Star Trek 60: The 90 Year Journey

 

I haven't been very motivated to celebrate or respond to Star Trek's 60th anniversary.  I fear for its future, and am dissatisfied with its present.  Besides which, this anniversary seems a little empty, and in this at least I'm not alone (I've heard Jonathan Frakes suggest it on his podcast with Brent Spiner.) Things feel really uncertain.

But then, I can't ignore the history--Star Trek's or my own.  I've been writing about Star Trek on this blog for more than 20 years.  My first published article about Star Trek appeared in 1976, the 10th anniversary year.  

I've felt that I bring a couple of unusual elements to this practice.  First, I was an inquiring adult viewer since the very beginning, the first episode sixty years ago.  I experienced Star Trek's revival in syndication as it happened, and everything that happened afterwards.  I saw all ten of the first regime's feature films in theatres on their first run.  Over the years I've met Gene Roddenberry, Majel Roddenberry, James Doohan, George Takei, Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, among others.  I've met and interviewed Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, LeVar Burton and Rod Roddenberry, as well as phone interviews with Rick Berman and Denise Crosby. 

But more importantly perhaps, I have done considerable research and writing into the long history of not only Star Trek as television and film and a cultural phenomenon, but on the longer history of what contributed to--what formed--the soul of Star Trek.

The usual histories of Star Trek that have appeared and likely will appear this year tend to cover the same familiar ground, beginning in the early 1960s.  The history I've written here goes farther back and deeper, to the likely contributions and origins of "the vision" that evolved into the soul of Star Trek in the lifetime of its originators.  It appears on this blog in some detail, some collected under the "Countdown to 40" label (to the 40th anniversary), and the Trek50 (or 50th year) label, which includes detailed analyses of key original series episodes.

Together with the essay I wrote that kicked off the Soul of Star Trek panel I chaired at the 40th anniversary convention in Seattle, here titled "A Passion for the Future,"  this seems to me to be the most extensive history about Star Trek anyone has accomplished, even if it is lacking in areas of television business and personality clashes.  Some would classify it as background.  I think of it as essence.

So for this 60th anniversary, I've streamlined some of what I now seem as the main elements of this history of the soul of Star Trek, which goes back not just to the 1960s but at least to the 1930s.  

There are many precedents and ancestors to the science fiction elements of the Star Trek universe.  But inspirations and precedents to the soul of Star Trek can also be found in the real world.  They include not only those from the 1960s (the early space program, JFK, the Civil Rights movement, ecology and Spaceship Earth) but from the 1930s and 1940s, when the principal creators of Star Trek were growing up and becoming young adults.

The Great Depression, FDR and the CCCs

While Gene Roddenberry (born in 1921, same year as my father) was growing up in 1930s Los Angeles, so was Robert Justman in New York, Gene Coon in Nebraska, Matt Jeffries in Virginia, Alexander Courage in Philadelphia, Harve Bennett in Chicago, DeForest Kelley in Georgia and James Doohan in Canada.  Even the slightly younger generation crucial to Star Trek were children in the 1930s, including Leonard Nimoy in Boston, William Shatner in Montreal, Walter Koenig in New York, Nichelle Nichols in Chicago, Majel Barrett in Ohio, John D. F. Black in Pittsburgh and D.C. Fontana in New Jersey, among others.

The Great Depression gripped their America beginning in 1930.  "It wasn't just the very poor--it was everyone who was affected," recalled historian Julie Willenz.  "I think the fact that one grew up in that environment changed your perspective for the rest of your life."

Gene Roddenberry (according to David Alexander's biography) saw some of the effects. He went to school with children who didn't have shoes, and he saw the travails of neighbors or heard his parents talk about them.  He also saw the haunted strangers, some of the one million men who rode the rails continuously, or the displaced families that poured into California from Oklahoma when black walls of wind turned their farmland into the Dust Bowl.  His father had a modest but steady job as a police officer, and Gene saw that he felt a responsibility to help others because he was able to help them.

This ethic was recognized by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  "If I read the temper of our people correctly," he said, "we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take but we must give as well."

FDR was an inspirational leader, who spoke directly to everyone in his fireside chats on the radio.  "Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money," he said.  "It lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort."

But FDR also acted boldly.  His New Deal programs put people to work while it built new infrastructure and elements of the future. For those who were young in the mid-1930s, the most relevant program--and perhaps the most successful in history--was the Civil Conservation Corps.  Millions of young men (and later, young women as well) were organized and employed in state parks and other conservation projects, as well as other public improvement projects.  (In one five month period, its workers built or improved 255,000 miles of roads and 40,000 schools, among other infrastructure.)

Those young unemployed enrolled in the program lived together in camps and were provided with food, recreation (including sports teams) and lots of education. They worked together for the common good. They were paid, with the bulk of their earnings mandated to be sent back to their struggling families.  For them and their families it was a lifesaver (my own father was in the CCCs and spoke highly of it all his life) but it also greatly benefited the country, and still does.  Much of what the CCCs built--in fact, that the New Deal built--exists and is being used today.

In a time that invited despair, these examples and inspirations offered hope--especially to the young. Historian William Manchester wrote that in contrast to their elders, the 1930s young had a different look. "There is an intensity to their expressions.  They are leaning slightly forward, as though trying to see the future. And they are smiling."

There's inspiration here for Roddenberry's vision of Earth that has eradicated poverty and built a society for everyone.  The soul of the CCC is echoed in the soul of Starfleet. There's more here about the 1930s and their relevance to Star Trek.

 The World of Tomorrow

By the end of the 1930s, science fiction pulp magazines that would fascinate young Gene Roddenberry and Sam Peebles were coming into their own.  Tom Swift novels, with their futuristic technology, were popular among avid young readers like GR, who was already reading science fiction novels by E.E. Smith and Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter of Mars.  (And for similarly adventure- minded readers, C.S. Forrester was publishing his Horatio Hornblower series set on the high seas.)

Science fiction had come to the movies as well. The more advanced ones came from Europe, like Fritz Lang's Woman in the Moon and Metropolis from Germany, and especially the H.G. Wells/Cameron Menzies Things to Come from England.  But Saturday matinees at the local movie palace were beginning to be a part of growing up in America, and their young audiences watched Buster Crabbe's Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials, among others. These and others were also on radio, and some were in the newspaper comics.  

 In 1938 science fiction took a new and more serious direction when John W. Campbell became editor of a prominent pulp, Astounding.  According to writer and s/f historian Lester del Rey, "he wanted them [his writers] to live in their futures.  And he wanted those futures to be livable."

The writers responded by becoming "future-oriented" (del Rey continued), "with the sense that the present was not the permanent center of everything: to them, the future was a real place.  It was three-dimensional."

Then very soon, one vision of the future did in fact become three-dimensional.  The future in this way entered the real world.  And millions of Americans experienced it.

It was the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, which called itself The World of Tomorrow. Spread over more than a thousand acres at the far edge of New York City, it was one of the largest fairs ever attempted, and the most carefully planned.  It was, noted Harper's magazine, "revolutionary in its contrast to other Fairs."  It was also the best known: the subject of numerous cover stories in magazines, and a star of movie newsreels.  Everyone knew about it.

Many nations of the world built pavilions, though many of the most impressive attractions were made by American corporations. The architecture was stunning.  The gleaming white buildings, dominated by the slender Trylon (fifty feet taller than the Washington Monument) and the global Perisphere (with space inside adequate to two Radio City Music Halls), all reminded more than one observer of the Cameron Menzies images in Things to Come, which may well have been an inspiration. 

Inside the Perisphere was the Democricity exhibit of America in 2039.  In the Futurerama exhibit, fairgoers sat in plush chairs with individual sound systems that moved them into another future--America in 1960--a place of green suburbs around gleaming cities, with multi-lane highways.  They left that dynamic experience with a button that said, "I have seen the future." 

That future was otherwise hard to imagine. At the time almost half of American families did not own a car.  There was no four lane highway without crossing lights anywhere in the country.  The first would be a 160 mile stretch of what became the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which opened just as the Fair was closing.  But this future didn't have to be entirely imagined.  For the people who visited the Fair, it was right there.

They saw it, they heard it, they walked around in it, interacting with new technologies (like robots, space rockets and television) and new visions, such as the exhibit which admitted that FDR was right, one third of the country was ill-housed and ill-fed, and a full 90% had incomes insufficient for "the good life."  But the power to raise the incomes of the entire population to the good life was not science fiction: "With modern technology and power production, it is no longer physically impossible...we need now to discover a workable formula for its distribution to 'three-thirds of a nation.'" 

This was the spirit of the Fair. "The tools for building the world of tomorrow are already in our hands," said the Fair's science director.  "Action is our slogan...If the world is awry we can change it."

And why not?  In the depths of the Depression they had already built parts of the future, from the TVA dams bringing electricity to millions, to the Golden Gate Bridge and the Cathedral of Learning; from highways to airports and national parks.  

The Fair had a direct effect on American science fiction.  Young Isaac Asimov read science fiction stories in the pulps in "vivid and agonizing transport because I wanted to be part of the story and couldn't." But in 1939 he could, when he visited the Fair. He was one of a number of science fiction writers (including Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury) who walked the Fair when they were in town for the first World Science Fiction Convention.  It was at the Fair that a science fiction editor came up with the character that Edmond Hamilton featured in a series of novels, called Captain Future.

It was a powerful place for many.  Young Carl Sagan visited as a child and it inspired him. In a survey, 90% of Americans said they wanted to see it.  A lot of them did--in its two years, the Fair drew some 44 million people (which counts the many who went more than once.)  They came by plane, ship, car and train (each offering special rates) and special long-distance buses.  Among them were my mother.  The power of a future you could walk around in cannot be overestimated.

But the real world was also turning darker. The New York World's Fair closed in 1940, as German bombers and British fighters battled in the English skies.  The Trylon and Perisphere and most of the other buildings were torn down.  Their steel was used to make weapons for World War II. 

Superman

The Depression and then the rise of Hitler in the 1930s had a powerful effect on two young men in Cleveland, who in response created a character that has lived--and changed-- for generations.  But its relevance to Star Trek may be mostly in what that character was intended to be, and who he was for his first decade or so.

Superman appeared in a comic book for the first time in 1938.  When he first started dreaming about the character four years earlier, Jerry Siegel was influenced (as he later recalled) by "President Roosevelt's fireside chats...being unemployed and worried during the Depression, and knowing hopelessness and fear.  Hearing and reading of the oppression and slaughter of helpless Jews in Nazi Germany...seeing movies depicting the horrors of privation suffered by the downtrodden..."

Siegel was also reading about crusading heroes and seeing them in movies.  He wondered what he could do for these victims of the 1930s.  "How could I help them, when I could barely help myself?  Superman was the answer." 

This became the key to Superman's character that has endured many reductions and perversions over the years but has somehow survived.  His first adventure in Action Comics involved saving an unjustly condemned woman from the electric chair.  His next stop was a wife beater.

In his 1930s adventures, he rescued miners in a cave-in, battled stock market manipulators and munitions manufacturers fomenting wars to sell their wares.  He fought crime, but also poverty and unsafe labor conditions. He battled crooked politicians and lobbyists, slum lords and corrupt industrialists and corrupt labor leaders alike.  He came to the aid of individuals in trouble, and was devoted to the common good.  He was a compassionate, high-spirited and humorous hero of the people.

Superman became so immediately popular that he appeared at the 1939 New York World's Fair: the "man of tomorrow" at the World of Tomorrow.

His adventures were soon heard on the radio. In  the intro to the very first radio broadcast Superman was described as "champion of the oppressed...who has sworn to devote his existence on Earth to helping those in need."

Later the radio introduction would describe him as a "champion of equal rights, valiant, courageous fighter against the forces of hate and prejudice."

In 1946 a 16-episode series had Superman battling an organization based on the KKK ("The Clan of the Fiery Cross.")  Reputedly based on descriptions by an actual reporter who infiltrated the still basically mysterious Klan, it exposed its secret rituals as well as its crime.  The series was credited with reducing KKK recruiting.  Notably, it related this domestic racism to Nazi racism.

Of course he also rescued Lois Lane a lot, but this particular Superman was the one that young people knew in the late 1930s and 1940s.

The Real War--and What Came After 

In 1940 young Gene Roddenberry was learning to fly. He'd been recruited for a pilot training program instituted by a U.S. Army Air Force General. Aviation was still so new that the General (Henry "Hap" Arnold) had himself been trained by the Wright Brothers.

Even though the US was not yet in the war, Roddenberry knew what he was training for.  After joining the Army Air Force, he flew B-17 bombers on missions in the Pacific. He was one of many of those who created and worked on the original Star Trek who were veterans of that war--who saw battle, were wounded, taken prisoner, including one who as a child was taken prisoner by his own government, in the U.S.

World War II was the most destructive war in history.  It involved an estimated 100 million people in 30 countries on every continent on Earth except Antarctica. In just six years, some 36 million died as a result of the war--many of them because this war was the first to employ as policy repeated large scale bombing of cities and civilians.      

They knew the enormity of war, and the intimacy of war.  According to Alexander's biography, Roddenberry was enraged by incompetent orders by a high officer that resulted in needless deaths of those in his command.

It is important to realize this, and to note that while they made some tense episodes of armed confrontation, this group of Star Trek creators created episode after episode which showed the grim folly of war, and the need for alternatives.  The space wars in later Star Trek were created by those who had never seen a moment of real war.

During the war, many soldiers as well as civilians became determined that the world would have to change when it was over.  It was a palpable feeling in England, and resulted immediately after the war in a change of government and new social programs such as free medical care.  It was expressed in America in a remarkable series of radio programs by Norman Corwin, who influenced GR (and later had a favorite young actor he employed named William Shatner.)   

Corwin wrote about "the little guy" in America, who proved his mettle and judgment in the war, and who could do great things when given the opportunity, including good housing, health and education.

He noted the international cooperation that won the war, as well as the nature of a war that spread around the world, and soldiers overseas who experienced different cultures.  "Before this war all of our countries were islands, each one of us cut off in spirit from the rest of the world," he wrote.  "But now we're together..."  Interdependence was a fact of future life.  

These sentiments entered the real world in a big way. As the war ended, the attempt to create the United Nations began.  It was not the world government that H.G.Wells and others had advocated for years, but it was a step towards recognizing interdependence, and solving problems and settling differences peacefully.  

The exterminations of the Holocaust became dramatically apparent immediately after the war.  But that immense crime against Jews in Europe was not the full extent of the suffering there.  During the war in Europe, anywhere from half to two-thirds of the housing in major cities had been destroyed. Some 30% of houses in Great Britain were reduced to rubble, and 40% in Germany.  The war in Europe had created from 13 to 20 million displaced persons. Some cities and villages in Italy were bombed repeatedly by airplanes from four or five nations on both sides.  "There has never been such destruction, such disintegration of life," wrote Anne O'Hare McCormick of the New York Times.

So in 1948, the United States--with the most intact and largest economy in the world--devoted some $13 billion to rebuilding Europe, in an unprecedented program called the Marshall Plan.  In addition to humanitarian help, the plan assisted the restoration of European economies. It encouraged (and occasionally mandated) close cooperation--economic and otherwise-- among European nations, including former enemies, which helped pave the way to the Common Market and then the European Union.  

In the United States, the federal government instituted two crucial programs: the G.I. Bill which enabled millions of veterans to obtain higher education in institutions of their choice.  The federal housing program helped them and others afford to buy their own homes. (There was obvious prejudice against black families in this program, though there was no racial discrimination in the G.I. Bill.) A third program in the 1950s led to coast to coast highway construction.  Together they helped to move the country towards the future envisioned at the World of Tomorrow. 

The contributions from the 1960s are perhaps more familiar.  The early space program began to bring science fiction space travel into the real world.  I still remember the thrill of those first Vanguard launches on live TV, so much like the Rocky Jones blast-offs I'd watched just a few years before.  Then came the manned flights, including John Glenn becoming the first American in orbit.  At least for awhile, a future in space seemed like a realistic possibility.

President John F. Kennedy became an obvious model for a future leader, not only because of his style but for the inspiration of his words.  In accepting the Democratic nomination in Los Angeles--where Gene Roddenberry was writing for TV--he pretty much stated the premise of Star Trek when he began: "From the lands that stretch 3000 miles behind me, the pioneers of old gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build a new world...Their motto was not 'every man for himself' but 'all for the common cause.'..We stand today on the edge of a new frontier..."  

In his Inaugural he stated the new reality: "For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life."  He challenged the Soviet Union to join in creating a better future. "Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce."

 His later efforts paid off in the nuclear test ban treaty, the first success in limiting the madness of the arms race.  He started this process with a remarkable speech at American University, when he again stated the new reality. "For in the final analysis our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet.  We all breathe the same air.  We all cherish our children's future.  And we are all mortal."

By then there was growing awareness of the implications of inhabiting one planet, in the concept of Spaceship Earth of Buckminster Fuller and others, and in the beginnings of an environmental movement and a more focused science of ecology.

From the mid 1950s through the early 1960s, the Civil Rights movement brought awareness of racial injustice and action to establish racial justice and equality, obviously reflected in Star Trek sixty years ago, and not only in the matter of race.  Other social changes  of the late 1960s concerning equal opportunity and equal humanity, war and peace and human fulfillment were also reflected in original series stories.

So from the 1930s through the 1960s, the first part of the journey explored possibilities as at least glimpsed in the real world, resulting in a better future.  And even when reality fell short, the ideas and ideals came alive for all to see.

The soul of Star Trek is infused with these ideals--of a united Earth with adequacy for all, of an end to war as the reflexive choice when in conflict, of the value of all life, of interdependence and equal standing and opportunity, of doing big things to solve problems together and work for a better future.  While it is also expressed for many simply in the way people treat each other on the Enterprise, these elements were in the lifetimes of Star Trek's creators represented not only in hopes and fictions but in the real world. 

As for the science fiction elements of the Star Trek universe, they also had ancestors in the 1940s and primarily in the 1950s.  Major elements of it were derived--or at least had appeared--in Saturday morning space shows on 1950s TV and even earlier in written science fiction. Those 50s shows (Space Patrol, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet; Rocky Jones, Space Ranger) all had the equivalents of the Federation of Planets, Earth united under a single government and an idealistic Starfleet for defense and exploration.  Space Patrol explicitly had the equivalent of warp drive (as well as something called Time Drive.) 

 Other Trek technology had many precedents: transporters and phasers with stun settings appeared in the Buster Crabbe Buck Rogers movie serials beginning in 1939.  Even some favorite plots had ancestors, like the one that appeared several times in the original series and began several later Star Trek series: earthlings on trial by a more advanced alien civilization.  Examples of that story go back at least as far as the early 1940s Captain Future novels. 

What became known as the Star Trek vision began with these earlier elements, and were augmented and elaborated during the run of the original series (with contributions by new producers, writers and the actors themselves.)  Gene Roddenberry further developed it when he was talking at a lot of conventions between the end of the original series and the beginning of the Next Generation.  The vision was shaped further during the run of that series, and to a lesser but important extent in subsequent series and the first ten features.

While the tech in Star Trek set some standards and fascinated many fans, and character interaction played its part, these were not what most distinguished the saga, nor what drew so much attention, inspired so many people around the world, and led to its 60 years of existence. It was the soul of Star Trek.  Star Trek orchestrated that sci-fi tech and stories, and imbued the Enterprise with soul. 

  And right now, just as American democracy is assaulted and wounded and deeply damaged, but stubbornly kept alive by the activism of ordinary people, the soul of Star Trek is also under assault by some of the same forces, along with the usual foolishness of corporate Hollywood.  But it too is being defended by the knowledge, the loyalty and the stubborn idealism of those who watched it, many of whom throughout the decades knew that the soul of Star Trek helped transform their own lives, bringing a future into their present.  

Coming Soon? Star Trek: In Name Only

 "Could Star Trek be dying?"  Those were the opening words of my New York Times article in 2004.  At that time, as in some previous moments, the threat was that there would be no new Star Trek stories on television or as feature films. (Leonard Nimoy laughed when I asked him that.  Of course he turned out to be right. So far.)

Today, sixty years since it began, Star Trek is endangered again, but in a different way.  There is likely to be a new feature film, and possibly more television beyond the series' now running or ready to resume.  But recent events suggest the distinct possibility that future stories could well be Star Trek in name only.  In essence they may even be anti-Trek: Star Trek without its soul.

The first of these events was the purchase of Paramount by Skydance Media, headed by David Ellison. He is, in the words of Wikipedia, "the son of Oracle Corporation co-founder Larry Ellison, a centibillionaire." It has been widely reported that David Ellison became an ally of President Trump, possibly or probably to help secure federal approval of the deal.  

Paramount is the parent company to the CBS network, and Ellison soon installed a Trump-friendly far right commentator as editor in chief of CBS News.  She engineered firings and layoffs, delayed broadcast of a 60 Minutes segment that cast the Trump administration's war on immigrants in an unfavorable light, and has by numerous accounts turned the network in a far right direction, losing viewership and staining the good name of what was once among the most hallowed in television news.

More recently, Ellison attended the State of the Union address, a day before he made the only offer now existing to purchase Warner Brothers properties, including CNN. He promised Trump he would make sweeping changes to that news network.  Warners had previously signaled it would accept the purchase offer of Netflix, but federal approval was delayed.  

On the day Ellison made a new offer for Warners, Josh Marshall at Talking Points memo reports,  the Netflix CEO was at the White House "apparently trying to see whether Netflix had the thing any company needs for a merger in 2026: the personal approval of Donald Trump. Apparently they didn't have it.  That's the autocracy playbook.  And at the federal level that's the game we're playing right now."  Netflix declined to make a new offer, leaving the field wide open for Ellison.

What this may mean for Star Trek revolves around this administration's evident white supremacist and white nationalist agenda, its wanton cruelty and bad faith, all antithetical to what Star Trek has represented for more than half a century.  

There are other recent events that are suggestive in this regard, both generally and specifically in terms of a current Star Trek streaming series. 

 In January 2026, Secretary of Defense (which he styles as Secretary of War) Hegseth and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk spoke jointly about employing advanced Artificial Intelligence systems in warfare, in events they titled "The Arsenal of Freedom." They both pronounced their goal is to "make Star Trek real."

It's long been known that a lot of tech industry people consider themselves Star Trek fans. Musk was one.  Another was Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.  (I watched Bezos receive a Legacy Award at the 40th anniversary Star Trek convention in Seattle.  His mother showed off the cardboard communicator he made as a child.)  Bezos purchased the Washington Post and then, apparently to please Trump, censored it, drove away its top people and gutted its staff, losing subscribers and respect. 

A number of actual Star Trek fans and several publications pointed out that this Musk-Hegseth event's title, "Arsenal of Freedom," was the title of the Next Generation episode which exposed the fatal folly of depending on the same sort of AI systems they were bragging about.  Hegseth also had the temerity to flash Spock's Vulcan salute. 

Remember that Musk went to Washington at the start of this second Trump administration as the first loud voice decrying Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs (not exactly enacting Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.)  

He had his Department of Government Efficiency minions and thugs bodily throw out staffers of the Institute of Peace and trash the place.  He cut off US funding for medical programs and other aid to poor populations in poor countries--"the richest person in the world killing the world's poorest children," as Bill Gates described it.  He supported false accusations of genocide of whites in South Africa and supported far rightists in Germany, raging against multiculturalism.  At Trump's second inaugural he repeatedly gave what has been described as the Nazi salute.  Not exactly Live Long and Prosper.

For his part, Hegseth presided over firing much of the top brass in the US military who coincidentally included almost all blacks and women, at the same time as he vilified DEI. Recently he announced that the Pentagon will forbid military personnel from taking graduate courses at some of the top universities in the US, because he calls them "woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination."

Hegseth is also a proponent of lethal military force first, last and always, and evidently agrees with the aide behind the White House throne, Stephen Miller, that the world "is governed by force."  That's a long way from the time that the US Secretary of State praised Star Trek: The Next Generation as a global model of peaceful mediation.

I could not help but think that a subtext of these "Arsenal of Freedom" events is to re-imagine Star Trek for the Ellison regime. Or perhaps it reflects a triumphant belief that this is going to be the direction that Ellison takes.  I see this also in the tenor of some unusual criticism of the new Star Trek series, Starfleet Academy.

Star Trek fans, especially on line, can be prickly.  Although I enjoy Starfleet Academy a lot more than I thought I would--I think it's very well done, and a breath of fresh air-- I sympathize with those who see its very contemporary slang and "language" as a little problematic.  Other nitpicks don't bother me--and the vitriol is simply unacceptable.  

But the sudden criticism over its "diversity" caught my attention, especially when it came from those who don't usually comment on Star Trek (which included the aforementioned Stephen Miller), and especially in the context of the Ellison takeover and the Musk-Hegseth appropriation of Star Trek.  Some of this critique (including at least some of the vitriol), especially online, even seems a little--shall we say-- organized. 

The timing is suspect, for it's not as if Starfleet Academy is an exception in terms of enacting diversity, of embodying IDIC.  If anything, this was even more pronounced in Star Trek: Discovery, from its inception in 2017.  Why single out Starfleet Academy now?  Well, why do you think?

As I write this, the fate of the team now in charge of Star Trek on television is not settled--contracts reportedly end this year.  There's not even a date set for the resumption of Strange New Worlds, which has seasons 4 and 5 ready to go.  What is known is that all previous Star Trek movies in development were cancelled, including the proposed fourth of the "Abramsverse" features.  Instead, a new movie is being written and developed by people new to Star Trek.

I suppose the tech is what far right fans like about Star Trek, but it's not all about the toys.  Yet that seems to be what they want to make Star Trek represent.

So here is what I fear, and unfortunately what I expect: There will be a new movie with Star Trek in the title, and it will be about high tech warfare, pitting humans against aliens: white far right Christian men conquer the universe! Phasers on overkill!  And the central starship will feature a cast overwhelmingly comprised of white males identifiable as Americans.  By then the current team running Star Trek television will be long gone, and so will Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, and nearly everything that has constituted the soul of Star Trek for sixty years.  

Coming soon: Star Trek: In Name Only. STINO. I hope I'm wrong.  But I will also be surprised if I am.

Update 3/23/26: Paramount announced today that the second season of Starfleet Academy will be its last. Was it done in by disappointing audience share, or to please White House white supremacist, psycho Stephen Miller?  There's no doubt he will be pleased.  In response, the creative team responsible for Starfleet Academy, most of whom helped create all the Star Trek on television for the past decade, issued an unusually long and pointed statement (reproduced in full here at Trekmovie), defending the Gene Roddenberry vision of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.  In addition to suggesting why they thought they were cancelled, it also seems like a goodbye, not just from Starfleet Academy, but the larger creative team itself, as discussions are supposedly going on about their participation in Star Trek's future.  That they now have no shows to work on tells its own tale.

Photos 1 and 2: Screen captures from Star Trek: The Next Generation first season episode "Arsenal of Freedom," from Trekcore.  Photo 3: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.  Photo 4: Starfleet Academy cast and creative staff at the beginning.

Strange Old Worlds

 On September 8, 1966 the first season of the Star Trek series began.  It explored strange new worlds in the galaxy of imagination as well as in television storytelling.  But 57 years later, I wonder if it is truly exploring anything more than its own mythology.  Star Trek today seems more and more to be about itself.

 The new Star Trek shows display excellent writing, acting, directing and visual effects.  It produces entertaining television. The current series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds seems to have tried to recapture that original innocence, with its premise, its stand-alone episodes and that thrilling variation on the original opening with updated imagery. But most episodes seem to explore mostly the styles of presenting the established (if visually updated) Star Trek universe—comedy, horror, mixing animation with live action, musical comedy.  Star Trek now seems to comments on itself more than any outside world, real or imagined, including the self-consciousness of Lower Decks.

 Discovery tried to push the envelope at times, and bravely explores diversity and the internal life of a starship in a different way, though its obsession with feelings feels excessive at times (in my weaker moments I’ve referred to Captain Burnham as Captain Emo.) While season 4 in particular pushed Star Trek forward, even in this series, Star Trek mythology generated lots of story.

 It’s not that these shows lack values or significant content. And it's not that decades and hundreds of Star Trek stories should be ignored. But maybe the emphasis seems different.  Strange new worlds aren't primary.  At best the new shows are about the characters and their relationships and interactions within the canonical Star Trek mythology.  They seem to be less about exploring the previously unknown, or involved with testing our assumptions against what is found out there.  Character-driven drama with technobabble is not all of what Star Trek started out to be.

 Maybe it’s at least partly inevitable.  When Star Trek began, nothing like it had been done on television before.  The series invented its story universe with every episode, and so every episode was exploring the unknown.  Perhaps it’s impossible to get back that innocence.

 For a lot has happened in 57 years.  Back when it began, Star Trek’s content was shaped more directly by generations of science fiction and not quite two decades of television drama.

  Science fiction that followed Jules Verne speculated on new technologies and what might be found on other planets, both imagined from the basis of known fact and science.  The science fiction that followed H.G. Wells used imagined technologies, phenomena and forms of life as metaphors to illuminate aspects of human life. (This is how Margaret Atwood divides it, and it’s a good starting point.)

 Following either progenitor, s/f writers also explored highly speculative science with cosmological and philosophical implications—everything from alternative archeology and anthropology (some of which has turned out to have some basis in fact) to implications of quantum physics and the additions and alterations over the years suggested by new astronomical and sub-atomic data.

Just as the Star Trek series adapted technologies and protocols seen in earlier sci-fi movies and television shows, the stories followed both Verne and Wells in speculating on a possible future while telling metaphorical tales, some of which applied to urgent contemporary social and political questions.

  While some of these stories came from science fiction writers, a great many were created by veteran television writers, sometimes re-purposing plots found everywhere, from ancient drama and classic fiction to TV westerns and Captain Video.  This was television drama, but westerns and other shows also often told morality tales, and so did Star Trek.

 Yet as the first full-hour network drama set in the far future, Star Trek was also open-ended: everything was possible in locations in time and space where no one had gone before. 

 But seeds of the current situation were also sown back then.  Gene Roddenberry believed that for a series with continuing characters set in the strange new worlds of the future, the show had to create and maintain a self-consistent story universe.

  So besides envisioning the basic template of as diverse a crew as he could get away with (or perhaps as diverse as anyone could imagine existing in a few centuries), as well as assembling talented collaborators and working carefully on how the series would look, GR did what Wells and other designers of alternative worlds knew to do: he made rules.  

Every week would bring a new story, but the technologies would have the same capabilities and work the same way week after week.  There was a chain of command aboard the Enterprise, and a set a standard procedures.  As much as possible for a starship warping through the galaxy, the Enterprise was grounded.

 As writers introduced new planets and new aliens, later writers had to honor the basics of those planets and characters if they used them in subsequent stories.  (There were periods of adjustment but once the template was found—for Klingons, say—it remained consistent.) Events in one story might inform later stories, until a kind of backstory was created for the main characters and Star Trek as a whole.

 Some of the “rules” were set forth in the Star Trek Writer’s Guide, which was revised as the series went on (I have before me the third revision: 31 typed and mimeographed pages dated April 17, 1967.)  It provides character background, technology and capabilities.  Believability in action is stressed, but also meaning, the metaphorical layer.

 The rules were needed because each episode had a different writer and director.  That’s also why actors playing the major roles became caretakers of their characters and what they did and how they did it.  Together they created the Star Trek universe.

 That universe expanded with new crews in a new century, beginning with The Next Generation. A rich storytelling universe supported hundreds of stories for five main crews and sets of characters, over nearly 40 years. 

In the meantime, the Star Trek universe generated other stories, principally in a series of novels.  Though officially permitted by whatever entity owned Star Trek at the time, these novels often went their own ways in terms of story and characters.  It was I believe in connection with the novels that the concept of “canon” was first introduced.  “Canon” was meant to denote all the aspects of the “real” Star Trek universe, at first defined as everything in the television and motion picture stories (but not the novels.)

 Canon is an interesting concept, and today it is a powerful one. While the dictionary defines it as a general law or principle, its second definition is a collection of sacred books regarded as genuine.  The Star Trek rules and guidelines (commonly called its Bible), along with that long history of story, had become canon law.

 Those of us raised as Catholics recognize canon law as the fundamentals of the institution of the Roman Catholic Church. Violations of canon were serious stuff, heavily sinful.  Canon was zealously guarded by Church hierarchy. Violating canon was heresy, punished by excommunication (an early version of being blocked,unfriended or ghosted—in other words, excluded and exiled.)  Canon today seems to have become a real factor in what stories are told.

 But the hierarchy in charge of Star Trek is not the only arbiter.  Star Trek’s relationship to the corporate entities that made the shows was always complicated. According to GR, he was constantly fighting against corporate control.  That control seems to have become more pronounced at the end of the Berman era.  Today Star Trek is seen as a valuable “franchise,” and the changes in corporate ownership in recent years has been dizzying.  The switch to streaming is still fluid, as evidenced by recent cancellations and the abrupt changes in access to the catalog. 

 But there is another factor strongly in play, with roots in the original series era.  With GR’s connivance, fans organized to write letters demanding that the original series be renewed after the first and second seasons.  After the original series left the air, fans organized Star Trek conventions.  There had been science fiction conventions where some attendees wore costumes, but there had been nothing the size and specific focus of those Star Trek conventions in the 1970s forward.  With the letter campaigns and especially the conventions, the phenomenon of fandom was born—not just for Star Trek, but for everyone.

 Fandom then acquired new tools for expression. Mostly through the bulletin boards on sites devoted to Star Trek, the Internet started to have influence, especially in the final years of Star Trek: Enterprise and the Star Trek: Nemesis feature film.  The negativity on the Internet, together with low ratings and box office failure, ended in the demise of the Rick Berman era in 2005, and the lineage from Gene Roddenberry through Berman was broken.

 By the time of the J.J. Abrams features, social media was prominent.  Abrams and then the creators of Star Trek: Discovery and other television shows paid closer attention to social media, made producers and stars more accessible, and saw conventions as potent promotional opportunities.

 Meanwhile, fandom (which may be defined as a subset of the more diverse universe of Star Trek fans) was becoming more aware of the business side of Star Trek.  Online discussions were at least as likely to be about production costs and box office as possible meanings in Star Trek stories.  Corporate, producers and fandom were growing more aware of each other, and engaging more directly.

 Today fandom is a real force in Star Trek and its storytelling.  In particular, fandom engages in questions of canon.  Variations are closely debated, and though some are accepted, others are condemned. Star Trek canon is not enforced only by a corporate Vatican but by a hyper-informed and vigilant fandom. This process is not all destructive, but it is consequential.  

All these past Star Trek stories, with their basic consistencies and through-lines, form a kind of mythology, and fandom is deeply engaged with that mythology, its familiar characters and events. Thanks to social media and the structures of the entertainment business today, Star Trek producers cannot afford to offend fandom too much.  They depend on fans who operate in social media, and vote by means of streaming subscriptions.  In this context, it’s all fan service.

 Gene Roddenberry respected fans and interacted with them at conventions.  But he was very direct and firm that fans would not dictate Star Trek content.  Today fandom may not write the stories, but it is one factor that may be limiting the storytelling. 

 These seem to me to be the chief factors leading to my impression that today’s Star Trek is less about exploring strange new worlds or ideas and their implications, and more about itself and its own mythology.

 The apparent emphasis on character interaction over situation and ideas may be another important factor. Taken together, the character emphasis and the self-referencing tendency may help to explain my impression that current Star Trek gives much lower priority than in its formative years to really engaging with urgent concerns of today’s world by means of exploring strange new worlds.  In sometimes awkward but sometimes revelatory ways, that’s what the original series and TNG did.  That to a great extent is what inspired Star Trek fans in the first place.

 Today’s Star Trek shows have revisited and expanded on issues that past Star Trek stories explored, for a new audience. They have dealt to some degree with certain implications of technology, though they seem oddly obsessed with cloning.  

But more powerful technology is no longer the chief source of urgent problems, if it ever was. Many of our concerns and our understanding of the world have changed in 57 years.  We are much more aware of the roles of ecological factors and non-human life, as we are faced with the challenges of climate distortion and the imminent possibility of mass extinctions.  We are more aware than ever of the dire consequences of a planet ruled by a few extremely wealthy individuals and corporations, with everyone else scrambling in uncertainty and insecurity. 

 Engaging in such questions as race, the arms race and the nuclear age, cultural differences and such larger questions as a more complex reading of human nature, Star Trek formed its character: the essence, the soul of Star Trek.  The commitment to retain that character by today’s Star Trek creators as well as viewers is heartening.  It was the motivation for many over the years to become devoted Star Trek fans (whether or not they became vocal members of fandom.)  But that commitment loses its power if it becomes the rote of canon.  It has to be actualized.

  Perhaps I’m wrong about the current shows. My perspective is derived from watching Star Trek for all of those 57 years.  That does not make me (in today’s terms) the target demographic, to say the least.  Perhaps newer viewers see the same kinds of explorations, and feel themselves changed by them as we once did.

 But consider this possibility: at its best, Star Trek once engaged with the strange new worlds that illuminate our world—the world that television drama largely refused to examine. These were the urgent public problems and mysteries that most vexed us as viewers. Now Star Trek seems to live in the no-longer-strange old world of its own mythos.  Mythologies can be defining and healthy, generating new stories and insights, but they can also become stultifying and irrelevant, until eventually they consume themselves.

Star Trek: Insurrection (Star Trek IX)

  This is the ninth of a series of essays on the first ten Star Trek features, the Trekalog.

by William Severini Kowinski

Star Trek: Insurrection has become a problematic movie as the ninth in the original ten (or Trekalog) of Star Trek features. Even its title has become troublesome. (There’s no insurrection to overthrow the government in this story.  We now know better what that looks like.) Though I have great affection for this film, I’ve been bothered by its shortcomings, from the first time I saw it in a theatre the week it was released in December 1998. I felt then it could have been a great Star Trek movie, as well as a brave one. In many respects, it dazzled me. I still believe thematically it remains a major evocation of the soul of Star Trek.   

This film, written by Michael Piller from a story by Piller and Rick Berman, and directed by Jonathan Frakes, has its fans.  At the time it opened, critic Gene Siskel said it was the only Star Trek movie he truly enjoyed.  (His TV partner, Roger Ebert, had a different view.) 

 Others have come to value it over the years, or at least elements of it. Jerry Goldsmith’s score—especially the lovely Ba’ku theme—remains one of my favorites, and the acting, the characterizations, the humor gave it an attractive buoyancy.  After many subsequent viewings, I’ve found more that’s annoying but I also retain that initial affection, and admire it even more for its courage.

 The conventional wisdom has become that it is more of a television episode than a movie.  Insofar as I even know what that means, I take the opposite view: I think it tries too hard to be an action movie.  Or more generally, it may simply be that the Star Trek features series started to run out of luck. Many if not most very good feature films have a pretty long history. They may have been conceived five or eight or ten years before they get made.  Even some sequels take years to develop.  But Star Trek movies rolled out at a faster pace—every two or three years.  They typically emerged from assembling bits and pieces of screenplay drafts, often at the last minute, with lots of different imput.  This fortuitously resulted in some excellent films.   Unfortunately that kind of luck doesn’t always appear.

 But before wallowing in the details, the most important element of this movie is the core story, the principles that are at stake.  In special features interviews for the first expanded DVD of this movie, writer Michael Piller said that he wanted to move away from the darker Star Trek (not only the previous feature, Star Trek: First Contact, but the ongoing television stories, particular of Deep Space Nine) and the darker path science fiction had been taking in general in the 1990s, to revive the optimistic spirit and idealistic modeling of Gene Roddenberry’s original vision.  “I wanted to do one for Gene,” he said.  So Insurrection pivoted on a moral issue with a real world history, as well as portraying a society that emphasized a different aspect of the soul of Star Trek.

 
The title sequence—set to that lilting but slightly unconventional Goldsmith theme—depicts a happy, healthy and busy agrarian society with some pre-industrial mechanisms.  But we quickly see hidden observers, Starfleet uniforms and unknown aliens (the Son’a), just before violence disrupts this peaceful day. The android Data has seemingly gone berserk, and has deliberately unmasked the hidden observers.  He also appears to be wounded.

 Meanwhile the Enterprise-E is far away, on yet another minor diplomatic mission (“Does anyone remember when we were explorers?” Captain Picard asks.) After being contacted by an Admiral Dougherty requesting Data’s schematics, and then a brief conversation with the Admiral about Data apparently gone amok, Picard (against the Admiral’s wishes) diverts the Enterprise to the distant planet involved, in an untraveled pocket of the galaxy called the Briar Patch because its environment disrupts starship technologies.

 Maneuvering a shuttle and a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan, Picard and Worf disable Data, and Geordi La Forge learns what went wrong: Data had been attacked and engaged his ethical subprograms.  But why was he attacking the Son’a and Federation personnel—everyone but the Ba’ku on the planet?

 Picard and an Enterprise team beam down to free the unmasked observers Dougherty tells him are hostages. They find instead peaceful, calm and intelligent villagers, treating the “off-worlders” as guests.  Picard soon learns that the Ba’ku are warp-capable but have chosen a life without advanced technology, on this welcoming planet. 

 Picard and the Ba’ku investigate what Data found that got him shot: a holo-ship, programmed to simulate the Ba’ku village.  When several Son’a attack them, Picard realizes what is happening: a conspiracy to transport the Ba’ku onto the holo-ship and abduct them. “You go to sleep one night in the village. Wake up the next morning on this flying holodeck transported en masse.  In a few days, you’re relocated on a similar planet without even realizing it.” But the question remains: why?

 By now some of the Enterprise crew are feeling and acting oddly. Riker and Troi are re-igniting their old romance, Worf is showing signs of going through Klingon puberty, and Picard himself feels a burst of vitality and exuberance.  Having danced his way to a mirror to examine his jawline, he realizes what is happening, and returns to the planet to speak with Anij and the other Ba’ku, who confirm that the “metaphasic radiation,” a quality of the rings around the planet that continuously regenerates genetic structure, is keeping them young and even improves their health.  Just being in orbit around the planet is enough to affect the Enterprise crew. Three centuries earlier, the Ba’ku left a war-torn planet and searched for an isolated haven to establish a peaceful culture, ending up here.

 Picard now realizes that the planned Ba’ku abduction has something to do with the “fountain of youth” effects of the planet’s rings.  He vows to prevent it, and in explaining his reason to Anij, Picard states in plain language the moral core of this story: “Some of the darkest chapters in the history of my world involve the forced relocation of a small group of people to satisfy the demands of a large one.  I’d hoped we had learned from our mistakes, but…it seems that some of us haven’t.”

 Those forced relocations and related behaviors (up to and including genocide) have happened multiple times on every inhabited continent on Earth, from ancient days through our own time in the 21^st century.  Many would observe that they are still happening. 

 But the instance Michael Piller said was foremost in his mind when he wrote this script was the removal over several centuries of a series of American Indian peoples, most graphically represented by the Trail of Tears that resulted from what was literally called the Indian Removal Act in 1830.  Cherokee, Seminole and other tribal groups were driven from their communities in the southeast (near where gold was discovered) and forced—including force-marched—thousands of miles to reservations in the West.  Thousands died of starvation and disease along the way, while others perished shortly after their arrival.

 Later, in his confrontation with Admiral Dougherty, Picard asserted that removal “will destroy the Ba’ku, just as cultures have been destroyed in every other forced relocation throughout history.”  Relocation and related oppressions certainly destroyed American Indian cultures that had flourished for many centuries. 

In this confrontation, Dougherty makes the case for kidnapping the Ba’ku.  The Son’a have developed a way to extract the youth-preserving qualities of the planet’s rings but the process would render the planet “uninhabitable for many generations.” They will deploy the huge, eye-catching particles collector, with technology the Federation can't duplicate.   But the planet (oddly, it is never named) is in Federation space, so for this mission the Son’a and the Federation are partners, sanctioned by the Federation Council.

 After Dougherty parries his proposals to delay the procedure for further study of alternatives while the Son’a and Ba’ku share the planet, Picard lays it on the line: “We are betraying the principles upon which the Federation was founded.  It’s an attack upon its very soul.”

 Though there are technical interpretations of how the Prime Directive does or doesn’t apply, Picard is consistent in his assertion about history.  For him, the nuances of “non-interference” are based upon a hard-won founding principle, which in a TNG episode he spelled out to his crew: “We are not invaders.  We are explorers.” 

The distinction is basic, and a huge change. Historically, explorers were the scouts for invaders. Again, we have to look no further than the Americas. Explorers, financed by governments and commercial interests, returned with news of lands to inhabit and resources to plunder and bring back to Europe. Columbus thought the friendly natives might make good slaves.

  When the Federation was founded, it committed to not repeating this history, to respecting the cultures and the lifeforms on planets it explored.  A number of Next Generation stories were about this very subject.

 This is what Starfleet’s Prime Directive is really about.  It is what makes the Federation different, not only in the fictional universe it inhabits, but in our universe as a vision of justice, diversity, and respect for all life.  It is as Picard said, an element of the Federation’s soul, and a major expression of the soul of Star Trek that has inspired so many for generations.

 Dougherty counters: “Jean-Luc, we are only moving six hundred people.” 

 “How many people does it take, Admiral, before it becomes wrong?” Picard replies.  “A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million?  How many people does it take, Admiral?”

 With its swelling music tag, this speech is a popular moment with many Trek fans.  Personally I feel this choice of tone makes Picard sound too pompous and self-righteous—he’s not really asking the question, he’s being indignant.  It’s no wonder that Dougherty dismisses his objections and orders him to another part of the galaxy.  But his point is solid—and controversial.

 Many people, evidently including some members of the cast, see sense and maybe a more persuasive case based on the numbers: Dougherty said that the regenerative properties of the rings’ radiation could benefit billions. Doesn’t helping billions justify moving six hundred people (and probably sacrificing their current perpetual youthfulness, perhaps condemning them to imminent death)?  Don’t the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? 

By positing billions against 600, this script forces a hard look at the core principles.  Doubtless the European invaders thought timber from American forests for sailing ships and other purposes, as well as crops like tobacco, would benefit millions in Europe, and therefore justified getting rid of the cultures of  hundreds or thousands living in those forests and on those lands that were in the way.  Just as they justified the Trail of Tears because gold would help their country’s economy, and therefore more people. 

 Invasion and exploitation always justifies itself on supposed principles, as long as they don’t get in the way of the invader’s gain.  What may look like a sensible calculus is usually a convenient rationalization for greed, based on greater military power and (almost always) assumptions of racial and cultural superiority.  Even the implication that the Federation can do what it wants with this planet because it is in "Federation space," (and apparently the  Ba'ku who live there don't have to be consulted) is a species of imperialism. 

 Picard had allowed himself to be swayed by this calculus before, in the seventh season episode “Journey’s End,” as described in an earlier post.  In that story it was young Wesley Crusher who rebelled against the forced relocation of a group of American Indians.  Perhaps it was this incident, augmented by the youthful idealism and rebelliousness revived by the rings, that reminded Picard so forcefully of the costs of violating this principle—as well as the price of upholding it.   

The rest of the story involves Picard and his core crew—the Magnificent Seven—and their championing of the Ba’ku.  There is a final twist—the discovery that the Son’a and Ba’ku are the same race, the grotesquely aging children against their perpetually youthful parents.  The Son’a’s motives are revealed to include revenge.

 There are also a few scenes involving the Ba’ku culture, particularly two conversations between Picard and Anij, as they grow closer.  In essence, Anij talks about fully inhabiting the present moment, without reviewing the past or planning for the future.  “You explore the universe,” Anij says to Picard.  “We have discovered that a single moment in time can be a universe in itself, full of powerful forces.  Most people aren’t aware enough of the now to even notice.”

  Here on Earth, mindfully exploring the present moment is a both meditation technique and its intention, developed in Zen and other Buddhist practice, only recently adapted in American and European contexts. A different approach to valuing the present moment was a theme in Star Trek: Generations, where it was a consequence of mortality, rather than a lesson of immortality. 

Later Anij demonstrates the ability to slow time down, or at least the perception of time. (Making the water drops visible as they fall, or the hummingbird’s visible wings may remind some viewers of effects of a certain herb, and of spending seeming hours watching smoke curl under a lamp.)  The Ba’ku insights may suggest the value that can be derived from different “alien” cultures, even small and isolated ones, like Tibet (though forms of Buddhism are prominent in many Asian countries.)  Perhaps what the Ba’ku have to teach would be more valuable than what the rings of their planet can offer.

 Though our own (often small) Native cultures were crushed before many of their profound insights were known or understood, some of those cultures made deep impressions on the dominant culture, and that continues to happen. For instance, the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) Confederation of tribes existed democratically, probably for longer than the United States has so far. Contacts with Founding Fathers and others, some scholars say, meaningfully influenced the idea and structure of the United States.  In turn, it influences the United Federation of Planets, though the Haudenosaunee had a different Prime Directive than Starfleet: In every decision, consider the impact on the seventh generation to come. (For us, seven generations takes us into the 23^rd century.) 

 J.M. Dillard’s novelization, published to coincide with the movie’s initial release, was based on a slightly earlier version of the script, but differs in plot details mostly in a different ending, in which Ru’afo escapes the collector but plunges into the rings, speedily becoming younger and younger until he disappears.  Apparently this was changed during shooting when that ending didn’t seem to be working.  The actual ending is disappointing: Picard and the villain climbing and fighting against a ticking clock to get to a control panel replicates the Generations climax and there are similar scenes in First Contact, while the blue background (meant to be the rings outside?) screams unfinished visual effect.

 The Son’a’s appearance is different in the novelization—not the wrinkled wraiths we see on the screen but with surgically thin baby smooth skin, and ostentatiously adorned in robes and jewels. Perhaps this was too close to a Hollywood reality.  Apart from their skin stretching salon, just about the only remnant of the Son’a’s conspicuous love of luxury is the incongruous sofa that is Ru’afo’s command chair on the bridge of his ship. (In the film, the Son’a have two alien slave races: the Ellora, who look like Vegas showgirls in body paint, and the Tarlac, who resemble the aliens in Buckaroo Banzai.)

 Apart from some Harlequin romance level descriptions, Dillard does elaborate on motives and intentions.  The duck-blind observation of the Ba’ku, in her interpretation, was itself always a ruse, to mask the secret of what the Son’a and Admiral Dougherty were up to. It takes an extra step to realize this from the actual movie, for the only hint I got was the implication of Dougherty saying the Ba’ku originally came from elsewhere in space (and hence weren’t covered by the Prime Directive), suggesting he must have known they weren’t a pre-warp society that required secrecy to study. 

 Towards the end, when Admiral Dougherty learns the true relationship of the Son’a and Ba’ku, Dillard has him realizing that Ru’afo was primarily seeking revenge, and that he never intended to share the youth-giving technology or its fruits with the Federation.  Similarly, Picard has a flash of recognition as he confronts Ru’afo on the collector: just as he had been driven by vengeance against the Borg in the events depicted in Star Trek: First Contact, so Ru’afo was obsessed with revenge against the Ba’ku who had rejected and exiled him. Even though revenge seems the default motivation for Star Trek movie villains, this movie might have benefited from such clarifying moments.

 Dillard also elaborates earlier on Picard’s thoughts from his initial confrontation with Dougherty.  He reasons that the Federation would probably need no more than a few years to figure out a better way to benefit from the cellular regeneration effects of the rings, and that the Son’a were rushing things for reasons of their own.  He doubts that the full and true plan had ever been presented to the Federation Council.  Clearer indications of Dougherty’s and Picard’s suspicions and realizations in the movie (perhaps as Dillard developed them) might have added texture and interest to the movie’s story, making it more of the unraveling of a mystery.

 I don’t want to belabor what I experienced as flaws in the film.  Every film has flaws, but some are serious enough—or there is an accumulation of them—to weaken the credibility and flow of the movie, or to engender confusion and raise questions, all of which are harmful when they take the viewer out of the story.  My disappointments are no doubt heightened by my conclusion that this could have been the best of the TNG features.

My first impression that this was a movie that just missed being really good was based on what seemed to be a confusing rhythm, a sense that, despite some slow scenes and comic moments, it just rushed on, with no rhythm but momentum.  I felt it needed more pace; it needs to breathe.  It’s not as if running time was a problem—this was the shortest of all Star Trek features.   

I felt this most acutely on first view in the cut from Geordi’s viewing of a sunrise—the first time in his life he’d seen one with normal vision, due to the planet’s regeneration effect.  In his original commentary to First Contact, director Jonathan Frakes noted the temptation to cut off a scene too quickly just to keep the movie moving.  The quick cut from the sunrise and Geordi’s eyes to an overview of orbiting ships was jarring, and to me trivialized what could have been a more powerful moment.  

 I was also taken out of the flow by elements of the story that didn't seem credible, like the simpleminded plan to relocate the Ba’ku (they weren’t going to notice they were no longer on their planet, with its particular hills and familiar sky?) or Data and the others in their invisibility suits tromping around supposedly undetected, as if the Ba’ku had no other sense but sight.

 I was always uneasy with the portrayal of the Ba’ku, though the actors rescued it for me.  Subsequent viewings suggest why they seem less credible than symbolic: their gracefully styled but rigidly earth-tone clothing, their uniformly pristine village buildings-- more elegant versions of a Phoenix suburb (as Marina Sirtis suggests in a recent commentary) and (as Jonathan Frakes notes) their unbroken whiteness. 

Then there are the missed opportunities, including a clearer sense (perhaps from a single point of view, like Picard’s) of the contrast between the trivial hurry of the Enterprise greeting a new Federation member, and the slower, fuller life on the planet, absent phaser fire. Another is the assertion that deploying the collector would destroy life on the planet for generations, implying for more than its people.  So even if the Ba’ku were removed, all other planetary life would be destroyed (though we see little of it), an act of geocide that would have been a major concern in a TNG episode. (And if Ru’aflo didn’t misspeak when he said “everything in this sector will be dead or dying," on more than one planet.)

 I get the impression now that not everybody making this movie was on the same page, contributing to  a lack of clarity and pace that can prevent viewers from just riding along on a voyage, with its ups and downs, sidetracks and problems solved together.  Confusion and disagreement about the core issues probably also contributed.  (Even in the third season of Picard, Captain Shaw’s erroneous if funny description of this movie’s events, particularly that it was Picard who violated the Prime Directive, suggests this confusion, as well as how the story might be whispered about at the time so that the Federation saves face.) 

Yet a lot of the pieces are there: the exodus from the village, the Enterprise space battle, the transporter and holoship trickery on the Son'a, the hummingbirds.  Some fans reacted against the humor, and the change in characterizations.  I enjoyed all of that. (Sure, Data in the haystack was sappy and forced, but so goofy that isolated it remains an awkward highlight.) The Enterprise crew didn’t need an alien virus to get a little silly, as in The Naked Now/Time—just an infusion of youth.  It’s fun watching these actors do humor, and do it well. In this (as well as other respects) it reminded me of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, when the Kirk Enterprise crew loosened up.  It also turns out to be a kind of preview to aspects of the TNG characters as they appear in Picard season 3. 

 If the viewer gets swept past the incongruities, then the buoyancy and the scenery in this movie combine for a bright ride. There are plenty of incidents, a fine romance for Captain Picard and Anij (though their kiss got cut entirely) and along with the main cast there are solid performances by F. Murray Abraham (Ru’afo), Anthony Zerbe (Admiral Dougherty) and Donna Murphy (Anij) as well as Gregg Henry (Son’a Gallatin),Daniel Hugh Kelly (Ba’ku Sojef) and a very young Michael Welch (Ba’ku child Artim.)  

 Director Frakes had approached First Contact’s Enterprise scenes as a horror story, using some traditional horror movie moves.  Those scenes were dark—often literally. Everyone—from Paramount to Rick Berman to Patrick Stewart, credited for the first time as a producer, wanted something lighter for this film.  So this time Frakes directed an action adventure out in the bright daylight, like a western. That final shot of the seven Enterprise officers all lined up, capped the reference to The Magnificent Seven heroes defending a helpless village. 

 The CGI is now a little outdated (this was the first Trek film to use it exclusively) but the Briar Patch is visually stunning, and the action scenes are fun.  Despite its reputation, this movie didn’t do so badly at the box office, either.  It’s too bad that it couldn’t more seamlessly bring together its moral center, the story and the mood, as did its model predecessor, The Voyage Home.