The Aircraft Carrier and the Starship
The USS Enterprise CVN 65 is, at least indirectly, the most famous of warships.
The first aircraft carrier with nuclear engines was the inspiration for the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 and its warp engines.
Gene Roddenberry was also fascinated by the earlier Enterprise CV6, a Yorktown class carrier, that fought in and survived WW2. Roddenberry’s original name for the Enterprise was “Yorktown”.
NBC executives commissioned Star Trek not for its scifi ideas, the first pilot was scrapped for being “too cerebral”, but because they liked how relatable the show was to the US navy.
I go “much* deeper into this in my longform video Star Trek Is Propaganda which lays out the full case with all the evidence.
So let’s just agree here that the original Enterprise is on a five year mission to build the United Nations…er….Federation and Star Trek is an idealised image of the United States navy in space…
…until the Vietnam war shattered that ideal.
George Lucas is on the record that Star Wars, as a myth of an advanced technological state defeated by brave low-tech rebels, was inspired by America’s war against Vietnam and the Viet Cong. And what was the aircraft carrier sitting in the Gulf of Tonkin launching Tie-fighter sorties?
It was the USS Enterprise CVN 65. One real warship inspiring Hollywood’s two most famous starships.
An Imperial star destroyer and a nuclear aircraft carrier play the same strategic role: mobile sovereign territory that projects force over a region without asking permission. The weapon of choice to control a rowdy galaxy of planetary states, or a post-WW2 planet of competing nation states…
…whether you’re the United States of America or the United Federation of Planets.
A democratic Republic.
Or a totalitarian Empire.
Which is the real question.
Manufactured Myths: From Romulus to Madison Avenue
Every era has its mythos.
The Greeks had the Olympians, Homer and more. Ancient India had the Ramayana. You get the idea.
Stories that tell us where we come from.
Rome had Romulus and Remus. A mythos that told citizens they were the fierce children of gods and wolves. And that their city was founded as a sanctuary. That the polis could take in outcasts and make them citizens.
Which is to say that..this sh*t matters. The myths of a nation shape it in great and terrible ways.
The United States has been desperate for a mythos for all of its short history. The Old West. The Founding Fathers. George Washington and his tree.
In 1892 Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister, wanted to sell American flags to schools. The pledge of allegiance was written as a sales device. It worked. 26,000 schools participated on the first day. Bellamy’s straight armed salute was changed to hand on heart in 1942 for…obvious reasons.
The American mythos wasn’t written by a priest class, although Madison Avenue advertising executives surely played a part, it burst like a whirlwind of bullsh*t from the chaos of capitalism.
Enter Star Trek Wars, stage right
Federation vs. Empire: The Superpower Dialectic
From the capitalist competition of Hollywood studios and transnational corporations to make movies that American consumers would buy tickets for…
…emerged the conjoined mythos of Star Trek Wars.
Post-WW2 America faced one giant civilisational scale question…
…how to be a superpower.
Star Trek is the highest vision of what America believed it could be. The epitome of liberal democratic power. Making alliances not enemies. Rebuilding its opponents and making them friends. Wielding the power of science and technology not to dominate, but to raise up the entire galaxy…or world.
Star Wars is the dark side of American power. America as its haters and critics accuse it of being. Not a liberal democratic super-power bringing order to the world, but an extractive Empire with super-weapons. Demanding tribute from its vassal states by making us buy your sh*tty, over budget weapons platforms, dropping napalm on Ewoks because…you can.
Star Trek Wars is the twin mythos of American culture having an argument with itself.
Is America the Federation…
…or the Empire?
But the really interesting thing about Star Trek Wars, as I write here in 2026, with Star Wars hitting the half century and Star Trek at 60…
…is that Star Trek Wars is a dead mythos.
And the real question is…who killed it?
Voices Outside the Overton Window
I was prompted to make this short video essay by Feral Historian’s brief reminiscence on Star Trek at 60. And Feral’s conclusion that he just didn’t care about Star Trek anymore.
Feral and I have both made numerous videos on Star Trek and Star Wars. We have, arguably, the two most similar channels on youtube, both critiquing scifi for its philosophical and historical meaning.
From opposing ends of the political spectrum. Feral somewhere over on the libertarian right, while I’m typically on the socialist left. But while we disagree on plenty…Feral…does not like Marxists…
…we both find ourselves outside the liberal centre. Looking into the territory of the political landscape comfortably covered by the Overton window, critiquing its myths.
And the reason the dissident right and the radical left are both winning elections and dominating the online discourse, is the same reason the myths of Star Trek Wars have died.
The myths are dead because the thing they were about is dying.
The Usual Suspects: Reboots, Culture Wars, and Megacorps
For many decades Star Trek Wars charted the dialectic between Federation and Empire in the American psyche.
Next Generation and Deep Space Nine doubled down on the institutional confidence of the Pax Americana. The Federation was technocratic liberalism triumphant. Flawed at its borders perhaps, but well intentioned and morally self-correcting.
The Star Wars Prequels mapped the dark anxieties within the dream. Showing how a decadent, bureaucratic Republic rots from within and invites its own Emperor under the guise of emergency powers…George Lucas critiquing the War on Terror / Patriot Act era.
There’s a good reason why this era of Star Trek Wars today provides the memes to discuss our political situation online, from the political compass expressed as Trek factions, to a former Stormtrooper with a Sith chest tattoo running for senate.
Because sometime in the 2000s Star Trek Wars began to die.
It would be too easy to answer the question Who Killed Star Trek Wars with
JJ Abrams. Hollywood’s biggest hack was given the keys to the American mythos and instead of continuing to drive that Cadillac down the long empty highway of the American psyche, JJ did the only thing he knew how to do.
He tried and failed to reboot it.
But JJ was really just the man brought in to wield the axe. He could no more personally kill a mythos than could…
…Daisy Ridley. Poor old Daisy, as the face of Rey, has been made the whipping girl for the most popular answer to our question…
…that Woke killed Star Trek Wars.
The simple fact that Star Trek and Star Wars were both always almost painfully woke. Both always had empowered female characters, and diverse casting, and intensely political storytelling. These facts count for nothing, because facts cannot change a belief built on bullsh*t.
The third answer to who killed Star Trek Wars, and the one I have a weakness for, is corporate capitalism.
Star Wars was bought by Disney, a corporate bureaucracy whose only understanding of mythos is how much it cost them to buy and how much they can squeeze out of the franchising rights. Asking Disney executives to make Star Wars is basically like asking Vogons to write poetry.
Meanwhile, Star Trek was first flushed into the Viacom sewer and then more recently bought out by the Sith lord Larry Ellison and his son Darth David. Star Trek, the myth that unflinching mirrored America’s imperial follies, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, is now owned by a billionaire who absolutely 100% will not allow it to say anything about certain ongoing political travesties supported by the US. If the Dominion should show up in Strange New Worlds to perform a perfectly justified military invasion of Bajor…you will know why.
Now. A lot of you are going to be shouting the same word at me around now.
ANDOR.
Yes, I know about Andor. I’m the guy who made that video you watched two years ago about Andor being Marxist. And now everyone is saying so.
But Andor is not the saviour of Star Wars. It’s the deathblow.
Disney bought Star Wars for the same reason they bought Marvel. As a franchise to brand products churned out from their dark satanic CGI mills. They made Dave Filoni the boss because he’s the nerd you hire to churn out corporate slop.
Andor is the evidence that this business strategy is not sustainable. Tony Gilroy is the proof that art is made by artists.
But. As tempting as the answer is that capitalism killed Star Trek Wars, it’s not like these franchises came from anywhere other than corporate greed in the first place.
America has always been a cabal of corporate profit seekers in a trenchcoat, selling a dream of liberal democracy to cover up that capitalism was never liberal or democratic.
The real answer to who killed Star Trek Wars, the American mythos.
Is America.
The Collapse of Hegemony and the Final Choice
Star Trek Wars is America arguing about what to do with power. The Star Trek mythic answer, build a higher civilization. Or the dark Star Wars vision of Imperial power.
What Star Trek Wars was never equipped to deal with was the collapse of power.
To mix my scifi metaphors:
The Federation dispatched its star destroyers to deal with the religious nutters on Arakis…
…and the star destroyers returned six months later, mission failed, covered in rust.
Because he who can destroy a thing controls a thing.
And America no longer controls the levers of global power. The aircraft carriers are obsolete. The Patriots are 200 times more expensive than every drone shot down.
But these are just symptoms of the fundamental reality. America is 4% of the global population and 15% of GDP, falling fast. The United States is not the Federation or the Empire.
It doesn’t have the power anymore to be either.
Star Trek Wars was a mythos of destined power. The Federation governs with the moral certainty of a civilisation that believes absolutely in its own cultural superiority. The Empire is led by demi-gods.
Neither apply to America. American power was never destined, and never certain. It was contingent. The outcome of good geography, a fortunate history, and some ruthless decisions. As those contingencies fade, so goes the power.
In the face of that reality America has chosen between its twin mythic destinies, and decided to become the Empire. MAGA are the people who watched Star Wars and thought the Death Star was cooooool. They elected Tangerine Palpatine. Twice. ICE are domestic stormtroopers ready to be turned on citizens and toss you into Narkina 5.
And Darth Hegseth is desperate to unleash the tactical nuclear Death Stars on Tatooine.
Let’s hope he doesn’t get the chance.
Because there’s a better choice for America than doubling down to become the Evil Empire.
All myths are lies. Every national mythos is propaganda to some degree. America was never the Federation or the Empire.
But myths are also visions. Orienting stories that shape decisions. Dreams that cannot come true, but can guide us to a better future.
The Empire leads only to the dark side…I mean come on people did you not watch Star Wars?
The Federation is a myth that can lead to the light. The Federation’s strength was never its starships, but its Prime Directive. Its willingness to NOT grasp power. Not to impose itself by force, but instead to cooperate.
It was always America’s best destiny. The destiny you choose. The destiny you build.
And it still could be.
Damien Walter 