ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (18)

By: Nikhil Singh
September 3, 2025

One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite sympathetic villains. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.

LOCUTUS

I’ve always found Star Trek inherently fascist, because it attempts to sell a military lifestyle as a utopian ideal.

Created in the post-war era, the militarised foundation is at first understandable — considering how many were conscripted into various services during the world wars. Though, the original series, as with many war media of that period, prioritises maverick individualism over authoritarianism and a ‘cowboy’ approach to leadership — which arose clearly out of a personal experience of conflict (usually beneath an officer class), rather than any form of romantic idealisation of warfare.

The Next Generation is a different beast. The ’80s and early ’90s saw a revaluation of Vietnam through the lens of veterans turned filmmakers, but the tone was, by and large, ‘counter-cultural’ and decisive in its questioning of authority. The Next Generation emerged in ’87, heralding the looming corporatisation of the ’90s and floating somewhere in the fallout of this wave of American anti-war sentiment. Introducing a European captain further distanced the spectre of conflict from the overall tone of the new show, whilst catering to the cartoonish Anglophiliac (by way of Francophiliac) sensibilities that haunt the pseudo-eclecticism of many American ‘hobbyists’.

One of Roddenberry’s chief inspirations for Picard was Horatio Hornblower, a character created by CS Forester for a series of novels. Hornblower starts as a seasick, friendless English midshipman during the Napoleonic wars and rises in the ranks, to the rank of Admiral, due to his bravery and strategic mindset. Picard is introduced as a sort of distant academic, whose artistic/eclectic tendencies have been stifled by a call to duty. This tone creates a rift in the character which, while humanising him sufficiently to curry audience sympathy, plays a cultural card: these dark traits would not have sold well, portrayed by an American actor to American audiences. Introducing Picard as a foreigner, albeit a cartoonish Frenchman cum Englishman, allowed for more audience latitude in terms of his character drives. American audiences simply expected likeable Eurocentric leaders to be sensitive, intelligent and conflicted. What we are left with essentially is a sort of headmaster you don’t have to necessarily like or understand, but would willingly respect and obey because they lead by example. A pitch-perfect authority figure of the time. In fact, one of the reasons why Picard’s turn as Locutus rings so true is simply because this inherent authoritarianism is itself enhanced and reverse-cartoonified.

Orwell, when writing 1984, was not attempting to be prescient. He very clearly stated that he was documenting his experience of 1948 — particularly the state of leadership in England at the time. The notion of oppressive leadership characterised as an elder family member subliminally imposes its hierarchical standards. The order is intimate — a bloodline, a heritage, subservience is hereditary. In Picard we subconsciously recognise this same Erl King, conscripting the youth with his panpipe. The narrative may claim exploration — the all-encompassing uniformed military lifestyle suggests plainly a call to arms.

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ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (18)

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