If we take Star Trek as the embodiment of representation serving only to further its own purpose we might read it as attempting to conceal that it has diminished the importance of our actual situation and implemented as a substitute its own representations, thereby diminishing the possibility of interpretation of our authentic existential situation.It does this by devaluing our existential position through making absent our sense of self as (always-already decaying) bodies, bodies that become wounded or age as time goes on.
Allegorically, the body's existence must be concealed and forgotten in order for representationalism to begin its claim to autonomy. So just as the Cartesian soul (the originator of the lineage of representation) "is not subject to die with (the body)", Captain Pike, the 'soul' of the former Enterprise, does not die, in the delta ray accident in the Menagerie along with his own body or the corpus of the Enterprise's former crew but instead remains encapsulated in a mechanical chair of sorts. Thus, too, Spock can perform a 'mind-meld' where he leaves his body and moves into another's. Finally, wounds, pains, do not matter in the Star Trek economy. Gem the Empath absorbs physical torture and Bones cures diseases. There are no corpses on the USS Enterprise since the life and decay of the body do not exist.The devaluation of the corporeal and ascendance of an autonomous representation, finally, mirrors our patriarchal social hierarchy in the Cartesian claim that "the rational soul" (the picture of the world) is lodged in the human body "like a pilot in his ship"21. And yet, finally, the body is given an all-important status: Kirk's boyish face is carefully dusted with rouge and Spock's eyebrows neatly penciled, bodies are encased in body-conscious clothing, female representatives of the Enterprise are carefully packaged in extremely short babydoll dresses, female 'others' are encased in revealing variations on exotic garb. We are seemingly invited to think of the body as an attractive, consumable object.
As with corpo-reality, the existential aspects of the Enterprise--its material features and machinations--are concealed, legitimized; made given or on the other hand fetishized. In this sense the representation of science/technology on the Enterprise is more (and at the same time less) sophisticated than, to take an example from the cinema, Chaplin's. Insofar as technology is not an object in question; it refuses to act as if it is a practical and material problem. We are not invited to question the instruments and equipmentality of the Star Trek world.Heidegger points out that technological equipment represents itself by taking itself to be transparent therefore forestalling reflection upon it.22 On the Enterprise, transportation and communication systems are given, immaterial and transparent in this same sense: we flip open our wallet-sized box and ask to be beamed up; if we need to get somewhere/enable the plot, we may be 'beamed down' to wherever we wish. Time is similarly mis-represented; re-told: we do not need clocks on the enterprise, nor maps, since locality is sheerly absent: on the Enterprise we only move 'full speed ahead' at warp factor 10 (while staying, all the while, in the same place and engaging, at the same time, in anachronistic fantasies). Time is at issue only when there is an impediment to progress: something that will hurt the supposed 'movement' of the enterprise, hurt 'us' psychologically or physically, interfere with the Enterprise's neverending pursuit of scientific domination; e.g., fuel or crystal problems, aliens or subversion. The only time we are invited to take part in an examination of technology is when we are displayed feats (like the transporter's dematerialization of the body) of technical virtuosity, in which case technology is neither demystified, explained, or analyzed, but merely set forth as a glamorous fetish. The ship, then, like the body either go unconsidered or are fetishized and the crew members, like ourselves, are exhorted to fix attention on what's on the screen.Technology on the Enterprise, is more sophisticated than in Modern Times , then, because it does not ask for tinkering-with in the form of Chaplin's obsessive tightening of bolts. 23 We needn't pay attention to technology on the Enterprise except in dramatic situations and then only by underlings--clearly defined 'others' like Scotty, the ship's engineer. The lack of reflection upon the givenness of technicity aboard the Starship Enterprise seems to state that possibilities of reflective subversion upon the state of things are slim.