Ireland becoming one unified country is a long way from happening, but Stormont’s first nationalist leader taking office is the first step… to fulfilling a 1990 prediction made in Star Trek.
Rishi Sunak is visiting the Northern Irish administrative capital this week after the nationalist Sinn Fein and Democratic Unionist Party struck an agreement to end a two-year stalemate.
“It is great to be back in Northern Ireland this evening, a special part of our United Kingdom,” the prime minister has said.
He added: “In the last few days, we have made significant progress towards a brighter future for people here. Yesterday, the assembly sat for the first time in two years. Tomorrow, the executive will meet.”
Michelle O’Neill has become Northern Ireland's first ever nationalist first minister, with her party founded on beliefs that Ireland should be one country.
A power-sharing agreement means that the DUP’s leader Emma Little-Pengelly, as deputy first minister, has effectively the same job and can block any such move.
In the unlikely event that it did happen, however, it would fulfil a prediction made on the sci-fi series Star Trek: The Next Generation back in January 1990.
In the episode The High Ground, the 12th episode of the then rebooted series’ third season, Patrick Stewart’s commander Jean-Luc Picard is speaking with his android helper Data (Brent Spiner). Data is heard to reference the “Irish reunification of 2024” in a passing reference, although his point is not developed or mentioned again in the series.
The High Ground was edited by its Irish broadcaster RTÉ to not show the clip, and British audiences also saw the episode minus the reference on the BBC. The original cut was not shown on British screens until 2006 while Irish fans would only have seen it had they bought the video or DVD version.
The clip has been trending on Twitter after the agreement led to Ms O’Neill taking office.
Speculative futures in television and film have sometimes been near the mark, such as when Lisa Simpson noted in a futuristic-set 2000 episode that she would become leader of the free world after ‘President Trump’. Blade Runner, however, did little to predict what 2019 might look like, with companies seen advertised infamously going under in the years after its 1982 release.
