Anything set in the far future should theoretically be timeless, but now and again sci-fi creators decide to get all contemporary and reference something in the current zeitgeist that ends up aging like milk. Take one moment from the first season of Star Trek Discovery, for instance, which is coming under the microscope in the wake of Elon Musk’s turbulent takeover of Twitter.
From our viewpoint at the tail-end of 2022, the Spacex founder is a widely ridiculed figure who has managed to transform his reputation from eccentric celebrity inventor to one of the planet’s least favorite people. However, back in 2017, Musk had yet to fully reveal his true colors, so there was still a lot of reverence surrounding the guy. Hence this clunker of a line from the Trek universe.
In DIS season 1, episode 4, “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry,” Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs) attempts to inspire a demotivated Stamets (Anthony Rapp) by asking him he wants to be remembered as a failure or go down along the great scientific minds in history, such as the Wright brothers, Zephram Cochrane, and, yes, Elon Musk.
As Twitter user @DommiFox put it in a tweet that’s gone viral (no doubt angering Musk himself if he’s seen it), “Make sure to pour one out for Star Trek discovery writers as well lads, this may haunt them for decades.”
There you have it, folks. It’s part of Star Trek canon forever now that Musk is viewed as one of the most acclaimed geniuses in Earth’s history, alongside the Wrights and the inventor of the warp core. Like one reply to this post hilariously pointed out, that must mean that we’re living in the Mirror Universe. Which, to be honest, would actually explain a lot.