“We Are Strong”: The Pakleds and Cognitive Disability in the Utopia

Abstract

This paper considers the role of the Pakleds as representing intellectually disabled people interfering in Star Trek’s utopia. Appearing first in The Next Generation and then again in Lower Decks, the Pakleds are a species of slow, technologically inferior aliens with poor verbal abilities and low intellectual capacity who trick and coerce other species into giving up advanced technology to them so that they can be “strong”. The Pakleds are consistently mocked and derided by other characters in the franchise, even when they are portrayed as profoundly dangerous. This dichotomy in representation of them as both backwards and silly, but also very dangerous to the Federation, is because the presence of intellectually disabled people threatens the Federation’s ideals of intellectual achievement and productivity by disrupting the neoliberal progress narrative upon which Star Trek’s imagined future is built. Using Rosemarie Garland Thomson’s conception of the normate body and Jeffrey Weinstock’s articulation of Extraterrestrialism in science fiction, I will analyse the Pakleds’ role in the Star Trek universe as a force that inherently disrupts the capitalist notion of productivity necessary for the progress narrative to function. The Pakleds’ appearances are nearly always contrasted with physically disabled characters experiencing acceptance and accommodation, making it clear that it is not disability that has no place in Star Trek’s utopia, but specifically that intellectual disability is problematic in a world where a person’s value is determined by their ability to contribute to the Federation’s intellectual environment, echoing real-world eugenic policies about immigration and inclusion.