more HUMAN than the strange, incomprehensible beings flying around the galaxy calling themselves "human." Think about it. We would find Khan far more relatable than any of the people in the Federation. The humans of the future might as well be Vulcans--or worse! But Khan, who has never known a transporter beam or a holodeck or a replicator, only Khan can save humanity in the 24th century because he is the only real human.
I argue the founding myth of Star Trek is to be found in Gene Roddenberry’s life - the pivotal years of World War 2 till after his airplane went down in the Syrian Desert. Roddenberry learned in World War 2 that Americans of many different backgrounds could work together & triumph over the mono-culture Fascists. This is the ‘friendly, cooperative side of Star Trek. The airplane crash taught Roddenberry that there really are people out in the 3rd world who will see a group of injured Americans and their first reaction is “Lets kill these stranger & take their stuff.” Roddenbery knew first hand that there really are cultures out there who will try to kill for no reason other than they think they can. This is the Star Trek which used conflict and violence nearly ALL the time. Roddenberry survived his night in the desert because he had a gun & he was willing to use it. I loved your essay, it needs to become a book.
I don't know why this detail in particular, of all the ones you listed, but the fact that Sisko's dad runs a restaurant in New Orleans always struck me as the glaring question mark in Star Trek's value scheme.
I can understand building warships and signing off on black ops programs when you're staring down the barrel of the Borg or the Dominion. But small businesses? With manual labor? In our most glorious future? Nonsense.
"Here we finally get to the RW undercurrent of Star Trek. We get at the contradiction of an egalitarian society producing aristocrats, an environmentalist culture founded on great works of industry, a hierarchical ethic in a civilization that proclaims personal freedom, a people who are always embracing new ideas yet never change, a race of explorers who want the whole galaxy to look the same, and I think it’s most glaring absurdity: pacifistic men who are masters of war."
This is where I disagree. What you're describing above is basically the Soviet Union. And no one would argue that the USSR is actually "right-wing" (other than commies who are embarrassed by its atrocities). I think you're underestimating how the left are capable of violence or hierarchy or industry. Which I can understand given the current crop of the left, but just look at communist propaganda (and let's not forget that it was the Russians who first went to space). As an aside, that's why I believe in the theory that the Federation is actually the "USSR in space" instead of the "USA in space" which most people take for granted.
I also take issue with the idea that horror is a "reactionary genre". I can see what you mean, and I used to hold to this (to be fair). But I would argue instead that horror (at least modern horror) is a product of liberals trying to cope with the consequences of their ideas. I guess you can call that "reactionary", but I would disagree. Just look at Alien, which others have argue is about the sexual revolution (and umm.... oral sex). Yet as far as I can tell, the people behind Alien (like Ridley Scott or H.R. Giger) aren't reactionaries.
My disagreements aside, this is a good essay. Much food for thoughts.
I think no country can be fully left-wing and exist for more then 5-10 years. USSR is like Star Trek in that stated left-wing ideals were backed and paid for by right-wing foundations of strong families, patriotism and hierarchy.
USSRˋs industry was partly inherited from Imperial Russia, partially built by American engineers. Communists excelled at mob violence, but when it came to organized violence they were beat. USSR army took in Imperial Russia officers to be capable of fighting and underperformed in WWII, until fighting became about nationalistic defending homeland (not defending international communism).
RE: Horror as reactionary, Alien does have a left-wing slant from its beginnings. It's there with the working-class crew, with The Company dropping a special order past HR declaring the crew dispensable. In 1979 they could still plausibly make that about the working man's Left being screwed by The Man's greed.
The reactionary element is discovering the derelict and the Space Jockey (this being long before he was "only" a 9 foot tall bodybuilder without a tan). Giger's blasphemous cathedral was an eldritch terror leering out of the shadows, making a mockery of man's knowledge and pretensions of mastery over nature. That the creature ends up using human bodies for its lifecycle adds high-octane jet fuel to that theme.
I'm not sure how much any of that was intentional, given there's a glaring analogy between the creature and predatory capitalists which is practically drawn on the screen in neon lights in Aliens. The xenomorph as anti-capitalist social commentary is far more egregious in the sequel, though I don't find it too convincing or eye-rolling in a movie best known for zinger-armed space marines.
The Prometheus films, flawed as they are, tried to pick up that thread from another angle with David, bringing religion into conflict with science and technology. David wants to break all the rules and transgress all the norms with his new play-toys. While he's having a good time as Dionysian Man, the human characters die grisly deaths. It's hard to say what point the movies want to make, but it's not too hard to pull a reactionary anti-technology and anti-modernity message out of these ideas. If that story about Scott's original plan for the Engineers has any weight to it, that might be even more on the nose.
Alien is too good a movie to pin down politically. It's about the horror of the feminine, but you can put a leftist or rightist frame on top of that and have plenty to ponder. Oftentimes artist's commitment to the Truth of their art is stronger than their political convictions (at least, until recently). Ridley Scott may be a lib, but he still made Gladiator.
When people say horror is reactionary, I imagine they're thinking of the highly moralistic 80s slasher films. But horror could just as easily be an inverted valorization of the margin, the monster (Guillermo Del Toro comes to mind).
I think the Federation is the USA in space and the Dominion is the USSR in space. Or rather, the Dominion is what a certain kind of Right Winger once imagined the USSR to be. But given the considerable overlap in the real world between America and the Soviet Union perhaps the distinctions are less important than we think.
The problem with the revelation of being totally alone is that it doesn't happen quickly enough for drama. As it is now, such evidence as there is is that we are totally alone. The future could only hold steadily mounting ways to investigate and discover there are no aliens and so steadily mounting evidence. Individuals would be persuaded one by one and probably by degrees through "it's probable" "it's much more likely than not" "it's almost certain."
It's hilarious how far the 90s shows go out of their way to show the Federation as a secular liberal utopia, flawless and intellectual, moral to a fault. And meanwhile you can't turn on anything made after 2014 that doesn't cast the Federation as a corrupt, meddling bureaucracy of impotent white men torturing aliens in secret rooms.
If Trek was always the fictionalization of liberal fantasies, it's interesting that the Boomer fantasy was the achievement of a secular liberal science utopia, and the Current Year fantasy is that this utopia was always corrupt, compromised and racist to its core.
Looks like someone might have created a monster...
" First contact is so perfect for the Left it became the real-life wet dream of many atheists. They just assumed fact would follow their fiction.
The only problem? It certainly won’t."
This is partially why I enjoy the Alien/Predator franchise so much.
https://natewinchester.substack.com/p/why-predator-is-awesome
It starts to get closer to that real sense of alienness and postulates the two extremes. One where the aliens are so much more advanced than us and the other where they are so much more primal than us. In either case, we end up being merely their prey.
For the other extreme, I do enjoy CS Lewis' Space Trilogy which really does suppose an alien life way more advanced that ours... morally. And so it is THEM that needs to be protected from us in trying to exploit them. (Of course being more morally advanced, the aliens have their guardian angels on speed dial so the protection from man is... most effective.)
But I have often wondered if the vast distances in the universe are there for our protections - or others'.
"The only problem? It certainly won't" This pairs well with this tweet about why utopia almost always seems to lead to mass murder: https://twitter.com/Devon_Eriksen_/status/1842597867153990139
I've been seeing Devon's tweets pop up regularly in our circles of late. ;)
He should be on substack. Oh wait - @devoneriksen is. XD
Though I would maybe quibble with him on the tech part. But that’s only because I’ve read CS Lewis’ space trilogy. (and am due for a reread)
I would definitely do a deeper refresher before fighting heavily about it.
I always felt the Maquis were right if you watch the show from the outside. But wrong if you are immersed.
I mean, if you buy into the premise that the federation has solved all the major problems (on Earth at least). No poverty, no hunger, no war, etc. Then Eddington and the Maquis are idiots for wanting to leave paradise.
But when you look at it from the outside and know that The Federation's Utopia is left wing fan fiction, the Eddington's critique is no longer aimed at the Federation, but at the writers.
Excellent article!
Please make a remake of First Contact where they meet Quark at the end.
I'd like to think even the Ferengi might have some qualms with current business practices.
"So what do you make"
"We don't make anything, we create a brand identity then license that identity"
"but what do you sell?"
"We sell a sense of belonging and identity"
"So you're con artists, I think we can do business"
"How is it that a show that prides itself on the commentary of the human condition also states in its very first episode that our humanity is effectively extinct, that what we’re witnessing is a bizarre post-humanity that coincidentally happens to wear our faces?"
Well damn it, now I can't unthink that.
I think that while it’s a well-put argument, it misses the way the show is usually constructed; ironically the humans in Star Trek are among the least “human”, flaws and all, of all presented species, and I think this is definitely intentional when you consider that most of the aliens they encounter represent in their primary natures the very human flaws that the leftist fantasy would do away with. I don’t think it’s a world-shattering contradiction for the show, honestly. It just makes me think of the framing differently.
"The funny thing is, Star Trek: First Contact is not actually about first contact. Very few movies concerning this trope are actually about encountering foreign life insofar as analyzing what alien actually means. If you want a good fiction book that takes the subject seriously, I happily recommend Sphere by Michael Crichton. It’s the best treatment I’ve read thus far, and it’s ironically debatable whether or not aliens even appear in that story."
They did examine that in an episode of TNG titled - ironically - First Contact.
But yeah, Sphere is actually my favorite Crichton book and a great examination of encountering intelligent life. (Andromeda Strain would be about just finding life elsewhere, period.)
"The charge was over violence, accusing the crew of the Enterprise that they did not know how to use violence correctly."
Was that the charge? Given your thesis that Trek's writers always seem to given themselves antagonists and foils with the same worldview as them, it seems more that Q is the ultimate transcendent post-human, the elite liberal alien accusing the Enterprise of being unevolved. They merely have to prove they hold the same simplistic moral framework as Q, and the test they are given doesn't challenge either of their preconceptions.
In other words, the test couldn't be "When is it correct to use violence?" since within the simplistic moral framework of Q, the Federation, and the show's writers, there IS no correct time to use violence. And because the writer is never going to present a situation where violence IS justified, none of the fictional ideologues will have their conception of utopian thinking threatened.
They would say that, but Picard’s actions at Farpoint are implicitly backed by violence, even if he doesn’t engage with it.
Ok so I could almost write a whole reply to this part:
"Now this is not saying the characters of Star Trek are evil for doing so, but it gets at the most fundamental and glaring inconsistency in the franchise. We’re supposed to view the violence of the past as backward, primitive. But it’s also totally justified when we do it. Because when we do it, it’s for the right reasons, and it’s to stop the bad people. Violence is okay when we do it because we’re the only ones in history who are smart enough to wield it properly for a good end."
Because part of the issue with this is that the franchise is so old and has been written for so long. At least some of what you bring up in Encounter at Farpoint is very much Gene Roddenberry's vision of things. There's strong arguments to be made that his most pure vision of Star Trek are the first 2 seasons of TNG. After which he was "kicked upstairs" and new writers started coming in. There is a lot of material out there about "Gene's box" and how the writers were constrained and frustrated by it. And that's where part of the contradiction you bring up here is actually different writers in the series essentially arguing with each other through the series itself.
Now I'll have to sit down to do an autistic count to be sure, but off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure almost every conflict and issue in the original first two seasons are expressly solved NOT with violence. Even the episode "Arsenal of Freedom" where they find an old weapons etsy-shop on a planet that troubles the cast is stopped in the end with clever thinking instead of just blowing them up (though some are blown up in the process). Datalore... would kind of be on the line there. I could see both sides make a compelling case that the day was solved with violence or without it. It would depend on how one defines "violence" and how one defines "solve."
But I won't bother unless you really want me to, then I could prep a post and do a quick episode analysis for you.
Oh and it is even more ironic then that the first episode of S3? "Ensigns of Command" (first episode produced, IIRC it wasn't the first episode aired) expressly has Data win the day with an arguably violent solution (it's the episode where Picard wins the day with a very legal & logical solution so it kind of balances out).
Yeah, to to treat Star Trek as this one monolithic thing is certainly in the wrong direction. There's a part where I mention that the politics Star Trek puts forward are very much in conflict with what would make interesting storylines. Was trying to get at that dynamic. But in terms of guiding principles, I think what I said is broadly accurate. Trying to nail down what Star Trek is, even on its own internal moral claims, is difficult to say the least.
Totally fair point. It would probably be easiest to divide Star Trek into eras. I think you could mark it as the Roddenberry era - the post-Roddenberry era - and the moder/woke era. (Or the Gold/Silver/Bronze ages if you want) Then a lot of the discussion would make sense. "Oh during the gold era there was this view on violence while the silver era had this view..."
By far the funniest part though is how many quotes from writers who literally worked on the show and wrote the scripts actually agreeing with you. A lot of them infamously hated the "roddenberry box" wanted to get out from it to write compelling dramas.
If anything I would almost say it has the problem of all art - there is the pure vision the artist has of their world/work, butting up against the reality that artists need to eat too. So if they want to appeal to the masses, they have compromise on their vision in some ways. Likewise there is the version of Star Trek that Gene had in his mind and it was always struggling against the need to make the show popular enough to get made and earn money.
I checked but didn't see it. Surprised you didn't outright quote Troi's line from First Contact.
COCHRANE: Alien? You mean extra-terrestrials. More bad guys?
TROI: Good guys. They're on a survey mission. They have no interest in Earth. Too primitive.
COCHRANE: Oh!
RIKER: Doctor, tomorrow morning when they detect the warp signature from your ship and realise that humans have discovered how to travel faster than light, they decide to alter their course and make first contact with Earth, right here.
COCHRANE: Here?
LAFORGE: Uh actually over there.
RIKER: It is one of the pivotal moments in human history, Doctor. You get to make first contact with an alien race, and after you do, everything begins to change.
LAFORGE: Your theories on warp drive allow fleets of starships to be built and mankind to start exploring the Galaxy.
TROI: It unites humanity in a way no one ever thought possible when they realize they're not alone in the universe. Poverty, disease, war. They'll all be gone within the next fifty years.
(Even though I've always been a trekkie, even I thought it was silly to think poverty and disease would vanish in the face of aliens.)
EDIT: Here's the scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwhI-WXh7Ew
50 years from post-apocalypse to post-scarcity is pretty quick.
LoL true. Though conceptually finding aliens and a whole new mass market to sell to would help
So this is awesome - your recent post inspired mine from today, and here you are with another banger! We’re going to squeeze Trek for everything it’s worth haha. Check mine! https://open.substack.com/pub/sanityofchristianity/p/the-despair-of-star-trek
In my headcanon, Khan is really a King Arthur figure, a man who awakens from his long slumber to discover the only world he ever called home in peril. A man who for all his eugenically-concocted abilities is far more HUMAN than the strange, incomprehensible beings flying around the galaxy calling themselves "human." Think about it. We would find Khan far more relatable than any of the people in the Federation. The humans of the future might as well be Vulcans--or worse! But Khan, who has never known a transporter beam or a holodeck or a replicator, only Khan can save humanity in the 24th century because he is the only real human.
Hey, at least by deep-sixing most terrestrial religions, “Star Trek” spares us cringeworthy DEI moments like this from “Babylon 5"…
https://youtu.be/8Hg_TRynRIs?si=WECFVtqXgnOjJZRe&t=3
I argue the founding myth of Star Trek is to be found in Gene Roddenberry’s life - the pivotal years of World War 2 till after his airplane went down in the Syrian Desert. Roddenberry learned in World War 2 that Americans of many different backgrounds could work together & triumph over the mono-culture Fascists. This is the ‘friendly, cooperative side of Star Trek. The airplane crash taught Roddenberry that there really are people out in the 3rd world who will see a group of injured Americans and their first reaction is “Lets kill these stranger & take their stuff.” Roddenbery knew first hand that there really are cultures out there who will try to kill for no reason other than they think they can. This is the Star Trek which used conflict and violence nearly ALL the time. Roddenberry survived his night in the desert because he had a gun & he was willing to use it. I loved your essay, it needs to become a book.
I don't know why this detail in particular, of all the ones you listed, but the fact that Sisko's dad runs a restaurant in New Orleans always struck me as the glaring question mark in Star Trek's value scheme.
I can understand building warships and signing off on black ops programs when you're staring down the barrel of the Borg or the Dominion. But small businesses? With manual labor? In our most glorious future? Nonsense.
"Here we finally get to the RW undercurrent of Star Trek. We get at the contradiction of an egalitarian society producing aristocrats, an environmentalist culture founded on great works of industry, a hierarchical ethic in a civilization that proclaims personal freedom, a people who are always embracing new ideas yet never change, a race of explorers who want the whole galaxy to look the same, and I think it’s most glaring absurdity: pacifistic men who are masters of war."
This is where I disagree. What you're describing above is basically the Soviet Union. And no one would argue that the USSR is actually "right-wing" (other than commies who are embarrassed by its atrocities). I think you're underestimating how the left are capable of violence or hierarchy or industry. Which I can understand given the current crop of the left, but just look at communist propaganda (and let's not forget that it was the Russians who first went to space). As an aside, that's why I believe in the theory that the Federation is actually the "USSR in space" instead of the "USA in space" which most people take for granted.
I also take issue with the idea that horror is a "reactionary genre". I can see what you mean, and I used to hold to this (to be fair). But I would argue instead that horror (at least modern horror) is a product of liberals trying to cope with the consequences of their ideas. I guess you can call that "reactionary", but I would disagree. Just look at Alien, which others have argue is about the sexual revolution (and umm.... oral sex). Yet as far as I can tell, the people behind Alien (like Ridley Scott or H.R. Giger) aren't reactionaries.
My disagreements aside, this is a good essay. Much food for thoughts.
I think no country can be fully left-wing and exist for more then 5-10 years. USSR is like Star Trek in that stated left-wing ideals were backed and paid for by right-wing foundations of strong families, patriotism and hierarchy.
USSRˋs industry was partly inherited from Imperial Russia, partially built by American engineers. Communists excelled at mob violence, but when it came to organized violence they were beat. USSR army took in Imperial Russia officers to be capable of fighting and underperformed in WWII, until fighting became about nationalistic defending homeland (not defending international communism).
RE: Horror as reactionary, Alien does have a left-wing slant from its beginnings. It's there with the working-class crew, with The Company dropping a special order past HR declaring the crew dispensable. In 1979 they could still plausibly make that about the working man's Left being screwed by The Man's greed.
The reactionary element is discovering the derelict and the Space Jockey (this being long before he was "only" a 9 foot tall bodybuilder without a tan). Giger's blasphemous cathedral was an eldritch terror leering out of the shadows, making a mockery of man's knowledge and pretensions of mastery over nature. That the creature ends up using human bodies for its lifecycle adds high-octane jet fuel to that theme.
I'm not sure how much any of that was intentional, given there's a glaring analogy between the creature and predatory capitalists which is practically drawn on the screen in neon lights in Aliens. The xenomorph as anti-capitalist social commentary is far more egregious in the sequel, though I don't find it too convincing or eye-rolling in a movie best known for zinger-armed space marines.
The Prometheus films, flawed as they are, tried to pick up that thread from another angle with David, bringing religion into conflict with science and technology. David wants to break all the rules and transgress all the norms with his new play-toys. While he's having a good time as Dionysian Man, the human characters die grisly deaths. It's hard to say what point the movies want to make, but it's not too hard to pull a reactionary anti-technology and anti-modernity message out of these ideas. If that story about Scott's original plan for the Engineers has any weight to it, that might be even more on the nose.
Alien is too good a movie to pin down politically. It's about the horror of the feminine, but you can put a leftist or rightist frame on top of that and have plenty to ponder. Oftentimes artist's commitment to the Truth of their art is stronger than their political convictions (at least, until recently). Ridley Scott may be a lib, but he still made Gladiator.
When people say horror is reactionary, I imagine they're thinking of the highly moralistic 80s slasher films. But horror could just as easily be an inverted valorization of the margin, the monster (Guillermo Del Toro comes to mind).
I think the Federation is the USA in space and the Dominion is the USSR in space. Or rather, the Dominion is what a certain kind of Right Winger once imagined the USSR to be. But given the considerable overlap in the real world between America and the Soviet Union perhaps the distinctions are less important than we think.
The problem with the revelation of being totally alone is that it doesn't happen quickly enough for drama. As it is now, such evidence as there is is that we are totally alone. The future could only hold steadily mounting ways to investigate and discover there are no aliens and so steadily mounting evidence. Individuals would be persuaded one by one and probably by degrees through "it's probable" "it's much more likely than not" "it's almost certain."
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/805511083382728487