WARNING: SPOILERS
Last week, I saw the second episode of Star Trek: Brave New Worlds and the premier episode of Marvel’s Secret Invasion. I thought there was a similarity in the way they both employed heavy-handed allegory.
This should come as no surprise with Brave New Worlds; it is, in many ways, the perfect recreation of Star Trek: The Original Series, and this is certainly one of them. The Federation’s persecution of Number One’s alien race is one of the few instances I can recall of a TV series exploring the question of institutional racism and, given how many viewers are likely resistant to the idea, perhaps the unsubtlety of it is actually a plus.
The skrulls searching for a homeland in Secret Invasion could be an allegory for a wide variety of displaced people. This is not new territory for Marvel, of course; a large undercurrent in many X-Men stories involves persecution of a minority. That the allegory is set in a paranoid spy thriller is a little disconcerting, but I think I can go along with it.
Other than that, the two series couldn’t be more different. One of the other features of the Star Trek universe that Brave New Worlds emulates is its hopeful vision of the future. When faced with its injustice, the Federation moves, perhaps just a little, but the episode ends with the hope that it’s a start to systemic change.
Marvel’s Secret Invasion, by way of contrast, ends with the death of a character who has been part of the MCU for a decade. To be sure, we never got to know much about the character, so the impact of its death on the audience may have been over-estimated by the creators of the series. Nonetheless, this was a dark end to what looks to be a dark series.
To be clear: I grew up with James Bond, Mission: Impossible, Matt Helm, I Spy, Our Man Flint and other spy fiction. I ate it up as a kid. Unfortunately, as I got older and learned more about the actual effect of spying (such as the destabilization of governments in Latin America by the CIA), I grew less and less enamored of it. People without my particular life experience will undoubtedly find something like Secret Invasion thrilling. And I will watch it. But at this point in my life, I’m more drawn to Star Trek‘s optimism.