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By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Star Wars is a franchise that explicitly commented on Vietnam, with the creator George Lucas once specifying that the ewoks fighting a technologically advanced force symbolized the Viet Cong. However, outside Original series The Episode “A Private Little War”, the Science fiction franchise Star Trek rarely touched Vietnam or its controversies. All that changed with The next generation The “The Hunted” episode, which the Michael Piller Showrunner confirmed was based on the theme of “how society treats its veterans who return.”
If you need a brief review, “The Hunted” is an episode in which the company investigates a planet that wants to join the Federation, but the planet needs help to track a escaped prisoner named Roga Danar. It turns out that he is a former soldier improved by the planetary government to fight in his name, but he and other similar troops were removed from society after the war because they were too aggressive. Star Trek: The next generation The Hancho Piller chief confirmed that this was an allegory for the Vietnam War and how many US citizens treated soldiers who saw how too barbaric to re -entered the normal society.
Interestingly, this Star Trek: The next generation The episode offered a very different perspective on Vietnam than the episode of cough “to private little war”, which had Kirk making reference obliquely to the conflict with the line “Do you remember the brush wars of the twentieth century in the Asian continent?” That episode presented Klingon putting together a primitive tribe with advanced weapons and Kirk making the crazy decision to fix the situation ensuring that the rival tribe is equally armed. While Dr. McCoy opposes this idea, Kirk’s final decision is fascinating because it seems that the generally leftist show explicitly supported the controversial participation of the United States in Vietnam.
We quickly advance to “The Hunted”, and you get a posterior episode of Star Trek that still does not criticize Vietnam … at least, not the role played by the US government. Although the planetary government in this episode is corrupt, history serves mainly as a criticism of American society and its reluctance to welcome Vietnam’s soldiers, many of whom were cursed and spit when they expected to be treated as heroes that return.
Picard ends the episode telling the planet that it can re -apply for the membership of the Federation after discovering how to treat its veterans. This essentially tells spectators that the future Utopia of Star Trek can only be achieved after we discover how to treat Vietnam veterans and other wars once they return to society. Obviously it is more than a little preacher, but what did you expect from the hippie franchise that is to save the world, a whale in danger of extinction at the same time?
Looking back in this episode of Star Trek, Michael Piller said that Roga Danar (the former fugitive soldier who symbolized Vietnam’s veterans) “getting to the company is a bit difficult to believe”, but finally enjoyed this episode. We have to agree: “The Hunted” is the perfect example of an episode of preaching that did not allow his message to prevent the writer from delivering an entertaining hour full of action and introspection. And Danar is a murderous character who would love to see again, possibly leading his own spin -off movie … one that could, only couldFinally get the taste of Section 31 Out of our mouths.
