okay so. i’m going to get a star trek tattoo someday. i know i will.
and there’s a very simple and yet very complicated reason why. star trek is the BEST overarching premise for a show/movie/anything ever that i have ever seen.
and the reason why is this: Star Trek says “The universe is bigger than you. The universe is bigger than me. The universe is bigger than we could ever imagine, filled with more wonders and miracles and horrors than we could ever create. And only through acceptance and exploration will we ever come together. Only by CELEBRATING and ACKNOWLEDGING differences will we ever move forward. We are better as one, but not as a conglomerate mass, as distinct and individual peoples and cultures.”
star trek is one of the only universes i’ve ever seen where the characters don’t MATTER. there’s the next generation, which has captain picard, not captain kirk. there’s the alternate original series with chris pine and a totally different version of jim kirk, there’s deep space nine, there’s voyager, there’s star trek discovery, all with different characters and casts. that’s because star trek is an IDEA. it’s not a show, or a movie or even a universe. it’s not like marvel, where everything exists in the same universe, and there are movies and tv shows in that universe. star trek is a CONCEPT.
there’s a quote from an ao3 fic called babel by seperis that i really. just adore.
“Back then, United Earth had a sense of humor about itself. We'd finally figured out that homogeneity isn't an actual goal to be admired; we achieved union because we'd finally accepted being one people didn't mean we all had to be the same people. We were a people and also a thousand peoples, with a single language and a thousand languages, with the same goals and a million different ones.“
star trek says: this is what we could be. this is what we could achieve, by accepting others, by growing, by opening our arms and being the explorers we ARE, just by being humans.
it captures this feeling of HOPE so beautifully. this feeling of a brighter future. of a bigger universe. of a world that’s not so narrow and small, of a world bigger than social constructs, of a world bigger than things like gender and race and politics, of a universe filled with marvelously strange people and marvelously strange things.
star trek says over and over and over and over, we can do better. we can BE better. we can be BIGGER. bigger than ourselves. bigger than our cities. bigger than our SPECIES. bigger than our PLANET. we can be bigger.
star trek is an idea that says: the universe is bigger and stranger than we could ever imagine. the universe is infinite in its possibilities, and we could be a part of that, if only we came together, and accepted one another, and worked TOGETHER for a better future.
star trek says “look at what could exist. look at what we could do.”
