Quantity with Quality

Shakespeare Was a Major Inspiration for Star Trek

Where do you find your brilliance?

This is my next story in a series of articles responding to Dr Mehmet Yildiz’s challenge to produce a short quality article with three take home points each day for thirty days.

I have chosen to use Wikipedia’s main page as inspiration, choosing one topic from the “Did You Know” section as topical encouragement.

It probably comes as no surprise to any fan of the Star Trek franchise, that many of the story ideas and underlying philosophical themes come from works by William Shakespeare.

Principal characters in the series including captains Kirk and Picard are played by actors with Shakespearean roles under their belts.

Several of the story arcs in the Star Trek canon mirror Shakespeare’s plays and/or characters.

There is an interesting bouncing ball chain of logic in an imagined futuristic society that uses historical prose to educate us on timeless topics in the present.

What We Can Learn from Shakespeare Courtesy of Star Trek

Allusion to previous well-known works of literature, art and film is a powerful way to create meaning. Shakespeare is oft quoted and referenced and therefore provides a broad platform of reference to a reader or viewer.

It is quite possible that most people today know of William Shakespeare through reference from pop culture rather than reading his works directly.

One could infer that Shakespeare was a wildly popular author, or, as is much more likely the case, Shakespeare wrote about evergreen topics regarding the core needs and desires of humans.

These topics of forbidden love, betrayal, and the struggle for power seem to transcend generations and still speak loudly to us today. Gene Roddenberry used Star Trek to shine a futuristic spotlight on the human condition in a way that appealed to a large audience and illustrated that nothing really changes when it comes to human (and possibly alien) interaction.

Take home points:

• Human nature is largely unaltered over time.
• We can make good use of this fact by employing historical stories to frame current events. Well-known stories and parables are powerful tools to use to explain human actions.
• If the present mirrors the past, we can expect that future interactions will follow the patterns already in existence.

The trick is to leverage what we know about the future mirroring the past to make the best world for ourselves.

Knowing that human nature rarely changes doesn’t mean that we can’t change our own particular story arc. In fact, we can take a great deal of comfort in knowing that some things like jealousy, anger, unrequited love and loss are all part of the normal and expected human condition.

We can’t effectively anticipate or plan our future, if we don’t fully understand who we are and what we are about in the present. What story are you telling about yourself? How does it relate to other peoples’ stories?

Are you a product of your past, or a reflection of your past? There is a difference, and it matters. The Star Trek crew used their past reflections to shape how they interacted in an unknown and previously unseen universe. We can do that too.

Live long and prosper.

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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.