I would just be being an utter buffoon if I didn’t direct everyone here today. I know I flag Steve Shives’ videos up fairly often, as I usually find his analysis of Star Trek episodes rather insightful, but to my amazement today he ventures into another of my fields of interest. A couple of weeks ago I directed you all to watch his video on Captain Pike’s fate. Following on from that, this time he begins to explore Pike as a communication aid user, which obviously interests me inordinately.

As Shives points out, when Pike is reintroduced into Star Trek episodes after the original series pilot, he is shown using a ‘beep chair’, which functions as both a mobility and communication aid. This was obviously done to accommodate the change of actors playing Pike. Yet, Geordie Laforge aside, it is probably the most significant representation of disability in all of Star Trek; and it’s certainly very interesting to see someone like shives looking at it in this detail. As he points out, there is a huge amount of discrepancy between a portrayal of a supposed communication aid user from the sixties and what we are able to do today: we are capable of a hell of a lot more than just beeping at people, for one. We thus can use such episodes to glimpse how disability was. perceived sixty yers ago, and how such perceptions have changed largely due to technology. It is therefore very interesting to see someone like Shives, who I don’t usually associate with such fields, starting to look at disability representation and how a character with a communication impairment was portrayed. He touches on issues like facilitated communication and eyegaze in order to give a bit of background, so it is as if two areas of my personality – communication aid user and Star Trek fan – have met in a way I never expected.