The Star Trek Movie That Could Have Been

Since I've adopted the more civilized practice of watching TV programs on DVD (or when more convenient, online), life has been better.  But in this tweeting-hysteria world, I'm out of step with what others are watching.  Nevertheless, sometimes there's a coincidence with what I've just seen, and something happening in the world of now.

That was the case recently when my viewing of the first disk of the fifth season of the TNT series Leverage coincided with the moment that the next Star Trek movie didn't have a director anymore.

In that moment (or those few days) there were stories that some fans wanted Jonathan Frakes to direct the 50th anniversary movie--and he enthusiastically agreed. Reportedly he let Paramount know he wanted to do it.

 It was about then that I watched his direction of "First Contact."  No, not the Star Trek movie--the one that's generally regarded as one of the best, that Frakes directed.  The 2012 episode of Leverage that Frakes directed.

The story isn't that important (dishonest tech mogol tricked into believing he's been contacted by aliens), just the date: 2012.  That was just a bit more than two years ago, as opposed to the 18 years since Star Trek: First Contact. 

Much of the positive response to the idea of Frakes directing the next Trek film had to do with his connections to the Trek past, as part of the Next Generation that had direct contact with Gene Roddenberry, and worked with members of Star Trek crews of all its eras, from the fictional 22nd to the 24th centuries.  He knows how to make Star Trek, as opposed to just movies.

Which seems both true and very important to me.  But what maybe got lost is that while he'd directed about a dozen episodes of  the three Trek series on the air in the early 90s before he directed First Contact, he's been directing films and especially television ever since.  In fact, a glance as his IMDB profile suggests he's done much of his directing since 2010.

So with the Trek possibility in mind, I took note of this Leverage episode: it had story, character moments, action, visual effects in a complex story with a large cast.  From a directorial standpoint, it had pretty much all the elements of a Star Trek story on film.  And the direction was really good.  The visual style, camera movement, the cuts, were all up to date for today's audience.

I was disappointed that he didn't do the commentary, but on the other hand, the alias of one of the con artists was Willie Riker.  The point is, Frakes is a more experienced and better director now than he was 18 years ago.

Then Paramount pretty quickly announced that Fast & Furious director Justin Lin would be the director of the next Trek.  On TrekMovie at least, fans greeted this with less than total happiness-- to say the comments were half and half is generous.  That seems to be the mood of Trekdom in general concerning what I've called Star Trek JJA but has elsewhere been dubbed JJ Trek, and (now that JJ is in another universe far far away) NuTrek.

Much of the discontent over the direction of NuTrek was reflected in a Trek Movie editorial by Lukas Kendall of Film Score Monthly.  I don't agree with everything he wrote but the general point is one I've made here in different ways.  Kendall focuses on the central importance of story to Star Trek, as opposed to CGI action, and that's certainly part of it.  Story is in many ways intrinsically soulful, and highly important to the soul of Star Trek.

I guess my point here is that I agree that Jonathan Frakes could have brought a sense of institutional memory, of Star Trek's identity, to what is going to be (after all) the 50th anniversary film.  But I would also add: the movie would lose nothing in terms of contemporary filmmaking.  Frakes is not just an excellent Star Trek director, he's an excellent director.

Meanwhile, congratulations to Star Trek: Voyager on its 20th anniversary.  A good time to revisit this 2013 piece on why Voyager is the ultimate Trek series. (Not that I think it is, but it's an interesting piece.)

Captain's Log: Where the Soul Is

There's no new Star Trek on TV to talk about, the movies are few and far between, and so a lot of what fills the Trek sites is news of merchandise: replicas, figures, jewelry, dresses, an Enterprise pizza cutter, a Borg cube cake.  It all has its place, these tools to increase the feeling of participation in the Star Trek myth (probably the best light to shine on it all.)  But it's not the essence.

Neither is the speculation on how to make Star Trek a better "franchise," which has the positive goal of increasing the number of Star Trek stories.  But it might have its drawbacks, and besides, it's mostly on the level of business.  That's certainly an important consideration, but it's not the essence either.  The mythos is part of it.  The franchise isn't.  It's not the soul of Star Trek.

There's an analogy between the merchandise and the technology in Star Trek.  Trek tech is exciting and integral to the Trek universe.  But on its own it is empty.  In an essay on Slate called "Forget the Tricorder," Joey Escrich (in writing about a new book called Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions of a Better Future) asserts "the most important innovations that will shape our future aren’t the gadgets, but the beliefs, values, communities, and relationships that will determine how we use them."

Here's another thought or observation to throw into the mix.  I admit I have been surprised that the JJA or Abramsverse movies, with all their much bigger budget contemporary effects and style, haven't overwhelmed the GR era Star Trek TV shows and movies.  Specifically in their alternate Original Series universe, one might expect New (or Nu) Kirk and Spock to have replaced the old.  That has not happened.  Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are admired for their portrayals, but William Shatner is still James T. Kirk, and Leonard Nimoy is still Mr. Spock.

The conventions (such as October's New York Comic Con) affirm this, as well as the firm grasp on the Trek imagination of the Next Generation crew.  The GR era shows and movies own the conventions, especially when the new cast isn't promoting a new movie.

The conventions are one place that the soul of Trek is enacted, as fans and Trek creators interact within the Trek mythology that includes the stories and the values that Trek promoted and that fans extract from Trek to guide and enhance their own lives.

Another place--which combine these two observations--seems to me to be in the independent films, the web series etc. otherwise known as fan films--pretty much set in the GR Trek mythic universe.

 That's found for example in the Star Trek Continues promotional videos through Wired.  This is participation in a deeper way--creating stories within the Star Trek universe to share with others.  Yet clearly the participants cherish the experience of creating with each other.

That was part of Star Trek from the beginning.  The airing of grievances, chronicles of conflict and misbehavior etc. since may have obscured the fundamental facts of it, that are so often expressed in the earliest interviews and accounts:  people who worked together to solve creative problems, united by the joy of each other and also their belief in the better future Star Trek stood for, the equality of opportunity and the diversity of contributions to the common enterprise.

Some of that future evolved through storytelling, such as the full historic meaning of The Prime Directive.  But a lot of it was there in what people often refer to as simply the relationships, both of the creators and of the characters.

I see the Star Trek universe as a series of concentric circles, with the creators at the center (producers, writers, actors, directors, designers etc.) and gradually expanding rings of ancilliary storytellers (novels, independent films, fan fictions etc.) and the rings of fandom from the most actively involved to the devoted viewers.  That they have always interacted is one reason that the soul of Star Trek is still so strong.  You see this today in the conventions but especially in the independent films--done with love, care, sacrifice, and for no monetary profit.      

Meanwhile, more is happening in the real world that might influence new Star Trek stories in a post-1960s or even 1990s understanding of the universe... First on my list is the astonishing idea that a third to half the water on planet Earth is older than the sun.  It's become fairly orthodox science that a great deal of Earth's water arrived from space, probably borne by comets.  But this discovery, if it holds up, makes that certain--not only from space but from outside our solar system... And right on cue, other scientists believe they've detected water on an exoplanet for the first time, on a Neptune-sized planet in the constellation of Cygnus.

A new study concludes that there indeed may be thousands of alien civilizations in the galaxy, but the vast distances make contact unlikely or at least very rare.Without warp drive anyway, but we knew that.   A survey found that 37% of the Americans polled believe space aliens exist, but proof of them has varied effects on their religious beliefs.  Meanwhile, a researcher of terrestrial life wonders if we will even recognize intelligent alien life if we run into it out there, especially since we have so much trouble recognizing it here.

So long for now.  And thanks for all the fish.

Captain's Log: Old Frontiers

From the beginning many if not most of the elements in the Star Trek universe were from what was then the 70 year tradition of science fiction in literature and film.  Trek honored that part of the tradition that favored scientific plausibility, especially in the technological foundations of its universe: warp drive, phasers, transporters etc. Many such elements were either projections based on new but existing technology (so that doors that swoosh open automatically would be in supermarkets in twenty or thirty years)  or fairly daring and imaginative extrapolations from scientific theories.

But as a television show, Star Trek was unique in using the latest scientific findings or theories as elements in stories or even as springboards for stories.  I think this much is generally acknowledged.  But in reading a few stories about recent scientific findings and controversies, especially regarding space and physics, I was struck by the realization that this adventurousness in using the latest science has been gone for a long time--perhaps since the later Berman era, but more surely in the Abrams era.

I felt the plausibility slipping away towards the end of Voyager, though there were of course lapses before that.  (I think the armor on Voyager did it for me finally.)  The writers for the first Star Trek JJA movie justified their new timeline reality with certain theories derived from quantum physics, but these theories weren't at all new.  I've noted that more scientifically literate fans than I have pointed out a number of plausibility lapses in the second movie.

Contrast this with the relatively new and very popular TV genre of the forensic science crime shows.  Producers for the one that some science publication judged the most scientifically accurate (Bones) embrace the idea of using the science and keeping up with new discoveries as a way to build stories.  There are staff members responsible for providing this information.

Though in some ways science is still catching up to Star Trek (and will for awhile longer), it sobering to realize that its essentials were established almost a half century ago.  Plate tectonics, for example, which is an axiom in earth sciences, was not even yet an established theory when Star Trek went on the air.

Black holes were such a new idea that there wasn't yet an established name for them. (A Trek episode referred to a "dark star.")  The term "black hole" was first used in 1967.  That was also the year that pulsars were first discovered.  The thermodynamics of black holes weren't mathematically described until the 1970s.

Just recently however an entirely new theory is being applied to how black holes behave internally, because neither general relativity nor quantum physics seem to work there.  New research is applying something called loop quantum gravity to the problem, and coming up with brand new theories involving fundamental questions about the universe.

Could this be used in a Star Trek story?  Could it even be the basis for one?  I don't know.  But recent experience suggests that it won't be, maybe not even in Star Trek novels anymore.

 Similarly, there are stories to be told that center on the vitally important and still evolving dynamics of Earth's climate crisis--not the science alone but the human responses.  But the Trek imagination seems stuck on wars and war metaphors, revenge drama and mostly on re-telling old stories with bigger visuals.  There's simply too much money at stake.  The tent pole must never shake.

Meanwhile, one basis for Star Trek from the beginning is accumulating more evidence: the existence of many worlds where life should be possible.  Applying the number of extra-solar planets already "found," the math suggests there are, yes, billions and billions of theoretically habitable planets. Geoffrey Marcy, a professor of astronomy at Berkeley, extrapolated the findings across the open void of space, adding: "With tens of billions of Earth-like planets in each galaxy, our entire universe must contain billions of billions of Earth-like planets." 

Other recent discoveries should spark all kinds of stories.  Scientists are realizing that the universe is even bigger than believed.  A galaxy has recently been found that is thirty billion light years away.

Or recent discoveries about Mars suggests that it not only once had water--it was once a watery world.  NASA has a video suggesting what it was like, and the project to study the Mars environment--launching tomorrow (Nov. 18)  is explained by LeVar Burton in this video:

[Update: This spacecraft was successfully launched. ]Which might remind us that how scientists believe the Earth obtained water and even how life may have started has completely changed since the 1960s.

Even something like the Cassini photo of Saturn with the Earth a distant dot (at the top of this column--click on it to see it much bigger) inspires not only wonder but recalls the wonder that Star Trek represents, as in this story.  Although I feel existing Trek stories still have much to suggest in other ways, it does seem that new science and its implications has dropped out of new Trek.

R.I.P. Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing died last week at the age of 94.  Famous for pioneering realistic fiction, she is quite possibly the only Nobel Prize for Literature winner to have written science fiction novels. When she did so she was criticized both by science fiction fans and guardians of literature.  Even as her first book in her Canopus in Argos series was published, she was defending herself against criticism from the literature side.  She said that "space fiction, with science fiction, makes up the most original branch of literature now...I do think there is something very wrong with an attitude that puts a 'serious' novel on one shelf and, let's say, First and Last Men on another."

She meant Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, who was also the author of The Star Maker, which Brian Aldiss in The Billion Year Spree calls "magnificent...the one great grey holy book of science fiction."  There are of course a number of very good science fiction writers as well as many bad ones.  But there is definitely a line of writers who combine literary quality with science fiction, beginning with H.G. Wells and Stapledon, and continuing through Kim Stanley Robinson.  That line runs through Doris Lessing as well.

Trekville News

In Star Trek news, there's an interview in which Bob Orci expresses some regret for his outbursts insulting fans (see previous Captain's Log) though I'm not sure his logic would pass the Spock test.  And I don't see  he understands that he began it by abusing the writer of a legitimate and composed critique, not a rant in a fan comment.

And there's this from Patrick Stewart.  Though I question the premise--nobody listens to old men of any race if they're not famous--he's still making us proud.

The Once and Future Vision

This satirical video from General Grin looks at Star Trek JJA from the perspective of the Star Trek Prime universe.  I have to agree with some commentators at Trek Movie that it's maybe five minutes too long, but don't miss the ending even if you skip through.  Another commenter assumes that "half the fan base" hates the Abrams movie and its universe.  I don't know how accurate that is.  But I'm sure there's anxiety, as the wind machine winds up for the second movie of the JJA reign, now officially called Star Trek Into Darkness.

Apart from the perceived disrespect towards the Roddenberry Trek, and the ruptures between the two story universes, there is some sense that the opinion of an early reviewer of the JJA TV series Revolution might be correct: "Revolution is science fiction for people who don’t want to be bothered with any of that tedious thinking stuff that tends to go along with true science fiction, and just want to get to the action."  They don't want to see it happen to Star Trek.

There are reasons why it might be, besides the tastes and preferences of the producer/director.  In television, Revolution seems to be one of those series that is driven by social media.  The plot moves and especially the "character" moves week to week seem to be on the order of what people like to tweet about, or talk about on Facebook, etc. and in comment threads.  JJA responds to today's movie universe of international markets of young people, where supposedly action translates better than ideas, and reboots of storied "franchises" have to recur to reflect the changing technologies available to the audience.  It's all about image--Blu-Ray, 3D, IMAX, and the technologies depicted as well (any "now" without touchscreens and smartphones is obsolete.)  And it's a lot about marketing, with its associated comic books etc.

It may or may not matter that Star Trek invented and excited its own fan base--in some ways, the pioneer of all current fan bases-- with ideas.  There were debates over ideas, and applications of what came to be known as "Gene's vision" to contemporary life.  (For all they were criticized as superficial, a lot of it is there in the Trekkies docus.)  We're apparently in a different part of the cycle.

But there's no sense prejudging Star Trek JJA2.  And it is pretty remarkable that a decade after the last Roddeberry-era Star Trek film and 7 years after the last TV show made a new episode, there are still fans, introducing that universe to new generations through DVDs etc.  Star Trek online fans are always taking sides over something.  Still, there's something melancholy and maybe profound to the ending of  this General Grin video.   

Captain's Log: Shatner as Spock, the Two Kirks, planetary images and humanoid robots




What if William Shatner had gotten the role of Spock instead of portraying Captain Kirk? The top photo above is as close as I've seen to what he might have looked like, at least with a semblance of the haircut if not the ears. It's apparently from a Shakespearian stage production, published this weekend in a collage accompanying a fascinating interview with William Shatner in the New York Times Magazine. Shatner talks a little about Trek, but most of the piece is about his post-Trek success and an account of a day spent with him. I didn't get an interview with Shatner when I did my Times piece on Trek several years ago, and judging from this article, that may have been just as well--I don't know if I would have survived it as well as Jordan did.

Among his many recent projects, Shatner did voice work for a 3-D animated film, Quantum Quest:A Cassini Space Odyssey, along with several Star Wars stars (Mark Hamill, Samuel L. Jackson, James Earl Jones and Hayden Christensen) and Chris Pine,who played Captain Kirk in Star Trek JJA. The Quantum Quest movie uses actual NASA footage, presumably including such dramatic shots of Saturn and its moons taken by the Cassini spacecraft as were reproduced recently in Wired. (One of them being the middle photo above.) Wired also published some unusual shots of Mars taken from orbit.

More NASA news: Fourteen Nobel Prize-winning scientists signed a letter supporting President Obama's plan for funding space exploration, and criticizing the bill in the U.S. House that “substantially underfunded” the areas of technology development, commercial spaceflight, robotic missions, and university and student research.

And the September Space Shuttle mission will carry not only human astronauts but, for the first time, humanoid robots, like the two pictured above. These "robonauts" will be going to the International Space Station, to help out the human crew. It's partly an experiment to see if human-robot interaction is enhanced when the robots look like people. A small step for a robot, a giant leap for...Data?

Next Trek: Don't Start with the Villain

The story for the next Star Trek movie is now being worked out, the writers say. But the questions they seem to get in interviews or Q&As tend to focus on the villain. Will it be Khan-like? Or Khan himself?

The writers' comments I’ve seen tend to deflect the question, so I hope those coming up with the story aren’t going to make this mistake. Just about the worst thing they could do is to start with the villain.

Yes, one of Star Trek’s most successful movies had a single big villain: Khan. And another success with the group villain, the Borg, that was given a face in the Borg Queen. But all three of the least successful Star Trek movies also had big single villains. And arguably the most successful Star Trek movie had no villain at all—Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Particularly doleful is the Khan obsession. Has it been so long since Star Trek Nemesis? After an attempted twisted villain muddied the story of Star Trek: Insurrection (which was really a Picard vs. Starfleet story), there was a publicly announced attempt to revive the franchise by imitating a past success, namely Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Nemesis was going to have a villain as epic as Khan. We saw how well that worked out.

Then we got another villain in Star Trek JJA who was very Khan-like (motivated solely by revenge, for his dead wife, though against Spock and the Federation rather than Kirk and the Federation), and that was in my view the weakest part of that movie.

The big, single villain actually worked only once—in Star Trek II. But I’d argue that it worked not because of the villain but because of the actor, Ricardo Montalban, specifically in opposition to William Shatner as Kirk. Montalban’s epic, edge-of-excessive acting was the only fair match to Shatner’s similar style that ever occurred in Star Trek, or really in any other such movie of recent decades I can think of.

And even at that, it wasn’t the only element that made that movie so satisfying and epic. The theme of aging and mortality, of friendship, the Genesis planet, Kirk discovering a son, and the death of Spock, all worked together. (Whereas in Nemesis, the correlation was not clearly established in Picard to what his genetic evil twin represented.)

It is interesting that the Moby Dick theme—of a destructive obsession—was central to The Wrath of Khan (with a copy of the book in plain view, and Khan freely chanelling Melville) and to the most commercially successful TNG movie, Star Trek: First Contact (where Picard quoted it.) In Star Trek II, it was Khan who was obsessed, and Kirk was defending himself. In First Contact, however, it was Picard, obsessed with the Borg—a faceless group villain—and the movie is resolved when Picard realizes that it is the obsession itself that is his enemy. The moral center of those movies was not in revenge itself, but in how widely destructive and self-destructive the obsession of revenge is.

Trek movies tend to succeed when behind the action is something a main character is learning. The conflict or the question may be within that character (in Star Trek II, it was Kirk’s confronting his aging and mortality that draws all the strands together.) It strengthens and centers the external problem.

In general, Star Trek is not about fighting villains but about solving problems and overcoming obstacles in service to a good cause. Often it is about learning: demonstrating the process of learning as applied to a specific mystery (Star Trek: The Motion Picture.) Sometimes it is about sharing that learning—demonstrating what Starfleet stands for, based on what humanity has learned. That happened more often on TV, but it was also a theme of Insurrection, where the theme (if not the movie) was more sophisticated, having to do with the Federation edging towards decadence, needing to re-learn the reasons for its most important principles.

Personally I don’t need another action movie with narrow CGI escapes and a one-dimensional villain. Please spare me a hero fighting for his family versus a villain avenging his dead wife. As for the previous Khanian theme of genetic superiority leading to hubris, that was done thoroughly in several episodes of Enterprise. Anyway I believe our actual future is threatened less these days by genetic manipulation than by our mysterious inability to confront the real and awfully close to apparent danger of climate catastrophe.

What I’m hoping for in the next Star Trek movie, in addition to more character development, is a subject that speaks to us now, and gives us some inkling of hope for the future.

Star Trek JJA: Second (Third & Fourth) Impressions: I've finally seen the Star Trek JJA movie on DVD, three times in fact, once with the commentary. How have my initial impressions changed? I like Ben Cross as Sarek and the Sulu and Chekov actors better, so I'm even more impressed with the acting. They created characters with a lot of heart. I was impressed with director Abrams inventiveness, energy and willingness to take chances in the visual presentation.

And I take note that Abrams' points of reference are primarily the Star Wars cycle, Indiana Jones and movies since, not past Trek films (except for a homage to the first.) So unless he was being disingenuous on the commentary, the many echoes of past Trek movies were accidental or in the screenplay. When they explained some choices, it was as if they were reinventing the wheel--either duplicating what was done in past Trek or considering and rejecting that choice.

On the basis of the commentary and the featurette, Abrams is enthusiastic and very present--the kind of person who inspires some, and exhausts others with his always on, always the center of attention personality. He also apparently doesn't know the meaning of the word "favorite." He has about 100 favorite shots, scenes and moments.

As for the movie's story, I still find it underwhelming. The pace and momentum of the film, plus the generally effective character moments, keep me watching, and on its own terms the story pretty much holds together. But what is at its center? Personal vengeance is the primary motivation of both the villain Nero and the hero Spock. That Nero could sustain that level of emotion for 25 years is mostly incredible. That he retains the loyalty of his crew for 25 years while apparently keeping them in the dark as to his plans and intent, is really incredible. He's a cardboard villain with cookie cutter motivation: a cliche.

As for the hero Kirk, what does he actually do that's heroic in this movie? He spends most of the time getting beat up. He loses most fights, is rescued from others, and wins one. I've revised my count of how many times he is literally hanging onto the "cliff" or slippery surface, from three to five. So I get it that he hangs in (or hangs on) but is that all there is? He has the makings of a leader--he's quick and intuitive, and action-oriented, and he listens to his bridge crew--but his heroism in this movie seems to be limited to enduring getting beat up. Spock certainly seems to come around to Kirk as the captain suddenly, and if that's motivated, it escaped me--four time.

I haven't seen the deleted scenes yet--I'll have to check whether there is a rentable disk that includes them.

A dramatic photo of the U.S. Space Shuttle on one of its last flights, taken from the International Space Station. More on NASA's future and other news in the Captain's Log below. Click photo to enlarge.

Captain's Log: New NASA, New Planets, New Movies, Old Doctor

Catching up on a lot of news...In our apparent reality, a shakeup in the American space program was announced by the Obama administration. Though it requires congressional approval, the new NASA budget cancels several manned programs, provides seed money for spacecraft development by non-government companies, and refocuses more unmanned efforts towards studying Earth as its climate contorts.

The Bush program to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars was effectively cancelled, but it had been so far behind in development, the goals wouldn't have been met anyway. But with the imminent end of the Shuttle and no new spacecraft in the pipeline, the U.S. will apparently depend on quick development of private rockets or "NASA would have to rely on Russia or other foreign countries to take its astronauts and cargoes aloft," notes the New York Times editorial, but adds, "That is a risk worth taking."

Why? Because resources are switched to developing new technologies for long-distance space travel. Another Times piece: “I think this is a dramatic shift in the way we’ve gone about particularly human spaceflight over the past almost 50 years,” said John M. Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University who was one of about a dozen people briefed about the NASA proposal on Sunday. “It is a somewhat risky proposition,” Dr. Logsdon said, “but we’ve been kind of stuck using the technologies we’ve developed in the ’50s and ’60s.”

Private companies do seem to be interested in space--not only in getting there, but staying there: at least one company is working on commercial space habitats. Meanwhile, there's been progress on creating fusion energy using lasers.

As for what there is out there to be found, scientists are learning more about the orphan of our own solar system (Pluto) and about the more than 400 alien worlds discovered so far around other stars--including hot Jupiters, pulsar planets, super-Earths, water worlds and even free-floating planets. Here's a neat little summary.

Moving on to the apparently fictional universe, you have to wonder, what has Star Trek JJA wrought? First the abrupt announcement that Spider-Man 4 has been cancelled, with the director and the stars fired, and this particular saga brought to an ignominious end. Now comes word of a new Spider-Man movie, with a new (as yet unknown) and likely younger cast, another reboot to the beginning, with hints of a "darker" hero.

Speaking of which, the guy who brought "darker" to Batman, Christopher Nolan, is now in charge of yet another reboot of Superman, presumably younger and darker and more violent. I'm sure there are fans out there cheering these developments. I can only wonder how many ways they can find to ruin these characters. Some of those involved in the new Superman say they know what went wrong with the last one, Superman Returns. I wonder. I sort of liked that movie, innocuous as it was, but the new one might start by looking for stars who appear to be older than 14.

There's a little news about the old Doctor--namely that the first part of "The End of Time" topped the UK Christmas ratings, and part two won the week. As for my response to these episodes, I was sort of waiting for the new edition of Russell T. Davis' book with the chapters about them, but now Amazon says it's six weeks away, so I'll probably write about them here before that. But maybe the ultimate tribute to David Tennant's Doctor was by the astronomer who announced a major discovery in the form of a Doctor Who story, with the Doctor and Martha: Doctor Who and the Star of Doom!

Finally, linking our apparent real world science with the soul that animates the fictional--and as a tribute to Black History Month here in the U.S. as well--a note on science by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his Nobel Prize lecture (and remember, according to Nichelle Nichols, Dr. King was a big Star Trek fan):

"Modern man has brought this whole world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future. He has reached new and astonishing peaks of scientific success... His airplanes and spaceships have dwarfed distance, placed time in chains, and carved highways through the stratosphere. This is a dazzling picture of modern man's scientific and technological progress.

Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.

Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live...Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul."

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.

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.

KHAAAN! Making a comeback in the next Star Trek JJA? Are you kidding? See post below.

Captain's Log: Khan-founded

Work on the script for the next Star Trek JJA movie begins soon, and the JJA folks say they are considering re-telling stories told in the Roddenberry universe, including revisiting Khan, but with different results.

Really? Apart from returning to a demented villain bent on revenge because his wife was killed (which they already did in Star Trek JJA), it seems retarded to me. Do they really want to make a movie that requires so many "re" words to report on?

It certainly would fit in well with current Hollywood orthodoxy. Just about all major movies--including, and maybe even especially, science fiction movies--are sequels, reboots or derived from TV shows, comics and blockbuster books. They come pre-branded and pre-sold, and even with an established core fan base. It's a small step from appropriating the iconic characters and universe to absorbing and tweaking old stories. Reboots of Spiderman and Batman revisit old villains, sometimes repeatedly. And it's so po-mo and hip, when even Jane Austen has generated stories that cannabalize hers, even overtly mocking the author's writing while sucking its blood.

But Star Trek didn't start out as Hollywood orthodoxy. It was about discovering new worlds. Whatever happened to "to boldly go"? Sure, new stories are risky, but a certain starship captain once asserted that "risk is our business." Even when it failed in other respects, Star Trek persistently tried to explore new worlds of meaning. It was about the wonder of new possibilities, not just new visuals effects. In its subtext it was about our changing world, and a different way of seeing the important currents moving in it, determining our future.

There's a word that seems to fit the tendency to re-do the familiar but bigger, faster and with more inflated hoopla surrounding it: decadence. It looks like splendor, but it smells like decay. I would hate to see Star Trek succumb to this.

In other Trek matters, two pieces of scholarship caught my eye: this piece by Harry Barber about scenes dropped from Star Trek JJA at some point in the process, and a TrekWeb edited analysis by Bill Williams of the evolution of Star Trek: Generations.

Captain's Log: Star Trek Wars (and President Obama Groks Spock)

Among the many comments and commentaries on Star Trek JJA, the most intriguing to me involve the perceived resemblances between this movie and Star Wars. There's a short video from College Humor deep in this Trek Movie thread that depicts the main points succinctly. I'm linking to it rather than the original source because of one of the comments, # 12 from Magic Al, which adds this:

The Star Wars comparison could be extended to the young hero lost and running from monsters on a snow planet until an old friend rescues him and tells him was he has to do next. It’s relevant because JJ Abrams is known to be a bigger Star Wars fan than a Star Trek fan. The comparison film illustrates the common “hero’s journey” mythology of these two films.

It reminded me that seeing J.J. Abrams on a Star Wars documentary prompted me to suggest here on this site, almost two years ago, what Abrams might do with his Star Trek movie. Abrams, I wrote:

... speaks about the first step, the hero's "Call to Adventure" (as [Joseph] Campbell called it). "At the heart of the story is some kid who is being called to service, to deal with something so much bigger than him."So of course I immediately thought of the Star Trek movie, and wondered if it might begin the Kirk story farther back than many have speculated--even earlier than at Starfleet Academy. With a boy in Iowa perhaps. What is his call? What is the crisis that changes his life? What is the "threshhold-crossing" event, in which (as someone said) you realize you're not in Kansas anymore. Or Iowa. That takes Kirk into a bigger world?

Later I wrote: Abrams talked about the appearance of the mentor. "In moments of absolute disconnect and loss and confusion and fear...these characters arrive that give purpose and confidence" to the hero. Who will be Kirk's mentor, I wondered, and the film gives us Captain Pike, challenging him at that crossroads moment. I also wondered:

The classic hero has companions to help on the quest, the journey. We know who Kirk's companions will be by the time the five year mission begins. Are they with him from the beginning?

That's what this film does--the story of how the hero's journey begins-- though how well or how meaningful it does it is an open question. There are lots of other questions in commentaries and comments since then, some of which the movie's writers addressed, as summarized in the above noted Trek Movie thread, or more directly at Darth Mojo.

I don't know that the answers are entirely consistent or satisfactory. But the basic question--reflected in a number of comments here--is how true to Trek this movie really is, beyond the superficial. Since it's become so popular, some of the possibilities JJA says he's entertaining for future stories worry me as well--like bringing back Khan, etc. This takeover of the classic characters was always dangerously close to exploitation. I would hate to see it go clearly over the line.

In general I'm sticking to what I said, possibly too far down in my commentary last time, concerning the differences between this movie and Star Trek GR: "Ultimately what we’ve got are stories. They may now occur in two separate Star Trek story universes, but they rise or fall on what they are as stories." So far, Star Trek JJA has but one story--even if you include the comic book prequel. Naturally we're talking about this one now because it's the newest and the biggest in awhile. But soon, this site will be getting back to those many other Star Trek stories, and what they tell us about the soul of Star Trek and the soul of the future.

It was the meaning in those stories, after all, that influenced several generations, including the current President of the United States, who has just screened the new movie at the White House, and talked about Star Trek to Newsweek. "Everybody was saying I was Spock, so I figured I should check it out and—[the president makes the Vulcan salute with his hand]." "I used to love Star Trek," the President said, not for its special effects but for its "evocative" stories and meaning, even to him at ten years old.


Speaking of this site, Soul of Star Trek appears recently on some fascinating lists: Blogs.com Top Ten Star Trek Blogs, the select Star Trek blog roll at UK's the Guardian, and the select Trek blog link list at Ex Astra Scientia. To which I humbly say, cool, and thanks a lot!

Final note: since torture is so much in the news again, I keep being reminded of the posts I did on the topic (also two years ago) and especially the TNG "Chain of Command" episodes (famous to fans for Picard's cry of "There are four lights!") It was in the second of those episodes, made all those years ago, that Picard says what was known even then: torture doesn't work in eliciting accurate information, a lesson that's more public than ever now.

So here's a link to that "Star Trek vs. 24" posting. I've also given the label "torture" to those and other relevant posts, which you can find in the label list in the sidebar column to the right, and see all those posts.

Star Trek GR is over. Star Trek JJA has begun. The new movie and the future, in posts below.

Star Trek JJA

Spoiler Assessment: Past the assertions in the first couple of paragraphs, this first section is pretty much spoiler-free. But in the sections that follow—after the subtitles—spoilers for those who haven’t seen the new movie are frequent.

Seeing the new Star Trek movie confirms that there are now two Star Trek story universes. There is Star Trek GR, the universe created by Gene Roddenberry and his collaborators on the original series and the Next Generation, altered but carried forward under the direction of Rick Berman. There are hundreds of hours of television and feature film stories set in this universe, along with many books and other forms of story.

But Paramount, owner of Star Trek copyrights for movies at least, authorized a new Trek movie universe, represented by one story told over a couple of hours plus, in this new feature film: what I’m calling Star Trek JJA, for the movie’s producer and director, J. J. Abrams.

I have some thoughts about the implications of this below, but first: the movie.

The impression produced by the commercials and previews turned out to be accurate: this is a fast-paced action movie, with (mostly) convincing and even inspiring visuals. The sets, effects and cinematography produce an exciting ride in a credible and exciting Trek context.

In order to give themselves over to this ride, even casual viewers of past Trek need to have confidence in the actors playing these iconic characters. These actors succeed in creating that confidence, with skill, presence and—aided by the scriptwriters—with new colors to the characters as well as selected references to the spirit and sometimes the vocal and visual mannerisms of the actors who created these characters.

This is especially true of the crucial trio: Chris Pine as Kirk, Karl Urban as McCoy, Zachary Quinto as Spock. Urban is almost an idealized DeForrest Kelley—younger and stronger than we ever saw D.K. as McCoy. Pine has the Shatner swagger and smile, but he fits the premise of this movie especially well because he’s the same, only different. He’s Kirk in an alternate timeline.

The wonder is Quinto. It’s not just that he instantly looks like Spock, but that he establishes complete credibility as Spock with so little apparent effort. Playing any Vulcan is difficult, and several actors have visibly labored with their portrayals, not always successfully. But playing the ultimate Vulcan is the ultimate challenge, and Quinto does it with seeming ease. Even when he is behaving in ways unfamiliar from Star Trek GR, he’s believable.

I’d been neutral on whether Quinto would really make a credible Spock (though I was rooting for him as a fellow Pittsburgher), but I had real doubts about Zoe Saldana as Uhura. She doesn’t look or sound like Nichelle Nichols, so it seemed like it could have been a case of indifferent casting: any young black actress is good enough. But Saldana is gorgeous and alluring in her own way, and a fine actor. Her scenes with Quinto were models of restraint, yet full of emotion.

Simon Pegg makes a charming Scotty, and even though John Cho as Sulu and Anton Yelchin as Chekov didn’t do much for me, one of the virtues of this movie for Star Trek GR fans is how it expands on these characters, giving them real expertise.

They are a young and attractive group as well as a capable one, and together with the look and feel of the film—purchased, it must be said, with a budget that goes higher than any Star Trek GR film had gone before—this movie revitalizes Star Trek for feature films.

Beyond the young crew, Bruce Greenwood was outstanding in the crucial role of Captain Pike, and the other subsidiary characters were fine, although I didn't really believe Ben Cross as Spock’s father, Sarek. Leonard Nimoy was perfect as Spock Prime—which seems redundant, but to me this performance was better than his previous 24th century Spock portrayals in those Next Generation episodes.

There were several references or homages to Trek GR films, both visually (the Enterprise fly-by as in Star Trek: the Motion Picture) and in the dialogue (Spock Prime repeating a famous line from Star Trek: Wrath of Khan and both Spock and Kirk repeating or referencing lines from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.) And that’s not counting the obligatory TOS echoes from Bones and Scotty.

There are as well some directorial references to other space opera movies, especially Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Some of the Star Wars stuff was questionable: Scotty’s little Ewok-like alien buddy was cute I guess, but the animated monster chasing Kirk on the ice planet was an embarrassing drag.

As they enabled J.J. Abrams fluid direction, screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman noted one basic structural element of Trek GR movies: they properly begin with the Enterprise getting underway on this adventure, and they properly end with the Enterprise warping off to its next adventure.

Warp, by the way, is handled more realistically (that is, according to theory) than in other portrayals: the ships simply disappear, though with a satisfyingly loud pop.

I’ll leave it to others to parse the look of this Enterprise, but it looked pretty good to me, and though it wasn’t quite the “character” GR said it should be in a Trek story, it was an exciting vehicle.

As a movie script, I thought this one was fluid and skillful, especially given all that it had to accomplish. Part of its accomplishment was obviously knowing Trek—playing with what it wanted to keep, and knowing what it was departing from. I also really liked the music, especially in certain scenes, and appreciated the quotes from past Trek movie scores—although I noted that the signature four note theme beginning didn’t emerge until the end credits. You know, your father’s Star Trek.

[continued]

Time Travel and Its Implications

Any story that depends on time travel has some built- in wonder, lots of wonderful opportunities, and a lot of pitfalls and potential headaches. But this time there’s also an important outcome outside the story itself.

Villains who travel back through time to alter the past and hence the future, present a number of problems, especially when they fail. The Borg in First Contact failed, for example, but it’s not clear what prevented them from trying it again—and again and again. This problem is solved in this movie because it’s a single ship and a single villain, and neither survives. (Spock’s advanced 24th century ship doesn’t survive, either—but Spock Prime does. With his knowledge, the Federation could be centuries ahead of their competitors.)

Plus the effects of time travel can be complicated and hard to keep straight. It may take repeat viewings to sort out just what legitimately could have been changed in the Star Trek GR universe by the incursions from the future that wound up establishing Star Trek JJA.

But that was the outcome: the end of Star Trek GR and the beginning of Star Trek JJA.

For those who saw the movie but were confused about this, here’s how I understand it: a 24th century Romulan mining ship comes back in time to the 23rd century in search of Spock, but they come not to praise him, but to bury him. Or at least to force him to witness the destruction of his home planet of Vulcan, as revenge for his inability to stop the destruction of Romulus and the villain’s family.

24th century Spock is also pulled into the past, where the Romulans have already altered history by killing Kirk’s father. The destruction of Vulcan, the death of Spock’s mother, and other events further diverge from the conditions that must exist for the Star Trek stories we know to take place.

Even when the villain is defeated, this alternate timeline remains—apparently shocking some moviegoers who expected a characteristic reset button return to “normal.” But Spock Prime states it clearly: things will not be what they once were going to be.

There’s a certain elegance in beginning the Abrams era with an alternate timeline. There’s the built-in advantage of globally known iconic characters, revisited, revived and revised. But now their future is unknown, their adventures new. The constraints of a story universe filled with people, places, events and previous stories are avoided.

But Star Trek GR is honored in the sense that it isn’t just ignored. A connection is made—personified by Leonard Nimoy as Spock Prime—that acknowledges Star Trek GR, even making it integral to the plot. It also doesn’t completely negate the timeline of Star Trek GR. But this is a new timeline: Star Trek JJA, and this is where the action is going to be.

If Star Trek JJA doesn’t go all the Oedipal way by actually killing the father, it does make the death of the father definite. The dedication of the movie—coming at the end of the long end-credit sequence, instead of at the beginning—to Gene and Majel Roddenberry, was more like a tombstone: he’s dead, Jim.

Was this the only way to make new Star Trek stories? No--there's the 25th century still open, for example, as well as the post-Nemesis 24th. Was this the only way to revisit the 23rd century--did they have to destroy Vulcan, etc.? No, not really. What they should have done will doubtless be debated for awhile. But what they have done has consequences.

Clearly there are now events that happened in original series television episodes and the movies—beginning with the very first pilot episode, and including the Spock trilogy that began with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan—that cannot happen in the Star Trek JJA timeline. Spock’s mother cannot beg him to save his father’s life, because she was killed, etc. All of this also calls into question the characters and events of Star Trek GR’s 24th century.

Let’s admit that there are inconsistencies in Star Trek GR, even within the original series, but certainly in the Berman era. An earlier time travel movie, Star Trek: First Contact, altered or at least stretched “facts” about Zephran Cochrane and other aspects of the GR universe past, as well as arguably altering the time line itself. Then there are elements of the prequel series Enterprise that trouble some, and let’s face it, there are 24th century stories that some wouldn’t mind erasing.

Ultimately what we’ve got are stories. They may now occur in two separate Star Trek story universes, but they rise or fall on what they are as stories.

New feature films will be in the Star Trek JJA universe. But the Star Trek GR universe still exists, in all those hours and pages. Star Trek GR can still generate new stories, though chances are they will be limited to novels, independent films and fan fictions. The canon of Star Trek GR ends with “Nemesis.” What happens next in that story universe is up to other imaginations, and those stories are all equal: they rise or fall on their own merits.

What is the Human Adventure?

Some observers are finding credibility gaps in this film, as in the villain’s ship, etc. but that happens in every movie, especially science fiction. Some have noted the villain’s clichéd motive, and though I agree that avenging your wife’s death has become so frequent and reflexive a motive as to be deadened, there’s also the cliché of an evil crew following the obsessions of the pirate captain. Some fundamentalist religious motive might have been more topical, but that would have brought out the protesters, so I assume Paramount wouldn’t go for that.

Still, the movie wisely didn’t spend a lot of time on the villain. (Khan’s generous screen time worked because his flamboyance nicely matched Shatner’s, but the villain-hero balance didn’t work in Nemesis on a visceral enough level.) Eric Bana is credibly creepy as Nero, although I can’t believe they used such a cheesy name—the most villainous Roman emperor as the Romulan working class villain? I don’t get it.

Keeping the fast forward momentum and the adrenalin attention of this film also has its costs. Action and dramatic scenes are pushed to the edge—in fact, Kirk is literally hanging off some kind of a cliff at least three times. (The Iowa Indiana Jones?) But there are only so many solutions to extreme jeopardy, and fortunate coincidence is one this movie uses more than once, when somebody (usually a bad guy) is distracted by something more important or pressing.

It’s all fun while it’s happening (which of course is the point) but perhaps as a result of maintaining that adrenalin attention along with all the other stuff the movie needed to do, there isn’t a lot of the kind of talk we got used to in Star Trek GR.

In this film, the talking moments are all taken up by character, plot and necessary exposition (as when Spock Prime explains the backstory.) There is some fine dialogue in this movie, and some memorable turns of phrase. (Pike suggesting that young Kirk was headed towards a future of being a “genius-level repeat offender” is my first favorite.) But the kind of talk—of debate over means and ends, over meaning and ethical responsibilities—that characterized Star Trek GR was largely absent.

But it wasn’t just talk about ethics that was absent. Leonard Nimoy was right in saying that this film portrayed a group of people getting together to solve problems—there was certainly that kind of talk on the Enterprise bridge. But personally I didn’t see much to support his assertion that this movie portrays the futility of seeking revenge, or at least that Kirk and Spock see it that way. I heard only a quick exchange on the subject between Kirk and Spock, with Spock seeming to speak in favor of vengeance, and once Nero expressed his preference for dying, Kirk quickly and happily assented, and destroyed an apparently helpless ship.

Otherwise, the new 23rd century of Star Trek JJA has some problems: Captain Pike thought Starfleet was getting stultified, and the Enterprise security officers—if that’s who there were—turn out to be bullies and thugs, who kept beating on the civilian Kirk when he was helpless. The one opportunity of going back in Trek history that’s appealed to me is to begin filling in a little more of how we got “from here to there,” to reference that awful song that introduced Enterprise: how Earth overcame its still-current quick march to self-destruction, and how Starfleet became what it is. It’s never really happened, and I don’t expect it to anymore. But I wonder if the 23rd century can be as much like the 21st as it seems to be in this movie—complete with Budwiser product placement—and we still survive, and form something like Starfleet and its Prime Directive.

It’s pretty clear already that this movie has resurrected Star Trek from the dead once more, at least in terms of commercial viability. Star Trek JJA has a credible young crew adding new dimensions and possibilities to familiar characters. The scriptwriting skills and the moviemaking skills are there, and there’s little doubt now that the money will be there, for another adventure and probably more. But just showing that humanity survives, still asserting some idealism, was a necessary but not sufficient for the Star Trek GR vision. What is the human adventure that continues?