This is one of those things we saw bubbling this past year….William Shatner, Captain James Tiberius Kirk himself, has been pondering via his always lively Twitter account about the legitimacy and usefulness of the newest branch of the United States of America’s military- Space Force.
Not to be confused for the Netflix comedy series of the same name (that actually has a trademark claim that predates the USA’s) starring Steve Carrell and John Malkovich, Space Force leaves many of us wondering what the hell.
Shatner, never a man to mix words, decided to take his quandaries all the way to publication the Military Times in an op-ed the 89-year-old wrote himself (which you can read here).
Here’s a nice snippet from the op-ed:
“Star Trek” has borrowed so much of its iconic rank symbols from the U.S. military and NASA. When you unveiled the Space Force logo, many immediately saw it as an homage to “Star Trek” (even though our Delta was an homage to the previous military space insignias). Why not borrow back from “Star Trek” and adopt our ranks as well? We took them from the Navy for good reason, even though Gene Roddenberry was a veteran of the U.S. Army Air Corps. They made better sense when talking about a (space) ship.
So wrapping this up, I’m going to say that if you want the public to believe in heroes, that you should adopt the Navy ranks as they are the ones the public is most used to being heroes.
So please reconsider and name the Space Force ranks after the U.S. Navy.
