This article contains spoilers from “Star Trek: Beyond”, but they are minor IN THE 1980s, some gay activists were pleading with politicians to care about AIDS, while others were writing to the producers of “Star Trek”. The legendary television series was slated for a comeback, and they wanted a queer character in order to see themselves on the starships they loved so much. They argued that a 24th-century society based on liberalism and pluralism would include non-straight people. The fans knew, too, that “Star Trek” had long used warp drive to escape potential controversy over earlier choices: an on-screen kiss between a white man and a black woman at the height of America’s modern civil rights struggle, and the inclusion of a Russian character in an American-styled space crew during the Cold War.

Indeed, “Star Trek” has always borne a trace of real-world politics: the United Federation of Planets, modelled after the UN or perhaps the EU, has embodied peace since the original series aired in 1966. Like those institutions, the Federation emerged after terrible wars, and its agenda is to share resources and establish political unity. It even founded an organisation—called Starfleet—of which Captain Kirk and comrades are officers, with the aims of exploration and diplomacy. The new film, “Star Trek: Beyond”, opens with Kirk on one such mission, eye-rolling through a boring peacekeeping gig.

That “Star Trek: Beyond” is the first in the franchise to feature a gay crewman is surprising. It tries to dodge this oversight by implying that he was there all along, at his station on the bridge piloting the ship through wormholes and nebulae. Little did we know that Lieutenant Sulu had a husband and a daughter living back home on a starbase. We only get glimpses of Sulu’s partner: both he and their daughter are seen but not heard. Unlike the relationship between two straight crewmates, Sulu’s relationship is not a significant part of the plot.

But keeping it at arm’s length from the actual plot reveals just how seriously “Star Trek”’s producers now take their task of stripping politics out of their movie universe. The television series and some of the films studiously explored the big moral questions facing a bloc as diverse as the Federation, from the limits on cultural integration right through to how a peace-loving organisation should tackle imperial forces. The three most recent “Star Trek” films strip out these moral and global questions, and instead focus on how to stop bad guys who want to kill a lot of people.

From Nero in the 2009 film, Khan and Marcus in “Star Trek: Into Darkness” and all the way through to “Beyond”’s villain, these men are maniacs motivated by vengeance and an infantile appetite for military force. Unlike real and powerful terrorists on Earth, they do not have ideologies. If “Star Trek” were still doing its job on television today, it would be asking questions about how a federation of planets can stick together when one powerful member becomes cautious of integration and votes to quit (with echoes of Brexit). Or how to tackle groups that, like Islamic State, use religion to justify an ultra-conservative social agenda—and abhorrent violence to impose it.

At the core of “Beyond” is a vague fight against the political concept of unity. In the 24th century, Vulcans, humans and countless other species live and love side by side. Two men can be together and raise a daughter. We see everyone getting along fine on the multicultural, pluralist starbase Yorktown—a kind of utopia that could be a cleaner, man-made planet version of New York City.

But Krall, the villain of the piece, hates the sight of different peoples being friends. He wants to go to war. “Without struggle you will never know who you truly are,” he booms, in his deep, evil voice. Yet Krall’s distaste for unity lacks an explanation of why he finds racial and cultural harmony so distressing and, therefore, a vision of his own ideology (which would presumably be racist or homophobic or with some other backward flavour). Krall is upset at the sight of the different species getting along—but unlike the real world’s anti-integration ideologues, he doesn’t use words to drive divisions between people. The film misses an opportunity to probe interesting questions and test the idea of liberalism. The film misses an opportunity to do what “Star Trek” does best.

Those hopeful letter writers from the 1980s may be happy to see their calls for inclusion answered, but they would surely prefer it to be done in a way that keeps alive “Trek”’s tradition of exploring today’s issues. America and the West, like the Federation, are based on liberalism and pluralism—but some people still want to break it and cause havoc. As the attacks on the Orlando nightclub in June showed, the spread of same-sex marriage does not mean that sexual minorities can rest easy. We are badly needing an analysis of how Orlando came to happen, and how the killer came to be. We turn to fiction to explain these motivations to us, and we should certainly expect “Trek” to follow the tradition of science fiction in exploring such a moral maze. In “Beyond”, Krall is one such villain, but it is a shame that he is not allowed to go into such specifics. Instead, he just wants to kill everyone. He’s nothing but a nutter with a nuke. This is “Star Trek”: beyond politics.