Seeing Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton) as chief engineer of the USS Enterprise-D, NCC-1701-D, certainly encouraged young black men and women to go into engineering.
For black people who want to be inventors, though, the encouragement from Star Trek would seem to be a little less enthusiastic, and with one big caveat: your invention, though very useful, could lead to personal tragedy.
Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first airing of the classic episode “The Ultimate Computer.”
Heroes & Icons, an “extra” 480P channel you might be able to pull in with your antenna, will be airing “The Apple” tonight (episodes are run roughly in original broadcast order, so “The Ultimate Computer” probably won’t rerun until next month).
The brilliant Richard Daystrom (William Marshall) has come aboard the Enterprise, NCC-1701, to install the new M-5 computer, which is “multitronic” (whatever that means), a major improvement on his invention of “duotronics” for starship computers.
The early tests seem to go well. The Enterprise arrives at Carinae II and the M-5 makes recommendations for a landing party that are much like what Captain Kirk (William Shatner) recommends, with the crucial difference that the M-5 does not consider it necessary for Kirk to go down to the planet.
It is an omen of things about to go wrong when Scotty notices that the M-5 has cut life support to a couple of decks. Well, the Enterprise is running with a skeleton crew, with the M-5 taking care of what the four hundred or so other crew members normally would.
By the time the war games roll around, things start going really wrong. The M-5 takes complete control of the Enterprise and treats the war games as actual battle.
The situation is so dangerous that Commodore Bob Wesley (Barry Russo), in command of the USS Lexington, is authorized to destroy the Enterprise.
Confronting Daystrom, Kirk learns that somehow Daystrom used his own brain to program the M-5. Now both the inventor and his creation are having a nervous breakdown.
Fortunately Kirk is able to get the M-5 to stand down. The M-5 drops the Enterprise’s shields and relinquishes control. The Lexington does not destroy the Enterprise.
Spock (Leonard Nimoy) opines that he does not wish to be commanded by a computer, and that a starship runs on loyalty to one man.
I find that line somewhat jarring today. Loyalty is good, as long as it’s not blind loyalty. If the captain is ill, the chief medical officer can relieve him of duty. And if the captain is a coward or a traitor, or both, Starfleet has a procedure for that, right?
Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) sedates Daystrom, and recommends the inventor be sent to a mental rehabilitation facility. And so it looks like the career of a black man who is a great computing genius ends in tragedy.
Maybe I’m making too much of Daystrom being played by a black actor who also played Othello and Blacula.
But then there is the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Daedalus,” which reveals that the transporter was invented by Emory Erickson (Bill Cobbs, who some might remember as a Navy chaplain on JAG).
Erickson is in a wheelchair, but that might not have anything to do with his invention. So Erickson has come aboard the Enterprise NX-01 to test his long-range transporter.
At least that’s what he tells Captain Archer (Scott Bakula). The real reason is that a transporter experiment trapped the inventor’s son, Quinn, in subspace, putting him in a sort of limbo between life and death. So the transporter test is actually a rescue mission.
The father is able to use the Enterprise’s transporter to bring his son back into regular space, but the son dies soon after materializing. Another black genius, another personal tragedy.
Heroes & Icons also reruns Enterprise episodes. Tonight, “Acquisition,” in which Ferengi try to loot the Enterprise for gold and other treasure. “Daedalus” will be rerun in about two or three months.