Live Long and Prosper

Every Star Trek fan knows the hand sign: fingers parted in a V, and the words “live long and prosper”. Fewer know where it came from. Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock, remembered sitting in synagogue as a boy while the kohanim, the priests, blessed the congregation with their hands held in exactly that shape. Years later, looking for a Vulcan greeting, he offered it. The most famous gesture in science fiction is a blessing from the Hebrew Bible:

“The LORD bless thee, and keep thee; The LORD make His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; The LORD lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”Numbers 6:24–26, JPS 1917

That is a good way into a show whose creator tried hard to leave religion behind, and which kept finding its way back to it.

A future without religion?

Gene Roddenberry was a humanist. He told The Humanist magazine in 1991 that as a teenager he had decided religion was largely nonsense. His Federation is a future where people have, in his view, outgrown it; Humanists UK even lists the starship Enterprise among its heritage objects.

The episode that says this most clearly is “Who Watches the Watchers” (The Next Generation, 1989). A Bronze Age people glimpse Starfleet's hidden technology and begin to worship Captain Picard. He refuses, and even lets himself be hurt to prove he is mortal. In this episode, faith is simply a mistake to be corrected. Believers watching will want to push back, and they should.

Then Deep Space Nine changed its mind

After Roddenberry's death, Deep Space Nine (1993–99) did something new. Major Kira is the first regular character whose faith shapes her life. Her people, the Bajorans, worship the Prophets, who live in a wormhole they call the Celestial Temple, and they hail Starfleet's Captain Sisko as their Emissary. Everything can be read two ways: as science, or as providence. The writers also showed faith going wrong: a power-hungry religious leader, Kai Winn, and a cult that worships the Prophets' dark counterparts. Producer Ira Behr put it simply: like war, they wanted to show, religion can be dangerous. And, the series suggests, it can also be the thing that holds a people together after occupation.

Five episodes for one evening

• “The Devil in the Dark” (The Original Series, 1967). Miners are being killed by a monster. It turns out to be a mother protecting her eggs. Roddenberry said the creature was not a monster but someone. An episode about the feared stranger.
• “Who Watches the Watchers” (The Next Generation, 1989). Picard refuses to be worshipped.
• “Darmok” (The Next Generation, 1991). An alien captain speaks only in references to his people's stories. Picard cannot understand him until he learns them, and in return tells him the Epic of Gilgamesh. If you show one episode to an interfaith group, show this: you cannot understand a people until you know their stories.
• “Rightful Heir” (The Next Generation, 1993). Worf, spiritually empty, prays at a Klingon monastery, and the legendary Kahless appears. He turns out to be a clone made from sacred texts. Should he lead anyway? The android Data tells Worf that he, too, once chose to believe he could be more than a machine: a leap of faith.
• “Emissary” (Deep Space Nine, 1993). Sisko meets the Prophets, beings who do not experience time, and has to explain what it is to be human.

Surak: a reformation in space

Vulcans were once violent to the point of destroying themselves. A philosopher named Surak taught them logic and mastery of emotion, and sent out messengers of peace, many of whom were killed. Centuries later, Vulcans argued about what he really meant: should emotions be erased, or mastered? In the series Enterprise, a lost original text of his teaching is recovered and changes everything. Jews, Christians and Muslims will all recognise a people going back to their sources to find what was forgotten.

“What does God need with a starship?”

In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989, PG), a charismatic preacher leads the crew to a planet where a being claims to be God. It wants their ship. Captain Kirk asks the question the film is remembered for. William Shatner said the idea came from watching television evangelists. Kirk's question is a good one, and the faiths ask it too. The Qur'an calls God al-Ghaniyy, the Self-Sufficient, who needs nothing from anyone: “Allah! He is the Absolute, the Owner of Praise” (Qur'an 35:15, Pickthall). A god who needs a starship is not God.

Infinite diversity

Vulcans have a symbol for their ideal, “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”. It is a lovely idea, and it was also, Nimoy complained, partly invented to sell jewellery. Both are true. The faiths have their own version. A Muslim writer on StarTrek.com pointed to the verse that says people were made into nations and tribes “that ye may know one another” (Qur'an 49:13, Pickthall); he also noticed that Vulcans, Klingons and Bajorans all fast, and saw Spock's calm under insult as a Ramadan virtue.

Where the comparison breaks

The Bajoran Prophets are beings inside a wormhole. However powerful, they are part of creation, not its Creator, which is exactly the line all three faiths draw, and exactly Kirk's test. Diversity of peoples, which the faiths celebrate, is also not the same as saying all beliefs are the same; each faith holds that some things are true. And “Who Watches the Watchers” treats every religion as a mistake. A good evening lets believers say why they disagree.