I have a new paper out! “Ethics, Experimentalism, and Hybrid Purpose: Navigating Science and the Military in Star Trek: Discovery” is out in the latest issue of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies. Sometime last year I saw their call for papers for a special issue on hybridity in Star Trek, and as I’m on a mission to eventually write papers on all my beloved books and media, I knew I had to submit to it. And the I remembered the tardigrade storyline of Discovery’s first season. I remembered, as well, the Manhattan Project, a period of science history that I find endlessly fascinating, and I knew how I could lump the two together.
The Manhattan Project had an interesting organisational structure, with two effective heads: General Groves, who represented the military, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, who represented the scientists. This structure was something that could be clearly mapped onto the tardigrade storyline, hence the following abstract:
In “Context Is for Kings,” “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry,” and “Choose Your Pain,” three season one episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, the hybrid nature of Starfleet becomes apparent when its scientists come into conflict with its soldiers. The order to treat a potentially sentient tardigrade-like creature as a military resource, subject to what is essentially slavery and vivisection, makes scientific ethics subject to strategic value. In each episode, a separate pairing between scientist and soldier develops, which both critiques the competing philosophies and acts as a metaphor for historical conflicts of this kind.
ojcade.com 