Like most little girls, I dreamed of what it might be like to be a princess once upon a time. As an adult, I often find myself longing for a more medieval existence, free from the internet and the complexities of modern geopolitics. Plague, infection, and dangerous childbirth notwithstanding, anyone born before the industrial revolution at least had a much simpler, plastic-free existence. They may have even been happier than we are now, but that would have depended on which social strata into which they were born.
For all the faults of modernity, at least it is rare to see anyone starve to death in a developed country, which was not always the case for the medieval peasant. People on the bottom rungs of society are the first to suffer the most from any sociopolitical upheaval, food shortage, or disease outbreak. We have advanced to the point where being at the bottom is not quite as deadly as it once was, but it is still not ideal. The economist Minouche Shafik defines a fair society (or economy) as one in which “if you didn’t know where you would land in that economy – you didn’t know which family you would be born into, or where you would be born – that you would think, I could have a good life in that economy”. This was not true of the Middle Ages, nor does it describe the planet Ardana, where the Enterprise crew encountered a strictly banded social system.
Kirk and crew are on a mission to obtain zenite from the mines of Ardana to stop a plague elsewhere. Upon arriving, the away team is attacked by a group of miners. They are saved by the High Advisor of Ardana, who invites the Starfleet officers to be his guests. The crew learns of the hardships of a divided mining planet. The miners, known as cave-dwelling Troglytes, are mistreated and made to perform all the physical labor while the upper intellectual class luxuriate in their cloud city. The group of Troglytes that Kirk encountered earlier were agitated protesters lashing out at the unfairness of their condition. The city dwellers quell any such backlash with torturous punishment.
Starkly banded social strata of this type represent an extreme exaggeration of labor distribution. Thinking back to medieval times, the feudal system likely would have originated when a small group of people, or a family, obtained or retained land and resources after the collapse of an empire. These decentralized landowners needed people to work the land, and the peasants needed protection and resources in return. The arrangement was not always fair, and peasants were more often on the unjust end, but the nobles were expected to keep their side of the deal. Namely, they would be the first to go to war to protect the realm. The expectations and responsibilities of a noblewoman, and especially a queen, were also difficult. She would be required to produce an heir, and the birth of a royal baby was often a public spectacle, drawing huge crowds of onlookers. I have now reevaluated my dream of being a medieval princess.
The point is that the nobility had a responsibility toward their subjects as much as they benefited from them, and the system functioned when everyone played their part. The rich people of Ardana were happy to exploit the labor of their poor underclass, but they offered nothing in return. Dr. McCoy discovers that zenite emits a harmful gas, which diminishes mental capacity. Specialized masks would filter the gas, and Kirk was willing to distribute them for free, but the rich upper class were having none of it. Perhaps the crippling effects of the gas were more of a feature than a bug. Kirk beams the High Advisor into the mines and forces him to dig for zenite until everyone feels the effects of the gas. In the end, the Troglytes got their masks. The noble cloud dwellers and lowly cave dwellers had been separate for so long that they could not relate to each other. Simple steps can vastly improve one’s quality of life, but a better future requires everyone from all social strata to work together in shaping it.
Hopeless Trekkie 