Star Trek’s Coolest Political Analogy Was Ruined By Its Greatest Failure

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 19 seconds ago

Regardless of what reactionaries on YouTube might tell you, Star Trek has always been full of political commentary. Original Series episodes like “A Private Little War” served as a commentary on Vietnam, for example, while Deep Space Nine’s “Paradise Lost” demonstrated the dangers of trading national freedom for security. Furthermore, the entire Maquis storyline that set up Voyager is a scathing allegory for the ethical quandaries of colonization.

Every now and then, though, Star Trek shoots itself in the foot with a clunky metaphor that doesn’t quite land. For example, the writer of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Defector,” Ronald D. Moore, previously insisted that his story was a metaphor for real-life events. According to him, this story presents “the Cuban missile crisis at the Neutral Zone.” Unfortunately, this political analogy doesn’t land because it relies on a deep understanding of the Romulan War, which the franchise has always inexplicably refused to flesh out.

The Gang Stops A Romulan War

In “The Defector,” the Enterprise offers sanctuary to a Romulan who is fleeing out of the Neutral Zone, away from his own people. He provides intel to Captain Picard about the Romulans building a secret base inside the Neutral Zone, where they can make and hide starships. Picard is skeptical of these claims and hesitant to enter the Neutral Zone, but he does so after the Romulan is revealed to be a high-ranking admiral. Unfortunately, he is being played by his own people, and the Romulans try to ambush the Enterprise. However, Picard brought some cloaked Klingon ships to even the odds, and the stalemate was resolved without bloodshed. 

The episode was written by Ronald D. Moore, the rockstar Star Trek writer who later became showrunner of the highly acclaimed Battlestar Galactica reboot. As recorded in Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, he once described the events of this episode as “the Cuban missile crisis at the Neutral Zone.” This makes sense, of course, because America’s discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba nearly led to all-out nuclear war. The seemingly unprovoked presence of the Enterprise in the Neutral Zone, meanwhile, would have given the Romulans a chance to righteously strike back at the invading Federation.

The Man With The Plan

Why, then, do I think the key political analogy of “The Defector” falls apart? Mostly, because the franchise never gave us a detailed rundown of what happened during the Earth-Romulan War. This conflict is first mentioned in The Original Series, but without much detail. We got a handful of details in the later series Enterprise, which retroactively revealed that the “humiliating defeat at the Battle of Cheron” mentioned in “The Defector” is actually a reference to the final battle of this interstellar conflict.  However, Enterprise ended without getting to show the Earth-Romulan War, which, to this day, still remains largely shrouded in mystery. 

Why does the confusion about the Earth-Romulan War ruin the political analogy of “The Defector?” Without knowing much about this conflict or that the defecting Romulan is referencing its most decisive battle, everything falls apart. All we really see in this Next Generation episode is Romulans trying to set a trap for our heroes. It’s not really clear that this was an attempt to justify a second major conflict between these empires or that Picard’s quick thinking might very well have saved the Federation from the futuristic equivalent of a nuclear war.

Like America and the USSR, there is plenty of complex and bitter history between the Federation and the Romulan Star Empire. Ronald D. Moore’s comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis is quite apt. The discovery of the Enterprise in the Neutral Zone, like the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba, would have been enough to trigger a destructive war between the two biggest powers in the galaxy. The story is complex and nuanced, but the payoff is far from satisfying, all because Star Trek has refused to give us details of the Earth-Romulan War for the last 60 years!