A new book casts unexpected light on Star Trek's approach to exploration, in the post below. Image is from TNG episode "Galaxy's Child," courtesy of Trek Core.

To Boldly Go...

"Can anybody remember when we used to be explorers?" Captain Picard asks at the beginning of Star Trek: Insurrection. Exploration is officially the main purpose of Starfleet. Even though Star Trek stories of exploration focus mostly on "new life and new civilizations" rather than science, the Starfleet ethos of exploration has inspired scientists of today. I came across impressive and specific evidence of this accidentally, when reading a new book about the impact of computer simulations.

After the main text by Sherry Turkle, there are several case studies by other authors in Simulations and Its Discontents (The MIT Press 2009.) The chapter by William J. Clancey is about the team in charge of the two Mars Rovers, as they explore the surface of Mars. Though they come from different scientific backgrounds with different areas of expertise, several describe themselves as explorers. One is even more specific: "I've often said that I do space science because I couldn't join Starfleet."

The following chapter, by Stefan Helmreich, is about the scientists aboard a deep sea research vessel. The ship Point Lobos and its remotely operated diving vehicle Ventana explore an extreme environment with lifeforms as alien as anything in science fiction. Again, the scientists aboard are from various disciplines, and they consider themselves explorers. And again, a connection is explicit: marine biologist Rob Haldane, the chief scientist on the mission, "told me that as a child he was riveted by Star Trek...As an adolescent, he studied the migration of large animals and particularly liked the movie Star Trek IV, in which the crew of the Enterprise returns to twentieth-century earth to save the whales..."

Star Trek is the latest saga to impart a sense of adventure and mystery to exploration, to discovery, confronting the unknown, being the first to see or learn something, or more broadly, the quest for knowledge. All of that is significant, for it inspires imagination and feeds the soul.

But there are more specific correspondences between Star Trek and the situations described in these chapters. Most obviously, Point Lobos is a ship, and like the Enterprise, it has particular characteristics, opportunities and limitations. A group of people are in a confined space, dependent on the ship and each other. Their relationships are in some sense dictated by being on a ship. While not a military vessel, even a research vessel can operate only through a delicate balance of authority and cooperation. A ship must have a captain, and a crew with particular expertise and responsibilities.

But this is a research ship, and the common task--the common motivation--of exploring also requires teamwork and shared knowledge and tasks that transcend each area of expertise. This is also true of the Mars Rover team--and while they aren't aboard a ship, they work to the same small facility, apart from the outside world. In both cases, geologists must know some biology, and biologists must learn something about the machinery they use. They must learn give and take in each other's research goals, and how to pursue knowledge that transcends one field.

Like the crew of the flagship Enterprise, these scientists are among the best. This is especially true of the Mars team--they were selected from many applicants. But even though they are used to standing out, they must learn to subsume their egoes to the mission, to the exploration.

Another close similarity is their dependence on technology to do their exploring. The Mars explorers are on Earth, and do their exploring through the Rovers. They talk about the Rovers almost as beings, and as extensions of themselves. The Point Lobos is actually in the environment it explores, but it explores with the remote sensing vehicle, the equivalent of "probes" sent out from the Enterprise. There is a more specific resemblance, according to the writer: "The similarity between the view-screens on the starship Enterprise and the screen through which we look at the video feed from the Ventana makes the comparison with Star Trek seem natural."

But unlike the crew on the Enterprise, the crew of Point Lobos spent a fair amount of time being seasick. Nevertheless, they want to be there. This speaks to the most important difference between Star Trek and how space exploration is now conducted--by unmanned vehicles. It also seems to be where space exploration is heading. Similarly, the Point Lobos may be one of the last ships to take scientists on the sea. "In the future, scientists might explore the ocean by surfing the Web."

But despite the discomforts, the scientists aboard the Point Lobos want to actually be on the ship. "The scientists I study want to be immersed in the sea. In some sense, they want to lose themselves in the place they study."

The practicalities aside, this has to be one of the attractions of space travel: to be immersed in the alien grandeur, the ultimate in beauty and terror, of space. It's a call of the soul.

From The Symphony of Science site, this video stars Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman and others, combining music, technology and science to express one way in which "We are all connected." I saw this at Daily Kos and was blown away. It's definitely in the Star Trek spirit, that a lot of Star Trek fans might enjoy. So here it is.

A new portrait of the central Milky Way using infrared and X-ray photography, a composite with contributions from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and Chandra X-Ray Observatory. There's a brief Captain's Log with other spacey news in the post below.[Click on the photo to enlarge. Credit: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC and STScl.]

Captain's Log: New Stuff! Gee, Could The Holidays Be Near?

November 17 sees the official release of Star Trek JJA in your favorite video formats. Plus a lot more Trek stuff coming out, but then this isn't a blog about stuff, which is unfortunate for its profitability.

The latest JJA comment on his next Trek again emphasizes that he wants it to go deeper and be more meaningful than the first one.

Kim Stanley Robinson's new novel, Galileo's Dream, won't be available in the U.S. until after Christmas (what's wrong with his marketing people???) but it's apparently in the stores in the UK, where the author gave an interview to the Guardian.

Speaking of the UK, the next David Tennant Doctor Who special, "The Waters of Mars," airs on the BBC on November 15, and is scheduled to be seen in the U.S. on BBC America and on Space in Canada on December 19. I wonder when it will hit YouTube, which is where I'll see it. I enjoyed seeing the previous two on DVD as well. The final two Tennants are still vaguely scheduled for "the holidays" in the UK.

Speaking of Galileo, the latest conference on life elsewhere in the universe was recently held at the Vatican, no less. Is that Galileo orbitting in his grave?

Trek Movie reports that Gene Roddenberry will be inducted into the TV Hall of Fame in January, along with fellow visionaries, game show producer Bob Stewart, announcer Don Pardo, Candace Bergen and the Smothers Brothers. Well, I suppose they were all pretty cool, but it does remind us that GR is still considered first and foremost a TV creature. Which is one big reason that no real scholarly biography has ever been written about him, nor is ever likely to be.

I've noticed that the comments on this site have become places where various entrepreneurs are hanging their products. As long as they're Trek-related I suppose there's no harm in it. Maybe I'll come up with a real post soon.

As Star Trek approaches its 43rd anniversary in yet another year of fear for the future, the question arises, "What makes Star Trek unique?" That question is addressed in the post below.

What Makes Star Trek Unique?

After forty-three years and many hours and pages of storytelling, what makes Star Trek unique? Star Trek is different from many current science fiction adventure stories, especially on TV and film, because it deals with real current and future issues, something suggested here last time for the next Star Trek movie, and apparently now embraced by that movie's writers (though I'm not sure "war and torture" is the best choice.)

But while such science fiction of consciousness is increasingly rare in the video game age, it isn't all that unusual historically or even in contemporary novels.
What has truly set Star Trek apart is its attempts to model the future: to show aspects of a better future, and the attitudes, characteristics and actions that both lead to a better future, and make the future itself a better place.

This direction has led to a lot of frustration for writers looking for easier ways to create familiar kinds of conflict, as well as general mockery of Star Trek as unrealistic. But it also accounts for Star Trek's appeal to many people around the world. Among other things, it encourages hope.

Let's face it: the future is seen most often with despair. That was true when Star Trek started, and it is at least as true now. Nuclear annihilation was possible at any moment in the late 60s, and besides the ongoing military, social, political and racial conflicts, the spectre of environmental Armageddon was already forming.

Today, the nuclear threat seems to have lessened (somewhat deceptively) as the interlocking consequences of the Climate Crisis have grown to seemingly overwhelming proportions. Add the barely imaginable changes that new technologies can quickly create, and the future can look terrifying.

While it may be easy to dismiss the movies and video games that promote Apocalypse as our default fate because of the bias towards high adrenalin visual effects violence that most easily hooks the audience, there isn't a lot of optimism in more thoughtful science fiction these days either. Check out these flash fictions and prediction for the next century in a New Scientist magazine section edited by s/f great Kim Stanley Robinson, or this review of the new novel by Margaret Atwood, a mainstream novelist who is also famous for speculative fiction like The Handmaid's Tale.

Though Atwood's Apocalypse in her new novel (The Year of the Flood) is one of plague, the reviewer (Jeannette Winterson) begins with this observation: "Nuclear, ecological, chemical, economic — our arsenal of Death by Stupidity is impressive for a species as smart as Homo sapiens."

And that's certainly one of the reasons that the science fiction of consciousness, and Star Trek's modelling of a better future, is so important. We need to confront these Death by Stupidity futures by getting smarter, in the present. Stories can help us do that by presenting thoughtful allegories, including cautionary tales. But they can also do that by presenting us with alternative futures: futures which are, for one thing, not shaped by Stupidity but by intelligence.

Star Trek links intelligence to leadership and heroism. It shows that intelligence both expresses and results from diversity and equality. It shows the rationality of common purpose, of the sense that we are all in this together.

Those who say Star Trek is unrealistic believe that selfishness, greed, hate and psychological and emotional as well as intellectual stupidity are "human nature" and they always result in the same catalog of ugly conflict. Looking at the past and the present in a certain way, it's hard to argue against that. But there are counterexamples. And there is evidence that compassion, cooperation, empathy and altruism do exist--in other animals as well as humanity--and that they too are part of human nature.

To some degree, Star Trek says, it is a matter of choice. "We are killers," Captain Kirk said. "But we aren't going to kill today." To some degree, it is a matter of what a society or a culture values and champions --including the culture of Starfleet, or simply the culture of the Enterprise-- which is often the lesson imparted (or modelled) by Captain Picard.

For it is not just better technology, nor even just the better use of intelligence that is necessary to save the future. It is the soul of the future.

After evaluating recent studies on the possible effects of the Climate Crisis on geopolitics and societal stability, Mike Davis concludes: "The real danger is that human solidarity itself, like a West Antarctic ice shelf, will suddenly fracture and shatter into a thousand shards." Reviewing Cormac McCarthy's apocalyptic novel The Road (with the film of it due out in a couple of weeks) George Monbiot responds: "Civilisation ends with a shutdown of human concern. Are we there already?"

There is no shutdown of human concern in the Star Trek future. That concern extends by its 24th century to all life forms. It is modelled in how people on the Enterprise treat each other, something which has inspired Star Trek fans from the beginning.

In its details, the Star Trek future is complicated, and resulted from global war and resulting traumas, suggested in some stories such as TNG's "Farpoint". And in its details, the Star Trek future is a very unlikely one--because it is a future made for us, a set of stories told to people in the present.

So its possible influence on the future is through its influence on the present. By incorporating its soul into the soul of the present, we ourselves can model what the next generations may see and learn and adopt to create the future.

But the Star Trek future has always been a model for the present as well, and it has changed lives in the ongoing present, by changing ideas, attitudes, behaviors and relationships. Hope for the future is a condition--and a commitment-- of the present. Star Trek models qualities we can adopt now, to make a better present, and maybe even a better future.

Captain's Log: Next Trek, Next Doctor, Next in Space

Star Trek writers for the next JJA feature, Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman, say they are currently in a research phase. Besides researching past Star Trek stories, I hope they are researching in a couple of others areas that were important in developing many of those past stories.

The first area is science. The original Roddenberry team did a lot of research in science and technology, as well as in science fiction, as they developed Star Trek. There got to be less of that over the years, but Star Trek still did keep developing stories that used new theories and ideas. But other science fiction authors have since gone where Star Trek has not gone before.

Partly perhaps because of visual effects limitations, even in the past Star Trek has missed some interesting possibilities. For example, George Zebrowski wrote extensively about creating space colonies inside asteroids in his late 70s classic, Macrolife. That's something Star Trek hasn't depicted, but it's probably easier to do now.

The second area is related to the first: our contemporary dilemmas that Star Trek explored in stories about the future, including those prompted by technology or scientific possibilities. For example, the most perplexing and threatening crisis we face as a planet is the Climate Crisis. What can Star Trek say about this? For example, how did it figure in the Star Trek version of the 21st to 23rd centuries?

These areas don't preclude emotion but may provide different emotional ground. Not every important emotion is only about personal relationships. Compassion, "biophilia," the dedication to prevent or correct injustice and to consider "the seventh generation to come" are also powerful motives for behaviors with epic consequences.

Rather than do variations on old stories--especially those that were told pretty well the first time--maybe some research is in order with the aim of doing for today what those Star Trek stories did for their times.

Meanwhile, in Doctor Who news, the guest star list for the remaining David Tennant television stories continues to grow. We know that Billie Piper (Rose) and Catherine Tate (Donna) will appear. Now it's out that John Simms will reprise his role as The Master. Can't say I'm crazy about the idea. It's both too weird and too predictable. Let's hope the basic idea is worth it that brings all these folks together who according to past eps are either dead or lost to the Doctor forever.

Timothy Dalton is also involved somehow, and I'd be surprised if Patrick Stewart isn't in there somewhere as well (though nothing's been said about that. It just makes sense to me.) One person I thought we'd see is Alex Kingston as the Doctor's mysterious "wife" (from last season's "Silence in the Library.") She may in fact be in it, but she is almost certainly in an early episode with the next Doctor, Matt Smith. In which she may appear to be the Doctor's mysterious "mother."

Meanwhile, the BBC site is promoting the activities of producer Julie Gardner, writer and showrunner Russell T. Davis and star David Tennant in Hollywood--while denying that they are all there preparing to make a Doctor Who movie. Sounds like science fiction to me. As well as a huge disappointment if it doesn't happen.

As for the new Doctor, Matt Smith and his teenage companion Karen Gillan, they've started filming. Smith's Doctor costume has been unveiled, and just about universally panned. Though I myself haven't worn a bow tie since grade school, I have had an identical tweed jacket in the closet for the last decade or so.

As for the real world, two notable recent rationales for the usefulness of space exploration came from Michael Winship at Salon and fictionist Kim Stanley Robinson in the Washington Post. Interestingly, both argue for it on the basis of what it will do for Planet Earth--KSR's specifically targets the Climate Crisis.

Now after I post this I'm going to pop outside in the probably vain attempt to see if I can catch a falling star during the Perseid meteor shower. I do this every year and have seldom been successful in seeing more than a few (never those promised "one a second" in any shower), even back in Pennsylvania where clear summer skies were much more likely than here on the far northern California coast. (Although, with music in my ear and a brandy in my hand, I had a pretty good time anyway.) There's moonlight to contend with this year as well. But for those of you in better locations, with more patience and better luck, tonight is supposed to be the best night, but tomorrow could be even better.

One small step...40 years ago today, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on ground not of this Earth. In July 1969, Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins blasted off to the moon in the powerful Saturn rocket (second photo). Today, those three met with President Obama, who appears to be not quite giving the Vulcan salute. He'd just shaken hands with Neil Armstrong, and as I never tire of telling, I met Armstrong when he spoke at the Farewell to James Doohan convention in 2004. Nichelle Nichols introduced me to him.

If few outside of science fiction fans believed humans would walk on the moon by 1969, few science fiction fans or writers imagined that the Apollo program would be the last voyage beyond Earth orbit in more than three decades. NASA has plans for a return to the moon and then on to Mars, and the astronauts today talked about it, but got no commitment from the President--although the administration is studying it, and with all the other spending priorities, they are unlikely to announce anything for at least a couple of years. But the new NASA director Obama appointed seems determined to get to Mars, and beyond.

As for the moon landing, William Shatner wrote about it in one of his books. Star Trek had been cancelled and he was out of work, a divorce left him broke and essentially homeless, so he watched Neil Armstrong while lying on his back in his makeshift camper and residence in the parking lot of a dinner theatre where he was appearing, on a tiny TV balanced on his chest, pulling in the signal with a small antennae augmented by aluminum foil. But as it turned out, even if NASA wasn't going where no one had gone before in the next few decades, Captain Kirk--and several captains after him--would be.

The Collected Captain Future Vol. 1 is officially published today, on Edmond Hamilton Day in Kinsman, Ohio, honoring the "Dean of Science Fiction" and the author of the original Captain Future pulp magazine tales.