As a long time trekkie, I’ve witnessed a large number of Enterpise spaceships sinking, being sucked up by quantum singularities, hit by alien technology weapons, or exploding at the end of a dramatic self-destruct sequence. In the Roddenberry world the end of an Enterprise spaceship normally occurs in a theater movie, not in the tv series, and it’s written in order to show the crew’s, and in particular the captain’s, cold blood, boldness and bravery in front of tragedy. First the ship is evacuated, and then the captain and the first officer alone engage the self-destruct sequence, boldly wearing their spandex uniform. They may explode with the ship, but they don’t care. Normally they are saved by the crew, actually, which manages to teleport them safely at the very last second. But that’s because they’re great commanding officers so the crew does everything to save them.
The vast space of the Roddenberry world does include corporations following their own agendas (there’s even an entire alien race devoted to this aspect, the Ferengi), as well as corrupted authorities, and irresponsible individuals who seem to be unaware of basic life saving rules, yet the captain of the Enterprise remains irreproachable, and embodies the appeal, if such a thing exist, of the soldier who knows what needs to be done and does it no matter the personal consequences.
Despite all this, people still die on the Enteprise, in particular those with a red uniform in The Original Series. Ok, it’s to make everything more intense. But it’s invented, the captain and crew are brave and irreproachable, and someone still dies.
Imagine real world.
