Oh Also, Was Star Trek More Progressive In The Sixties?

Wait! Hear me out...

 

 Just while I'm on the subject of what is and isn't progress – and indeed of East versus West – I can't shake the feeling that the depiction of aliens in in The Original Series of Star Trek was actually less xenophobic than their depiction in The Next Generation. I'll admit I haven't seen every episode of either – so you should probably stop reading now – but I'm not just talking about how TOS's smaller budget meant that its Klingons had to look more human...

 

 

 Obviously aliens don't have to look human, but those encountered by Picard on TNG also had strange, mock-foreign accents – despite the fact they're being instantly translated – and often sleazier moral systems, which the Federation had to cajole like Henry Higgins into its own incurious chess-and-Mozart mainstream. 

 The aliens encountered by Kirk's Enterprise on the other hand are far less patronisingly depicted. They speak with the same accents as Kirk (when they're not sounding too high-faluting), and regularly occupy a higher place in the cosmic food chain than our heroes. The biggest idiots Kirk encounters often display the powers of actual gods. The problem these aliens pose isn't savagery, unless it's savagery they themselves inspire. 

 

"Stop that nonsense, or you'll not be allowed to make any more planets!"

 

 And I know that TNG has its own god-like pest in Q, but he's more New Age than Old Testament. There's nothing blasphemous about Q, he's just a pest. Anyway working out how to deal with a god isn't nearly as interesting as working out how to deal without one. And that, rather than the "tolerating" of those who are "different", seemed the real mission of Spock, Bones and Kirk.