Theme 3: Might vs. Right & Fate vs. Agency
Might does not make right, and belief that you are a Chosen One blinds you to the agency of others, or even your own.
Star Trek: Discovery (DSC) is rife with commentary on the nature of political power and who gets to wield it. There is also a lot of talk about fate, with Lorca’s fortune cookies as a recurring symbol. What is going on here? Let’s see if we can pull these two threads together.
Lorca exemplifies the type of person who wields raw power with intentional lack of regard and compassion for others. The etymology of his first name, Gabriel, means ‘strong man.’ Jason Isaacs describes his character this way in a Buzzfeed interview: “[Lorca’s] a liar and a manipulator, and obviously thinks that might is right, and he thinks that he can get anyone to do what he wants.”
This is no mere commentary on Terran Empire political philosophy. It is inspired by current events. Isaacs collaborated with the writers to create a character that represents the nationalist/populist strongmen who are gaining followers and political power all around the world, including the United States. In an interview on the Season 1 Blu-ray Isaacs explains their motivation:
There are many people who are out there who can passionately argue that the notion … people can work together, that there are harmonious solutions, diplomatic solutions to things, is fanciful and may be short lived. And we see a resurgence in politics around the world right now that one needs to be strong and one needs to dominate militarily, and that bullying is the right way to go, that this blip in human relations for the last 50 to 100 years has been just that, and we will return to might is right.
For Isaacs, putting this message out into the world was “one of the reasons to make the show.” Explaining that Star Trek has always been a socially conscious entertainment property, he says, “the only reason to do it again was to tell a story that has some modern resonance. It’s such a horribly, unbelievably decisive time.”
Some fans think that Lorca’s imitation of Trump was too on the nose–“Terrans need a leader who will preserve our way of life, our race … make the Empire glorious again.”–but Loca is a timeless archetype, which like it or not has also become a timely one. The character will feel relevant long after Trump is off the stage.
The question of whether might makes right will never be a universally agreed upon proposition, human nature being what it is. But there are periods in history that cause the question to be asked–and answered–more loudly than in other periods. Just speaking of Isaacs’s British tradition, the principle that right makes might is one of the reasons King Arthur became a beloved English folk hero; his benevolent and ur-democratic tendencies were a welcome fantasy to a people living under a spate of more bad kings than good ones. Robin Hood was another example of right making might. He was popularized under a king who was forced to sign the Magna Carta, which finally enshrined into law the notion that what is right is dependent not upon the king’s guards but on a universal sense of fairness and dignity. These ideas reached their logical conclusion with the United States Constitution. And yet… we are now in a period where storytellers are again called upon to pose the question: should might make right; is that who we really want to be?
As David Frum wrote recently about his debate with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon: “The cruel always believe the kind are weak. But human decency and goodness can also move human affairs. They will be felt. And today’s ‘populists’ will follow their predecessors into what President George W. Bush so aptly called ‘history’s graveyard of discarded lies.’”
These words, and many like them spilled across our newspapers, sound much like lines of dialogue in Season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery. As the current political moment evolves (for good or ill) and we look back on Season 1, its “modern resonance” will only become more clear. We will look back–as we do on many episodes of TOS–and be grateful that Star Trek once again took a stand when it mattered. By killing off Lorca–the quintessential “bad king”–and allowing the Discovery crew to triumph, the show reminds us that might does not make right, and that “human decency and goodness can also move human affairs.”
But what about those fortune cookies?
People who put themselves on the might side of the Right-vs-Might equation tend to create all sorts of justifications for their power. They craft a narrative that explains why they got to the top of their society’s food chain when so many others did not. For those kings of England the story they told themselves and their people was that God literally handpicked them and their family to rule in His name. In the modern world, people who wield socio-economic power–say a business owner of a profitable fortune cookie company, like Lorca’s ancestor–tell themselves that they just worked harder and smarter than other people. While this may often be true, this narrative edits out certain privileges that may have been available to them and not others. It is seductive to hold the self image that you are special, unique, and chosen. It can also create negative consequences not just for those around you but also yourself.
Lorca does not believe in God, but he does believe in an unseen, all-powerful force in the universe that continues to smile on him alone. Describing the ion storm that sent him to the prime universe, he says “It was physics working as the hand of destiny, my destiny.” When he is about to declare himself the new emperor, reflecting back on all the twists in his life that brought him to this moment, he declares, “Nothing that’s happened to me was an accident…. I’m living proof that fate is real.”
Isaacs says of Lorca: “He’s also a racial purist… everybody has a place, and there’s a natural hierarchy that needs to be respected.” If fate has decreed that he should be on top, that must mean that fate also wants everyone else at the bottom.
The show does not endorse this view, of course. In fact, holding this view makes Lorca not only unsuccessful at his goals, but foolishly so. By believing he is destined to be emperor with Burnham at his side, and that it would be impossible for these things not to happen to him, he fails to foresee how Burnham will betray him. He does not see Georgiou’s blade until it’s sticking out of his chest.
Burnham knows better. Earlier in the season, when Lorca muses about how fate brought them together, she corrects him: “Fate did not bring me here. You did.” When you are powerless in society, as she was when Lorca found her, you see things about how the power structures of society impact your life that people in power may not see, or don’t want to see. Burnham knows from experience that she is a cork bobbing in the ocean subject to powerful currents she cannot control. But she is not fatalistic about this. She knows that she has at least some agency, which with great effort, cunning and bravery, she can use to at least keep herself afloat in those currents and to steer in the direction she wants to go.
The fact that Burnham is played by a woman and a person of color adds more of that “modern resonance” to this theme. People who look like Sonequa Martin-Green have no illusions about how on point they must be in order to get ahead in life, while some (many?) people who look like Jason Isaacs go through life without ever being fully aware of the large and small graces they have received that allowed them to get as far as they did.
In an article about how DSC “was actually feminist all along” Casey Cipriani writes: “Lorca’s actions are decidedly misogynistic from the beginning. He essentially kidnapped Burnham from her prison transport because he was in a type of creepy, grooming, father-figure-turned-romantic sexual relationship with the Burnham from his universe. That he felt that he could simply take ownership of the Prime universe’s Burnham, groom her as well, and convince her to join his cause is a level of presumptuousness that only comes with extreme disregard for women’s own agency.”
Despite this, Burnham’s craftiness and skill won the day over his blind self regard for his own power. If Lorca saw life as she did, and knew that you have to make your own fate, he might have been more careful and avoided dying in a mycelial fireball.
In the end, the bowl of fortune cookies–the symbol of Lorca’s belief in fate, which allowed him to believe his might was always right–was vaporized by Cornwall’s phaser. Then the crew sat together around the conference table, and instead of waiting for some invisible force to guide them, they set about solving their problems on their own.
