THE TREK TOWARDS PERFECTION: THEORY AND BELIEF ON THE FINAL FRONTIER
A stabilized Omega particle. Public Domain.
About midway through Star Trek: Voyager’s fourth-season episode, “The Omega Directive,” Captain Janeway and crew member, Seven of Nine, are discussing the creative and destructive potential of a particle known as “Omega.” To Janeway, and the United Federation of Planets she serves, Omega is a danger, capable of destroying everything in its path. But Seven has a different perspective: as a recently-liberated member of the Borg collective – a race of cybernetically augmented humanoids with a shared hive mind seeking the unreachable goal of “perfection” – she believes that “Omega is infinitely complex, yet harmonious. . . . [It] represents perfection.” (1) As they work together, Janeway asks if Omega’s perfection is “a theory or belief?” Seven is unable to answer, perhaps realizing for the first time that the boundary between theory and belief is less rigid than she once believed. For the audience it raises the question: what is the difference between these – between a theory and a belief about ourselves, about the world around us, or even about our experience of God? Moreover, what difference does it make to us if our faith is a matter of theory or belief?
I have been a fan of Star Trek for nearly my entire life, and I can barely remember a time when I wasn’t anxiously waiting each week for a new episode of The Next Generation to air. My friends and I would use the whole day to dissect the details of the previous night’s new episode, and I can’t count the hours we’d spend creating homemade Star Trek movies, crafting new models of ships out of paper plates, and even writing fan-fics for school writing assignments.
While I have loved Star Trek since childhood, I only came to my faith as an adult. Though my family tried to raise me in the United Church of Canada, it was only after attending an Anglican Christmas Eve service at age nineteen that I first suspected that maybe there was a God after all, and maybe God was asking me to pay attention to – and to be in a relationship with – the divine. That pull was so strong that I immediately joined the parish choir, was confirmed that Pentecost, and now, twenty years later, am pursuing ordained ministry.
Several years ago, I took on the ambitious goal of watching every single episode of Star Trek, and it was only then that I realized that my favorite franchise had some strong feelings about religion and faith.
The Star Trek franchise has never had an easy relationship with religion. (2) Whether it be The Original Series’s suggestion in “The Apple” that devotion to a god of any kind necessarily leads to stagnation as a species, (3) or Captain Picard’s insistence in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Who Watches the Watchers” that to believe in a divine being is nothing more than irrational “Dark Age . . . fear and superstition,” (4) Star Trek has always been careful to suggest that the humanity of the future no longer practices religion of any kind. Star Trek’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, was an adamant atheist. In a 1991 interview with the magazine The Humanist, Roddenbery said:
I made up my mind that church, and probably largely the Bible, was not for me. I did not go back to even thinking much about it for years. If people need religion, ignore them and maybe they will ignore you and you can go on with your life. (5)
It is unsurprising, then, that whenever religion did come up in Star Trek, it was usually in the context of more “primitive” and “less civilized” species who discovered that their god was actually a false god, revealed or destroyed by the Enterprise crew who “liberated” the people by the end of the episode.
By the time Star Trek: Voyager (VOY) premiered in 1995, the tone had shifted a bit, due in large part to its predecessor, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9), which put conversations around religion’s place in 24th-century society front and center. While VOY may not have grappled with religion as regularly as DS9 did, it nonetheless featured several episodes related to the question of faith. More importantly, it addressed not just the faith of alien species, but of humans – and often in a more favorable light than its predecessors.
This brings us back to “The Omega Directive.” Omega is not the false god of previous incarnations of Star Trek, and I think it serves a more interesting function because of this. Series producer Brannon Braga has stated that while “the human facet of Star Trek is secular,” the Borg essentially have a religion built around the concept of “perfection.” (6) Seven’s desire to see Omega is based on her understanding that not only does this perfection exist, but that individuals are able to encounter and witness that perfection. In this, it serves as an apt metaphor for our own desire to meet God and to understand the part the divine plays in our own lives.
The question, in the context of this episode at least, hinges on the distinction between theory and belief, where theory implies something that can be proven (or disproven) through experimentation, and belief involves trust in the truth of something regardless of evidence. Seven argues that Omega can be stabilized and harnessed based on two factors: first, the science tells her that it should be possible because, second, the Borg were able to do it “for one trillionth of a nanosecond” before losing containment. A trillionth of a nanosecond is so small as to be meaningless – it’s a unit of time that the human mind cannot comprehend. But this inconceivably short period serves a larger function – it is a stand in for the fact that our own experiences with the divine are often fleeting.
At the beginning of my own journey to faith, I felt as though I had had a direct, intimate experience with God. It happened over twenty years ago and lasted mere moments, but in those moments, I knew that I had encountered something – someone – larger than myself, who knew me intimately. More importantly, I knew without a doubt that this new relationship was one that would last, and that it was worth trusting. Like the Borg’s initial encounter with a stabilized Omega, the experience was fleeting, but it nonetheless inspired both of us to continue to search after it because we could not ignore the reality of it. It had changed us forever.
I cannot make an argument for God based on empirical evidence, nor do I think it’s possible to. To attempt to prove God exists is to quantify the divine in ways that make God too small. A small, definable god is not one I would want to worship. Even the Bible offers no proofs for the existence of God. (7) Rather, our experience of God is largely known by our relationship with God, and because that relationship fundamentally changes us, by showing us a different way of living, we can’t help but respond to it. As a result, any argument for God based purely on external evidence would fall short because it can’t adequately show what a personal relationship with God looks like. (8) By living in response to that relationship we allow others to see the ways in which we are changed, and our very lives become a kind of proof for the existence of God. “Faith,” says Rowan Williams, “has a lot to do with the simple fact that there are trustworthy lives to be seen, that we can see in some believing people a world we’d like to live in.” (9) Seven of Nine lives and acts as though the potential for a stabilized Omega is a real possibility, and so her theory, based on the scantest of evidence, is also a belief that there is more to be learned by interaction with it. Despite only having a shared memory of a stable Omega, she cannot shake the trust she has in its potential, just as I have continued to trust in my relationship with God despite the initial brevity of that first encounter.
It’s here, however, that the metaphorical power of Omega breaks down (as all metaphors for God eventually do), because Seven cannot have the kind of personal relationship with a particle that a person has with God, although the episode tries to suggest this might be possible. While working to eradicate the Omega particles, a number of them spontaneously coalesce while Seven watches, allowing her character more proof of the perfection she seeks than human faith is ever likely to find of God. As she reflects on her experience, Seven says to Captain Janeway:
For three point two seconds I saw perfection. When Omega stabilised, I felt a curious sensation. As I was watching it, it seemed to be watching me. The Borg have assimilated many species with mythologies to explain such moments of clarity. I've always dismissed them as trivial. Perhaps I was wrong. (10)
In her own way, Seven now has a relationship with Omega she did not have before, becoming aware of a world beyond her conception up to that point. Janeway responds by suggesting that Seven has just had her first spiritual experience.
Though Janeway initially presents theory and belief as being opposed to one another, perhaps they should properly be treated as two sides of the same coin. Almost cyclical in nature, faith can begin with an experience of God that seems tangible in the moment but may, in fact, be fleeting. Nonetheless, it can be enough to test a theory that may result in trust – belief – that a relationship with God is possible and worthwhile. By that relationship we are changed and live a different kind of life which we live in front of other people, acting as its own kind of proof of God, potentially allowing others to test their own theories about the divine. But sometimes, like Seven, we find that nothing can account for those mysterious, mystical moments when everything seems to come together on its own for us to encounter when we least expect it. Perhaps theory and belief are but the starting points for a greater journey.
Star Trek: Voyager, season 4, episode 21, “The Omega Directive,” directed by Victor Lobl, written by Lisa Klink, featuring Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan, aired April 15, 1998, on the United Paramount Network (UPN), https://www.netflix.com/watch/70178130?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2C2c0c246d514612a58303f740f34f8cdb5385598e%3A16744945ff668b802e34a57792c18122896f8bab%2C2c0c246d514612a58303f740f34f8cdb5385598e%3A16744945ff668b802e34a57792c18122896f8bab%2Cunknown%2C.
For a detailed summary of Star Trek episodes that have dealt with the questions of religion and faith, see Ex Astris Scientia, “Religion in Star Trek,” accessed March 1, 2021, https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/religion.htm.
Star Trek, season 2, episode 5, “The Apple,” directed by Joseph Pevny, written by Max Ehrlich, featuring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley, aired October 13, 1967, on NBC, https://www.netflix.com/watch/70178523?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2C7da9d33aca3a52a2b4f7ff0937a4e70be93a2380%3Ae6df783afd3aa097ee207034e78b8e46abe85cc9%2C7da9d33aca3a52a2b4f7ff0937a4e70be93a2380%3Ae6df783afd3aa097ee207034e78b8e46abe85cc9%2Cunknown%2C.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 3, episode 4, “Who Watches the Watchers,” directed by Robert Wiemer, written by Richard Manning and Hans Beimler, featuring Patrick Stewart, aired October 16, 1989, in broadcast syndication, https://www.netflix.com/watch/70177914?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2Cf8f5350d6f30ba8808ca2d3402b9ddfd301b377b%3A135ca7c3fc841f72c9ddaea8b85118877a7ea888%2Cf8f5350d6f30ba8808ca2d3402b9ddfd301b377b%3A135ca7c3fc841f72c9ddaea8b85118877a7ea888%2Cunknown%2C.
The Humanist, March/April, 1991, http://trekcomic.com/2016/11/24/gene-roddenberrys-1991-humanist-interview/, accessed March 15, 2021.
Ex Astris Scientia, “Religion in Star Trek,” accessed March 1, 2021, https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/religion.htm.
Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, [2007] 2010), 21.
Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, [2007] 2010), 31.
Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, [2007] 2010), 21–22.
Star Trek: Voyager, “The Omega Directive.”
