' Star Trek is fun because it's a completely fictional world, so that removes some of the preconceived notions we have about certain nations or cultures,' Draudt said. Image credit: Will Kirk / Johns Hopkins University Image caption: Darcie Draudt leads classroom discussion about inner workings of Starfleet. With five decades of lore built through television series, movies, books, video games, and role-playing guides, the complexity of the Star Trek universe is both a blessing for detail-obsessed fans and a convenient tool for critical analysis. She said she was drawn to the combination of escapism and realism and the way the show's unique world of politics and interplanetary relationships reflects our own.

For generations, Star Trek fans have traveled along with the crew of the Enterprise as they journeyed into darkness, searched for first contact with alien species, battled Starfleet insurrections, and survived the wrath of nemeses in their exploration beyond the final frontier and their eventual voyage home.īut between the phaser blasts and action-packed fistfights with the Gorn, Star Trek has presented something more utopian: a future where our problems can be solved simply by listening to each other.įor two weeks, students in Darcie Draudt's Star Trek and Diplomacy Intersession class at Johns Hopkins University journeyed to the 24th century to determine the way Starfleet regulations and relations with Klingons, Romulans, and the rest of the galaxy relate to-and could inform-the politics of our own 21st-century world.ĭraudt, a political science doctoral student in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, first fell in love with Trek while working in foreign affairs in Washington.

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