Star Trek (in general) and disability

[ysobel]

... so, okay, when I was in high school I hadn't considered fanfic as a possibility so instead was daydreaming up clone-universes of Star Trek (andm to a lesser extent, Pern). With a complete OT3 of not-Kirk, not-Spock, and not-McCoy.

I reeeeally wish I had any of the high school stuff any more, because it would be terribly entertaining to go back and look at it.

One thing I do remember, though?

At least half the time, the not-Kirk was disabled.

Sometimes from an incurable medical whosit, sometimes from unfixable damage sustained in a Dramatic Rescue. Always with adaptive technology -- fuck the whole "blocky uncomfortable wheelchair where the person can mentally trigger communication by a light flashing yes or no" thing that TOS had; I think the most frequent thing I used was a sort of not-really-a-jet-pack exoskeleton, which right now (based on current knowledge and vague fuzzy memories of what I was writing) I can best describe as a cross between Iron Man and orthotic brace.

I'm kind of torn on the lack of visible disability in Starfleet. On the one hand, it *is* a semi-military organization that has standards of physical fitness. On the other, does it need to? I mean, okay, you don't want someone with a spastic condition to be responsible for manually aiming a weapon, and maybe you don't want someone who can't crawl into ducts to be an engineering lackey, but. Still.

(One other argument is that, aside from medical purposes, for which temporary wheelchairs are sufficient, is that Star Trek, being a somewhat idealistic view of Earth's future, is a placetime where all significant diseases have been cured. But I ... am skeptical. Some of the more serious medical issues of a thousand years ago, even a hundred years ago, are no longer an issue, but others have risen to take their place.)

Adaptations can be made for aliens wishing to enter Starfleet, but yet not for disabled people, even for cases where the needed adaptive technology exists *now*?

...I do not blame TOS for this; it was a product of its time. The movie ... could have done something.

Me, I just want to find my dorky immature OT3 daydreamings.

Comments

[niqaeli]

Part of the reason we've had conditions replace the ones we've eliminated is that, well, basically -- things that previously would've killed you don't now. It's a fair bet that this is part of the reason autism is on the rise: they think that a lot of children that died of 'failure to thrive' were in fact autistic. In the modern age, they are able to live long enough for their disabilities to manifest.

So -- I don't know. I tend to think that we'll keep beating things and keep improving quality of life, and that once we make certain breakthroughs (most particularly as relates to stem cells and genetic therapies), disability may become increasingly rare as we find ways to cure what would only have been treatable at best in the current era. (Which is actually perhaps horrible to contemplate when we consider that in it becomes rare it's possible that people will start getting worse in how they treat people with disabilities.)

But then again, that said? I suspect that if we fling ourselves to the stars, we'll find new and horrible things out there to keep having to outmatch. So I doubt major medical conditions will ever completely disappear; it'll be a never-ending game of cat-and-mouse, as it were.

[rainbow]

I'd like to put my name down for one of the exoskeletons *nod*

Going by what I know of Gene, I wouldn't be surprised if his premise was that in the future pretty much everything disabling could be cured, and ones that couldn't be cured would be rare and remarkable (like Pike); milder disabilities wouldn't exist.