Spoilers for episode 4 of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy”, “Vox in Excelso”, to follow.
“Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” is absolutely not afraid of being a school show. Its third episode, “Vitus Reflux”, focused on campus athletics (including some suitable mascots) and a prank war. Now its fourth episode, “Vox in Excelso,” has turned its attention to something even more exciting: a debate team, coached by the Doctor (Robert Picardo).
The Doctor introduces the power of rhetoric to his students by quoting a quote from Judge Aaron Satie, apparently one of the great legal minds of the 24th century. As the honorable judge wrote:
“With the first link, the chain is forged. The first censored speech, the first forbidden thought, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.”
Trekkies might recognize these words, because they were In fact written for an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” – specifically “The Drumhead”, written by Jeri Taylor. During this episode, an explosion on the Enterprise reveals that Klingon scientist J’Dan (Henry Woronicz) is working for the Romulans as a spy. Criminal investigator Admiral Norah Satie (Jean Simmons), daughter of the late Judge Satie, is sent to the Enterprise to investigate, but she gradually begins to abuse her power, searching for evidence of a larger conspiracy that does not exist.
Satie’s paranoia becomes so great that she eventually suspects (or deludes herself) that Captain Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart) himself is working with the Romulans and puts him at the helm. To silence her, Picard recites a few words he first learned as a schoolboy. These words? That of Judge Satie, which first angers Admiral Satie before making him realize how far she has strayed from the example of her venerated father.
Star Trek: TNG’s The Drumhead Follows a Witch Hunt on the Enterprise
“The Drumhead” is one of the most suspenseful and (true to its title) tightest episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” If you had to rank the best courtroom or trial episodes of “Star Trek,” they would definitely be among the best. Satie may not be a physically imposing villain like a Klingon warrior or Borg drone, but it’s unsettling how she slowly takes over the Enterprise, turning the spaceship into a playground of kangaroos.
It’s all the more frightening because at the beginning, she’s just a legal woman doing her job. It’s easy to see why Worf (Michael Dorn), one of the Enterprise’s most authoritarian crew members, supports Satie’s crusade until the end. As Picard and Worf explain at the end of the episode, safeguarding freedom requires constant vigilance, which means it’s not enough to watch for obvious dangers.
Combining a courtroom drama with an exploration of a community torn apart by paranoid authorities, “The Drumhead” often feels like a riff on Arthur Miller’s 1953 play “The Crucible.” This play, a fictionalization of the Salem witch trials (and, later, a 1996 film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder), explored the anti-communist paranoia sweeping the then-contemporary United States through allegory.
This “Red Scare” was infamously made by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose name lives on as “McCarthyism” – that is, the oppressive trampling of freedom to find imaginary dangers (much like Satie does in “The Drumhead”). Miller himself had some skin in the game; in 1952, filmmaker Eliza Kazan appointed him as a communist to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
The Drumhead continues to influence the Star Trek franchise
Being a suspected communist, and blacklisted (in Hollywood or elsewhere) because of this, could ruin people’s lives in Joe McCarthy’s America. McCarthyism would have been a vivid memory for Jeri Taylor (she was born in 1938), and “The Drumhead” explores the blacklist. Enterprise crewman Simon Tarses (Spencer Garret), who had claimed to have a Vulcan grandparent on his Starfleet Academy application, is exposed by Satie as actually having a Romulan grandparent. Of course, Tarses has nothing to do with espionage, but his legacy dooms him. (Another example of ‘Star Trek’ uses fictional alien races to explore real prejudices.)
In “The Drumhead,” Picard describes Satie’s “first link” speech as “wisdom and a warning.” This is a truly timeless message, because freedom of speech is a principle you can’t provide exceptions for. If those in power decide that something, or someone, isn’t free, so no one really is.
It is also true that civil liberties are often gradually eroded. Severe repression in one fell swoop may provoke negative reactions, but a slow retreat from freedom may go unnoticed by the apathetic. Then, when you agree to have one right taken away, it creates room for others to be stolen. So forging the first link is equivalent to an entire chain.
“Starfleet Academy”‘s take on the words of wisdom from “The Drumhead” is fan service, yes, but it’s never a bad time to hear those words. As Picard noted, we must be vigilant, lest we fail to notice a chain forming around us until it is too tight to escape.
“Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” streams on Paramount+, with new episodes airing Thursdays.
