Short answer
- Yes.
Long answer - Star Trek has spoken about many subjects; drugs, racism, xenophobia and not judging someone by the way they look, are just some of the subjects Star Trek has tackled over its 60 year history. But the subject of special needs has rarely been spoken about. Yes, there is Data who could be seen as being on the autistic spectrum but he is an Android, that was how he was designed by his creator and then there are the Pakleds - more on them later.
Special Needs has never been overtly discussed in star trek. It can seem as if there is no one with any form of Special Needs in the Federation because of the advancement of medical technology, but that isn’t the case, as evidenced by Doctor Bashir having been genetically enhanced as documented in the Deep Space Nine episodes, “Doctor Bashir, I Presume” and “Statistical Probabilities”. Special needs does exist in the Star Trek universe. However, both of these episodes deal with the aftermath of genetic enhancements, not what it is like to have special needs.
So here is one of the reasons for why it is appropriate for Space Truckers to tackle the subject of special needs. It is because Star Trek hasn’t! Not all parents are going to have the funds to pay for their child to have a procedure to ‘fix’ their child’s special needs, nevermind it is illegal to have or facilitate such procedures. So there has to be a section of the population in the star trek universe that has special needs. They won’t necessarily be in starfleet because obviously an applicant needs a certain level of aptitude to pass the entrance exams.
So what is their story? How do they cope? Who is there to fight for them when others would exploit them? Can they achieve more than it would seem they can, by using kindness, nurturing and thoughtful consideration instead of low expectation and assumption? What is their story? These are the types of questions the space Truckers team wanted to explore.
‘Ah, but what about the Pakleds?’ I hear you say. Yes yes, the Pakleds. Remember that Space Truckers was first conceived in 2010, way before Lower Decks was ever a twinkle in CBS and Paramount’s eyes. The only episode to feature the Packleds, apart from being background walking characters, was the Next Generation episode “The Samaritan Snare”. In this episode an alien race, the Pakleds, were shown to be “...a little slow?” (Riker’s exact words) and it was suggested by Data that the Pakleds may have poorly developed language skills. So are the Pakleds a proxy for people with Special Needs? No, they are not, because in the episode, Worf inadvertently treats the Pakleds with a bit more respect by intimating that there may be more to the Pakleds than it may seem and he was indeed right. It was a ruse by the Pakleds to get more technology.
An interesting tidbit about Space Truckers. It was actually suggested by a few people, including a fiction podcast producer, that it would be more appropriate to make the character of Terry a Pakled instead of a person who has special needs, because of possible backlash. Gaius felt very strongly that this would be disingenuous to the character that he had envisioned and to the stories he wanted to tell.
The other reason why it is appropriate for the Space Truckers team to write about a character with special needs is because Gaius worked for about 15 years in a home supporting adults with special needs and also working in a FE college supporting teenagers who have special needs. His wife, Amiee, has also worked with people with special needs for more time than Gaius has, so the couple have at least 30 years of combined experience. The character of Terry is an amalgam of traits and different people Gaius has supported with input from Amiee.
