The Next Generation and Generational Trauma, an introduction.
The one good thing my father ever gave me was a love of science fiction. Mostly Star Wars & Trek, but those things led to other good things I found on my own, like Madeline L’Engle, Doctor Who, and Terry Pratchett. My dad is not a good person, when we were little we’d go on these family bike rides and one time my little brother Steven crashed at the bottom of a hill and broke his jaw and my father yelled at him for a good ten minutes to shut up and stop crying until my mother was able to come back with the car to rush him to the hospital. After he survived a heart attack, he left his most recent wife who had dementia, and whom when I went down to take care of him would drive between Pensacola and Destin to visit her as well and make sure, she was getting care. This was when I finally decided a relationship with my father wasn’t worth it, stopped talking to him, blocked his calls. The world is horrible enough without horrible people. As far as I was concerned, he died of that heart attack while I was stuck in a backyard air B&B with a compostable toilet in the height of covid, eating takeaway pad Thai and recording podcasts in the bathtub.
I wonder where he went wrong, how the man who cried at the death of Spock and said, “Woah! Use the Force Luke!” at the end of Supergirl could be such a cruel and narcissistic person. How anyone who believed in the Federation of Planets could vote for Trump, twice. And I wonder, how did I get the right message from these things while sitting next to this person who got it so wrong, for whom empathy for people different than ourselves was a pie in the sky futuristic concept, and not an idea to be incorporated into our lives right now.
This is my starting point for a Star Trek the Next Generation recap. In rewatching each episode and writing about it, my hope is that I can unravel some of my past and reclaim some of those lessons. If some folks along the way want to share in that journey, all the better. Engage, Number One.
