Many of those who propound this hypothesis see JFK as the logos that enters into the young, vibrant, and optimistic Captain James T. Kirk, the leader of the Starship Enterprise which is on a five year mission to go where no man has gone before, into the new frontier that is now the ever moving universe instead of the moving American western frontier. One can argue, however, that the parallels between the Kennedy administration and the crew of the Starship Enterprise is even broader than the Kennedy-Kirk connection and parallels. You have vice-president Lyndon Baines Johnson leading the medical operations of the Star Trek Enterprise in the form of the drawling and emotional Southerner Leonard “Bones” McCoy. You have Bobby Kennedy, one of JFK’s closest advisors, kind of inhabiting the body of the half-human half-alien Mr. Spock. You have the best and brightest Ivy Leaguers who served in the Kennedy administration represented in the engineers who keep the Starship Enterprise functioning particularly when it is under pressure from a variety of varying forces many of them from alien forces outside the ship. You have crew members who are representative of what passed for liberal diversity in the early and mid-1960s. There is the Black communications officer Lieutenant Uhuru whose name is supposedly Swahili for freedom and whose character is presumably a shout out to the civil rights movement then afoot in the United States. There is the Russian ensign Pavel Chekhov, whose last name is that of a famous Russian literary figure making it easy for viewer to make the connection. There is the Japanese Lieutenant Sulu who along with Chekhov often helms the Enterprise. Uhuru, Chekhov, and Sulu embody in the series Africa, the evil other of 1960s America, and Asia respectively. All three are played by American actors and all serve under the command of he who some would see as the ultimate American action hero and gunslinger of the era, Captain James T. Kirk. You have a host of glamorous young women in auxiliary female roles such as Nurse Chapel and Yeoman Janice Rand all whom, as is Uhuru, are garbed in not so futuristic mini-skirts presumably, at least in part, for the young nerd boy male gaze that those who made the show presumed would watch the show.
Characters are not the only reflections of Kennedy America in Star Trek. There are also the many contradictions in the show that reflect the contradictions of America in an era where the counterculture was becoming prominent. You have, for example, the ethnographic episodes where Kirk and Company learn about and learn something from the aliens they encounter on the new frontier such as in the 1967 episode “Errand of Mercy”, an episode in which Kirk and the Enterprise come up against the Klingons, Star Trek’s Russkies, both of whom are shown up by a planet full of powerful pacifists. You have the episodes that mirror the playing chicken games of the Cold War such as 1966’s “The Corbomite Maneuver”, an episode that ultimately asks why can’t we just get along and answers we can with a little understanding, understanding that will help the great powers avoid nuclear annihilation. And you have the too many to list imperial episodes in which Kirk and the Enterprise do what they are not supposed to do, violate the prime directive of the cultural anthropology episodes to leave native cultures alone so they can develop on their own, episodes that are slyly commented on and critiqued in “Errand of Mercy”, episodes all which show the primitives on the frontier how they can progress by simply “adapting” to the United Federation of Planets, the utopian liberal American way.
The ethnographic, cold war, and imperial episodes are not the only generic episodes one finds in Star Trek. There are also the many episodes, too many to list, where Kirk not only gets his man but gets, well almost gets, his woman. It is as if those making Star Trek were coyly commenting on John's and Bobby’s many extra marital sexual affairs or the sexual power of those in power. But then again, affairs are close to the Hollywood heart and many of those who tune in to Hollywood television shows and watch Hollywood movies do so to see fairy tale romances amidst the western action adventure. Sex, as Hollywood has known for some time sells and selling is central to the Hollywood capitalist enterprise. There are the episodes where history in space parallels American history in time, the episodes where the Enterprise finds Romans, Chicago like mobsters, and Third Reich like Nazis in outer space, episodes undoubtedly impacted by the budgetary constraints of the show. There are the alternative history episodes of the show, most famously 1967’s “City on the Edge of Forever”. There are the episodes where the Star Trek crew go back to the era in which the show was made such as 1967’s “Tomorrow is Yesterday” There are the megalomaniac episodes of the show, episodes in which Kirk and the Enterprise come up against more powerful forces in the form, for example, of Greek gods and characters who have lived the lives of many illustrious humans but who, by episodes end, are outsmarted and out manoeuvred in classic Hollywood fashion by Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise such as 1969’s “Requiem for Methuselah". The show must go on after all and in Hollywood genres go on and on and on in repetitive fashion, something viewers of Hollywood television and film love and love and love.
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