Forgetting the Painful Past: Strange New World’s “Among the Lotus Eaters”

What happens if you can no longer recall who you are and where you come from? What are the effects when groups’ collective and individual memories are erased? What are the political implications when parts of society retain their history and other parts lose theirs? 

These are questions many people are asking when Black, Queer, and other histories have been removed from public school curricula. Legislators in several states have banned the teaching of subjects that they think will make some children uncomfortable while their removable makes others upset. Clearly, these topics might also make some adults uneasy. 

I don’t usually write reviews, but as I read commentaries on the most recent episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, no one directly addressed how this episode connects to this issue. 

In “Among the Lotus Eaters,” the crew of the Enterprise returns to a place of pain. They must “clean up” the mess they made when they had a very short but tragic visit to a planet in which three crew members died and several others were wounded. This visit seems to have resulted in “cultural contamination” where the iron age culture of the planet somehow has a Starfleet symbol, a clear violation of their non-interference order, the Prime Directive. 

Captain Pike and his crew must face their terrible past and try to deal with their interference in the development of this primitive world. Pike holds himself accountable for the fates of those under his command and accepts the responsibility of setting things right. However, when his crew arrives on the planet, they find these primitive people have phaser weapons and the delta symbol of Starfleet adorns the gates to their castle. Something is horribly wrong. 

Pike discovers the cause: one of the crew members Pike believed had died survived and made himself the ruler of the planet. Pike and his crew are attacked and awaken in a cage – and they no longer know who they are, why they are there, or what happened before. They have lost their memories. 

The dynamic of a ruling class that can retain their memories and a worker class that has no memory seems to me to be a science fiction commentary on our refusal to face our country’s past, whether our relatives were part of it or not. Even outsiders, like the surviving crew member, benefit from and exploit this memory-based caste system. 

When Pike and his landing party confront another worker, the worker rationalizes his lack of memory telling them that memories would be painful. The worker doesn’t want to remember his family, if he lost them. He doesn’t want to feel grief, pain, anger, and unhappiness. Having no memory saves him from this kind of discomfort and makes his toil more bearable. Sound familiar? 

However, our Enterprisians, even without their memories, retain key parts of themselves. Captain Pike knows that he has been separated from someone he loves and instinctually takes leadership. Lt. Ortegas finds strength in her ability to pilot the ship. Dr. M’Benga is driven to heal those in pain. 

When Pike finally confronts the wayward crew member, we learn that the ruling class has been manipulating the workers with fiction about their lost memories. They have used the workers’ lack of history to their political advantage. People without a past don’t cause problems or challenge the rulers. Repressing history and losing memory are the key elements in maintaining this abusive society. 

As our crew regains their memories and figures out how they came to be in this situation; our guide remembers his lost family. Tearfully, he acknowledges that even painful memories are better than none at all. 

In Greek mythology, the lotus eaters were a community that ate a fruit that put them into a drug-like sleep and thus they did not care about important things. They needed to come out of their daze and wake up in order to take real action. 

This episode was about the danger of falling asleep, losing our history, and thus losing ourselves. The danger was not only for the crew of the Enterprise on Rigel VII, but, a comment about our current world.  

We need to wake up! We must not lose our histories and thus lose ourselves. We must not let people erase the past for political power and personal gain. Our individual and collective histories are critical to us and our societies. As Captain Pike notes at the end of the episode, such forgetting is not a natural development. He rightfully justifies altering the situation so everyone may remember and takes the power-hungry despot into custody. 

There has been a lot written about how the newest Trek shows are “woke.” There have been complaints that they make political statements. The original Star Trek in the 60s made bold and clear statements about everything from racism to the Vietnam War. Star Trek and science fiction are, by their very nature, social and political commentary. 

This episode was directly addressing the need to hold on to our history, even when it is uncomfortable to face. It challenges us not to become lotus eaters but to wake up and confront the problems of our uncomfortable past and clean up the messes that we have made or inherited. 

Whether or not you agree with the message, “Among the Lotus Eaters”  does what good science fiction, good Star Trek, and good literature always does: use stories and characters to help us see our world in a new way – and inspire us to change for the better.