Many Trekkies may be curious that someone like Jeff Bezos (who admits he gave bad advice to Lord of the Rings showrunners) would be a Trekkie. Star Trek, after all, takes place in a post-capitalist society in which humanity is no longer motivated by the accumulation of wealth. Class has essentially been erased, and technology allows everyone to live comfortably, without need. Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, is one of the richest people on the planet, said to be worth over $237 billion. He owns Amazon and The Washington Post, and in recent years has spread his money around the American right, lending financial support to the country's most inept politicians. He also stopped the Post from endorsing Kamala Harris for president. Bezos has been described as an oligarch and is certainly one of the most insidious supra-capitalists on Earth. These are not the philosophical views of Gene Roddenberry's futuristic utopia.

Where Bezos and Star Trek overlap, however, is an interest in stars. Bezos owns a private rocket company called Blue Origin, which has been launching crafts into the upper atmosphere for years. Indeed, in 2022, Star Trek star William Shatner rides a Blue Origin rocket, sort of spiritually merging Trek and Bezos in an abstract way. Bezos is certainly not the pacifist communist seen on Star Trek, but he does seem to want to send people into space. Bezos is also a major investor in Fandom.com, the website that hosts Memory Alpha, the largest Star Trek website.

As it happens, Bezos had a previous brush with Trek in 2016, as he had a cameo in Justin Lin's Star Trek Beyond, 13th feature film in the series. According to Memory Alpha, Bezos played an alien doctor ... named Bezos.

Jeff Bezos will not be recognized. Not only is he on screen for just a few seconds in Star Trek Beyond, but his famously bald head is covered in elaborate alien makeup. He appeared at the beginning of the film when the character of Kalara (Lydia Wilson) was introduced. Callara appeared on an escape pod and was rescued by the USS Enterprise. She was brought aboard and interrogated by Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) when he discovered that she had escaped a disaster she encountered around a planet called Altamid and that her ship was now stuck there. The Enterprise goes to Altamid to help, but it was a trap. A massive swarm of miniature attack ships tear the Enterprise apart, and the crew must escape to the planet's surface to survive.

When Kalara was interrogated, she was scanned and examined by a cadre of Federation doctors, clearly making sure she was fine. One of the doctors was Jeff Bezos.

According to Memory Alpha, Bezos' love of Star Trek manifested itself in many ways. He bought one of the eight-foot shooting models of the USS Enterprise, used in some Trek feature films. He named his dog Kamala, after a character played by Famke Jansen on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Bezos also loved "Next Generation" voice computing and clearly modeled Amazon's Alexa after them.

Bezos' politics may be the polar opposite of Star Trek, but one can only hope that he'll revisit the show someday and figure it out. Since he was in one of the movies, he might be encouraged to do so. One understands the technological element of Star Trek, but not the message that unity, pacifism and anti-capitalism were the means to achieve it.