Star Trek--The Motion Picture

The dominant ideology is militaristic, modified with a number of rules of engagement and an overriding sense of the importance of life wherever it is found. Exploration and discovery marks another ideology shaping the behavior of the participants and determining how they react to what they encounter. The overall social structure of the film mirrors that of the U.S. Navy. This is seen throughout in the terminology used for different elements (from the ships being operated in space to the various ranks assigned to different crew members). The narrative itself invokes the military ideology--a danger approaches the earth, and a team is sent to discover what it is and eliminate it. This is what focuses the attention of the audience--a problem has been stated, and a solution is being attempted. The various problems encountered along the way delay the solution, but always it is the cavalry that is on the way to save the day.

The iconography is military as well, from the uniforms worn by crew members to the various military designations on the sides of t

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owledge, and the solving of problems. The narrative is a mystery. There is an alien presence attacking ships, and it is headed toward Earth. The task at hand is t find out what it is, what it wants, and how it can be stopped, preferably through communication, but by other means if necessary. The power of the object hidden in a huge cloud is awe-inspiring, and there is a religious ideology underlying much of the action for this reason. This is clearly the motivation for Spock, she sensed the presence of some power beyond anything he had ever imagined and who had to find it to see if it held the answers he sought. Science fiction often has an explicit or implicit religious ideology at its center, for science fiction often deals with cosmic issues and so delves into the realm of what we call God because it is simply too big, too mysterious, or too distant for us to have any sense of it as a manifestation of the physical alone. Even the mechanism at the heart of the cloud has the same sense of mystic wonder about its Creator. The film was made at the end of the 1970s at a time when world tensions were still in the Cold War mode. A dominant idealogy in all the different manifestations of Star Trek is the unity of humankind, a
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1966
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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