Now that I have matured I realize that almost all of it is quite anti-religious, some more open then others. The Stargate series is quite blatant, the series revolves around a battle against false gods (the Gould and then the Original) and the message is that there is no God just more advanced beings. Star Trek projects the same message in all it's series, for example, the Q are omnipotent beings with Godlike powers but are just considered a more advanced species. The Bajoran prophets/Gods (DS9) turn out to be aliens who experience non-linear time. Other series are not as blatant but the message is still there.
It is fascinating to me that this genre was considered "clean" and "safe" when I was growing up when it is really quite anti-religious when you think about it.
One of the first "Oh!" moments I had was reading the Martian Chronicles when I was (I think) ten or eleven. There's a story in there about a woman who has a dream that space travelers from Earth come to Mars and she meets them. Her husband ridicules the idea, telling her that scientists have shown that there's too much oxygen on Earth for life to survive. I was used to hearing how Hashem made the Earth perfect for life, and how amazing that was. It was the first time I came across something that suggested the Earth wasn't perfect for life, only for us. It was a real change in perspective.
ReplyDelete"Who Mourns for Adonais?" is episode No. 31, production No. 33, of the second season of the American science fiction television series, Star Trek
ReplyDeleteThat was one of the episodes I had in mind. Another one from TOS was the episode with Sargon when he and his wife have god like powers and Sargon states their biggest problem was what do you do when you have god like powers?
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