Hey, Who's Up For Politicizing The New Star Trek Movie?

The new film’s resident villain, that’s who:

Will the new Star Trek sequel boldly go where much of Hollywood has gone before–bashing President George W. Bush?

Benedict Cumberbatch, the British actor who plays the mysterious villain in Star Trek Into Darkness, told BBC America that the new film’s futuristic setting didn’t stop it from reflecting on recent global events.

In the film there’s a debate among Starfleet personnel over how best to extract an enemy in a distant part of the galaxy — and whether that enemy should be subjected to due process.

The British actor says: “It’s no spoiler I think to say that there’s a huge backbone in this film that’s a comment on recent U.S. interventionist overseas policy from the Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld era.”

Gee, wait’ll Cumberbatch finds out that James T. Kirk was inspired by John F. Kennedy, and the United Federation of Planets by JFK and LBJ’s New Frontier/Great Society interventionist overseas policy. Or that the Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld era of foreign policy flowed directly from the previous Clinton, Gore and Madeleine Albright era?

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The trick to good sci-fi is to bury the politicization deep in the subtext, which is made much easier when the layer on top of that contains spaceships, phaser pistols, and the distaff half of the crew in miniskirts. The writers know that — even if the actors hired to speak their lines give the game away far too often.