At Home Among Strangers

Star Trek, difference, and the art of belonging

As a child in the United States in the 1960s, I found something in Star Trek that has stayed with me ever since. I am on the autism spectrum and have often felt like a stranger, as though I came from another planet. Yet in this series, I could feel at home. The actors and crews have changed over the decades. The fascination has remained. Now there is also a loss to acknowledge: Patrick Stewart, who gave Captain Jean-Luc Picard his face and voice, died on 28 October, aged 86. Mohana Basu’s article in Nature (2026), exploring his significance for scientists, is the occasion for these reflections.

Why has this fictional universe retained its appeal for so many decades? The spaceships and adventures are part of the answer. But I think it also has something to do with hope: we can become better at living together without everyone first having to become alike. Each new crew gives this hope new faces and new conflicts.

We are not all a little autistic, even if many of us recognise individual traits. Nor is autism another word for feeling alienated. But feeling excluded, misunderstood, or uncertain about the unwritten rules is an experience many people share. For some, it is fleeting. For others, it shapes much of everyday life. Recognition can build a bridge without making our experiences the same.

Star Trek allows us to explore this connection. Its most valuable vision of the future, as I read it, is a community that makes room for different ways of being. That requires a willingness to learn from those who regard themselves as normal, too.

Recognising ourselves in the stranger

Spock is central to this experience. Half human and half Vulcan, he moves between different expectations concerning emotion, reason, and behaviour. What seems natural in one setting can make him an outsider in another.

Spock can be read as a character with traits that some autistic viewers recognise: precise language, a direct manner, and an uneasy relationship with social conventions that others take for granted. Later, Data offers another way into similar experiences. He studies human interactions, trying to understand what others apparently just know. A remark may be a joke. A question may be an indirect instruction. The words alone do not always tell us what is happening.

Such characters are often described as “autistic-coded”. This means they can be interpreted through autistic experiences, even though they were not necessarily written or explicitly portrayed as autistic. The recognition is real for those who experience it, without turning that interpretation into a clinical description of the character.

Autism entails neither an absence of emotion nor necessarily a particular inclination towards pure logic. A restrained expression tells us little about the intensity of someone’s experience, and social uncertainty does not in itself tell us anything about their willingness to care for others.

Yet finding this recognition through a Vulcan and an android involves a tension. Fiction creates enough distance to make unfamiliar experiences intelligible. But why do these experiences become easier to see when they belong to someone who is not entirely human? If unfamiliar ways of speaking and expressing emotion are repeatedly placed outside humanity, the story risks reinforcing the distance it helps us cross. Recognition becomes most fruitful when it turns our attention back towards the people around us: their unfamiliar expressions, too, may hold a life we do not yet understand.

Who needs to learn to understand whom?

When someone struggles socially, the task is often assigned to the person who stands out. They must learn the codes, find the right tone of voice, and discover when to speak. Much of this can be useful. But if adaptation moves in only one direction, the community’s own habits escape examination.

The sociologist Damian Milton (2012), who is himself autistic, has given this difficulty a name: the “double empathy problem”. He describes difficulties in understanding between people with different experiences and expectations as a mutual problem. Non-autistic people can also misinterpret autistic people. This perspective does not remove the need for support and accommodations, but shifts attention from one person’s supposed deficit to what happens between people.

Silence can be mistaken for a lack of interest, and direct speech for unfriendliness. The majority’s ways of interacting must also be open to examination.

Star Trek makes this interesting by shifting the perspective. Among unfamiliar civilisations, human behaviour can seem both strange and difficult to understand. What we call ordinary good manners at home loses some of its self-evidence when we are the visitors.

How do we encounter another person without making our own way of being the measure of everything they do? We need judgement to distinguish between what actually causes harm and what merely departs from our expectations.

Picard and the right to say no

The scientists in Basu’s article emphasise Picard’s curiosity and willingness to listen. One episode connects these qualities particularly clearly to the question of belonging: “The Measure of a Man” from The Next Generation (1989).

The researcher Bruce Maddox wants to dismantle Data to investigate how he was constructed, hoping to produce more androids. Data doubts that he can be reassembled without losing something essential to himself, and wishes to refuse. This raises the question that drives the episode: does he have that right, or is he Starfleet’s property?

Picard defends Data in a legal hearing. What is at stake here is not Data’s ability as a crew member, but his right to determine the course of his own existence. Maddox sees an opportunity for knowledge and technological progress. Data sees a risk he is unwilling to take. Who gets to define what that risk means?

Picard uses his authority to ensure that Data’s perspective carries weight within an institution that could deprive him of the right to choose. This is a stronger form of listening than seeking good advice: he defends the significance of a refusal, even when it obstructs the institution’s plans.

The ruling gives Data the freedom to choose. It does not settle every question about consciousness or what constitutes a person. This very restraint makes the ending compelling. Uncertainty about another’s inner life does not become sufficient grounds for treating him as a thing.

Data is an android, and his situation cannot be equated with the lives of autistic people. But the episode can sharpen a question that also concerns human communities: can those who express themselves differently help define their own boundaries? Or must they first appear sufficiently like us to be believed?

Having value without being indispensable

Still, we should also question Star Trek’s inclusive vision of the future. Several of the characters who stand out have extraordinary abilities. They solve problems others cannot solve. Their difference has a clear place because it benefits the community.

It is easy to value the person who saves the day. It is harder to make equally unquestioned room for someone who needs more time, misunderstands an instruction, or has to withdraw without offering an exceptional achievement in return.

This concerns both employment and education. When we justify inclusion by pointing to the particular talents neurodivergent people may possess, the argument can open doors. But it can also place a new condition at the entrance: show us what you are especially good at, and we will make room for your difference.

A person should be able to belong even on days when they do not succeed.

The future as practice

Science fiction allows us to imagine encounters we have not yet had. In doing so, it can also make us more attentive to the encounters already before us.

A starship is far removed from everyday life. Yet the questions on board are familiar: who is heard? Who gets to define the situation? Who must continually explain themselves? And who can be part of the community without having to prove their worth all over again?

Perhaps this helps explain the series’ longevity. Its stories make room for both adventure and reflection, and their questions acquire fresh relevance. Data’s case can now also be read in the light of artificial intelligence, while the question of who gets to belong follows us through changing societies. We return to familiar characters and discover that we ourselves have new questions.

Perhaps this is also why a series about distant planets can offer a sense of home. It opens a space where difference can be met with interest, and where understanding one another is a shared task.

We do not need to wait for our first encounter with an alien civilisation to begin practising.

References

Basu, M. (2026, October 30). Patrick Stewart dies: How Captain Picard inspired today’s science leaders. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-03543-9

Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008

Snodgrass, M. (Writer), & Scheerer, R. (Director). (1989, February 13). The measure of a man (Season 2, Episode 9) [TV series episode]. In G. Roddenberry (Executive Producer), Star Trek: The Next Generation. Paramount Domestic Television.