Kang on the Enterprise: "Another of Kirk's tricks?"
Monday, February 27, 2006
A wounded crewman, now healed, appears with his sword, crazed to kill Klingons and “even the score” (even though he is no longer hurt.) Kirk and Spock observe the alien hovering above---they note that it grew more vibrant when the crewman expressed a lust for vengeance and violence.
“It exists on the hate of others,” Kirk concludes.
“It has acted as a catalyst to that violence,” Spock adds, and suggests that to defeat it “all hostile emotions must cease.”
At this point the Enterprise has only a short time before its dilithium crystals fail and the ship will be helpless far from Federation space. With the help of Kang’s wife, Kirk meets with him, but Kang won’t buy it. “We are hunters,” he says. “We take what we want.”
“There’s another way to survive,” Kirk says. “Mutual trust and help.”
There’s some swordplay and a vintage Captain Kirk speech, aggressively delivered as counterpoint to its meaning. “The good old game of war—pawn against pawn---stopping the bad guys, where somewhere something sits back and laughs---and starts it all over again.”
“Those who hate and fight must stop themselves,” Spock says, “otherwise it is not stopped.”
“Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier who never questions orders,” Kirk taunts Kang.
Kang sees the entity, finally believes it is manipulating them, and throws down his sword. “Klingons fight for their own purposes,” he says.
“Cessation of hostilities have weakened it,” Spock observes. He suggests good spirits might do it in.
Kirk tells the entity to go away. “We don’t want to play. We know about you. Maybe there are others like you around, maybe you’ve caused a lot of suffering, a lot of history, but that’s all over. We’ll be on our guard now. We’ll be ready for you.”
“Only a fool fights in a burning house,” Kang cries, and joins in the general laughter, and even slaps Kirk on the back. (If you take a look at this episode, don’t miss Spock’s expression in the background after Kang’s back-slap.)
Notably, the episode ends here---there is no coda or final scene of the Enterprise bridge crew discussing the mission and joking around.
“It exists on the hate of others,” Kirk concludes.
“It has acted as a catalyst to that violence,” Spock adds, and suggests that to defeat it “all hostile emotions must cease.”
At this point the Enterprise has only a short time before its dilithium crystals fail and the ship will be helpless far from Federation space. With the help of Kang’s wife, Kirk meets with him, but Kang won’t buy it. “We are hunters,” he says. “We take what we want.”
“There’s another way to survive,” Kirk says. “Mutual trust and help.”
There’s some swordplay and a vintage Captain Kirk speech, aggressively delivered as counterpoint to its meaning. “The good old game of war—pawn against pawn---stopping the bad guys, where somewhere something sits back and laughs---and starts it all over again.”
“Those who hate and fight must stop themselves,” Spock says, “otherwise it is not stopped.”
“Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier who never questions orders,” Kirk taunts Kang.
Kang sees the entity, finally believes it is manipulating them, and throws down his sword. “Klingons fight for their own purposes,” he says.
“Cessation of hostilities have weakened it,” Spock observes. He suggests good spirits might do it in.
Kirk tells the entity to go away. “We don’t want to play. We know about you. Maybe there are others like you around, maybe you’ve caused a lot of suffering, a lot of history, but that’s all over. We’ll be on our guard now. We’ll be ready for you.”
“Only a fool fights in a burning house,” Kang cries, and joins in the general laughter, and even slaps Kirk on the back. (If you take a look at this episode, don’t miss Spock’s expression in the background after Kang’s back-slap.)
Notably, the episode ends here---there is no coda or final scene of the Enterprise bridge crew discussing the mission and joking around.
“I know there is evil in the world---essential evil, not the opposite of good but something in which good itself is an irrelevance---a fantasy.”
These words are quoted by Bob Dylan in his autobiographical account, Chronicles: Volume One, which he says are spoken by Scratch (the Devil) in a play by Archibald MacLeish. (I couldn’t find them in the published version of the play, so perhaps they were in an earlier version that Dylan got when MacLeish wanted him to write music for it.) I just happened to read this after I started this essay. When something like that happens, you pay attention. You’re probably on to something.
One contemporary definition of evil comes from Scott Peck in his book People of the Lie. (Peck, a practicing psychiatrist and author of best-sellers such as The Road Less Traveled, died last year. He held his own set of beliefs based on various religions, including Islam and Buddhism, when he wrote this book. But immediately afterwards, he became a committed Christian, and announced this in the book’s introduction.)
Peck argued that evil is a disease, and its chief characteristic or manifestation is deception, the lie. But not simply people lying to others; it’s people lying to themselves: self-deception.
Part of that self-deception could be the refusal to face the possibility of being in error---even of not being conscious of one’s motivations or emotions that could be distorting one’s evaluation of what’s really going on, both in the outside world and inside oneself.
That is in a sense what the entity does in “Day of the Dove” when it manipulates minds. It creates internal fantasies that are as much “lies” as the reality it changes by breaking the laws of causality.
Much of what people believe in this episode is not true. The Federation didn’t lure the Klingon ship with a false distress call and then attack it with a secret weapon; the Klingons didn’t destroy a defenseless Federation colony, any more than the Klingons killed a brother Chekhov never had.
Yet their belief sparks their emotions, and their emotions lead them to leap to all kinds of conclusions, including about the character of their adversaries. They are butchers, animals, freaks. And it gives them the fever to fight. That, in this story, is the goal of evil.
It’s important to note that for those in the grip of this fever, any idea that the other side is justified, or that the facts may be other than believed, or may mean something different that our side or our leader say, seem fantastic. People who believe otherwise are either crazy or cowards or enemy sympathizers.
Peck asserts that people may deceive themselves because of the evil within them, or because they are enthralled by an evil person they serve: a leader, a spouse, a parent. In a sense, this includes being enthralled by a belief, a cause, if it leads to deception and self-deception, and to the refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions, feelings and experiences. The evil person may engender the evil acts, but the enthralled person cooperates and enables them. In the end, what counts are the evil acts, and for those, leaders and followers are both responsible.
These words are quoted by Bob Dylan in his autobiographical account, Chronicles: Volume One, which he says are spoken by Scratch (the Devil) in a play by Archibald MacLeish. (I couldn’t find them in the published version of the play, so perhaps they were in an earlier version that Dylan got when MacLeish wanted him to write music for it.) I just happened to read this after I started this essay. When something like that happens, you pay attention. You’re probably on to something.
One contemporary definition of evil comes from Scott Peck in his book People of the Lie. (Peck, a practicing psychiatrist and author of best-sellers such as The Road Less Traveled, died last year. He held his own set of beliefs based on various religions, including Islam and Buddhism, when he wrote this book. But immediately afterwards, he became a committed Christian, and announced this in the book’s introduction.)
Peck argued that evil is a disease, and its chief characteristic or manifestation is deception, the lie. But not simply people lying to others; it’s people lying to themselves: self-deception.
Part of that self-deception could be the refusal to face the possibility of being in error---even of not being conscious of one’s motivations or emotions that could be distorting one’s evaluation of what’s really going on, both in the outside world and inside oneself.
That is in a sense what the entity does in “Day of the Dove” when it manipulates minds. It creates internal fantasies that are as much “lies” as the reality it changes by breaking the laws of causality.
Much of what people believe in this episode is not true. The Federation didn’t lure the Klingon ship with a false distress call and then attack it with a secret weapon; the Klingons didn’t destroy a defenseless Federation colony, any more than the Klingons killed a brother Chekhov never had.
Yet their belief sparks their emotions, and their emotions lead them to leap to all kinds of conclusions, including about the character of their adversaries. They are butchers, animals, freaks. And it gives them the fever to fight. That, in this story, is the goal of evil.
It’s important to note that for those in the grip of this fever, any idea that the other side is justified, or that the facts may be other than believed, or may mean something different that our side or our leader say, seem fantastic. People who believe otherwise are either crazy or cowards or enemy sympathizers.
Peck asserts that people may deceive themselves because of the evil within them, or because they are enthralled by an evil person they serve: a leader, a spouse, a parent. In a sense, this includes being enthralled by a belief, a cause, if it leads to deception and self-deception, and to the refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions, feelings and experiences. The evil person may engender the evil acts, but the enthralled person cooperates and enables them. In the end, what counts are the evil acts, and for those, leaders and followers are both responsible.
“Day of the Dove” was written by accomplished science fiction writer Jerome Bixby, who wrote several other episodes including the classic “Mirror, Mirror” in the second season. It aired for the first time on November 1, 1968 (between Halloween and the Catholic “All Soul’s Day” or Day of the Dead.)
1968 was a year of death and violence, and deep emotional divisions. The war in Vietnam was raging, both with U.S. bombing in both South and North Vietnam, and the ground war in South Vietnam. In a two-week period in May, more than 1,100 U.S. soldiers were killed.
In early April, Martin Luther King was assassinated, setting off destructive rioting in many U.S. cities. Troops had to be sent to Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Washington and Baltimore.
There were student revolts in the U.S. and Europe. In early June, Robert Kennedy was assassinated, just as he appeared on his way to the Democratic nomination for President on an anti-war platform. There were massive demonstrations in Chicago at the Democratic convention that summer, with nightly violence broadcast coast to coast, caused by what a presidential commission would later call “a police riot.”
The war had divided the country in many ways and in the deepest ways probably since the Civil War, for longstanding alliances and friendships were fractured and families were split—brother against brother, husbands against wives, and most of all, parents against children.
The 60s were a time of great change happening very fast: in everything from sexual mores and relationships, to racial and gender stereotypes. The truthfulness as well as the judgment of leaders was called into question, as well as the rightness of actions and goals. Was war necessary to achieve these goals, and were they worthy goals in the first place?
So much of what nearly everyone had simply accepted as good and true was questioned. Were all our comfortable homes, vibrant industries and wonderful consumer products not so innocent after all—were they the result of processes that were poisoning the air and water, and destroying the planet? Was our prosperity based in part on exploiting others? These questions had not been raised in so many American homes before. This caused great distress, terrible tensions and intimate conflict.
At the same time, the U.S. and Soviet Union were separately sending manned spacecraft into orbit. In the month before this episode aired, Apollo 7 hosted the first live television broadcast from space, during an 11 day mission orbiting the earth 163 times. And during a four-day mission, a manned Soviet craft practiced approach maneuvers with an unmanned craft, a prelude to docking.
People were seeing what the future could be, and they were seeing the present in a kind of self-destruction, threatening that future.
For many, space exploration represented what science and rational thinking could do. On the other hand (some believed) the violence that seemed to have the world in its grip seemed evidence of the damage fiery emotions could cause. This way of looking at what was happening in the late 60s was part of the appeal of Mr. Spock.
Sock represented “logic,” which meant not only science, but what philosophers had called “reason.” The Founding Fathers considered themselves men of reason; they thought of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights as reasoned and reasonable documents, that brought principles to bear on evidence; that brought the logic of those principles to bear on current situations. Those principles were themselves a combination of ideals and pragmatism, a set of logical rules based at least in part on hopes and aspirations.
At the same time, those who were against the Vietnam war claimed that the so-called logic of its proponents was too narrow. It left out too many facts that called these rigid conclusions into question. And it left out human consequences and their importance, which transcended the logic of numbers and had devastating effects on human lives and the physical environment. In order to gauge the importance of lives, and the suffering caused by violence and warfare, perhaps took feelings: the exercise of empathy. But they did not see this as irrational (though many pro-war advocates did.) They saw this as reason---as factoring in human suffering and destruction as well as history, geopolitical realities and the quantitative measurements of weapons and warfare.
Only with the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy in the spring 1968 primaries did opposition to the war gain some legitimacy, and even a lot of that was withdrawn due to later violence. Many people continued to believe that anti-war demonstrators were traitors to their country. They reacted with violent emotion, and at times with real violence.
One of those actively opposing the war was Leonard Nimoy, who was active in support of Eugene McCarthy, as well as for civil rights, civil liberties and social justice causes. In 1968, Mr. Spock met Dr. Spock at a political event. (Dr. Benjamin Spock, world famous as the baby doctor, but also a peace activist who’d been arrested protesting the draft. As Nimoy recounts in his books, he introduced himself as the man who played Spock. Dr. Spock said only, “I know. Have you been indicted yet?”)
Though Star Trek stories did not always carry a blatant anti-war message, Bixby admitted this was his intent with “Day of the Dove” (as the title itself gives away. It was during Vietnam that the terms, “hawks” for pro-war and “doves” for pro-peace, became well known. I believe the terms originated in a magazine article about the White House deliberations during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.)
1968 was a year of death and violence, and deep emotional divisions. The war in Vietnam was raging, both with U.S. bombing in both South and North Vietnam, and the ground war in South Vietnam. In a two-week period in May, more than 1,100 U.S. soldiers were killed.
In early April, Martin Luther King was assassinated, setting off destructive rioting in many U.S. cities. Troops had to be sent to Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Washington and Baltimore.
There were student revolts in the U.S. and Europe. In early June, Robert Kennedy was assassinated, just as he appeared on his way to the Democratic nomination for President on an anti-war platform. There were massive demonstrations in Chicago at the Democratic convention that summer, with nightly violence broadcast coast to coast, caused by what a presidential commission would later call “a police riot.”
The war had divided the country in many ways and in the deepest ways probably since the Civil War, for longstanding alliances and friendships were fractured and families were split—brother against brother, husbands against wives, and most of all, parents against children.
The 60s were a time of great change happening very fast: in everything from sexual mores and relationships, to racial and gender stereotypes. The truthfulness as well as the judgment of leaders was called into question, as well as the rightness of actions and goals. Was war necessary to achieve these goals, and were they worthy goals in the first place?
So much of what nearly everyone had simply accepted as good and true was questioned. Were all our comfortable homes, vibrant industries and wonderful consumer products not so innocent after all—were they the result of processes that were poisoning the air and water, and destroying the planet? Was our prosperity based in part on exploiting others? These questions had not been raised in so many American homes before. This caused great distress, terrible tensions and intimate conflict.
At the same time, the U.S. and Soviet Union were separately sending manned spacecraft into orbit. In the month before this episode aired, Apollo 7 hosted the first live television broadcast from space, during an 11 day mission orbiting the earth 163 times. And during a four-day mission, a manned Soviet craft practiced approach maneuvers with an unmanned craft, a prelude to docking.
People were seeing what the future could be, and they were seeing the present in a kind of self-destruction, threatening that future.
For many, space exploration represented what science and rational thinking could do. On the other hand (some believed) the violence that seemed to have the world in its grip seemed evidence of the damage fiery emotions could cause. This way of looking at what was happening in the late 60s was part of the appeal of Mr. Spock.
Sock represented “logic,” which meant not only science, but what philosophers had called “reason.” The Founding Fathers considered themselves men of reason; they thought of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights as reasoned and reasonable documents, that brought principles to bear on evidence; that brought the logic of those principles to bear on current situations. Those principles were themselves a combination of ideals and pragmatism, a set of logical rules based at least in part on hopes and aspirations.
At the same time, those who were against the Vietnam war claimed that the so-called logic of its proponents was too narrow. It left out too many facts that called these rigid conclusions into question. And it left out human consequences and their importance, which transcended the logic of numbers and had devastating effects on human lives and the physical environment. In order to gauge the importance of lives, and the suffering caused by violence and warfare, perhaps took feelings: the exercise of empathy. But they did not see this as irrational (though many pro-war advocates did.) They saw this as reason---as factoring in human suffering and destruction as well as history, geopolitical realities and the quantitative measurements of weapons and warfare.
Only with the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy in the spring 1968 primaries did opposition to the war gain some legitimacy, and even a lot of that was withdrawn due to later violence. Many people continued to believe that anti-war demonstrators were traitors to their country. They reacted with violent emotion, and at times with real violence.
One of those actively opposing the war was Leonard Nimoy, who was active in support of Eugene McCarthy, as well as for civil rights, civil liberties and social justice causes. In 1968, Mr. Spock met Dr. Spock at a political event. (Dr. Benjamin Spock, world famous as the baby doctor, but also a peace activist who’d been arrested protesting the draft. As Nimoy recounts in his books, he introduced himself as the man who played Spock. Dr. Spock said only, “I know. Have you been indicted yet?”)
Though Star Trek stories did not always carry a blatant anti-war message, Bixby admitted this was his intent with “Day of the Dove” (as the title itself gives away. It was during Vietnam that the terms, “hawks” for pro-war and “doves” for pro-peace, became well known. I believe the terms originated in a magazine article about the White House deliberations during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.)
So what does this episode say about evil? It suggests that it comes from outside, yet its effects are expressed by human (or Klingon) behavior. In a sense, where evil is located doesn’t matter: it’s the resulting behavior that counts. Because people, at least theoretically, have control over their behavior.
Psychologists and mythologists such as Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and James Hillman, have emphasized the power of certain forces and ideas that most human cultures---and most humans---have in common. In other times and places, cultures gave these forces names, and represented them as beings---gods, demons, heroes. These are also called “archetypes.” And they are real, whether or not one believes that Zeus or Saturn, Satan or the Raven spirit exist in the world, separate from the human soul or psyche.
They are real because they are part of us and can captivate us, motivate us, inhabit us at various times, and may even in a sense possess us. We may think we are acting with total control, that we have sound reasons for what we do, but we’re mistaken.
These archetypes may not be entirely evil; they may even be mostly good, or have good and evil qualities, as humans do. But they are powerful, just as our instincts are---instincts our species developed to survive, but which aren’t always appropriate to situations that evoke them. That’s when they can become destructive, and indulging them becomes evil.
In this Star Trek episode, you might say that the men and women are possessed by the devil, or more specifically, by Mars. They believe they were unjustly attacked and violently injured, and challenged to respond in kind. The term “war fever” is very accurate. It may even be understated. People are possessed by it. When war kicks in, it takes over---and we don’t have to think back more than a few years to see that as plain as day.
In this episode, “the dogs of war” are loosed, and they are like wild animals within people. We see and hear the outrage at injury become the lust for violence. The adversary becomes the enemy, and is immediately demonized---they are inhuman butchers: therefore violence is justified not only to repel aggression but in revenge.
War sparks the Us Versus Them fire within us, and when adversaries become enemies, there can be nothing good about them. Every act (even if it is the mirror image of our own acts) is evil; all differences between Us and Them, especially visible and racial differences, become part of our rationale for hatred.
We see all of this happen in this story, but we also see that it is based on illusions and delusions. Kirk and Spock see this almost immediately. They apply consciousness to the workings of unconsciousness, whether the automatic reactions are thoughts or feelings. They see there is no basis for these feelings, and they see they are being manipulated.
Is it manipulation from the outside? Yes, in this story, it is an alien entity. But Star Trek stories are also symbolic, and allegorical. The alien may be the devil, or even if we “have no devil” we know how one behaves.
If you believe with Scott Peck that evil is the lie, then there are two expressions of evil in this episode. The people in this story are deceived, and deception is evil. If they refuse to listen to consciousness, to consider that their feelings may not be justified by reality, they are engaging in self-deception, and that is evil.
In Scott Peck’s terms, even if the alien entity is the originator of evil, those that are “enthralled” and follow the leader are also guilty of evil.
This sense of group responsibility, or the responsibility of the follower, is made specific when Kirk says: “Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier who never questions orders.” “Never questions orders” has a specific historical echo—which William Shatner, for one, could not fail to catch.
When Nazis were put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at Nuremberg and elsewhere, they tried to excuse their conduct in the death camps as “only following orders.” These tribunals specifically denied this claim as valid—these soldiers and underlings were personally responsible for what they did, no matter what their orders.
Though the Nuremberg trials were in 1948, Americans were newly aware of them from the 1961 Hollywood movie, Judgment at Nuremberg, starring Spencer Tracy, and featuring William Shatner.
Individual responsibility was also an issue in the Vietnam war, partly because of the draft. Some believed draft resistance was a moral imperative, a way to refuse to cooperate with evil. The moral responsibility of individual soldiers was the theme of a song by Buffy Sainte Marie, made popular by Donovan, called “The Universal Soldier” (It had nothing to do with the later movie of that title.)
The issue came to worldwide public attention again when American soldiers slaughtered 400 to 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in what became known as the MyLai Massacre. (Scott Peck devotes a long chapter to it in People of the Lie.) Although it didn’t hit the news for over a year, it actually occurred in 1968, several months before this episode aired.
In the final analysis, evil is as evil does. People can have all kinds of thoughts and feelings, but how do they behave? In this story, the emphasis is on the cause of war---especially of what Vietnam became, a war that fed on itself. (Robert MacNamara, who was Secretary of Defense at the time, now says that he had long concluded that the Vietnam war couldn’t be won and probably should not have been fought; nevertheless, it continued, and he helped continue it.) The solution is recognizing the realities, including the fever that deceives us.
In terms of behavior, an alternative to war is presented: cooperation and mutual aid. Many Star Trek stories would dramatize this, and show that while it is difficult, it is not impossible. But this story is about group and individual behavior. “Those who hate and fight must stop themselves,” Spock says, “otherwise it is not stopped.” But how do you do that?
In this story, Bixby presents the problem finally as a choice---much as he did in Mirror, Mirror when Kirk presents the mirror universe Spock with the choice of steering his Enterprise towards a better, more ethical future. But how do you make the choice?
The simple answer is consciousness---not lying to yourself-- and taking responsibility. Of course it's easier said than done, but it can be done, and there are ways of doing it. A big step is simply being aware of the possibility of self-deception, and of the habits of self-deception and evil such as projecting evil unfairly or inaccurately on others, and scapegoating (blaming someone else, usually weaker).
"Our burgeoning interest in the existence and source of our prejudices, hidden hostilities, irrational fears, perceptual blind spots, mental ruts, and resistance to growth is the start of an evolutionary leap," Scott Peck writes. Of course, sometimes we are confronted with real evil and real danger. But knowing the difference between reality and illusion, wherever it comes from, helps us act more effectively.
How else is it done? There’s a more specific answer in a first season Star Trek episode, “ A Taste of Armageddon.” I’ll take a look at that, and what it says about dealing with evil within and without, next time. With any luck, next week: same time, same station.
Psychologists and mythologists such as Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and James Hillman, have emphasized the power of certain forces and ideas that most human cultures---and most humans---have in common. In other times and places, cultures gave these forces names, and represented them as beings---gods, demons, heroes. These are also called “archetypes.” And they are real, whether or not one believes that Zeus or Saturn, Satan or the Raven spirit exist in the world, separate from the human soul or psyche.
They are real because they are part of us and can captivate us, motivate us, inhabit us at various times, and may even in a sense possess us. We may think we are acting with total control, that we have sound reasons for what we do, but we’re mistaken.
These archetypes may not be entirely evil; they may even be mostly good, or have good and evil qualities, as humans do. But they are powerful, just as our instincts are---instincts our species developed to survive, but which aren’t always appropriate to situations that evoke them. That’s when they can become destructive, and indulging them becomes evil.
In this Star Trek episode, you might say that the men and women are possessed by the devil, or more specifically, by Mars. They believe they were unjustly attacked and violently injured, and challenged to respond in kind. The term “war fever” is very accurate. It may even be understated. People are possessed by it. When war kicks in, it takes over---and we don’t have to think back more than a few years to see that as plain as day.
In this episode, “the dogs of war” are loosed, and they are like wild animals within people. We see and hear the outrage at injury become the lust for violence. The adversary becomes the enemy, and is immediately demonized---they are inhuman butchers: therefore violence is justified not only to repel aggression but in revenge.
War sparks the Us Versus Them fire within us, and when adversaries become enemies, there can be nothing good about them. Every act (even if it is the mirror image of our own acts) is evil; all differences between Us and Them, especially visible and racial differences, become part of our rationale for hatred.
We see all of this happen in this story, but we also see that it is based on illusions and delusions. Kirk and Spock see this almost immediately. They apply consciousness to the workings of unconsciousness, whether the automatic reactions are thoughts or feelings. They see there is no basis for these feelings, and they see they are being manipulated.
Is it manipulation from the outside? Yes, in this story, it is an alien entity. But Star Trek stories are also symbolic, and allegorical. The alien may be the devil, or even if we “have no devil” we know how one behaves.
If you believe with Scott Peck that evil is the lie, then there are two expressions of evil in this episode. The people in this story are deceived, and deception is evil. If they refuse to listen to consciousness, to consider that their feelings may not be justified by reality, they are engaging in self-deception, and that is evil.
In Scott Peck’s terms, even if the alien entity is the originator of evil, those that are “enthralled” and follow the leader are also guilty of evil.
This sense of group responsibility, or the responsibility of the follower, is made specific when Kirk says: “Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier who never questions orders.” “Never questions orders” has a specific historical echo—which William Shatner, for one, could not fail to catch.
When Nazis were put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at Nuremberg and elsewhere, they tried to excuse their conduct in the death camps as “only following orders.” These tribunals specifically denied this claim as valid—these soldiers and underlings were personally responsible for what they did, no matter what their orders.
Though the Nuremberg trials were in 1948, Americans were newly aware of them from the 1961 Hollywood movie, Judgment at Nuremberg, starring Spencer Tracy, and featuring William Shatner.
Individual responsibility was also an issue in the Vietnam war, partly because of the draft. Some believed draft resistance was a moral imperative, a way to refuse to cooperate with evil. The moral responsibility of individual soldiers was the theme of a song by Buffy Sainte Marie, made popular by Donovan, called “The Universal Soldier” (It had nothing to do with the later movie of that title.)
The issue came to worldwide public attention again when American soldiers slaughtered 400 to 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in what became known as the MyLai Massacre. (Scott Peck devotes a long chapter to it in People of the Lie.) Although it didn’t hit the news for over a year, it actually occurred in 1968, several months before this episode aired.
In the final analysis, evil is as evil does. People can have all kinds of thoughts and feelings, but how do they behave? In this story, the emphasis is on the cause of war---especially of what Vietnam became, a war that fed on itself. (Robert MacNamara, who was Secretary of Defense at the time, now says that he had long concluded that the Vietnam war couldn’t be won and probably should not have been fought; nevertheless, it continued, and he helped continue it.) The solution is recognizing the realities, including the fever that deceives us.
In terms of behavior, an alternative to war is presented: cooperation and mutual aid. Many Star Trek stories would dramatize this, and show that while it is difficult, it is not impossible. But this story is about group and individual behavior. “Those who hate and fight must stop themselves,” Spock says, “otherwise it is not stopped.” But how do you do that?
In this story, Bixby presents the problem finally as a choice---much as he did in Mirror, Mirror when Kirk presents the mirror universe Spock with the choice of steering his Enterprise towards a better, more ethical future. But how do you make the choice?
The simple answer is consciousness---not lying to yourself-- and taking responsibility. Of course it's easier said than done, but it can be done, and there are ways of doing it. A big step is simply being aware of the possibility of self-deception, and of the habits of self-deception and evil such as projecting evil unfairly or inaccurately on others, and scapegoating (blaming someone else, usually weaker).
"Our burgeoning interest in the existence and source of our prejudices, hidden hostilities, irrational fears, perceptual blind spots, mental ruts, and resistance to growth is the start of an evolutionary leap," Scott Peck writes. Of course, sometimes we are confronted with real evil and real danger. But knowing the difference between reality and illusion, wherever it comes from, helps us act more effectively.
How else is it done? There’s a more specific answer in a first season Star Trek episode, “ A Taste of Armageddon.” I’ll take a look at that, and what it says about dealing with evil within and without, next time. With any luck, next week: same time, same station.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
How To Know When You've Maybe Seen Too Much Star Trek
When people are talking about the latest developments in the Middle East and you think the solution is a Romulan warbird in orbit around the earth. Differences below might get settled very quickly.
When someone mentions seeing Charlie Rose interview American diplomat and Middle East expert Dennis Ross, and you remember him from his interview on the DVD of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
When you're at a Mozart 250th birthday commemoration concert, and the quartet they are playing sounds like the same one a delusional crewman thinks he's playing in the TNG episode, "Where No One Has Gone Before."
When you see the Montery Bay Acquarium on a PBS special and recognize it as the Cetacean Institute in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
When this all happens the same evening.
Yes. Way too much.
However:
Because you heard him on the Trek DVD, you listen to what Dennis Ross has to say about the Middle East on Charlie Rose.
Because the Traveler has such admiration for Mozart, you probably paid a little more attention to his music back when that show was first on the air, and maybe that's one reason you went to the 250th birthday concert, and had that joyous experience.
Because you recognize Montery Acquarium, you watch a few minutes of the PBS show and get interested, and watch the whole thing: it's fascinating. Did you know that great white sharks can sense the electrical impulses in your heart, if you happen to be in the water? Or that tuna swim amazingly fast, and migrate over thousands of miles of ocean, returning to precise locations, and scientists don't have a clue how they do it? That some jellyfish can be seven feet across, with tentacles a hundred feet long, and they may be direct descendants of the first ocean creatures? That certain plain old fish live to be a hundred years old? Or that great white sharks and tuna are endangered?
And you thought Star Trek aliens were alien? They're nowhere near as weird and wondrous as our fellow creatures on earth. Why---
There I go. Star Trek again.
Think I have a problem? Do you?
When people are talking about the latest developments in the Middle East and you think the solution is a Romulan warbird in orbit around the earth. Differences below might get settled very quickly.
When someone mentions seeing Charlie Rose interview American diplomat and Middle East expert Dennis Ross, and you remember him from his interview on the DVD of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
When you're at a Mozart 250th birthday commemoration concert, and the quartet they are playing sounds like the same one a delusional crewman thinks he's playing in the TNG episode, "Where No One Has Gone Before."
When you see the Montery Bay Acquarium on a PBS special and recognize it as the Cetacean Institute in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
When this all happens the same evening.
Yes. Way too much.
However:
Because you heard him on the Trek DVD, you listen to what Dennis Ross has to say about the Middle East on Charlie Rose.
Because the Traveler has such admiration for Mozart, you probably paid a little more attention to his music back when that show was first on the air, and maybe that's one reason you went to the 250th birthday concert, and had that joyous experience.
Because you recognize Montery Acquarium, you watch a few minutes of the PBS show and get interested, and watch the whole thing: it's fascinating. Did you know that great white sharks can sense the electrical impulses in your heart, if you happen to be in the water? Or that tuna swim amazingly fast, and migrate over thousands of miles of ocean, returning to precise locations, and scientists don't have a clue how they do it? That some jellyfish can be seven feet across, with tentacles a hundred feet long, and they may be direct descendants of the first ocean creatures? That certain plain old fish live to be a hundred years old? Or that great white sharks and tuna are endangered?
And you thought Star Trek aliens were alien? They're nowhere near as weird and wondrous as our fellow creatures on earth. Why---
There I go. Star Trek again.
Think I have a problem? Do you?
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Star Trek: The Accidental Arcs
by William S. Kowinski
Star Trek as a saga is largely improvised. The original series concentrated on making the elements of the Star Trek universe consistent, to produce plausibility. Eventually stories began to build on characters and events of past stories. One Klingon encounter led to another.
Then came the accidental arc of “the trilogy”—the second, third and fourth Star Trek feature films. They weren’t planned as a continuous story, occurring sequentially in time. If Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan had not been such a creative and commercial success, it may well have been the last of Star Trek.
Star Trek: The Next Generation began on television with certain commitments and hopes, and before it began Gene Roddenberry, other producers and writers had well over a decade of musing on what the original series had established and what was left within that to explore---which, as it turned out, was a lot.
In the formal sense of “story arc” in episodic TV—a continuous story over several or many episodes—TNG didn’t go much past the two-parter (although it could be argued that the return to earth of the Enterprise-D in “Family” was the third episode in the “Best of Both Worlds” confrontation with the Borg arc.) It wasn’t until TNG has solidified Star Trek’s prominence at Paramount that longer arcs were explored in “Deep Space Nine” and “Voyager.” “Enterprise” had something akin to a season-long arc and then in the first half of its last season produced several “mini-arcs” of three episodes, reminiscent of how the British “Doctor Who” series was long organized.
But there are other ways of looking at Star Trek in terms of arcs, at least metaphorically. Such as the accidental arcs of major characters, and the improvised arc of the entire saga.
by William S. Kowinski
Star Trek as a saga is largely improvised. The original series concentrated on making the elements of the Star Trek universe consistent, to produce plausibility. Eventually stories began to build on characters and events of past stories. One Klingon encounter led to another.
Then came the accidental arc of “the trilogy”—the second, third and fourth Star Trek feature films. They weren’t planned as a continuous story, occurring sequentially in time. If Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan had not been such a creative and commercial success, it may well have been the last of Star Trek.
Star Trek: The Next Generation began on television with certain commitments and hopes, and before it began Gene Roddenberry, other producers and writers had well over a decade of musing on what the original series had established and what was left within that to explore---which, as it turned out, was a lot.
In the formal sense of “story arc” in episodic TV—a continuous story over several or many episodes—TNG didn’t go much past the two-parter (although it could be argued that the return to earth of the Enterprise-D in “Family” was the third episode in the “Best of Both Worlds” confrontation with the Borg arc.) It wasn’t until TNG has solidified Star Trek’s prominence at Paramount that longer arcs were explored in “Deep Space Nine” and “Voyager.” “Enterprise” had something akin to a season-long arc and then in the first half of its last season produced several “mini-arcs” of three episodes, reminiscent of how the British “Doctor Who” series was long organized.
But there are other ways of looking at Star Trek in terms of arcs, at least metaphorically. Such as the accidental arcs of major characters, and the improvised arc of the entire saga.
Character and the Arc for Spock
Character arcs add up to our sense of the character’s essence, of what makes Kirk Kirk or Picard Picard, based on how they responded to a variety of situations depicted over time. But the character arc basically shows us how the character changed over time.
As far as I know, the only character arc that was planned from the beginning was Data, and that was a very basic plan. Brent Spiner has said that GR told him that Data would start out being quite different from the humans around him, but his eagerness to learn and his involvement in the lives of the crew and of the Enterprise, including his relationships, would mean that Data would gradually become more “human” in speech and behavior. In other words, the puppet Pinocchio would become a boy.
At some point, the TNG producers must have realized that they had a similar opportunity with Worf, though the changes in him would be more dynamic: how could he become more comfortable as a member of the Enterprise crew, and assimilate (it’s hard to use that word in a non-Borgian sense, but it’s the correct one) the best of what humanity had to offer, without losing his Klingon identity---in fact, while he strengthened it? That became the Worf arc, and it continued in Deep Space Nine.
By then, Star Trek producers had the example of the character arc of Spock. Due at least in part to the involvement and prodding of Leonard Nimoy, Spock began to change with the very first Star Trek feature. Nimoy managed the change somewhat in the same way as he managed the establishing of the basic Spock character in TOS: by using the particular script or story he was confronted with, and finding a way to do something interesting with Spock that would support the story, but also grow the character.
So in the chaos of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Nimoy (with Shatner) apparently cooked up a few moments that clarified what had been implied from the beginning: that Vger’s journey to the point of needing human feeling was parallel to Spock’s journey of trying to purge himself of everything human, failing, and then learning from his mind-meld with Vger the value of those human aspects, to himself as well as to Vger.
Spock’s arc seemed to be over in Star Trek II. He seemed warmer with Kirk and others than in the first film, and older than in the series, which fit well into one of “Khan”'s general themes: the relativity of youth and aging. But then, Spock died.
The movie was a major hit and so the arc was not complete. Spock returned at the end of Trek III, and in IV was a new Spock, with a different air of innocence. He had knowledge but incomplete access to personal memories: he was, in his own way, Data-like.
By Star Trek VI the arc was more or less complete, though Spock had personal lessons to learn in the course of the film. He had come to one conclusion that seemed to merge Vulcan logic with what a commander of Star Fleet in an earlier film called “Vulcan mysticism.” Spock told Valeris to have faith that the universe unfolds as it should. But his other insight, communicated in this same scene, was a summation of his personal journey, of Spock’s basic arc: “Logic is the beginning, not the end of wisdom.” But within the film, Spock also learns about human weakness (anger), and perhaps even Vulcan weakness (arrogance), and again the theme of aging emerges, culminating when the original crew refuses to stand down, and warps into legend.
Spock makes one more appearance, more than 80 years later, when he meets Picard and Data, and learns of the recent death of his father, in a TNG two-parter. While it was a decent story, and continued Spock’ occupational evolution as a kind of diplomat and mentor, it contributed little to the character arc. This story ended with Spock underground on Romulus, working for the reunification of Romulans and Vulcans (which unites this last story with one in the first season of TOS), an apt correspondence to Spock’s character arc of personal unification.
Carl Jung believed, as others have, that we have several “personalities,” several contending voices within us. The process of becoming more conscious, of knowing ourselves, over a lifetime is partly a process of recognizing those voices and getting them to work together. Nimoy believed that adolescents in particular were drawn to Spock because they were realizing their own internal conflicts for the first time. So in this sense at least, Spock’s arc is a template for all of us.
Character arcs add up to our sense of the character’s essence, of what makes Kirk Kirk or Picard Picard, based on how they responded to a variety of situations depicted over time. But the character arc basically shows us how the character changed over time.
As far as I know, the only character arc that was planned from the beginning was Data, and that was a very basic plan. Brent Spiner has said that GR told him that Data would start out being quite different from the humans around him, but his eagerness to learn and his involvement in the lives of the crew and of the Enterprise, including his relationships, would mean that Data would gradually become more “human” in speech and behavior. In other words, the puppet Pinocchio would become a boy.
At some point, the TNG producers must have realized that they had a similar opportunity with Worf, though the changes in him would be more dynamic: how could he become more comfortable as a member of the Enterprise crew, and assimilate (it’s hard to use that word in a non-Borgian sense, but it’s the correct one) the best of what humanity had to offer, without losing his Klingon identity---in fact, while he strengthened it? That became the Worf arc, and it continued in Deep Space Nine.
By then, Star Trek producers had the example of the character arc of Spock. Due at least in part to the involvement and prodding of Leonard Nimoy, Spock began to change with the very first Star Trek feature. Nimoy managed the change somewhat in the same way as he managed the establishing of the basic Spock character in TOS: by using the particular script or story he was confronted with, and finding a way to do something interesting with Spock that would support the story, but also grow the character.
So in the chaos of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Nimoy (with Shatner) apparently cooked up a few moments that clarified what had been implied from the beginning: that Vger’s journey to the point of needing human feeling was parallel to Spock’s journey of trying to purge himself of everything human, failing, and then learning from his mind-meld with Vger the value of those human aspects, to himself as well as to Vger.
Spock’s arc seemed to be over in Star Trek II. He seemed warmer with Kirk and others than in the first film, and older than in the series, which fit well into one of “Khan”'s general themes: the relativity of youth and aging. But then, Spock died.
The movie was a major hit and so the arc was not complete. Spock returned at the end of Trek III, and in IV was a new Spock, with a different air of innocence. He had knowledge but incomplete access to personal memories: he was, in his own way, Data-like.
By Star Trek VI the arc was more or less complete, though Spock had personal lessons to learn in the course of the film. He had come to one conclusion that seemed to merge Vulcan logic with what a commander of Star Fleet in an earlier film called “Vulcan mysticism.” Spock told Valeris to have faith that the universe unfolds as it should. But his other insight, communicated in this same scene, was a summation of his personal journey, of Spock’s basic arc: “Logic is the beginning, not the end of wisdom.” But within the film, Spock also learns about human weakness (anger), and perhaps even Vulcan weakness (arrogance), and again the theme of aging emerges, culminating when the original crew refuses to stand down, and warps into legend.
Spock makes one more appearance, more than 80 years later, when he meets Picard and Data, and learns of the recent death of his father, in a TNG two-parter. While it was a decent story, and continued Spock’ occupational evolution as a kind of diplomat and mentor, it contributed little to the character arc. This story ended with Spock underground on Romulus, working for the reunification of Romulans and Vulcans (which unites this last story with one in the first season of TOS), an apt correspondence to Spock’s character arc of personal unification.
Carl Jung believed, as others have, that we have several “personalities,” several contending voices within us. The process of becoming more conscious, of knowing ourselves, over a lifetime is partly a process of recognizing those voices and getting them to work together. Nimoy believed that adolescents in particular were drawn to Spock because they were realizing their own internal conflicts for the first time. So in this sense at least, Spock’s arc is a template for all of us.
Captains of Soul
Captain Kirk’s character arc was perhaps less dramatic, if it’s possible to say that anything Shatner played was “less dramatic.” Mostly it seemed to be a kind of mellowing, of gaining complexity and self-knowledge through experience and the insults of aging, manifesting as a world-weary humor, the distinct irony that characterizes the latter movies, without completely losing the exuberance that was always the anchor of Kirk’s character. He dies trying to make a difference, doing so partly because "it was fun." (So maybe it could be summed up with the Shatner joke that didn't make it into Generations---from Captain on the bridge, to the bridge on the Captain.)
Captain Picard’s arc was probably also partly planned from the beginning, in the somewhat superficial way of his being a bit remote and uncomfortable with informal personal contact (especially children) in the beginning, and gradually warming and loosening up. This apparently mirrored Patrick Stewart’s attitude as an actor, when his British discipline and reserve met with the rest of the riot-prone cast. However, Stewart’s attitude changed perhaps even faster than Picard’s.
But when I think of Picard’s character arc, I think immediately of the impact on him of events in stories that, not just coincidentally, are among the best TNG episodes.
Throughout Star Trek and other TV and film science fiction, earthlings are forever being “taken over” by aliens, and when the alien influence is purged, they go back to normal as if nothing had happened to them. At least in the case of Picard, this doesn’t happen. The effects of his assimilation by the Borg are explored immediately in “Family.” In that story, he is humbled (“or humiliated” as his brother says) and hurt. In this story his youth is established as demonstrating a will to excel, and he did excel. But it was a lonely struggle---his father opposed his dreams of a Starfleet career, and his older brother resented and bullied him. (Patrick Stewart’s relationship with his own father was reputedly difficult.)
The effect of assimilation arises in a different way in the TNG feature “First Contact.” There we see the buried anger, the cold drive for vengeance, with its thinly veiled component of fear. Again, Picard is trying to impose his will---as he willed himself to win the Starfleet Academy marathon, he wills himself to defeat the Borg, no matter the cost to others.
Between the two Borg encounters, he had passed up on the opportunity to end the Borg threat by using the rescued Borg Hugh to infect the collective with a destructive virus. After being upbraided for this by an Admiral, he begins to doubt this decision. His dogged obsession with the Borg, and especially his residual contact with the collective, allows him to defeat a Borg incursion in the 24th century, and eventually to save the future by defeating the Borg in the 21st century. But other aspects of his character and its arc come into play when he is reminded of an archetype he is unconsciously acting out: that of Ahab, the whaling ship captain obsessed with revenge in Melville’s Moby Dick.
By now we know from earlier in his history that he is particularly aware of literary and historical precedents and meaning. Partly through that, and partly through his tutelage by Counsellor Troi, he has learned the benefits of being conscious of his own motivations, and in this case, of his own “shadow,” or the unconscious motives that masquerade as perfectly reasonable, leading to deliberately chosen behavior. All that makes his instant recognition of the truth of this archetype, and his instant change of behavior, very plausible for the Captain Picard we have come to know.
Captain Kirk’s character arc was perhaps less dramatic, if it’s possible to say that anything Shatner played was “less dramatic.” Mostly it seemed to be a kind of mellowing, of gaining complexity and self-knowledge through experience and the insults of aging, manifesting as a world-weary humor, the distinct irony that characterizes the latter movies, without completely losing the exuberance that was always the anchor of Kirk’s character. He dies trying to make a difference, doing so partly because "it was fun." (So maybe it could be summed up with the Shatner joke that didn't make it into Generations---from Captain on the bridge, to the bridge on the Captain.)
Captain Picard’s arc was probably also partly planned from the beginning, in the somewhat superficial way of his being a bit remote and uncomfortable with informal personal contact (especially children) in the beginning, and gradually warming and loosening up. This apparently mirrored Patrick Stewart’s attitude as an actor, when his British discipline and reserve met with the rest of the riot-prone cast. However, Stewart’s attitude changed perhaps even faster than Picard’s.
But when I think of Picard’s character arc, I think immediately of the impact on him of events in stories that, not just coincidentally, are among the best TNG episodes.
Throughout Star Trek and other TV and film science fiction, earthlings are forever being “taken over” by aliens, and when the alien influence is purged, they go back to normal as if nothing had happened to them. At least in the case of Picard, this doesn’t happen. The effects of his assimilation by the Borg are explored immediately in “Family.” In that story, he is humbled (“or humiliated” as his brother says) and hurt. In this story his youth is established as demonstrating a will to excel, and he did excel. But it was a lonely struggle---his father opposed his dreams of a Starfleet career, and his older brother resented and bullied him. (Patrick Stewart’s relationship with his own father was reputedly difficult.)
The effect of assimilation arises in a different way in the TNG feature “First Contact.” There we see the buried anger, the cold drive for vengeance, with its thinly veiled component of fear. Again, Picard is trying to impose his will---as he willed himself to win the Starfleet Academy marathon, he wills himself to defeat the Borg, no matter the cost to others.
Between the two Borg encounters, he had passed up on the opportunity to end the Borg threat by using the rescued Borg Hugh to infect the collective with a destructive virus. After being upbraided for this by an Admiral, he begins to doubt this decision. His dogged obsession with the Borg, and especially his residual contact with the collective, allows him to defeat a Borg incursion in the 24th century, and eventually to save the future by defeating the Borg in the 21st century. But other aspects of his character and its arc come into play when he is reminded of an archetype he is unconsciously acting out: that of Ahab, the whaling ship captain obsessed with revenge in Melville’s Moby Dick.
By now we know from earlier in his history that he is particularly aware of literary and historical precedents and meaning. Partly through that, and partly through his tutelage by Counsellor Troi, he has learned the benefits of being conscious of his own motivations, and in this case, of his own “shadow,” or the unconscious motives that masquerade as perfectly reasonable, leading to deliberately chosen behavior. All that makes his instant recognition of the truth of this archetype, and his instant change of behavior, very plausible for the Captain Picard we have come to know.
Picard's Archetypal Arcs
Within the series, Picard had at least two powerful experiences that changed his character, but in ways that are hard to pin down, though I believe they are real, and do affect subsequent stories. They were his encounter with Dathon, the captain of the Tamarians, in “Darmok,” and the experience of living an entire lifetime on an alien planet in a few minutes, in “The Inner Light.”
“Darmok” is rightly hailed as one of the most imaginative science fiction stories ever, and one of the most daring, since it relies on the idea that these aliens think and communicate in such an alien way. But while Troi and Data back on the ship begin to piece together the meaning of a key phrase, it is Picard, with his understanding of literature and ancient civilizations, who realizes the Tamarians communicate by metaphor, and moreover, he is able to tell an appropriate story from earth’s mythology to seal the beginning of mutual understanding with Dathon.
Picard had watched Dathon perform his rituals, and he returned Dathon’s artifacts to the Tamarians. But he did two things after the Tamarians left. He began reading the Homeric Hymns, because he felt the power of “our own root metaphors.” And in a very powerful last moment as he looked through his cabin window into space, he performed part of Dathon’s ritual.
It is this sense of primal cultures that our acts are related to the archetypal, and recognition of what exists as sacred in sacramental acts and rituals. Picard was profoundly affected by this, and I believe it contributes to such later developments as his attempted defense of the Native Americans on Dorvan V in “Journey’s End,” (which in turn may have made him more certain of his actions defending the Ba’ku in “Insurrection.”)
He was even more profoundly affected by living an entire lifetime on the dying planet of Kataan, although he never left the Enterprise bridge. It had been well established that Picard never had a family, and apparently never even a committed relationship. It was living the life he never had---as a husband, a father and a grandfather---that affected him even more than living in the Kataan culture, in its poignant final days (something which is more apt to affect us, as we consider our greenhouse future.)
Again, the key moment after his return is at his cabin window, when he gazes into space and plays the Ressican flute, and the song he had composed in that other life. Just as Kataan has lost all life, he has lost the life he’d had, yet just as his memories preserve the story of Kataan, his experiences as Kamin become part of his reality as Picard.
There’s at least one later episode that refers directly to this, when Picard plays the flute again, and falls in love, perhaps to begin building that life he’d never had. But the realities of Starfleet intervene again, because the Captain must make life and death decisions without fear or favor, even involving his beloved. But you get the sense that Picard has been permanently changed, with a deeper sense of mortality, a greater appreciation of the moment and for his Enterprise family. And in the feature “Generations,” when he is propelled into the Nexus where his greatest fantasy can come true, it is the fantasy of a family, a home with a wife and children. (Interestingly, it is akin to Kirk’s fantasy in the Nexus, of a home with the woman he loves.)
Close observers of others series can probably produce character arcs for their characters--perhaps Captain Sisko's journey towards the Prophets, Captain Janeway's journey to a more complex humanity, Captain Archer's seasoning from eager enthusiast to desperate and focused warrior to statesman, and the changes he goes through that convinces him that the Federation is necessary. But let's move on to the saga itself.
Within the series, Picard had at least two powerful experiences that changed his character, but in ways that are hard to pin down, though I believe they are real, and do affect subsequent stories. They were his encounter with Dathon, the captain of the Tamarians, in “Darmok,” and the experience of living an entire lifetime on an alien planet in a few minutes, in “The Inner Light.”
“Darmok” is rightly hailed as one of the most imaginative science fiction stories ever, and one of the most daring, since it relies on the idea that these aliens think and communicate in such an alien way. But while Troi and Data back on the ship begin to piece together the meaning of a key phrase, it is Picard, with his understanding of literature and ancient civilizations, who realizes the Tamarians communicate by metaphor, and moreover, he is able to tell an appropriate story from earth’s mythology to seal the beginning of mutual understanding with Dathon.
Picard had watched Dathon perform his rituals, and he returned Dathon’s artifacts to the Tamarians. But he did two things after the Tamarians left. He began reading the Homeric Hymns, because he felt the power of “our own root metaphors.” And in a very powerful last moment as he looked through his cabin window into space, he performed part of Dathon’s ritual.
It is this sense of primal cultures that our acts are related to the archetypal, and recognition of what exists as sacred in sacramental acts and rituals. Picard was profoundly affected by this, and I believe it contributes to such later developments as his attempted defense of the Native Americans on Dorvan V in “Journey’s End,” (which in turn may have made him more certain of his actions defending the Ba’ku in “Insurrection.”)
He was even more profoundly affected by living an entire lifetime on the dying planet of Kataan, although he never left the Enterprise bridge. It had been well established that Picard never had a family, and apparently never even a committed relationship. It was living the life he never had---as a husband, a father and a grandfather---that affected him even more than living in the Kataan culture, in its poignant final days (something which is more apt to affect us, as we consider our greenhouse future.)
Again, the key moment after his return is at his cabin window, when he gazes into space and plays the Ressican flute, and the song he had composed in that other life. Just as Kataan has lost all life, he has lost the life he’d had, yet just as his memories preserve the story of Kataan, his experiences as Kamin become part of his reality as Picard.
There’s at least one later episode that refers directly to this, when Picard plays the flute again, and falls in love, perhaps to begin building that life he’d never had. But the realities of Starfleet intervene again, because the Captain must make life and death decisions without fear or favor, even involving his beloved. But you get the sense that Picard has been permanently changed, with a deeper sense of mortality, a greater appreciation of the moment and for his Enterprise family. And in the feature “Generations,” when he is propelled into the Nexus where his greatest fantasy can come true, it is the fantasy of a family, a home with a wife and children. (Interestingly, it is akin to Kirk’s fantasy in the Nexus, of a home with the woman he loves.)
Close observers of others series can probably produce character arcs for their characters--perhaps Captain Sisko's journey towards the Prophets, Captain Janeway's journey to a more complex humanity, Captain Archer's seasoning from eager enthusiast to desperate and focused warrior to statesman, and the changes he goes through that convinces him that the Federation is necessary. But let's move on to the saga itself.
The Saga's Sagging Arc
But what of the grand arc of the Star Trek saga? That’s the most accidental arc of all, as the saga went on, at first in fits and starts, always threatening to end, and then in a great rush of many stories told at once (more than a decade with new episodes of two series on TV and new movies in the theatres), and then the slow fade to a sudden stop with the cancellation of Enterprise.
As a prequel series, Enterprise of course complicated the arc by giving it a new beginning. Fans were disturbed by some of the failures of “continuity” with later Trek they thought they saw, but it may also be argued that Enterprise tried too hard to accommodate familiar “races”—even the Borg, not encountered again until the 24th century.
But in its simplest sense, the Star Trek saga arc might go like this: after terrible warfare and the reversion to post-apocalyptic nightmare of violence and superstition, a scientific breakthrough---the discovery of warp drive—changes everything, when it attracts a passing science vessel of Vulcans, and humans learn they are not alone in the universe they now have the power to explore.
The earth unites and banishes poverty and war. Starfleet is formed. But after a century humans are chafing at their limitations, and at the Vulcans’ insistence they are not ready for true interstellar exploration. But Captain Archer and the first Enterprise begin that process. This leads to the founding of the Federation.
In an as yet undramatized period---possibly the subject of the proposed “Star Trek: The Beginning” movie---earth is at war with the Romulan Empire. It ends and the neutral zone is established. By the 23rd century, Captain Kirk’s Enterprise is exploring farther, by now governed by the Prime Directive. It is also exploring the nature of humanity, through contrast with the civilizations of other worlds it encounters.
Human progress continues in the 24th century, not simply in new technologies but in better understanding of humanity, a greater commitment to self-knowledge, and a richer sense of the ethical behavior necessary for relationships with beings different from themselves.
But new enemies test both the inventiveness and will of the Federation, and the depth of its ethical understanding. In encounters with the Borg and the Dominion, once again humans must face their inner demons as well as their outer enemies, and deal with feelings of anger and vengeance, and the self-perpetuating emotions of war. Some falter but recover, stronger in soul than before (Picard.) Others fall into the sentimentality and shadow emotions of earlier eras (or of earlier war movies.)
Under this pressure, the Federation falters in its principles. Evils of the past return---political expediency over practical principle, shady deals, violation of the Constitution---I mean, the Prime Directive, secret police, licensed murderers for the state, the use and (if novels are included that take the narrative past the "canon") defense of torture. It seems that only Jean-Luc Picard is left to defend the Vision of GR, I mean the Federation, and that’s before Picard’s story is taken over by novels.
Obviously, the arc was influenced by 9-11 and current warfare (although it reverted to recycling old war movie drama and cliches long before that), but that's hardly an excuse: the arc started in the midst of Vietnam, Civil Rights, government provocateurs in anti-war groups and spying on individuals, a presidential Enemy's List, subversion of the Constiution, etc. Star Trek provided both rational and idealistic alternatives, and convincingly dramatized them.
In short, the arc of the Star Trek saga has left its reason for being in question, with a deeply conflicted Federation and a compromised Starfleet. Not a pretty picture. A new movie might help. If it’s the right new movie.
But what of the grand arc of the Star Trek saga? That’s the most accidental arc of all, as the saga went on, at first in fits and starts, always threatening to end, and then in a great rush of many stories told at once (more than a decade with new episodes of two series on TV and new movies in the theatres), and then the slow fade to a sudden stop with the cancellation of Enterprise.
As a prequel series, Enterprise of course complicated the arc by giving it a new beginning. Fans were disturbed by some of the failures of “continuity” with later Trek they thought they saw, but it may also be argued that Enterprise tried too hard to accommodate familiar “races”—even the Borg, not encountered again until the 24th century.
But in its simplest sense, the Star Trek saga arc might go like this: after terrible warfare and the reversion to post-apocalyptic nightmare of violence and superstition, a scientific breakthrough---the discovery of warp drive—changes everything, when it attracts a passing science vessel of Vulcans, and humans learn they are not alone in the universe they now have the power to explore.
The earth unites and banishes poverty and war. Starfleet is formed. But after a century humans are chafing at their limitations, and at the Vulcans’ insistence they are not ready for true interstellar exploration. But Captain Archer and the first Enterprise begin that process. This leads to the founding of the Federation.
In an as yet undramatized period---possibly the subject of the proposed “Star Trek: The Beginning” movie---earth is at war with the Romulan Empire. It ends and the neutral zone is established. By the 23rd century, Captain Kirk’s Enterprise is exploring farther, by now governed by the Prime Directive. It is also exploring the nature of humanity, through contrast with the civilizations of other worlds it encounters.
Human progress continues in the 24th century, not simply in new technologies but in better understanding of humanity, a greater commitment to self-knowledge, and a richer sense of the ethical behavior necessary for relationships with beings different from themselves.
But new enemies test both the inventiveness and will of the Federation, and the depth of its ethical understanding. In encounters with the Borg and the Dominion, once again humans must face their inner demons as well as their outer enemies, and deal with feelings of anger and vengeance, and the self-perpetuating emotions of war. Some falter but recover, stronger in soul than before (Picard.) Others fall into the sentimentality and shadow emotions of earlier eras (or of earlier war movies.)
Under this pressure, the Federation falters in its principles. Evils of the past return---political expediency over practical principle, shady deals, violation of the Constitution---I mean, the Prime Directive, secret police, licensed murderers for the state, the use and (if novels are included that take the narrative past the "canon") defense of torture. It seems that only Jean-Luc Picard is left to defend the Vision of GR, I mean the Federation, and that’s before Picard’s story is taken over by novels.
Obviously, the arc was influenced by 9-11 and current warfare (although it reverted to recycling old war movie drama and cliches long before that), but that's hardly an excuse: the arc started in the midst of Vietnam, Civil Rights, government provocateurs in anti-war groups and spying on individuals, a presidential Enemy's List, subversion of the Constiution, etc. Star Trek provided both rational and idealistic alternatives, and convincingly dramatized them.
In short, the arc of the Star Trek saga has left its reason for being in question, with a deeply conflicted Federation and a compromised Starfleet. Not a pretty picture. A new movie might help. If it’s the right new movie.
Monday, December 26, 2005
A Star Trek Carol
by William S. Kowinski
As far as I recall (and fans of the various series’ can correct me on this), Christmas figured in a Star Trek story only once: in the feature film, Star Trek: Generations. When he arrives in the Nexus, Jean Luc Picard immediately begins to live a fantasy of family life. With the look of the house and how everyone in his family is dressed, it is an idealized Victorian England Christmas. I always thought this came directly from the fact that during TNG’s first run, Patrick Stewart was appearing now and again in a one-man show of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, set in pretty much the same Victorian era.
He hasn’t done it in recent years, but this December Patrick Stewart performed it again in London. Though he performed it off and on since 1988, including runs in the United States during his Jean Luc Picard 1990s, I’ve never seen it.
But some years ago I received the audio cassettes as a Christmas gift, and the coincidence of learning he was doing it again in London, watching the Peter Ackroyd bio of Dickens on PBS, and spending extra time in bed due to a cold, all conspired in inspiring me to listen to it again.
by William S. Kowinski
As far as I recall (and fans of the various series’ can correct me on this), Christmas figured in a Star Trek story only once: in the feature film, Star Trek: Generations. When he arrives in the Nexus, Jean Luc Picard immediately begins to live a fantasy of family life. With the look of the house and how everyone in his family is dressed, it is an idealized Victorian England Christmas. I always thought this came directly from the fact that during TNG’s first run, Patrick Stewart was appearing now and again in a one-man show of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, set in pretty much the same Victorian era.
He hasn’t done it in recent years, but this December Patrick Stewart performed it again in London. Though he performed it off and on since 1988, including runs in the United States during his Jean Luc Picard 1990s, I’ve never seen it.
But some years ago I received the audio cassettes as a Christmas gift, and the coincidence of learning he was doing it again in London, watching the Peter Ackroyd bio of Dickens on PBS, and spending extra time in bed due to a cold, all conspired in inspiring me to listen to it again.
Listening to the audio tapes then inspired me to dig up my taped-from-TV video of his 1999 TV movie version, a full production with other actors, movie sets and visual effects. I watched it on Christmas day.
With its sequences of the ghosts taking Scrooge on a tour of Christmas past, present and future, it is not far in form from a holodeck story on TNG. In fact, the episode “Tapestry,” in which Q takes Picard back to his Academy days to change one fateful day, and then forward to the consequences of the change, evolved from a story idea called “Q Carol,” a direct reference to the Dickens’ story. (So writes Larry Nemecek in the STNG Companion.)
Both Stewart’s stage version and the film version ( with music by Stephen Warbuck, who would win the Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love released the previous year) adhere very closely to Dickens’ book. So the Dickens’ point of view, often obscured in other productions, is very clear in this one. It conveys a very Star Trek-compatible message.
For instance, the first ghost to visit Scrooge is that of his dead partner in the counting-house, Jacob Marley. Marley must drag heavy chains of regret because of his misspent life. He cries out:
Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"
"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
With its sequences of the ghosts taking Scrooge on a tour of Christmas past, present and future, it is not far in form from a holodeck story on TNG. In fact, the episode “Tapestry,” in which Q takes Picard back to his Academy days to change one fateful day, and then forward to the consequences of the change, evolved from a story idea called “Q Carol,” a direct reference to the Dickens’ story. (So writes Larry Nemecek in the STNG Companion.)
Both Stewart’s stage version and the film version ( with music by Stephen Warbuck, who would win the Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love released the previous year) adhere very closely to Dickens’ book. So the Dickens’ point of view, often obscured in other productions, is very clear in this one. It conveys a very Star Trek-compatible message.
For instance, the first ghost to visit Scrooge is that of his dead partner in the counting-house, Jacob Marley. Marley must drag heavy chains of regret because of his misspent life. He cries out:
Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"
"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
“The common welfare was my business” is the essence of Dickens’ message to his fellow Londoners, where many lived in unspeakable poverty in a heavily polluted city (in Dickens, the London fog was not romantic—it was more like smog laden with disease.)
But since Scrooge is such a monster at the beginning of the story, Stewart got the opportunity to play a person behaving badly that he didn’t get on Star Trek. It is also a full part (even when he’s restricted to playing only Scrooge in the film) that showed Scrooge as sullen and mean, then frightened, humbled but still trying to retain control in his encounters with the ghosts, and then his second chance transformation and its aftermath. Stewart is more than adequate to the challenge each step of the way. His performance is a triumph.
More than a decade earlier, George C. Scott did a TV movie version of the story, and put his stamp on Scrooge’s transformation upon waking up on Christmas morning with his sudden, gleeful jumping up and down on his bed, when he realizes he has been given the chance to redeem himself. Stewart managed an even better effect in this crucial scene: he begins to choke, the choking sounds accelerate, and suddenly it turn into laughter. Scrooge had not laughed in so long it was physically wrenching to get one out. It’s not only an inspired idea, Stewart made it work beautifully.
But equally impressive is his attitude when he shows up for Christmas dinner at his nephew’s house, after this transformation. Though he’s been ebullient in the street, wishing a Merry Christmas to everyone he passes, when he gets to his nephew’s house he is suddenly shy and embarrassed. He slides into the dining room as if expecting to be rejected. It’s a terrific moment.
Dickens may seem a bit simplistic to us now, or even not realistic, because his selfish rich are mean and penny-pinching, whereas the rich of our era go in for conspicuous consumption and high times. But in linking virtue with healthy high spirits and family affections, Christmas charity with making merry on Christmas, Dickens is making a case for a good society in which social responsibility and the pursuit of happiness go hand in hand. It is a general theory of love. And not so different from Jean-Luc Picard’s Star Trek century.
But since Scrooge is such a monster at the beginning of the story, Stewart got the opportunity to play a person behaving badly that he didn’t get on Star Trek. It is also a full part (even when he’s restricted to playing only Scrooge in the film) that showed Scrooge as sullen and mean, then frightened, humbled but still trying to retain control in his encounters with the ghosts, and then his second chance transformation and its aftermath. Stewart is more than adequate to the challenge each step of the way. His performance is a triumph.
More than a decade earlier, George C. Scott did a TV movie version of the story, and put his stamp on Scrooge’s transformation upon waking up on Christmas morning with his sudden, gleeful jumping up and down on his bed, when he realizes he has been given the chance to redeem himself. Stewart managed an even better effect in this crucial scene: he begins to choke, the choking sounds accelerate, and suddenly it turn into laughter. Scrooge had not laughed in so long it was physically wrenching to get one out. It’s not only an inspired idea, Stewart made it work beautifully.
But equally impressive is his attitude when he shows up for Christmas dinner at his nephew’s house, after this transformation. Though he’s been ebullient in the street, wishing a Merry Christmas to everyone he passes, when he gets to his nephew’s house he is suddenly shy and embarrassed. He slides into the dining room as if expecting to be rejected. It’s a terrific moment.
Dickens may seem a bit simplistic to us now, or even not realistic, because his selfish rich are mean and penny-pinching, whereas the rich of our era go in for conspicuous consumption and high times. But in linking virtue with healthy high spirits and family affections, Christmas charity with making merry on Christmas, Dickens is making a case for a good society in which social responsibility and the pursuit of happiness go hand in hand. It is a general theory of love. And not so different from Jean-Luc Picard’s Star Trek century.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Light for a Cloudy Star Trek Future?
by William S. Kowinski
It’s been an eventful couple of weeks for Star Trek news---some hopeful, some disconcerting, some just confusing. Much of it suggests more questions than answers.
Some of the news seems to come from the gradually unfolding consequences of both the end of the Star Trek franchise as we’ve known it for some 20 years, and of the latest corporate changes for Paramount. In the world of Star Trek, Decipher, the company that published the Star Trek fan magazine since 2001, announced it was closing down its publishing and the Communicator with it.
Then Paramount announced its Digital Entertainment division was also shutting down, which put the future of the official site, Startrek.com in doubt.
Both moves seemed related to the splitting of Paramount and Viacom into two separate entities. With Paramount in charge of movies and Viacom in charge of television (and books), nobody seems to know who will be in charge of Star Trek, and its future movies and television, if any. (So far, there hasn’t been a disruption at Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, which does Star Trek books. They’re part of Viacom.)
Then came the startling news that Paramount is buying the studio Dreamworks SKG, which means among other things that Steven Speilberg will be making movies and developing projects for Paramount. His science fiction blockbuster of last summer, War of the Worlds, was a Paramount and Dreamworks co-production.
Like the rest of this news, the most that can be said now about the Paramount deal is that it could be good for Star Trek, or it could be bad. It could mean a more powerful and aggressive Paramount, with new producers and directors of some clout and taste, with experience in successful sci-fi features. Or it could mean that the Trek franchise gets lost amidst bigger deals and priorities.
There seems to be hope that the apparently bad news for the Communicator and Startrek.com will have a happier ending. Larry Nemecek, managing editor of the Communicator, is convinced his magazine will continue publishing, but is being affected by the Paramount/Viacom confusion. In the meantime, Eugene Roddenberry has indicated interest in Startrek.com.
What apparent good news there was had to do with the potential eleventh Star Trek feature film. Within a couple of days of each other, news stories quoted Patrick Stewart as revealing that he had been part of serious discussions about a new Trek film to be made a couple of years from now, and Bryan Singer (director of the first two X-Men films, and the upcoming Superman Returns) indicating his interest in directing the next Trek movie.
These two stories immediately reminded me of Leonard Nimoy saying that whenever Star Trek has looked absolutely dead, it always came back, stronger than ever. Since the hard fate and bad feelings of Star Trek Nemesis, it seemed the chances for a new movie were slipping away, and even if there was one, it certainly wouldn’t be another Next Generation film. Patrick Stewart in particular insisted that he was finished with playing Jean-Luc Picard.
So what does this mean? I don't really know, and I have no inside information. But I can tell you what my instincts suggest to me.
by William S. Kowinski
It’s been an eventful couple of weeks for Star Trek news---some hopeful, some disconcerting, some just confusing. Much of it suggests more questions than answers.
Some of the news seems to come from the gradually unfolding consequences of both the end of the Star Trek franchise as we’ve known it for some 20 years, and of the latest corporate changes for Paramount. In the world of Star Trek, Decipher, the company that published the Star Trek fan magazine since 2001, announced it was closing down its publishing and the Communicator with it.
Then Paramount announced its Digital Entertainment division was also shutting down, which put the future of the official site, Startrek.com in doubt.
Both moves seemed related to the splitting of Paramount and Viacom into two separate entities. With Paramount in charge of movies and Viacom in charge of television (and books), nobody seems to know who will be in charge of Star Trek, and its future movies and television, if any. (So far, there hasn’t been a disruption at Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, which does Star Trek books. They’re part of Viacom.)
Then came the startling news that Paramount is buying the studio Dreamworks SKG, which means among other things that Steven Speilberg will be making movies and developing projects for Paramount. His science fiction blockbuster of last summer, War of the Worlds, was a Paramount and Dreamworks co-production.
Like the rest of this news, the most that can be said now about the Paramount deal is that it could be good for Star Trek, or it could be bad. It could mean a more powerful and aggressive Paramount, with new producers and directors of some clout and taste, with experience in successful sci-fi features. Or it could mean that the Trek franchise gets lost amidst bigger deals and priorities.
There seems to be hope that the apparently bad news for the Communicator and Startrek.com will have a happier ending. Larry Nemecek, managing editor of the Communicator, is convinced his magazine will continue publishing, but is being affected by the Paramount/Viacom confusion. In the meantime, Eugene Roddenberry has indicated interest in Startrek.com.
What apparent good news there was had to do with the potential eleventh Star Trek feature film. Within a couple of days of each other, news stories quoted Patrick Stewart as revealing that he had been part of serious discussions about a new Trek film to be made a couple of years from now, and Bryan Singer (director of the first two X-Men films, and the upcoming Superman Returns) indicating his interest in directing the next Trek movie.
These two stories immediately reminded me of Leonard Nimoy saying that whenever Star Trek has looked absolutely dead, it always came back, stronger than ever. Since the hard fate and bad feelings of Star Trek Nemesis, it seemed the chances for a new movie were slipping away, and even if there was one, it certainly wouldn’t be another Next Generation film. Patrick Stewart in particular insisted that he was finished with playing Jean-Luc Picard.
So what does this mean? I don't really know, and I have no inside information. But I can tell you what my instincts suggest to me.
I ascribe a lot of credibility to Stewart’s statement. First, he seems to have said it to two reputable sources, and he was very positive and very definite about it. It also has the smell of credibility because I believe Stewart genuinely wants to make another Star Trek picture. His protestations about playing Picard again seemed like a reaction to Paramount’s evaluation of Nemesis at the box office, and probably to how he and the cast were treated. There was trouble brewing even before the picture hit the theatres, with Paramount’s surprise “A generation’s final journey begins” tag line.
And in the many months since, Stewart has spoken with affection for Star Trek and particularly his fellow cast members. He mentioned bursting into tears while rehearsing his final “farewell” scene with Jonathan Frakes as Riker, in Nemesis, and much later, crying uncontrollably when he channel surfed into a showing of Nemesis on television, because he missed his friends and their work together.
Contrary to the suggestion by some cynical fans, he wouldn’t be doing it so much for the money---or even for Star Trek---but to work with these dear friends again, in the world they created together. (Anybody who thinks Patrick Stewart works only for money might consider the 16 months he’s devoting to doing nothing much but acting for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s amazing series of the entire Shakespeare canon of plays.)
Bryan Singer’s expression of interest in directing a Trek movie, on the other hand, should be taken with a grain of salt. It could be interpreted as simply his own fantasy, and nothing new at that. Like any Trek fan, he has ideas of what he’d do with the next movie. But on the other hand it could be more than that, in which case, keep that salt to put on the popcorn.
Even though it may have been a purely speculative remark to a fan, this has to be taken a bit more seriously because of Singer’s relationship with Stewart (after Singer directed Stewart in the second X-Men film, Stewart got him a bit part in Nemesis---which Singer points out was on the Enterprise bridge during a battle---the kind of thing a fan would point out.)
But even if there’s not much chance of Singer actually making a Trek film, his interest could very well send a message to Paramount: hey, this A List director of franchise films is interested in making a Trek movie. Maybe it’s worth doing. Maybe other A List directors would be interested.
For instance, the one you just got under contract.
And in the many months since, Stewart has spoken with affection for Star Trek and particularly his fellow cast members. He mentioned bursting into tears while rehearsing his final “farewell” scene with Jonathan Frakes as Riker, in Nemesis, and much later, crying uncontrollably when he channel surfed into a showing of Nemesis on television, because he missed his friends and their work together.
Contrary to the suggestion by some cynical fans, he wouldn’t be doing it so much for the money---or even for Star Trek---but to work with these dear friends again, in the world they created together. (Anybody who thinks Patrick Stewart works only for money might consider the 16 months he’s devoting to doing nothing much but acting for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s amazing series of the entire Shakespeare canon of plays.)
Bryan Singer’s expression of interest in directing a Trek movie, on the other hand, should be taken with a grain of salt. It could be interpreted as simply his own fantasy, and nothing new at that. Like any Trek fan, he has ideas of what he’d do with the next movie. But on the other hand it could be more than that, in which case, keep that salt to put on the popcorn.
Even though it may have been a purely speculative remark to a fan, this has to be taken a bit more seriously because of Singer’s relationship with Stewart (after Singer directed Stewart in the second X-Men film, Stewart got him a bit part in Nemesis---which Singer points out was on the Enterprise bridge during a battle---the kind of thing a fan would point out.)
But even if there’s not much chance of Singer actually making a Trek film, his interest could very well send a message to Paramount: hey, this A List director of franchise films is interested in making a Trek movie. Maybe it’s worth doing. Maybe other A List directors would be interested.
For instance, the one you just got under contract.
The idea of Steven Spielberg making the next Trek film may or may not be a good one for Trek, but it sure would get Paramount moving. Spielberg as producer might be even better.
And this high level interest would be welcome all around. Patrick Stewart refuses to overtly blame the director of Nemesis for its failure, but others in the cast haven’t been so shy. Several have been outspoken that director Stuart Baird didn’t compensate for his lack of knowledge of (or interest in) the Trek universe with sparkling storytelling and mesmerizing visual style. And there was the questionable selection of scenes, which Baird at least had a hand in. Even Stewart once suggested that the DVD for Nemesis should have an Actors’ rather than a Director’s Cut.
But what about the Trek XI we’ve been hearing about from Rick Berman? It’s supposed to be about the beginning of Star Trek, before the time of Enterprise, and have no one from previous casts in it. That would include, one assumes, Patrick Stewart.
Then there’s the little mystery of why Stewart decided to announce this now, when he said these meetings (with “money men” involved )took place something like four months ago. He hasn’t exactly been silent and invisible all that time.
My guess is that Berman’s Trek: the Beginning is dead. And maybe Berman and Stewart know this now, and so Stewart felt he could talk about that meeting four months ago.
I'm guessing as well that there have always been at least two approaches being discussed, though Berman and his regime may have been aware of only theirs. I recall rumors some months ago that Jonathan Frakes had met with people Paramount about the next movie. The speculation then was that he was being considered as director for Berman’s project. Maybe so. But maybe not. Maybe he was part of these other discussions.
If someone or ones with the power to push Paramount’s buttons decides that the problem with Nemesis was the director, the release date, whatever. And that Enterprise proved that a new Trek crew in a new Trek universe is riskier than using a universe and crew with proven popularity--- then this other project may be getting the upper hand.
And perhaps not only Stewart and Berman but the announced writer, Erik Jendreson, knows this now. In any event, he has recently signed on as writer and producer for a new television series, which would pretty much preclude his continuing participation in a Trek project.
My further guess is that it is not exclusively a Next Generation project, but is akin to John Logan’s idea for Trek XI that he talked about in an interview I unfortunately can no longer find, before Nemesis was released. If I recall correctly, he was proposing a lighter tone, and a story involving characters (and actors) from more than one Trek TV series. So this would involve Picard and other Next Gen characters, but not only them.
And this high level interest would be welcome all around. Patrick Stewart refuses to overtly blame the director of Nemesis for its failure, but others in the cast haven’t been so shy. Several have been outspoken that director Stuart Baird didn’t compensate for his lack of knowledge of (or interest in) the Trek universe with sparkling storytelling and mesmerizing visual style. And there was the questionable selection of scenes, which Baird at least had a hand in. Even Stewart once suggested that the DVD for Nemesis should have an Actors’ rather than a Director’s Cut.
But what about the Trek XI we’ve been hearing about from Rick Berman? It’s supposed to be about the beginning of Star Trek, before the time of Enterprise, and have no one from previous casts in it. That would include, one assumes, Patrick Stewart.
Then there’s the little mystery of why Stewart decided to announce this now, when he said these meetings (with “money men” involved )took place something like four months ago. He hasn’t exactly been silent and invisible all that time.
My guess is that Berman’s Trek: the Beginning is dead. And maybe Berman and Stewart know this now, and so Stewart felt he could talk about that meeting four months ago.
I'm guessing as well that there have always been at least two approaches being discussed, though Berman and his regime may have been aware of only theirs. I recall rumors some months ago that Jonathan Frakes had met with people Paramount about the next movie. The speculation then was that he was being considered as director for Berman’s project. Maybe so. But maybe not. Maybe he was part of these other discussions.
If someone or ones with the power to push Paramount’s buttons decides that the problem with Nemesis was the director, the release date, whatever. And that Enterprise proved that a new Trek crew in a new Trek universe is riskier than using a universe and crew with proven popularity--- then this other project may be getting the upper hand.
And perhaps not only Stewart and Berman but the announced writer, Erik Jendreson, knows this now. In any event, he has recently signed on as writer and producer for a new television series, which would pretty much preclude his continuing participation in a Trek project.
My further guess is that it is not exclusively a Next Generation project, but is akin to John Logan’s idea for Trek XI that he talked about in an interview I unfortunately can no longer find, before Nemesis was released. If I recall correctly, he was proposing a lighter tone, and a story involving characters (and actors) from more than one Trek TV series. So this would involve Picard and other Next Gen characters, but not only them.
Lots of people play the game of “what should the next Trek movie be?” I played it in some emails with Nick Sagan. I’m not going to tell you his ideas, because as a former Trek writer and producer, and the author of two terrific sci-fi novels and one more soon to come, he is in a much better position to actually sell his approach.
But I’ll tell you mine. It’s a premise and an approach, not yet a story. The premise is that some members of all the Enterprise crews suddenly disappear (not all of them—just the ones who agree to be in the picture.) They reappear on one of the Enterprises---perhaps Archer’s, perhaps Picard’s. They don’t know why. Until who should appear in their midst, but Q.
Next Gen movies have needed Q for some time, in my opinion, and he’s the perfect rationale for gathering available major Trek actors for this movie. (It would have been a perfect 40th anniversary premise, by the way.) Even DS9 and Voyager actors could be included---all of them have been on one Enterprise or another, even for transport or a tour.
The premise is that the universe is very confused, something major has happened to its very fabric, and even Q is confused. He tried to turn to Picard and his Enterprise to help him sort it out, but the space-time continuum is in such flux that he grabbed people from several Enterprises over several hundred years. Furthermore, he got some of them long after they retired (Captain Kirk, anyone?) and perhaps even some at a point in their lives before they served. Or, perhaps in the case of Kirk, they’re snatched from alternate timelines.
But the essence is Picard and Q solving the problem of what’s wrong with the universe, with the able assistance of Kirk, Archer and whoever. (In terms of casting, an additional beauty of this premise is that everybody doesn’t have to be in the whole movie. There could be surprises throughout.)
The approach to the story I would like to see does not involve the political emphasis of latter Trek, or big space battles that would turn Trek into another adjunct of video games, but a return to what was promised in Next Gen’s final episode.
Remember what Q said at the end? “That is the exploration that awaits you! Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence!”
I’m not talking about either psychobabble or technobabble. I mean an exciting, challenging story that involves concepts that arise from the latest ideas in quantum physics and related fields.
The truth is that for all its advanced technology, the Star Trek universe is basically Newtonian, with a lot of technobabble tap-dancing. Gene Roddenberry went for ideas and for nourishment to scientists as well as technicians, and it’s time that Star Trek went back to sources like that for new ideas.
So---where do I sign?
UPDATE 12/15/05: Ain't It Cool News and TrekWeb are reporting a story that apparently originated at Canmag.com that indeed the prequel story for the next film is dead, and that the new film is to feature Picard, Kirk and Archer. But the setting is to be the Mirror Universe, which is not an idea I find appealing at all. It was badly done on Enterprise and I wasn't fond of the DS9 attempts I saw either. (The original series episode worked but only as a self-contained allegory.)
Anyway, I hope this "news" didn't originate with this site, because it was all speculation and proposal here.
But I’ll tell you mine. It’s a premise and an approach, not yet a story. The premise is that some members of all the Enterprise crews suddenly disappear (not all of them—just the ones who agree to be in the picture.) They reappear on one of the Enterprises---perhaps Archer’s, perhaps Picard’s. They don’t know why. Until who should appear in their midst, but Q.
Next Gen movies have needed Q for some time, in my opinion, and he’s the perfect rationale for gathering available major Trek actors for this movie. (It would have been a perfect 40th anniversary premise, by the way.) Even DS9 and Voyager actors could be included---all of them have been on one Enterprise or another, even for transport or a tour.
The premise is that the universe is very confused, something major has happened to its very fabric, and even Q is confused. He tried to turn to Picard and his Enterprise to help him sort it out, but the space-time continuum is in such flux that he grabbed people from several Enterprises over several hundred years. Furthermore, he got some of them long after they retired (Captain Kirk, anyone?) and perhaps even some at a point in their lives before they served. Or, perhaps in the case of Kirk, they’re snatched from alternate timelines.
But the essence is Picard and Q solving the problem of what’s wrong with the universe, with the able assistance of Kirk, Archer and whoever. (In terms of casting, an additional beauty of this premise is that everybody doesn’t have to be in the whole movie. There could be surprises throughout.)
The approach to the story I would like to see does not involve the political emphasis of latter Trek, or big space battles that would turn Trek into another adjunct of video games, but a return to what was promised in Next Gen’s final episode.
Remember what Q said at the end? “That is the exploration that awaits you! Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence!”
I’m not talking about either psychobabble or technobabble. I mean an exciting, challenging story that involves concepts that arise from the latest ideas in quantum physics and related fields.
The truth is that for all its advanced technology, the Star Trek universe is basically Newtonian, with a lot of technobabble tap-dancing. Gene Roddenberry went for ideas and for nourishment to scientists as well as technicians, and it’s time that Star Trek went back to sources like that for new ideas.
So---where do I sign?
UPDATE 12/15/05: Ain't It Cool News and TrekWeb are reporting a story that apparently originated at Canmag.com that indeed the prequel story for the next film is dead, and that the new film is to feature Picard, Kirk and Archer. But the setting is to be the Mirror Universe, which is not an idea I find appealing at all. It was badly done on Enterprise and I wasn't fond of the DS9 attempts I saw either. (The original series episode worked but only as a self-contained allegory.)
Anyway, I hope this "news" didn't originate with this site, because it was all speculation and proposal here.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Looking for Star Trek, High and Low
(Along with the Beatles, Herman Melville and Harry Potter)
by William S. Kowinski
Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling has a fascinating new non-fictional but still scientific book called Shaping Things (M.I.T. Press), which should be of interest to anyone into design, the future and the interface of information technology and the stuff in our lives. Plus it’s very short.
This isn’t about Bruce Sterling, however. It’s been inspired by an “endintroduction” to his book by Peter Lunenfeld, editorial director of Mediawork, the outfit that puts out this series of little books. He starts off: “I was mulling over Shakespeare’s observation that the future is an ‘undiscovered country.’ No, that’s not true; I was watching late night cable and stumbled across one of those forgettable Star Trek films from the 1990s, with that phrase in the title.”
We’ll overlook the slight to the films, and mention that he was of course referring to Star Trek VI (which I’ve conveniently just posted an essay about, here.) Lunefeld goes on to say that then he “remembered that Shakespeare wasn’t referring to the future, he was referring to death. Actually, that’s not true either.” He looked up the phrase on the Internet, and got the “proper context from Hamlet” which he swears he actually did read, but long ago.
His conclusion, and presumably the reason for mentioning all this, was: “This mix of the high and the low, the dread and the absurd, constitutes the future, and that’s what this Mediawork pamphlet is about.”
It’s also an aspect of the future that Star Trek had a hand in creating, and that it embodies. Especially the “mix of the high and the low.” And that’s a very good and very necessary thing.
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Now back to the show...
(Along with the Beatles, Herman Melville and Harry Potter)
by William S. Kowinski
Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling has a fascinating new non-fictional but still scientific book called Shaping Things (M.I.T. Press), which should be of interest to anyone into design, the future and the interface of information technology and the stuff in our lives. Plus it’s very short.
This isn’t about Bruce Sterling, however. It’s been inspired by an “endintroduction” to his book by Peter Lunenfeld, editorial director of Mediawork, the outfit that puts out this series of little books. He starts off: “I was mulling over Shakespeare’s observation that the future is an ‘undiscovered country.’ No, that’s not true; I was watching late night cable and stumbled across one of those forgettable Star Trek films from the 1990s, with that phrase in the title.”
We’ll overlook the slight to the films, and mention that he was of course referring to Star Trek VI (which I’ve conveniently just posted an essay about, here.) Lunefeld goes on to say that then he “remembered that Shakespeare wasn’t referring to the future, he was referring to death. Actually, that’s not true either.” He looked up the phrase on the Internet, and got the “proper context from Hamlet” which he swears he actually did read, but long ago.
His conclusion, and presumably the reason for mentioning all this, was: “This mix of the high and the low, the dread and the absurd, constitutes the future, and that’s what this Mediawork pamphlet is about.”
It’s also an aspect of the future that Star Trek had a hand in creating, and that it embodies. Especially the “mix of the high and the low.” And that’s a very good and very necessary thing.
Before we go on, a brief commercial message: you'll find a Powell's Bookstore box on this page. You can use it to search for new and used books. If you order anything after linking from here, this site gets a cut. Thanks.
Now back to the show...
Lunefeld felt this was worth mentioning because for awhile now there’s been a cultural separation between what is perceived as popular art or entertainment, and what is ritually considered high art. The difference between pulp science fiction and Literature, say, or rock and classical music, TV drama and Greek drama, and…Star Trek and Shakespeare.
For example, a new biography of the Beatles was just published---it’s almost a thousand pages long, with a hundred pages of footnotes, a scholarly tome and, according to the New York Times review, very well written. The review authors expressed wonder at how things had changed since the early 1960s: “Rock 'n' roll was considered marginal and disposable; the way to learn about its practitioners was to scour fan magazines or pore over sparse album liner notes. When the Beatles began, it would have been unthinkable to read a well-written biography about rock 'n' roll performers that was as serious and thoroughly researched as an important book about Faulkner or Picasso or Mao. For better and for worse, the Beatles changed all that.”
So in its way did Star Trek. It was just a television drama, just science fiction, and dangerously close to a kids show--- the combination was about the lowest you could go. Star Trek became a serious part of the culture the same way the Beatles did---by becoming very popular and making a lot of money for a long time. But like the Beatles, in other ways as well.
(Before we get too far away from the Beatles biography, it’s worth saying that I’ve thought more than once how sorely we lack a really good biography of Gene Roddenberry by a trained biographer or journalist, not either a show business friend or a show business enemy. His authorized biography is respectable, while the other more scurrilous one basically repeats every grudge anyone had against him. There are lots of points of view in lots of books, but no means to figure out what’s what. Evaluating information objectively and placing it in an historical perspective in a biography like one on Faulkner or Picasso or the Beatles has yet to be accomplished.)
For example, a new biography of the Beatles was just published---it’s almost a thousand pages long, with a hundred pages of footnotes, a scholarly tome and, according to the New York Times review, very well written. The review authors expressed wonder at how things had changed since the early 1960s: “Rock 'n' roll was considered marginal and disposable; the way to learn about its practitioners was to scour fan magazines or pore over sparse album liner notes. When the Beatles began, it would have been unthinkable to read a well-written biography about rock 'n' roll performers that was as serious and thoroughly researched as an important book about Faulkner or Picasso or Mao. For better and for worse, the Beatles changed all that.”
So in its way did Star Trek. It was just a television drama, just science fiction, and dangerously close to a kids show--- the combination was about the lowest you could go. Star Trek became a serious part of the culture the same way the Beatles did---by becoming very popular and making a lot of money for a long time. But like the Beatles, in other ways as well.
(Before we get too far away from the Beatles biography, it’s worth saying that I’ve thought more than once how sorely we lack a really good biography of Gene Roddenberry by a trained biographer or journalist, not either a show business friend or a show business enemy. His authorized biography is respectable, while the other more scurrilous one basically repeats every grudge anyone had against him. There are lots of points of view in lots of books, but no means to figure out what’s what. Evaluating information objectively and placing it in an historical perspective in a biography like one on Faulkner or Picasso or the Beatles has yet to be accomplished.)
Like the Beatles, Star Trek rebelled against various high art traditions while it absorbed and used elements of that tradition. In Star Trek’s case, it was the form and content of story.
In a general way, Star Trek was part of several storytelling traditions: literary (both the supposed low form of science fiction, and the higher forms of classical literature) and dramatic. Science fiction, which began (with H.G. Wells, at least) in the late 19th century era when literature in the form of the novel was a primary popular storytelling form, was in Wells’ hands (and those who followed him) a ready-made way to bring classic literary ideas into the present, and forward to the metaphorical future.
As television drama, Star Trek was in a long line of literary and dramatic adaptation, or theft. Crucial to its creators were the movies. Everyone from GR to Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner had movie palace matinee memories. When George Takei got to display his previously nonexistent swordsmanship in “The Naked Time” episode of the original series, he was thrilled because he loved Robin Hood---not from reading the stories but from the movies. (He loved the Erroll Flynn classic version and when he sought fencing lessons, he happened to wind up learning from the man who taught Flynn for that very movie, and who did Basil Rathbone’s sword-fighting in the film itself.)
In a general way, Star Trek was part of several storytelling traditions: literary (both the supposed low form of science fiction, and the higher forms of classical literature) and dramatic. Science fiction, which began (with H.G. Wells, at least) in the late 19th century era when literature in the form of the novel was a primary popular storytelling form, was in Wells’ hands (and those who followed him) a ready-made way to bring classic literary ideas into the present, and forward to the metaphorical future.
As television drama, Star Trek was in a long line of literary and dramatic adaptation, or theft. Crucial to its creators were the movies. Everyone from GR to Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner had movie palace matinee memories. When George Takei got to display his previously nonexistent swordsmanship in “The Naked Time” episode of the original series, he was thrilled because he loved Robin Hood---not from reading the stories but from the movies. (He loved the Erroll Flynn classic version and when he sought fencing lessons, he happened to wind up learning from the man who taught Flynn for that very movie, and who did Basil Rathbone’s sword-fighting in the film itself.)
So Star Trek took plots and ideas from everywhere, from a submarine movie to Joseph Conrad, from Captain Video to Shakespeare. Viewers even got a taste of what classic Greek theatre was like, because (as William Shatner said) the budgets were so small they were essentially putting on plays, but plays with meaning, like the Greeks did. Much of the cast in both the original series and TNG were theatre trained. If a writer suggested a classical allusion, they knew how to play it.
It truly was in the 60s, with the Beatles and other popular music, with Star Trek and a few other TV shows, that popular art and entertainment reinterpreted high art forms and narratives, and made them more accessible. Like those old Classic Comics books or movie versions, they also became conduits to the classics themselves. They made them relevant and easier to approach. They provided a kind of introduction. And the classics, in turn, illuminated aspects of a Star Trek story or a Beatles tune. Bob Dylan learned from an established (if notorious) poet like Allen Ginsberg, and Ginsberg recognized in him his successor.
In fact, ideas, encounters and engagements relevant to the times were more likely to be found in pop culture than in high art, and were accessible to more people, particularly the young.
Practitioners in forms old enough to be high art forms, like the novel, also became underground and popular successes dealing with ideas and issues that seized the imaginations of a popular or cult audience. A lot of young people got turned on to mystical and Eastern religious thought by J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac. Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Doris Lessing and others became both popular and cult. They also turned readers on to writers they admired and emulated.
There was so much energy in popular forms in the 60s—in music, movies and television as well as more experimental theatre, novels and poetry---that a fair number of young people who’d majored in English literature became pop culture commentators, rock critics, film and TV reviewers and pop journalists. Who also played in a band, or made super eight movies.
So the cross-fertilization became pretty natural, and pretty healthy. Thanks as well to wide availability of paperback books, old movies on TV and foreign and experimental films on campuses, people began to make their own explorations, perhaps to go where no one in their families or neighborhoods or high school had gone before.
You could start anywhere and get everywhere, as the cross-fertilization of popular and high art continued. Leading to situations like: my Moby Dick story.
It truly was in the 60s, with the Beatles and other popular music, with Star Trek and a few other TV shows, that popular art and entertainment reinterpreted high art forms and narratives, and made them more accessible. Like those old Classic Comics books or movie versions, they also became conduits to the classics themselves. They made them relevant and easier to approach. They provided a kind of introduction. And the classics, in turn, illuminated aspects of a Star Trek story or a Beatles tune. Bob Dylan learned from an established (if notorious) poet like Allen Ginsberg, and Ginsberg recognized in him his successor.
In fact, ideas, encounters and engagements relevant to the times were more likely to be found in pop culture than in high art, and were accessible to more people, particularly the young.
Practitioners in forms old enough to be high art forms, like the novel, also became underground and popular successes dealing with ideas and issues that seized the imaginations of a popular or cult audience. A lot of young people got turned on to mystical and Eastern religious thought by J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac. Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Doris Lessing and others became both popular and cult. They also turned readers on to writers they admired and emulated.
There was so much energy in popular forms in the 60s—in music, movies and television as well as more experimental theatre, novels and poetry---that a fair number of young people who’d majored in English literature became pop culture commentators, rock critics, film and TV reviewers and pop journalists. Who also played in a band, or made super eight movies.
So the cross-fertilization became pretty natural, and pretty healthy. Thanks as well to wide availability of paperback books, old movies on TV and foreign and experimental films on campuses, people began to make their own explorations, perhaps to go where no one in their families or neighborhoods or high school had gone before.
You could start anywhere and get everywhere, as the cross-fertilization of popular and high art continued. Leading to situations like: my Moby Dick story.
I first encountered Moby Dick in high school, in a long dense passage about whales in our American Literature anthology. All we were supposed to know about it, though, was that the white whale was a symbol. Even though I was a literature major in college, I never had to read the whole book; I just had to know a little about Melville, and generally what the established critics said about Moby Dick. There were plenty of other books I had to read. I never got around to that one.
But sometime in the mid 1980s my curiosity was piqued and I found my paperback copy (because as a lit major it was more important to have the book than to have read it) and began reading. I was astonished. The language was rich and crazy, like Shakespeare disguised as a mad sailor telling strange sea tales.
Then I came upon a passage in which Ahab talks of chasing Moby Dick “around perdition’s flames,” and then his expression, “he’s tasks me,” and then the “I spit at thee” speech, and somehow it seemed I read it all before. Or heard it. And then I realized---it was Khan.
This may not be a surprise to you, but trust me, this was an authentic personal discovery. Apart from the common theme of obsession, at that point I knew of no connection between Moby Dick and Star Trek II, which I had only seen once or maybe twice in a movie theatre. (It wasn’t until I saw it on video that I noticed the copy of Moby Dick in Khan’s empty quarters---with the same cover as my paperback.)
Of course the irony wasn’t lost on me---instead of this literature major picking up a literary allusion in a popular movie, I’d spotted Melville plagiarizing from Star Trek. (It was a couple of years later, when I was definitely on a campaign to read all the really long novels I’d always meant to read but didn’t, that I spotted the name “Yoyodyne” in a novel by Thomas Pynchon---and immediately remembered it from one of my favorite recent movies, Buckaroo Banzai.)
This reverse derivation is a somewhat surreal but quite lovely experience, showing the vitality of both the popular and classical art in a two-way relationship across time. That so many young people now may be discovering, for instance, how many classical composers have stolen from John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith and the other composers of orchestral soundtracks, is a deeply cultural experience, and a very hopeful one for holding on to the threads of the best content and practices, from past to future.
This two-way relationship is pretty widespread by now. At the memorial for GR, Patrick Stewart (who quotes---actually misquotes—lines from Moby Dick in First Contact) mentioned that someone had written to Rick Berman to point out that Captain Picard reading a copy of the Homeric Hymns (at the end of the TNG episode, "Darmok") had probably made “more people curious about that literature than at any time since their creation!”
I can recall more than one discussion of the epic of Gilgamesh in a Star Trek forum, including some very moving summaries of the story. A few months work of TNG episodes and viewers could see entire scenes from Shakespeare acted, meet Mark Twain and Jack London in 19th century San Francisco, hear discussions of Jung and Euclid, see Data reenact Sherlock Holmes in Victorian London, and watch Einstein play poker with Newton and Stephen Hawking.
Star Trek was among the first to include some of the spirit and meaning from the classics, as well as bits and pieces and allusions. Now there are other conduits for elements and values derived from “high” culture, especially for the young. Like Star Wars, and Harry Potter.
This two-way transport is even easier these days, thanks to DVD, video cassettes and the Internet---practically the whole culture, high and low, is easily available, a lot of it for cheap or for free.
But people don't have to seek Star Trek out---it remains more frequently present on TV sets all over the world. Several generations have learned from these Star Trek stories by now, have confronted the same ethical questions and choices, asked the same important questions about mortality and meaning, the past and the future, that the best literature and drama, philosophy and science also address. And come to their own conclusions.
At the same time, Star Trek put them in the context of a romantic but believable future, when confronting these issues was part of this believable journey. The application of the past to the future would run through our present as we watched. Later, curiosity about the classical roots or source of some element of the story could lead to discoveries that enriched the episode or movie on the next encounter.
Star Trek has been a bridge to these ideas and to appreciating these works, since it began. That’s become more valuable and more important as time goes on, and our culture sinks into a dull morass, where intelligence is stereotyped, and curiosity is nearly extinct. That’s why I consider Star Trek fans among the true elite.
"Star Trek appeals to a higher denominator,” Harve Bennett once said. “ It appeals to the imagination, to the mind."
But sometime in the mid 1980s my curiosity was piqued and I found my paperback copy (because as a lit major it was more important to have the book than to have read it) and began reading. I was astonished. The language was rich and crazy, like Shakespeare disguised as a mad sailor telling strange sea tales.
Then I came upon a passage in which Ahab talks of chasing Moby Dick “around perdition’s flames,” and then his expression, “he’s tasks me,” and then the “I spit at thee” speech, and somehow it seemed I read it all before. Or heard it. And then I realized---it was Khan.
This may not be a surprise to you, but trust me, this was an authentic personal discovery. Apart from the common theme of obsession, at that point I knew of no connection between Moby Dick and Star Trek II, which I had only seen once or maybe twice in a movie theatre. (It wasn’t until I saw it on video that I noticed the copy of Moby Dick in Khan’s empty quarters---with the same cover as my paperback.)
Of course the irony wasn’t lost on me---instead of this literature major picking up a literary allusion in a popular movie, I’d spotted Melville plagiarizing from Star Trek. (It was a couple of years later, when I was definitely on a campaign to read all the really long novels I’d always meant to read but didn’t, that I spotted the name “Yoyodyne” in a novel by Thomas Pynchon---and immediately remembered it from one of my favorite recent movies, Buckaroo Banzai.)
This reverse derivation is a somewhat surreal but quite lovely experience, showing the vitality of both the popular and classical art in a two-way relationship across time. That so many young people now may be discovering, for instance, how many classical composers have stolen from John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith and the other composers of orchestral soundtracks, is a deeply cultural experience, and a very hopeful one for holding on to the threads of the best content and practices, from past to future.
This two-way relationship is pretty widespread by now. At the memorial for GR, Patrick Stewart (who quotes---actually misquotes—lines from Moby Dick in First Contact) mentioned that someone had written to Rick Berman to point out that Captain Picard reading a copy of the Homeric Hymns (at the end of the TNG episode, "Darmok") had probably made “more people curious about that literature than at any time since their creation!”
I can recall more than one discussion of the epic of Gilgamesh in a Star Trek forum, including some very moving summaries of the story. A few months work of TNG episodes and viewers could see entire scenes from Shakespeare acted, meet Mark Twain and Jack London in 19th century San Francisco, hear discussions of Jung and Euclid, see Data reenact Sherlock Holmes in Victorian London, and watch Einstein play poker with Newton and Stephen Hawking.
Star Trek was among the first to include some of the spirit and meaning from the classics, as well as bits and pieces and allusions. Now there are other conduits for elements and values derived from “high” culture, especially for the young. Like Star Wars, and Harry Potter.
This two-way transport is even easier these days, thanks to DVD, video cassettes and the Internet---practically the whole culture, high and low, is easily available, a lot of it for cheap or for free.
But people don't have to seek Star Trek out---it remains more frequently present on TV sets all over the world. Several generations have learned from these Star Trek stories by now, have confronted the same ethical questions and choices, asked the same important questions about mortality and meaning, the past and the future, that the best literature and drama, philosophy and science also address. And come to their own conclusions.
At the same time, Star Trek put them in the context of a romantic but believable future, when confronting these issues was part of this believable journey. The application of the past to the future would run through our present as we watched. Later, curiosity about the classical roots or source of some element of the story could lead to discoveries that enriched the episode or movie on the next encounter.
Star Trek has been a bridge to these ideas and to appreciating these works, since it began. That’s become more valuable and more important as time goes on, and our culture sinks into a dull morass, where intelligence is stereotyped, and curiosity is nearly extinct. That’s why I consider Star Trek fans among the true elite.
"Star Trek appeals to a higher denominator,” Harve Bennett once said. “ It appeals to the imagination, to the mind."
Distinctions between high and low cultural expressions have existed at various times and places in history, though not everywhere and not always. There’s a fascinating book by Lawrence W. Levine called Highbrow Lowbrow which details how there was little difference in much of the 18th and all of the 19th century, particularly in America, where Shakespeare and Dickens (writing in that new “popular” form called the novel) and Verdi’s and Mozart’s operas were as much a part of mass culture as jugglers, banjo players and music hall comedy.
When there is a distinction, it is usually based on money and social class, and sometimes on education. There remained some mixing in the 20th century, particularly based on tastes brought over by European immigrants: Italian peasants who loved opera, for instance, and Russians who worshipped ballet. But in some ways, the distinctions certainly became more rigid.
By now, however, in a way they’ve also reversed. Rich people are still more or less in charge of high art, like the symphonies their money partly supports, or the painting and sculpture only they can afford to buy (if only for the investment.) Yet anybody can tune into a classical radio station or get some idea of great paintings from reproductions, and the literary classics are among the cheapest paperbacks you can find. Thanks to DVDs, video stores, downloadable music, etc.--even literary classics online for free--a larger chunk of cultural expression is more easily accessible than ever before.
The problem isn’t so much access to high art, it’s the lack of respect for it. There’s less looking down on the low tastes for popular entertainment. Instead there’s more looking askance at what’s defined as high art. Popular culture is the culture. So it’s become up to popular culture to keep the best of great art alive.
The distinction between high and low has seldom been made by artists themselves. The great composers took liberally from folk melodies, classical artists stole from jazz, jazz artists stole from classical, and the Beatles absorbed from everybody. The same is true in all the arts. But these days, the balance has been distorted—high art absorbs low, but popular arts and entertainment, and even their audiences, keep their distance from the forms and content of high art.
Why is that? Money mostly, but this time not concentrated in the wealthy. The big bucks are in what’s defined as commercial entertainment, which is itself so closely allied to advertising that it is as much a form of advertising as it is a form of music, drama or literature. There is little to distinguish most television from the commercials.
The success of advertising and commercial culture depends on ignorance. Few products are sold anymore on the basis of meeting a need or because they’re good quality and value. Most advertising creates a phony need and suggests, falsely, that its product will meet it. Advertising depends on people falling for it. The dumber the customers are, the easier it is. By and large, television has to be as least as dumb as the commercials if the commercials are to look smart. And sooner or later, everything becomes television, just as every business becomes Hollywood.
When there is a distinction, it is usually based on money and social class, and sometimes on education. There remained some mixing in the 20th century, particularly based on tastes brought over by European immigrants: Italian peasants who loved opera, for instance, and Russians who worshipped ballet. But in some ways, the distinctions certainly became more rigid.
By now, however, in a way they’ve also reversed. Rich people are still more or less in charge of high art, like the symphonies their money partly supports, or the painting and sculpture only they can afford to buy (if only for the investment.) Yet anybody can tune into a classical radio station or get some idea of great paintings from reproductions, and the literary classics are among the cheapest paperbacks you can find. Thanks to DVDs, video stores, downloadable music, etc.--even literary classics online for free--a larger chunk of cultural expression is more easily accessible than ever before.
The problem isn’t so much access to high art, it’s the lack of respect for it. There’s less looking down on the low tastes for popular entertainment. Instead there’s more looking askance at what’s defined as high art. Popular culture is the culture. So it’s become up to popular culture to keep the best of great art alive.
The distinction between high and low has seldom been made by artists themselves. The great composers took liberally from folk melodies, classical artists stole from jazz, jazz artists stole from classical, and the Beatles absorbed from everybody. The same is true in all the arts. But these days, the balance has been distorted—high art absorbs low, but popular arts and entertainment, and even their audiences, keep their distance from the forms and content of high art.
Why is that? Money mostly, but this time not concentrated in the wealthy. The big bucks are in what’s defined as commercial entertainment, which is itself so closely allied to advertising that it is as much a form of advertising as it is a form of music, drama or literature. There is little to distinguish most television from the commercials.
The success of advertising and commercial culture depends on ignorance. Few products are sold anymore on the basis of meeting a need or because they’re good quality and value. Most advertising creates a phony need and suggests, falsely, that its product will meet it. Advertising depends on people falling for it. The dumber the customers are, the easier it is. By and large, television has to be as least as dumb as the commercials if the commercials are to look smart. And sooner or later, everything becomes television, just as every business becomes Hollywood.
But the future depends on other qualities besides gullibility, short attention spans, jaded brains and senses, and psychological enslavement to what’s popular at the current moment---all of which are essential to the triumph of the will of advertising.
The future will only exist for individuals and for society if people are curious and adventurous in their minds and hearts, and if they esteem learning, knowledge, openness to the best new and old ideas and expressions, and above all to making up their own minds based on quality and quantity of information.
People who deride Star Trek fans as losers (because they are different) and conformists (because they are all the same) and especially as shallow people who pour way too much interest and faith in a relatively silly television show, just don’t get it. Star Trek fans often exercise more intellectual curiosity and openness, as well as sincere need to understand the larger contexts of their lives, and a heartfelt desire to live a good life, than many of their jaded critics do.
As someone from the lower middle class who was lucky to be born in a time and place where I could go to a college and study literature and philosophy and theatre, while being part of a new culture of movies and popular music and writing, I don’t dismiss any avenue of exploration that leads to great insights, expanded consciousness and the oceanic and subtle complexities of feeling inspired by great art, high and low.
What does it matter really if a Harvard professor or Star Trek II leads you to Moby Dick, as long as you get there? And why would anyone object to the shared memory of Moby Dick informing a psychological insight particularly instructive to us in our time, in the guise of Jean Luc Picard in the 24th century, being consumed by vengeance against the Borg?
It’s win-win, as far as I can see.
We need people with depth and character, if we’re to have any sort of future. And if we don’t get there, then we need a present where we reach with our hands and hearts and minds to the extent of our potential, so we at least live full lives. We must try our best not only to create a better world, but to be the kind of people who make it better right now, so we at least deserve a future.
Anyway, according to the big thinkers at MIT, Star Trek fans are way ahead.
The future will only exist for individuals and for society if people are curious and adventurous in their minds and hearts, and if they esteem learning, knowledge, openness to the best new and old ideas and expressions, and above all to making up their own minds based on quality and quantity of information.
People who deride Star Trek fans as losers (because they are different) and conformists (because they are all the same) and especially as shallow people who pour way too much interest and faith in a relatively silly television show, just don’t get it. Star Trek fans often exercise more intellectual curiosity and openness, as well as sincere need to understand the larger contexts of their lives, and a heartfelt desire to live a good life, than many of their jaded critics do.
As someone from the lower middle class who was lucky to be born in a time and place where I could go to a college and study literature and philosophy and theatre, while being part of a new culture of movies and popular music and writing, I don’t dismiss any avenue of exploration that leads to great insights, expanded consciousness and the oceanic and subtle complexities of feeling inspired by great art, high and low.
What does it matter really if a Harvard professor or Star Trek II leads you to Moby Dick, as long as you get there? And why would anyone object to the shared memory of Moby Dick informing a psychological insight particularly instructive to us in our time, in the guise of Jean Luc Picard in the 24th century, being consumed by vengeance against the Borg?
It’s win-win, as far as I can see.
We need people with depth and character, if we’re to have any sort of future. And if we don’t get there, then we need a present where we reach with our hands and hearts and minds to the extent of our potential, so we at least live full lives. We must try our best not only to create a better world, but to be the kind of people who make it better right now, so we at least deserve a future.
Anyway, according to the big thinkers at MIT, Star Trek fans are way ahead.
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