The other night, I was watching an episode of Star Trek: Discovery and I’m almost positive I saw someone on the ship in a wheelchair. It wasn’t anything special like someone on the bridge, and it wasn’t even a futuristic chair. Just a background crew member wheeling along in a scene.
I saw this and first, I got excited. Second, I went into geek mode, wondering what would happen to this person if the ship was hit by an asteroid, fired on by Klingons or some other hostile aliens or, more comically, if the ship’s gravity turned off. Finally, it got me thinking a little more seriously.
I read an article once asking why there aren’t more disabled characters in science fiction.
I’m all for inclusion and representation, which is what the article was addressing, but I don’t think it necessarily fits with space dramas like Star Trek or Star Wars. These shows and movies are speculative, fantastical, and depict far-off worlds and futuristic times, with stories featuring faster-than-light space travel, teleportation, hover cars, and holograms and androids who are basically sentient beings.
One of the key points of the Star Trek franchise is that, by the time period of the original series (Kirk, Spock, etc.), Earth has basically become a utopia, eliminating war, famine, disease, and poverty. Why not assume disability would be lumped in with that?
As a sci-fi fan, I do think it would be interesting to read or see something set in almost a middle-phase, where technology is just at the point where disabilities and illnesses could be fixed/cured/treated (in fact, there probably already is a story like this somewhere out there), but I also want to immerse myself in worlds of possibilities where anything and everything can happen.
Cheers!
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