The science fiction fandoms are fighting again. Devotees of Star Wars and Star Trek have spent decades arguing about which of their beloved space sagas is the very best (in 2017, some even came to blows over it), but now, one of the franchises’ very own stars has entered the chat.
Simon Pegg has serious street cred with both fandoms—in the rebooted Star Trek cinematic universe, he stars as chief engineer Scotty and even wrote Star Trek: Beyond, while over in Star Wars-land, he appeared in The Force Awakens as junkyard dealer Unkar Plutt. But in an interview with FactionTalk on SiriusXM, Pegg may have betrayed where his true sympathies lie, describing the Star Wars fanbase as “kind of toxic at the moment.”
He’s not wrong. The newest trilogy of Star Wars films released under Disney have given rise to toxic sludge from the Star Wars fanbase, who targeted John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran with racist and sexist messages on social media. Tran was eventually driven off of social media; years later, she opened up to The Hollywood Reporter about that awful chapter of her life, saying, “If someone doesn’t understand me or my experience, it shouldn’t be my place to have to internalise their misogyny or racism or all of the above. Maybe they just don’t have the imagination to understand that there are different types of people living in the world.” Boyega, for his part, criticised Disney for its laissez-faire handling of the racist abuse, saying that the House of Mouse knew “fuck all” about how to defend its stars.
“I’m the only cast member who had their own unique experience of that franchise based on their race,” the actor said. “Let’s just leave it like that. It makes you angry with a process like that. It makes you much more militant; it changes you. Because you realise, ‘I got given this opportunity but I’m in an industry that wasn’t even ready for me.’ Nobody else in the cast had people saying they were going to boycott the movie because [they were in it]. Nobody else had the uproar and death threats sent to their Instagram DMs and social media, saying, ‘Black this and Black that and you shouldn’t be a Stormtrooper.’”
Pegg touched on these very same threads in his SiriusXM interview. "Suddenly there's a little bit more diversity and everyone's kicking off about it and it’s really sad,” he said. He went on to contrast this troubled landscape with the Star Trek fandom: "I find the Star Trek fans have always been very, very inclusive. You know, Star Trek is about diversity. It has been since 1966. It always was. There's no, sort of like, 'Oh, you're suddenly being woke now.' Star Trek was woke from the beginning. You had a Japanese navigator just after the second World War. There was a Black woman on the deck in the position of authority. This is massively progressive."
“Infinite diversity in infinite combinations,” the series’ philosophy that “our differences combine to create meaning and beauty,” as Spock says in The Original Series, has become Star Trek’s calling card. Star Trek trumpets those powerful words on its social media, fans tattoo them on their bodies, and the series tries its damndest to live up to their promise. Of course, Star Trek’s “progress” has always been imperfect, as Ryan Britt reveals in his history of the franchise, Phasers On Stun. In an exclusive excerpt published at Esquire, Nichelle Nichols (who played Lieutenant Uhura, the aforementioned Black woman on the deck) insisted that the studio only gave “lip service” to the idea of racial equality. When Nichols quit the show over unequal treatment, Martin Luther King Jr. famously begged her to return, telling the actress, “Remember, you are not important there in spite of your color. You are important there because of your color.” It’s been a long and winding road, but Star Trek has since strived to do better by increasing its representation of women, people of colour, and LGBTQIA+ characters.
Pegg isn’t the only star speaking out about what’s rotten in the Star Wars fandom. Earlier this summer, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds star Anson Mount entered the chat, too. When Star Wars fans attacked Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram with racist abuse, Mount posted on Instagram in support of the actress, writing, “We, the Trek Family, have her back.” Speaking to Esquire exclusively after the season finale of Strange New Worlds, Mount said of his statement, “I don't think it should have made headlines, honestly, that I spoke out. I think it should be expected. I think it should be the norm. What has started to become not necessarily acceptable, but expected in our culture—including the fandom culture—is really concerning to me, because I think that expectation is just a few steps down from acceptance. I don't think we should ever accept that kind of behavior and inhumanity.”
Your lips to the Star Wars fandom’s ears, Captain. If there’s one thing we know, it’s that this deplorable behaviour wouldn’t fly in Starfleet.
Adrienne Westenfeld is the Books and Fiction Editor at Esquire, where she oversees books coverage, edits fiction, and curates the Esquire Book Club.
