Monday, February 27, 2006

Trek XI Latest

You've probably seen the story--that Doug Mirabello, identified as Rick Berman's assistant, posted on the Internet concerning the next Trek feature. We'll see if there is any confirmation or denial coming, but for now we can speculate.

He's quoted as saying that the Erik Jendresen script for the next Trek film---the prequel "Star Trek: The Beginning" idea--has been scrapped. This sounds likely. It makes sense if you find Patrick Stewart's quoted comments credible, about being asked to be in the next movie, which I do. Also the fact that Jendresen has signed on to a tv series project, which doesn't prevent him from working on an ongoing movie script, but makes it less likely.

Mirabello is also quoted doubting that there are any plans for Patrick Stewart to be in the next film, as Stewart said a month or so ago. He said maybe Stewart had "a casual conversation" with a Paramount exec concerning "hypotheticals," and then Stewart "ran with" that when talking to a reporter.

This does not sound likely. Stewart described a meeting with people he found credible, people with money and the power to make the movie. I think we can assume he knows the difference.

Berman's assistant offers another possibility, that "there's a chance that someone else at Paramount is planning something huge and keeping us out of the loop." Ya think? While "planning" might be a bit premature, this sounds more likely.

But one thing just about everyone seems to agree on--anything new from official Trekdom is three years away, at best.

Neverthless, fan films are going great. More Star Trek stars in front of and behind the camera are joining in. The latest being visual effects supervisor Ronald B. Moore joining up with Star Trek New Voyages.

If official Star Trek isn't going to be making anything new for awhile, they really should license some fan films, so these folks can make a few bucks. They could devise some sort of non-competitive clause for whenever they decide to make an official new movie or TV show.

Still, it shows how important Star Trek is to the people who've been part of it, as well as to its core of loyal fans. Star Trek has explored so many new frontiers, and this is one more: what other series can say its most precious people believe in it so much they will create more Star Trek for free?

An entity that feeds on hostility and violence. Has it made a lot of history? Posted by Picasa
Star Trek: the Nature of Evil
by William S. Kowinski

Star Trek is an adventure about exploring the future. But on television, it was also a weekly drama series that often came down to a sophisticated form of cops and robbers—good guys versus bad guys. It was an adult drama series, so the good guys weren’t all good, and the bad guys weren’t always all bad. But however Star Trek played with the basic expectation---often in a very meaningful and revelatory way-- some sense of good versus evil was nearly always present.

But in those stories, from the Original Series on, Star Trek questioned the very nature of good and evil. More than adult drama, this was drama exploring a very basic human question---and one that challenged and often flummoxed philosophers through the ages.

The nature of evil has been a knotty religious and philosophical problem for centuries, and in more recent decades, has become a psychological, biological. sociological and political conundrum as well.

Some of the oldest debates are over whether evil exists as something autonomous and powerful, something outside that affects the world, and humans in particular. Or is it human behavior with its source inside?

And if evil is within human beings, it is an inborn part of human nature? Some religions believe humans are born in a “fallen” state of “original sin.” Others believe humans are genetically “programmed” or “hard-wired” with evil instincts as a survival advantage.

Or is evil not separate, but the absence of good, or a shadow on the soul?

Early Christianity believed in both the external and internal evil: the Devil and original sin. Evil existed as a thing in itself; yet the absence of good was also involved.

To even begin to catalogue how Star Trek treated the question of evil would take a dissertation. But it’s worth looking at how evil was approached in two episodes of the original series, both dealing with the evils of war.

McCoy and Chekhov on the planet's surface.
The florescent pink bushes should have tipped
them off something was wrong. Posted by Picasa
Even though “Day of the Dove” was a third season episode, I begin with it because seeing it recently on DVD prompted this post. I will shortly discuss its story in historical context, but my own recent response to it had more to do with the present. The basic premise of this story is the existence of an alien entity that feeds on the energies of violent emotions---on hatred, vengeance, racial bigotry. But the entity does more than that---it creates the conditions that prompt those emotions by manipulating both matter and mind. In essence, it creates evil, and feeds on the emotions evil produces.

This sense of evil as an alien force that creates a self-perpetuating, self-renewing closed loop of evil energies was suddenly frightening, because it made me wonder if this was the explanation for what was happening around me today. The troubles of this world seem distorted to enormous proportions, overpowering what would seem to be the normal agencies of control.

It is this sense of an uncontrollable force that generates evil, violence, hatred and vengeance, and makes them seem justified and proper, even reasonable and certainly necessary, and even, eventually, normal—that suddenly caused me to wonder if this indeed was the reason: That from somewhere has come an alien power called evil, and it is in control of this time.

Many may identify with this feeling or this perception, from quite different points of view. Some may see simply the extreme polarizations, the political discourse overcome with extremes of anger, contempt and self-righteousness, and the justification of slander, lies and threats visited upon opponents.

Or some may see only the hatred they identify with terrorists, or a particular race and religion. Or some may see mostly the violence perpetrated under false pretenses by the Bush government, and its apparent attempts to create a perpetual warfare authoritarian state, while sacrificing the earth’s future by ignoring the true clear and present dangers to its most vulnerable citizens as well as to the planet’s ability to sustain life as we know it. Or they may see both terrorists and “insurgents,” locked in the same cycle with “warmongers” and war profiteers in the ruling class of the U.S.

In fact, they may agree on only the feeling---that evil is out there, and has us in its grip.

I’m not saying I believe this, just that this episode made me wonder for a moment if evil was a force from outside, affecting everyone and everything. And so I intend to explore where that feeling leads by examining this episode.

The ever-logical Mr. Spock searches for
the alien entity on the Enterprise. Posted by Picasa
Day of the Dove” begins with a landing party on a barren planet, investigating a distress signal from a Federation colony that now seems to have completely vanished. Meanwhile, the Enterprise detects a Klingon vessel heading their way, and the landing party quickly concludes the colony had been destroyed by Klingons.

But after responding to a distress call the Klingon ship has been attacked and disabled, with heavy loss of life, and its armed landing party suddenly appears on the planet to take the Enterprise crew hostage. The Klingon captain Kang (Michael Ansara) accuses Kirk of attacking him with a new Federation weapon, and claims the Enterprise in compensation for his disabled ship.

“Go to the devil,” Kirk says.

“We have no devil, Kirk, “Kang responds. “But we understand the habits of yours.”

Chekhov suddenly goes berserk (not for the last time), desiring to avenge the death of his brother, killed by Klingons. Kang uses a device to torture him until Kirk relents (with Chekhov screaming, ”Don’t let these animals have the ship!”) and arranges to have them all beamed aboard the Enterprise. But he secretly signals Spock, and the landing party is beamed aboard, while the Klingons are kept in the pattern buffer until Security is ready.

But also aboard the ship is the Alien Entity, defined so far only as a shimmer of light.

Because the Klingon ship is spewing radiation, the Enterprise beams its remaining crew over, so a total of 38 Klingons are aboard. At this point, the apparent coincidences accelerate---along with the Enterprise, which is suddenly bolting for the edge of the galaxy at warp 9. It is also attacked from nowhere, trapping 400 crew members beyond sealed bulkheads. Now there are also 38 on the Starfleet side.

When both sides confront each other, their modern weapons disappear and are replaced by swords. The alien light appears pleased when they fight.

But there’s another clue to the accelerating blood lust and racial slurs when Chekhov runs from the bridge still intent on avenging his brother, but Sulu tells Kirk that Chekhov doesn’t have a brother.

Spock locates the alien force. “We must contact it,” Kirk says. “See what it wants.” Spock theorizes that it can manipulate both matter and mind. But to what end?

Kirk decides to defuse the hostilities with Kang, to “bury the hatchet,” which Spock points out is an apt phrase given the circumstances.

But there’s another burst of war fever and racism on the bridge. Scotty calls Spock “ a green-blooded half-breed freak” among other things, and McCoy joins in. Spock says he’s not so pleased about being around humans either.

“What are we saying?” Kirk says. “What are we doing to each other?”

“This is war!” Scott cries.

“There—is—no—war,” Kirk says. “We’ve been trained to think in other terms, to fight the causes of war if necessary. Has the war been staged for us—complete with weapons, ideologies, patriotic drum-beating, even race hatred?”

Spock agrees, and hypothesizes that basic hostilities between humans and Klingons have been magnified---that they are to fight apparently by design.

Meanwhile, a rampaging Chekhov has trapped Kang’s wife (who is also his science officer) and is in the act of trying to rape her when Kirk intervenes. “Is this what’s in store for us? Violence? Hatred?”

Dr. McCoy—who has been railing against Klingons as butchers—reports that everyone’s wounds are healing. It appears that the entity will heal them so they can continue fighting, perhaps forever.

McCoy then apologizes to Spock for his racist outburst earlier.

“I, too, felt a brief surge of racial bigotry,” Spock says. “Most distasteful.”

Kang on the Enterprise: "Another of Kirk's tricks?" Posted by Picasa
A wounded crewman, now healed, appears with his sword, crazed to kill Klingons and “even the score” (even though he is no longer hurt.) Kirk and Spock observe the alien hovering above---they note that it grew more vibrant when the crewman expressed a lust for vengeance and violence.

“It exists on the hate of others,” Kirk concludes.

“It has acted as a catalyst to that violence,” Spock adds, and suggests that to defeat it “all hostile emotions must cease.”

At this point the Enterprise has only a short time before its dilithium crystals fail and the ship will be helpless far from Federation space. With the help of Kang’s wife, Kirk meets with him, but Kang won’t buy it. “We are hunters,” he says. “We take what we want.”

“There’s another way to survive,” Kirk says. “Mutual trust and help.”

There’s some swordplay and a vintage Captain Kirk speech, aggressively delivered as counterpoint to its meaning. “The good old game of war—pawn against pawn---stopping the bad guys, where somewhere something sits back and laughs---and starts it all over again.”

“Those who hate and fight must stop themselves,” Spock says, “otherwise it is not stopped.”

“Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier who never questions orders,” Kirk taunts Kang.

Kang sees the entity, finally believes it is manipulating them, and throws down his sword. “Klingons fight for their own purposes,” he says.

“Cessation of hostilities have weakened it,” Spock observes. He suggests good spirits might do it in.

Kirk tells the entity to go away. “We don’t want to play. We know about you. Maybe there are others like you around, maybe you’ve caused a lot of suffering, a lot of history, but that’s all over. We’ll be on our guard now. We’ll be ready for you.”

“Only a fool fights in a burning house,” Kang cries, and joins in the general laughter, and even slaps Kirk on the back. (If you take a look at this episode, don’t miss Spock’s expression in the background after Kang’s back-slap.)

Notably, the episode ends here---there is no coda or final scene of the Enterprise bridge crew discussing the mission and joking around.

M. Scott Peck, author of "People of the Lie" Posted by Picasa
“I know there is evil in the world---essential evil, not the opposite of good but something in which good itself is an irrelevance---a fantasy.”

These words are quoted by Bob Dylan in his autobiographical account, Chronicles: Volume One, which he says are spoken by Scratch (the Devil) in a play by Archibald MacLeish. (I couldn’t find them in the published version of the play, so perhaps they were in an earlier version that Dylan got when MacLeish wanted him to write music for it.) I just happened to read this after I started this essay. When something like that happens, you pay attention. You’re probably on to something.

One contemporary definition of evil comes from Scott Peck in his book People of the Lie. (Peck, a practicing psychiatrist and author of best-sellers such as The Road Less Traveled, died last year. He held his own set of beliefs based on various religions, including Islam and Buddhism, when he wrote this book. But immediately afterwards, he became a committed Christian, and announced this in the book’s introduction.)

Peck argued that evil is a disease, and its chief characteristic or manifestation is deception, the lie. But not simply people lying to others; it’s people lying to themselves: self-deception.

Part of that self-deception could be the refusal to face the possibility of being in error---even of not being conscious of one’s motivations or emotions that could be distorting one’s evaluation of what’s really going on, both in the outside world and inside oneself.

That is in a sense what the entity does in “Day of the Dove” when it manipulates minds. It creates internal fantasies that are as much “lies” as the reality it changes by breaking the laws of causality.

Much of what people believe in this episode is not true. The Federation didn’t lure the Klingon ship with a false distress call and then attack it with a secret weapon; the Klingons didn’t destroy a defenseless Federation colony, any more than the Klingons killed a brother Chekhov never had.

Yet their belief sparks their emotions, and their emotions lead them to leap to all kinds of conclusions, including about the character of their adversaries. They are butchers, animals, freaks. And it gives them the fever to fight. That, in this story, is the goal of evil.

It’s important to note that for those in the grip of this fever, any idea that the other side is justified, or that the facts may be other than believed, or may mean something different that our side or our leader say, seem fantastic. People who believe otherwise are either crazy or cowards or enemy sympathizers.

Peck asserts that people may deceive themselves because of the evil within them, or because they are enthralled by an evil person they serve: a leader, a spouse, a parent. In a sense, this includes being enthralled by a belief, a cause, if it leads to deception and self-deception, and to the refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions, feelings and experiences. The evil person may engender the evil acts, but the enthralled person cooperates and enables them. In the end, what counts are the evil acts, and for those, leaders and followers are both responsible.

Robert Kennedy in 1968. Posted by Picasa
“Day of the Dove” was written by accomplished science fiction writer Jerome Bixby, who wrote several other episodes including the classic “Mirror, Mirror” in the second season. It aired for the first time on November 1, 1968 (between Halloween and the Catholic “All Soul’s Day” or Day of the Dead.)

1968 was a year of death and violence, and deep emotional divisions. The war in Vietnam was raging, both with U.S. bombing in both South and North Vietnam, and the ground war in South Vietnam. In a two-week period in May, more than 1,100 U.S. soldiers were killed.

In early April, Martin Luther King was assassinated, setting off destructive rioting in many U.S. cities. Troops had to be sent to Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Washington and Baltimore.

There were student revolts in the U.S. and Europe. In early June, Robert Kennedy was assassinated, just as he appeared on his way to the Democratic nomination for President on an anti-war platform. There were massive demonstrations in Chicago at the Democratic convention that summer, with nightly violence broadcast coast to coast, caused by what a presidential commission would later call “a police riot.”

The war had divided the country in many ways and in the deepest ways probably since the Civil War, for longstanding alliances and friendships were fractured and families were split—brother against brother, husbands against wives, and most of all, parents against children.

The 60s were a time of great change happening very fast: in everything from sexual mores and relationships, to racial and gender stereotypes. The truthfulness as well as the judgment of leaders was called into question, as well as the rightness of actions and goals. Was war necessary to achieve these goals, and were they worthy goals in the first place?

So much of what nearly everyone had simply accepted as good and true was questioned. Were all our comfortable homes, vibrant industries and wonderful consumer products not so innocent after all—were they the result of processes that were poisoning the air and water, and destroying the planet? Was our prosperity based in part on exploiting others? These questions had not been raised in so many American homes before. This caused great distress, terrible tensions and intimate conflict.

At the same time, the U.S. and Soviet Union were separately sending manned spacecraft into orbit. In the month before this episode aired, Apollo 7 hosted the first live television broadcast from space, during an 11 day mission orbiting the earth 163 times. And during a four-day mission, a manned Soviet craft practiced approach maneuvers with an unmanned craft, a prelude to docking.

People were seeing what the future could be, and they were seeing the present in a kind of self-destruction, threatening that future.

For many, space exploration represented what science and rational thinking could do. On the other hand (some believed) the violence that seemed to have the world in its grip seemed evidence of the damage fiery emotions could cause. This way of looking at what was happening in the late 60s was part of the appeal of Mr. Spock.

Sock represented “logic,” which meant not only science, but what philosophers had called “reason.” The Founding Fathers considered themselves men of reason; they thought of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights as reasoned and reasonable documents, that brought principles to bear on evidence; that brought the logic of those principles to bear on current situations. Those principles were themselves a combination of ideals and pragmatism, a set of logical rules based at least in part on hopes and aspirations.

At the same time, those who were against the Vietnam war claimed that the so-called logic of its proponents was too narrow. It left out too many facts that called these rigid conclusions into question. And it left out human consequences and their importance, which transcended the logic of numbers and had devastating effects on human lives and the physical environment. In order to gauge the importance of lives, and the suffering caused by violence and warfare, perhaps took feelings: the exercise of empathy. But they did not see this as irrational (though many pro-war advocates did.) They saw this as reason---as factoring in human suffering and destruction as well as history, geopolitical realities and the quantitative measurements of weapons and warfare.

Only with the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy in the spring 1968 primaries did opposition to the war gain some legitimacy, and even a lot of that was withdrawn due to later violence. Many people continued to believe that anti-war demonstrators were traitors to their country. They reacted with violent emotion, and at times with real violence.

One of those actively opposing the war was Leonard Nimoy, who was active in support of Eugene McCarthy, as well as for civil rights, civil liberties and social justice causes. In 1968, Mr. Spock met Dr. Spock at a political event. (Dr. Benjamin Spock, world famous as the baby doctor, but also a peace activist who’d been arrested protesting the draft. As Nimoy recounts in his books, he introduced himself as the man who played Spock. Dr. Spock said only, “I know. Have you been indicted yet?”)

Though Star Trek stories did not always carry a blatant anti-war message, Bixby admitted this was his intent with “Day of the Dove” (as the title itself gives away. It was during Vietnam that the terms, “hawks” for pro-war and “doves” for pro-peace, became well known. I believe the terms originated in a magazine article about the White House deliberations during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.)

Kirk finds Kang takes some convincing. Posted by Picasa
So what does this episode say about evil? It suggests that it comes from outside, yet its effects are expressed by human (or Klingon) behavior. In a sense, where evil is located doesn’t matter: it’s the resulting behavior that counts. Because people, at least theoretically, have control over their behavior.

Psychologists and mythologists such as Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and James Hillman, have emphasized the power of certain forces and ideas that most human cultures---and most humans---have in common. In other times and places, cultures gave these forces names, and represented them as beings---gods, demons, heroes. These are also called “archetypes.” And they are real, whether or not one believes that Zeus or Saturn, Satan or the Raven spirit exist in the world, separate from the human soul or psyche.

They are real because they are part of us and can captivate us, motivate us, inhabit us at various times, and may even in a sense possess us. We may think we are acting with total control, that we have sound reasons for what we do, but we’re mistaken.

These archetypes may not be entirely evil; they may even be mostly good, or have good and evil qualities, as humans do. But they are powerful, just as our instincts are---instincts our species developed to survive, but which aren’t always appropriate to situations that evoke them. That’s when they can become destructive, and indulging them becomes evil.

In this Star Trek episode, you might say that the men and women are possessed by the devil, or more specifically, by Mars. They believe they were unjustly attacked and violently injured, and challenged to respond in kind. The term “war fever” is very accurate. It may even be understated. People are possessed by it. When war kicks in, it takes over---and we don’t have to think back more than a few years to see that as plain as day.

In this episode, “the dogs of war” are loosed, and they are like wild animals within people. We see and hear the outrage at injury become the lust for violence. The adversary becomes the enemy, and is immediately demonized---they are inhuman butchers: therefore violence is justified not only to repel aggression but in revenge.

War sparks the Us Versus Them fire within us, and when adversaries become enemies, there can be nothing good about them. Every act (even if it is the mirror image of our own acts) is evil; all differences between Us and Them, especially visible and racial differences, become part of our rationale for hatred.

We see all of this happen in this story, but we also see that it is based on illusions and delusions. Kirk and Spock see this almost immediately. They apply consciousness to the workings of unconsciousness, whether the automatic reactions are thoughts or feelings. They see there is no basis for these feelings, and they see they are being manipulated.

Is it manipulation from the outside? Yes, in this story, it is an alien entity. But Star Trek stories are also symbolic, and allegorical. The alien may be the devil, or even if we “have no devil” we know how one behaves.

If you believe with Scott Peck that evil is the lie, then there are two expressions of evil in this episode. The people in this story are deceived, and deception is evil. If they refuse to listen to consciousness, to consider that their feelings may not be justified by reality, they are engaging in self-deception, and that is evil.

In Scott Peck’s terms, even if the alien entity is the originator of evil, those that are “enthralled” and follow the leader are also guilty of evil.

This sense of group responsibility, or the responsibility of the follower, is made specific when Kirk says: “Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier who never questions orders.” “Never questions orders” has a specific historical echo—which William Shatner, for one, could not fail to catch.

When Nazis were put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at Nuremberg and elsewhere, they tried to excuse their conduct in the death camps as “only following orders.” These tribunals specifically denied this claim as valid—these soldiers and underlings were personally responsible for what they did, no matter what their orders.

Though the Nuremberg trials were in 1948, Americans were newly aware of them from the 1961 Hollywood movie, Judgment at Nuremberg, starring Spencer Tracy, and featuring William Shatner.

Individual responsibility was also an issue in the Vietnam war, partly because of the draft. Some believed draft resistance was a moral imperative, a way to refuse to cooperate with evil. The moral responsibility of individual soldiers was the theme of a song by Buffy Sainte Marie, made popular by Donovan, called “The Universal Soldier” (It had nothing to do with the later movie of that title.)

The issue came to worldwide public attention again when American soldiers slaughtered 400 to 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in what became known as the MyLai Massacre. (Scott Peck devotes a long chapter to it in People of the Lie.) Although it didn’t hit the news for over a year, it actually occurred in 1968, several months before this episode aired.

In the final analysis, evil is as evil does. People can have all kinds of thoughts and feelings, but how do they behave? In this story, the emphasis is on the cause of war---especially of what Vietnam became, a war that fed on itself. (Robert MacNamara, who was Secretary of Defense at the time, now says that he had long concluded that the Vietnam war couldn’t be won and probably should not have been fought; nevertheless, it continued, and he helped continue it.) The solution is recognizing the realities, including the fever that deceives us.

In terms of behavior, an alternative to war is presented: cooperation and mutual aid. Many Star Trek stories would dramatize this, and show that while it is difficult, it is not impossible. But this story is about group and individual behavior. “Those who hate and fight must stop themselves,” Spock says, “otherwise it is not stopped.” But how do you do that?

In this story, Bixby presents the problem finally as a choice---much as he did in Mirror, Mirror when Kirk presents the mirror universe Spock with the choice of steering his Enterprise towards a better, more ethical future. But how do you make the choice?

The simple answer is consciousness---not lying to yourself-- and taking responsibility. Of course it's easier said than done, but it can be done, and there are ways of doing it. A big step is simply being aware of the possibility of self-deception, and of the habits of self-deception and evil such as projecting evil unfairly or inaccurately on others, and scapegoating (blaming someone else, usually weaker).

"Our burgeoning interest in the existence and source of our prejudices, hidden hostilities, irrational fears, perceptual blind spots, mental ruts, and resistance to growth is the start of an evolutionary leap," Scott Peck writes. Of course, sometimes we are confronted with real evil and real danger. But knowing the difference between reality and illusion, wherever it comes from, helps us act more effectively.

How else is it done? There’s a more specific answer in a first season Star Trek episode, “ A Taste of Armageddon.” I’ll take a look at that, and what it says about dealing with evil within and without, next time. With any luck, next week: same time, same station.