Two Malaysian participants in a "Save Star Trek" event via startrek.com/my
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Star Trek: A Passion for the Future
by William S. Kowinski
If you wanted to find the future, where would you go? To a World Future Society convention, as I did once? (There was one in Chicago just last week, which got almost no media coverage.) Or to the annual Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference like the one last month, where high technologists plug their products (big announcements by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates mean this one gets more media) and each expert ignores the field of every other expert, producing a chaos of foamy promotion, narrow prediction, and airy generalities?
Or would you head instead for a Star Trek convention, where people of all ages, races and descriptions gather to celebrate and talk about a future of adventure, exploration, ethics, intelligence and infinite diversity?
While you would obtain useful information and insights into aspects of the future at conferences like the WFS and TED, these smorgasbords of marketers and experts dominated by whatever it is they are selling or are expert in, seem unsatisfying, and the future they portray often appears to be mostly for themselves.
Star Trek conventions feature plenty of commercialism and obsessive experts in arcane areas, but they have at least one major advantage. At these other events, people have an interest---and very often a self-interest---in the future, or their version of it. At a Star Trek convention, as in the soul of Star Trek itself, you are likely to find a passion for the future.
Why is passion for the future important? Hope is enacted in the present. If you believe the future will be better---exciting, fulfilling and compassionate---it's heartening: it helps you get through the day. But if you have a passion to make a better future, then you can contribute to that possibility by what you do and say, what you advocate and represent, in the present.
Passion is not a word you generally associate with Trekkies, and perhaps it is more obvious in the people whose job it is to project emotion and articulate thought. When you hear people like actors LeVar Burton, George Takei, Denise Crosby or Nichelle Nichols, or writers and producers like Michael Piller, Dorothy Fontana or Jeri Taylor talk about the Star Trek vision of the future, the passion comes to the surface. When they speak from the stages at convention, you can feel it in their connection to the audience. They are speaking for the audience as much as to it.
The audience, or a significant part of it, wears the uniforms or attends the conventions and watches the shows to identify themselves with statements like Nichelle Nichols'---in this case, part of an on-camera interview, but just as likely to be heard from convention stages: "Star Trek is a format for what our future could be, one of harmony and respect and progress and adventure and intelligence, and of peaceful exploration with infinite diversity in infinite combinations, is what makes this universe beautiful."
They may try to express this passion in odds ways, like building the Star Trek future around them so they can, in one way or another, live in it, rather than give themselves up to the deluded, tyrannical and extremely lame present. But some also find other ways, working through organizations with Trek affiliations, or more covertly in their professions, civic and charitable activities and other commitments.
Many of them would also agree with George Takei: "I think it is very important that the philosophy [of Star Trek] not just remain an ideal out there, but we incorporate it into our lives and act on it. Certainly that's part of the message of Star Trek."
Today, Star Trek is conspicuously alone in being a complex vision of the future known around the world. It functions as a mythology of the future that has already influenced actual events and trends, on many levels, from the fairly mundane to profound decisions individuals have made concerning their own lives and futures.
Star Trek influences many cultures and helps to define a global culture, particularly in relation to the future. The passion for the future that Star Trek evokes and helps to delineate and instill is central to its contribution and its identity. Even in the current waning of its apparent popularity, no other vision or saga---or "franchise"--- has this identity and influence.
(Text continues after photos)
Remembering the Future
"Do you remember the future?" asks the subversive clone, addressing Dr. Memory, the central memory core of the Future Fair, in Firesign Theatre's comedy recording, "'>I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus."
"Yessssss," says Dr. Memory.
"Forget it!"
The future has drifted in and out of societal consciousness over the years. At the moment it seems to be largely forgotten. "Today we live entirely in the present," wrote political economist Robert Skidelsky at this century began. "For most people the past has little meaning; there is no future on the horizon except more of the present, apart from the ambiguous promises offered by science."
This apathy is often accompanied by fatalism. A survey of Americans in 1999 showed that half believed a manmade disaster would destroy civilization in the 21st century. The events of 9-11-01 and afterwards have simply darkened that mood. A poll just this year shows that while one third of residents of Japan expected World War III in their lifetimes, two-thirds of Americans did.
This blindness to the future extends to the arts. "We dwellers in the empire do not seem to want art with visionary power now---art that looks to the future," wrote Mark Edmundson.
But this wasn't always true---especially when Star Trek was being born.
A Brief History of the Future
The future has been an important concept in western civilization since at least the Old Testament era. But there are two points in history particularly important to Star Trek and its envisioning of the future.
The first is the 1890s, when the industrial revolution was maturing, an accelerating barrage of new technologies were changing daily life in Europe and America, and the philosophical ideas of progress and evolution developed from the 18th century were meeting new scientific findings in geology, astronomy, physics and biology (particularly Darwinian evolution)---culminating in newly emerging pictures of the past and present.
The center of all this activity was London, where new centers of education were created to extract and train new technical talent from the lower middle class, to serve industrial progress. But one such science student became a writer, who created a synthesis of the forces and ideas of his age, and gave them voice.
But in the process, H.G. Wells did not just invent modern science fiction. He also invented the modern approach to thinking about the future.
At the start of the twentieth century, H.G. Wells gave a lecture to the Royal Institution that was later published as The Discovery of the Future. There are two kinds of thinking applied to the future, he said. The first sees the future "as a sort of black non-existence upon which the advancing present will presently write events." This kind of mind thinks in terms of the past. The second kind of thinking "sees the world as one great workshop, and the present is no more than material for the future, for the thing that is yet destined to be." This kind of mind anticipates, and looks to the future creatively and constructively.
Wells maintained that "a systematic exploration of the future", composed of a comprehensive evaluation of insights and information from all relevant fields, can yield a "working knowledge of things in the future." Wells asserted that if this new science could ascertain the "biological, intellectual, economic consequences" of new technology and the ramifications of actions in the present, then humanity could use it to create a desirable future. In fact the existence of this knowledge itself could be a persuasive argument that humanity should think creatively and take charge of its own future.
When Wells was speaking, the automobile was still a few years in the future, but to illustrate his point, he not only predicted it but more impressively, forecast much of what happened in the subsequent half century because of it. He foresaw a future of big fast cars, long-distance buses and fat trucks on wide superhighways, and prefabricated suburban communities of middle class homes filled with labor-saving appliances. He saw these suburbs expanding while cities shrink, and the sprawl in the U.S. spreading unbounded from Boston to Washington, D.C.
He predicted electric ranges and dishwashing detergent, the replacement of printed books with something like disks or video cassettes, and the presence in every home of an electrically connected box that would present the news-though in carefully censored versions. He was wrong about what these boxes would be called, but perhaps more accurate. He called them "Babble Machines."
He made even more impressive predictions later on, and also had some major misses. '>Anticipations became Wells' first best seller (it was more popular at first than any of his now famous science fiction novels), but having essentially created the modern future studies field, he almost immediately backed away from it. A few years later he decided that there could be no exact science of anticipating the future, and we will return to reasons when they become relevant in a later episode. (There's more on parallels and legacies linking Wells and Roddenberry, elsewhere on this blog.)
But by the turn of the century the future had been discovered, though Wells' insights would largely lie fallow for more than fifty years. The spectre of atomic warfare made a science of forecasting the future seem more crucial, but this area of inquiry quickly expanded to an interest not just in specific prediction but in the entire idea of the future.
This was the second important point in history: the 1960s.
"Do you remember the future?" asks the subversive clone, addressing Dr. Memory, the central memory core of the Future Fair, in Firesign Theatre's comedy recording, "'>I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus."
"Yessssss," says Dr. Memory.
"Forget it!"
The future has drifted in and out of societal consciousness over the years. At the moment it seems to be largely forgotten. "Today we live entirely in the present," wrote political economist Robert Skidelsky at this century began. "For most people the past has little meaning; there is no future on the horizon except more of the present, apart from the ambiguous promises offered by science."
This apathy is often accompanied by fatalism. A survey of Americans in 1999 showed that half believed a manmade disaster would destroy civilization in the 21st century. The events of 9-11-01 and afterwards have simply darkened that mood. A poll just this year shows that while one third of residents of Japan expected World War III in their lifetimes, two-thirds of Americans did.
This blindness to the future extends to the arts. "We dwellers in the empire do not seem to want art with visionary power now---art that looks to the future," wrote Mark Edmundson.
But this wasn't always true---especially when Star Trek was being born.
A Brief History of the Future
The future has been an important concept in western civilization since at least the Old Testament era. But there are two points in history particularly important to Star Trek and its envisioning of the future.
The first is the 1890s, when the industrial revolution was maturing, an accelerating barrage of new technologies were changing daily life in Europe and America, and the philosophical ideas of progress and evolution developed from the 18th century were meeting new scientific findings in geology, astronomy, physics and biology (particularly Darwinian evolution)---culminating in newly emerging pictures of the past and present.
The center of all this activity was London, where new centers of education were created to extract and train new technical talent from the lower middle class, to serve industrial progress. But one such science student became a writer, who created a synthesis of the forces and ideas of his age, and gave them voice.
But in the process, H.G. Wells did not just invent modern science fiction. He also invented the modern approach to thinking about the future.
At the start of the twentieth century, H.G. Wells gave a lecture to the Royal Institution that was later published as The Discovery of the Future. There are two kinds of thinking applied to the future, he said. The first sees the future "as a sort of black non-existence upon which the advancing present will presently write events." This kind of mind thinks in terms of the past. The second kind of thinking "sees the world as one great workshop, and the present is no more than material for the future, for the thing that is yet destined to be." This kind of mind anticipates, and looks to the future creatively and constructively.
Wells maintained that "a systematic exploration of the future", composed of a comprehensive evaluation of insights and information from all relevant fields, can yield a "working knowledge of things in the future." Wells asserted that if this new science could ascertain the "biological, intellectual, economic consequences" of new technology and the ramifications of actions in the present, then humanity could use it to create a desirable future. In fact the existence of this knowledge itself could be a persuasive argument that humanity should think creatively and take charge of its own future.
When Wells was speaking, the automobile was still a few years in the future, but to illustrate his point, he not only predicted it but more impressively, forecast much of what happened in the subsequent half century because of it. He foresaw a future of big fast cars, long-distance buses and fat trucks on wide superhighways, and prefabricated suburban communities of middle class homes filled with labor-saving appliances. He saw these suburbs expanding while cities shrink, and the sprawl in the U.S. spreading unbounded from Boston to Washington, D.C.
He predicted electric ranges and dishwashing detergent, the replacement of printed books with something like disks or video cassettes, and the presence in every home of an electrically connected box that would present the news-though in carefully censored versions. He was wrong about what these boxes would be called, but perhaps more accurate. He called them "Babble Machines."
He made even more impressive predictions later on, and also had some major misses. '>Anticipations became Wells' first best seller (it was more popular at first than any of his now famous science fiction novels), but having essentially created the modern future studies field, he almost immediately backed away from it. A few years later he decided that there could be no exact science of anticipating the future, and we will return to reasons when they become relevant in a later episode. (There's more on parallels and legacies linking Wells and Roddenberry, elsewhere on this blog.)
But by the turn of the century the future had been discovered, though Wells' insights would largely lie fallow for more than fifty years. The spectre of atomic warfare made a science of forecasting the future seem more crucial, but this area of inquiry quickly expanded to an interest not just in specific prediction but in the entire idea of the future.
This was the second important point in history: the 1960s.
Idealists Without Illusions
This time the action centered in North America. The enormous productive capacity created there for World War II, untouched by the war's violence, promised an era of expansion and affluence, especially in view of new technologies, some developed before and after the war and many spawned by the war. Like the 1890s in England, the postwar U.S. needed more educated technicians and managers, research scientists and experts in newly emerging fields. Ex-soldiers went to college at government expense, and the Baby Boom meant education would continue to expand.
In this period of rapid change and growing affluence, a strain of idealism tempered by hard experience created what was dubbed "the New Breed" within what is now sentimentally called "The Greatest Generation." This was the generation of World War II veterans like Gene Roddenberry and many others who would contribute to creating Star Trek. But in the early 1960s, it was most clearly identified as the generation of President John F. Kennedy, who described himself as an "idealist without illusions."
With his theme of the New Frontier, his visionary views on the space program, Civil Rights and world peace, and his accent on youth, Kennedy was clearly oriented towards the future. (There's more concerning Kennedy and connections to Roddenberry and the early 60s development of Star Trek elsewhere on this blog, at "the Star Trek 60s Pt. 1.")
At the same time, there was an explosion of studies, books and articles by physical and social scientists in many fields, as well as the first scholars and freelance intellects (like Arthur C. Clarke) who specialized in the future. Though they often came at the subject from a particular discipline, they typically were trying to synthesize a big picture view of the future, as Wells had advised. Partly because they had an advocate in the White House and felt that the future was an idea whose time had come, they were mostly optimistic.
In his 1969 book, The Search for a Usable Future, Martin E. Marty put it this way: "Knowing that audacity was called for and inspired by the confidence that man was prevailing, they pictured a realm of possibility to which our culture was tending. The technological and humane orders were converging to create a world wherein conflict may remain but in which it would be productive of good. There men would learn to embrace the works of their hands, to affirm the human city. The fundamental human model for this was the cool, worldly, problem-solving, practical man. Man in control. He was now orbiting the world, probing the depths of the sea. Aided by all the disciplines, he could foresee problems and program his way through or past them. This was to be a society of affluence, abundance, leisure, and meaningful human relations."
Even with the obvious hubris, it's not hard to see a lot of Star Trek in that description.
This time the action centered in North America. The enormous productive capacity created there for World War II, untouched by the war's violence, promised an era of expansion and affluence, especially in view of new technologies, some developed before and after the war and many spawned by the war. Like the 1890s in England, the postwar U.S. needed more educated technicians and managers, research scientists and experts in newly emerging fields. Ex-soldiers went to college at government expense, and the Baby Boom meant education would continue to expand.
In this period of rapid change and growing affluence, a strain of idealism tempered by hard experience created what was dubbed "the New Breed" within what is now sentimentally called "The Greatest Generation." This was the generation of World War II veterans like Gene Roddenberry and many others who would contribute to creating Star Trek. But in the early 1960s, it was most clearly identified as the generation of President John F. Kennedy, who described himself as an "idealist without illusions."
With his theme of the New Frontier, his visionary views on the space program, Civil Rights and world peace, and his accent on youth, Kennedy was clearly oriented towards the future. (There's more concerning Kennedy and connections to Roddenberry and the early 60s development of Star Trek elsewhere on this blog, at "the Star Trek 60s Pt. 1.")
At the same time, there was an explosion of studies, books and articles by physical and social scientists in many fields, as well as the first scholars and freelance intellects (like Arthur C. Clarke) who specialized in the future. Though they often came at the subject from a particular discipline, they typically were trying to synthesize a big picture view of the future, as Wells had advised. Partly because they had an advocate in the White House and felt that the future was an idea whose time had come, they were mostly optimistic.
In his 1969 book, The Search for a Usable Future, Martin E. Marty put it this way: "Knowing that audacity was called for and inspired by the confidence that man was prevailing, they pictured a realm of possibility to which our culture was tending. The technological and humane orders were converging to create a world wherein conflict may remain but in which it would be productive of good. There men would learn to embrace the works of their hands, to affirm the human city. The fundamental human model for this was the cool, worldly, problem-solving, practical man. Man in control. He was now orbiting the world, probing the depths of the sea. Aided by all the disciplines, he could foresee problems and program his way through or past them. This was to be a society of affluence, abundance, leisure, and meaningful human relations."
Even with the obvious hubris, it's not hard to see a lot of Star Trek in that description.
Utopia or Oblivion
But that brief era ended with Kennedy's assassination (just weeks before Gene Roddenberry completed his first Star Trek proposal), the widening Vietnam War, and the societal turmoil of the second half of the 1960s. The apparent irrationality of Vietnam, the oppressions and angry analyses of them made by and on behalf of racial minorities, Third World populations, students, women and others, plus the continuing nuclear arms race and the first burst of information and alarm concerning environmental issues (both current degradations and dire future prospects), fossil fuel depletion and overpopulation in the near future, all combined to short circuit Utopian optimism and replace it with apocalyptic despair.
Yet interest in the future continued and even accelerated throughout the decade, and well into the 1970s. There were doomsday warnings but also new possibilities for human potential---The '>Population Bomb jostling Castaneda's '>The Teachings of Don Juan on the best-seller list. But most particularly there were new approaches to synthesizing visions of a better future, and the explosive development of a new field of future studies.
The future was part of the public discourse. There were books in paperback like Arthur C. Clarke's'> Profiles of the Future (which Roddenberry read and admired), John McHale's '>The Future of the Future, Robert Theobald's '>Futures Conditional, culminating in the best-seller '>Future Shock by Alvin Toffler, plus works on ecology, media, geopolitics and so on, all with a futures orientation, by people like '>Marshall McLuhan, '>Margaret Mead, '>Gregory Bateson and '>Paul Shepard, among others.
But perhaps the quintessential figure of this period was the thinker who had been at it the longest: '>Buckminster Fuller, who had invented the geodesic dome, and was now in the 60s and 70s providing deep analysis and generative concepts that would remain important for decades, such as "spaceship earth" and his "anticipatory design science."
Fuller also raised the stakes for considering the future. In almost the first words of his Inaugural Address, President Kennedy had stated the central premise of the early 1960s futurists, that of the suddenly real possibilities of utopia or apocalypse: "The world is very different now," Kennedy said. " For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life."
But in a single phrase, Buckminster Fuller re-stated this as a stark either/or. Because of the speed and weight of destructive forces which could only be quelled by a comprehensive solution making the future better for everybody, Fuller concluded that the only choice humankind has for the future is "Utopia or Oblivion."
But that brief era ended with Kennedy's assassination (just weeks before Gene Roddenberry completed his first Star Trek proposal), the widening Vietnam War, and the societal turmoil of the second half of the 1960s. The apparent irrationality of Vietnam, the oppressions and angry analyses of them made by and on behalf of racial minorities, Third World populations, students, women and others, plus the continuing nuclear arms race and the first burst of information and alarm concerning environmental issues (both current degradations and dire future prospects), fossil fuel depletion and overpopulation in the near future, all combined to short circuit Utopian optimism and replace it with apocalyptic despair.
Yet interest in the future continued and even accelerated throughout the decade, and well into the 1970s. There were doomsday warnings but also new possibilities for human potential---The '>Population Bomb jostling Castaneda's '>The Teachings of Don Juan on the best-seller list. But most particularly there were new approaches to synthesizing visions of a better future, and the explosive development of a new field of future studies.
The future was part of the public discourse. There were books in paperback like Arthur C. Clarke's'> Profiles of the Future (which Roddenberry read and admired), John McHale's '>The Future of the Future, Robert Theobald's '>Futures Conditional, culminating in the best-seller '>Future Shock by Alvin Toffler, plus works on ecology, media, geopolitics and so on, all with a futures orientation, by people like '>Marshall McLuhan, '>Margaret Mead, '>Gregory Bateson and '>Paul Shepard, among others.
But perhaps the quintessential figure of this period was the thinker who had been at it the longest: '>Buckminster Fuller, who had invented the geodesic dome, and was now in the 60s and 70s providing deep analysis and generative concepts that would remain important for decades, such as "spaceship earth" and his "anticipatory design science."
Fuller also raised the stakes for considering the future. In almost the first words of his Inaugural Address, President Kennedy had stated the central premise of the early 1960s futurists, that of the suddenly real possibilities of utopia or apocalypse: "The world is very different now," Kennedy said. " For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life."
But in a single phrase, Buckminster Fuller re-stated this as a stark either/or. Because of the speed and weight of destructive forces which could only be quelled by a comprehensive solution making the future better for everybody, Fuller concluded that the only choice humankind has for the future is "Utopia or Oblivion."
The Trek Rebellion
It was this concern for the future, both the fears and despair over apocalyptic war or ecocastrophe, and the idealism and frenzy to use the tools of science and the insights of the arts to make a better future, that helped to revive Star Trek in the 1970s, just as it had united "freaks" and "geeks" in watching the series in the 60s.
Although this context is seldom if ever presented in histories of Star Trek, it was in fact important to the times. Buckminster Fuller was a well-known figure on U.S. college campuses, and important schools like MIT hosted organizations dedicated to exploring and enacting Fuller's visions. (It was at MIT in fact that I heard and met Buckminster Fuller in the early 1970s.)
There were more than a thousand futures studies courses in North American universities, as well as futurist doctoral programs and futures studies in high schools. More than 200 futurist organizations were headquartered in Washington alone. Gene Roddenberry was invited to speak to many of these groups, and no one who was thinking and writing about current or future topics could have missed what was going on, and what was being written and said.
Everyone was aware of the apocalyptic mood, whether from books and media reports about them and their dire projections, or the movies that tended to focus on catastrophe, partly because it is more easily dramatized, and moving pictures in particular find it easier to evoke a visceral response to horrors, fighting and explosions. In print as well, earth's self-destruction had become such a staple of science fiction stories that it was often just assumed as the background to the story's premise.
But despair is not the favorite condition of healthy humans, especially the young. Hope now became an act of rebellion. The concern for contemporary social issues, of war and social justice and poverty in the midst of overabundance, were considered problems necessary to solve not only for the good of the present, but for the possibilities of the future.
The belief that the future was something that individuals and society needed to think about, and desperately needed to consider when designing present actions---that our conceptual tools had to be applied to making a better future---was a passion for the future that was reflected in the frenzy for Star Trek.
This became even more true as the culture began to forget about the future. Though specific concerns continued, for ecological issues and the nuclear arms race in the 80s, and so on, the future as a subject, as a holistic idea, faded away.
But the problems have not faded (though we might define them differently), and Buckminster Fuller's stark choice still confronts us. . We will have to make things better or we will perish, and quite possibly take much of the life on the planet with us. Star Trek, especially the original series and TNG, constitutes one of the last surviving expressions of the ideals without illusions that keep the passion for the future alive.
(There has, however, been a recent interest in the study of utopias, reflecting perhaps the understanding that utopias don't define themselves as perfect or unchanging. Star Trek never denied the problems or the apocalyptic possibilities, and its future was far from perfect.)
Star Trek succeeded where many of the futurist visions of this period failed, and continue to fail, because of other elements that were part of its process and its expression, as well as its essence. That brings us back to the difference between the World Future Society and the Star Trek conventions. For a key to Star Trek's visions of the future are two other crucial elements: story and soul.
Both are explored next time, right here.
It was this concern for the future, both the fears and despair over apocalyptic war or ecocastrophe, and the idealism and frenzy to use the tools of science and the insights of the arts to make a better future, that helped to revive Star Trek in the 1970s, just as it had united "freaks" and "geeks" in watching the series in the 60s.
Although this context is seldom if ever presented in histories of Star Trek, it was in fact important to the times. Buckminster Fuller was a well-known figure on U.S. college campuses, and important schools like MIT hosted organizations dedicated to exploring and enacting Fuller's visions. (It was at MIT in fact that I heard and met Buckminster Fuller in the early 1970s.)
There were more than a thousand futures studies courses in North American universities, as well as futurist doctoral programs and futures studies in high schools. More than 200 futurist organizations were headquartered in Washington alone. Gene Roddenberry was invited to speak to many of these groups, and no one who was thinking and writing about current or future topics could have missed what was going on, and what was being written and said.
Everyone was aware of the apocalyptic mood, whether from books and media reports about them and their dire projections, or the movies that tended to focus on catastrophe, partly because it is more easily dramatized, and moving pictures in particular find it easier to evoke a visceral response to horrors, fighting and explosions. In print as well, earth's self-destruction had become such a staple of science fiction stories that it was often just assumed as the background to the story's premise.
But despair is not the favorite condition of healthy humans, especially the young. Hope now became an act of rebellion. The concern for contemporary social issues, of war and social justice and poverty in the midst of overabundance, were considered problems necessary to solve not only for the good of the present, but for the possibilities of the future.
The belief that the future was something that individuals and society needed to think about, and desperately needed to consider when designing present actions---that our conceptual tools had to be applied to making a better future---was a passion for the future that was reflected in the frenzy for Star Trek.
This became even more true as the culture began to forget about the future. Though specific concerns continued, for ecological issues and the nuclear arms race in the 80s, and so on, the future as a subject, as a holistic idea, faded away.
But the problems have not faded (though we might define them differently), and Buckminster Fuller's stark choice still confronts us. . We will have to make things better or we will perish, and quite possibly take much of the life on the planet with us. Star Trek, especially the original series and TNG, constitutes one of the last surviving expressions of the ideals without illusions that keep the passion for the future alive.
(There has, however, been a recent interest in the study of utopias, reflecting perhaps the understanding that utopias don't define themselves as perfect or unchanging. Star Trek never denied the problems or the apocalyptic possibilities, and its future was far from perfect.)
Star Trek succeeded where many of the futurist visions of this period failed, and continue to fail, because of other elements that were part of its process and its expression, as well as its essence. That brings us back to the difference between the World Future Society and the Star Trek conventions. For a key to Star Trek's visions of the future are two other crucial elements: story and soul.
Both are explored next time, right here.
Monday, August 01, 2005
TrekCheck: Another Possibility for Trek XI
A couple of additional rumors surfaced last week, again of dubious credibility. One quoted Brent Spiner as saying he’s ready to come back as Data for the new movie, the same week as Brent Spiner was quoted as saying he’s too old to play Data anymore. (The second was a more credibly sourced quote, though Spiner has been known to be on both sides of playing/not playing Data again within a brief span of time. The first quote also misused the term "maiden voyage" in a way that Spiner probably wouldn't.)
Designated writer Erik Jendresen was also quoted---though it sounded like an old quote—talking about a time frame of 80 years before Kirk. But something else he said suggested a possibility. He mentioned that he’d like this movie to get the audience to “feel something.” The context led me to think he could mean the kind of feelings inspired by death.
This---and maybe the new Harry Potter--led me to think about how Star Trek has handled the subject of death, especially heroic death for a cause. Fans didn’t react with great outpouring of feeling to the heroic death of Data in “Nemesis.” They seemed to have mixed feelings concerning Kirk’s death in “Generations” and Trip Tucker in the “These Are the Voyages” final episode of Enterprise, with one of the more prominent emotions being anger at the manner of their respective demises. Most fans found the death of Spock in Star Trek II to be emotionally moving, which ironically had something to do with bringing him back to life in the next movie.
Tasha Yar's death in TNG was unique, in that its effects were dramatized over many years, and that its point initially was that her death was "meaningless," that is, the more or less random death that could come to anyone serving on the Enterprise in the course of doing their duty and engaged in the dangerous mission of confronting the unknown.
But Trek XI has a different and so far unique opportunity, if it indeed becomes a unique movie: if it is a time period in which no other Trek stories were set, with new characters, and no old ones.
The filmmakers have the possibility of creating a set of characters---the crew of a starship, for example---that the audience comes to care about during the course of the movie. They can be placed in jeopardy in a very meaningful situation, perhaps one that no humans have faced before. What they decide to do, and why (and since it’s Star Trek, with emphasis on the why), will influence the future history of the Trek universe. The gravity of what they do would be emphasized if this time, the crew doesn't escape at the last second, but they do sacrifice their lives.
If we in the audience can be led to see---and to feel---the reasons and the importance of their heroic action, it becomes possible to create a powerful and emotional effect when these characters sacrifice their lives. But the key would be the reason: it’s not enough to repeat the usual war movie motivations, however realistic they might be: that they die for each other, or their action is motivated by payback for loss of comrades. It has to be an action and a reason unique to the Star Trek universe.
It could even involve treachery, betrayal or cowardice by comrades (although that couldn’t be the main or only reason for the heroic deaths. See J.K. Rowling for the right way to do it.) The point is that an entirely new cast means everything could be up for grabs.
I hesitate to suggest this possibility, because it is very risky: it can easily be done badly. There is the particular risk of pushing the same buttons, making it a warrior sacrifice, which would please those who want to see Star Trek become World War II (or, more likely, the Napoleonic wars) in space. Given how conventional this has become, especially in science fiction, there is no reason for people to pay money to see it again, and would divide Star Trek fans even further.
Still, the ultimate sacrifice is something that could not be done cleanly with major Trek characters the audience had come to know over many stories. It would mean that at least some of these characters would not be available for future films or TV, although subsidiary characters in this film could become major characters later on. It is a unique opportunity, something that Trek has never done. (Perhaps the Enterprise C crew in the TNG episode, "Yesterday's Enterprise" comes closest.) It would take a lot of thought, a lot of artistry, and a lot of nerve to do it. I'm not at all sure it's the best idea, or even a good idea. But these circumstances make it possible.
A couple of additional rumors surfaced last week, again of dubious credibility. One quoted Brent Spiner as saying he’s ready to come back as Data for the new movie, the same week as Brent Spiner was quoted as saying he’s too old to play Data anymore. (The second was a more credibly sourced quote, though Spiner has been known to be on both sides of playing/not playing Data again within a brief span of time. The first quote also misused the term "maiden voyage" in a way that Spiner probably wouldn't.)
Designated writer Erik Jendresen was also quoted---though it sounded like an old quote—talking about a time frame of 80 years before Kirk. But something else he said suggested a possibility. He mentioned that he’d like this movie to get the audience to “feel something.” The context led me to think he could mean the kind of feelings inspired by death.
This---and maybe the new Harry Potter--led me to think about how Star Trek has handled the subject of death, especially heroic death for a cause. Fans didn’t react with great outpouring of feeling to the heroic death of Data in “Nemesis.” They seemed to have mixed feelings concerning Kirk’s death in “Generations” and Trip Tucker in the “These Are the Voyages” final episode of Enterprise, with one of the more prominent emotions being anger at the manner of their respective demises. Most fans found the death of Spock in Star Trek II to be emotionally moving, which ironically had something to do with bringing him back to life in the next movie.
Tasha Yar's death in TNG was unique, in that its effects were dramatized over many years, and that its point initially was that her death was "meaningless," that is, the more or less random death that could come to anyone serving on the Enterprise in the course of doing their duty and engaged in the dangerous mission of confronting the unknown.
But Trek XI has a different and so far unique opportunity, if it indeed becomes a unique movie: if it is a time period in which no other Trek stories were set, with new characters, and no old ones.
The filmmakers have the possibility of creating a set of characters---the crew of a starship, for example---that the audience comes to care about during the course of the movie. They can be placed in jeopardy in a very meaningful situation, perhaps one that no humans have faced before. What they decide to do, and why (and since it’s Star Trek, with emphasis on the why), will influence the future history of the Trek universe. The gravity of what they do would be emphasized if this time, the crew doesn't escape at the last second, but they do sacrifice their lives.
If we in the audience can be led to see---and to feel---the reasons and the importance of their heroic action, it becomes possible to create a powerful and emotional effect when these characters sacrifice their lives. But the key would be the reason: it’s not enough to repeat the usual war movie motivations, however realistic they might be: that they die for each other, or their action is motivated by payback for loss of comrades. It has to be an action and a reason unique to the Star Trek universe.
It could even involve treachery, betrayal or cowardice by comrades (although that couldn’t be the main or only reason for the heroic deaths. See J.K. Rowling for the right way to do it.) The point is that an entirely new cast means everything could be up for grabs.
I hesitate to suggest this possibility, because it is very risky: it can easily be done badly. There is the particular risk of pushing the same buttons, making it a warrior sacrifice, which would please those who want to see Star Trek become World War II (or, more likely, the Napoleonic wars) in space. Given how conventional this has become, especially in science fiction, there is no reason for people to pay money to see it again, and would divide Star Trek fans even further.
Still, the ultimate sacrifice is something that could not be done cleanly with major Trek characters the audience had come to know over many stories. It would mean that at least some of these characters would not be available for future films or TV, although subsidiary characters in this film could become major characters later on. It is a unique opportunity, something that Trek has never done. (Perhaps the Enterprise C crew in the TNG episode, "Yesterday's Enterprise" comes closest.) It would take a lot of thought, a lot of artistry, and a lot of nerve to do it. I'm not at all sure it's the best idea, or even a good idea. But these circumstances make it possible.
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