While Captain Kirk is on the surface, Scotty is in command. And stubborn, too.

Anan is having a quiet drink alone when Kirk approaches from behind him. Anan reveals another talent—he greets Kirk by name without seeing him. “My first impression of you was correct,” Anan says, on Kirk’s approach, weapon in hand. “You are a barbarian. Don’t look so incredulous, Captain. Of course you are---we all are! A killer first, a builder second. A hunter, a warrior, and let’s be honest, a murderer. That is our joint heritage, is it not?”

“We’re a little less cold-blooded about it than you are,” Kirk says. Then adds: “You don’t seem to realize the risk you’re taking. We don’t make war with computers and herd people into suicide stations. We make the real thing. I could destroy this planet.” Kirk says he can do it alone.

Anan mocks him. “I had no idea you were so formidable.”

“You seem to think I’m joking,” Kirk says, smiling. He then again demands his communicator and phaser. Anan directs him, pushes a button alerting guards, Kirk pushes him into the corridor first, which deters the first wave of guards, but after putting up a valiant hand to hand battle (while Anan looks on, apparently disgusted by the physical violence), Kirk is subdued and taken to the council chamber.

In the meantime, Spock has rigged the Eminiarian communicator to talk to the Enterprise. He orders Scotty to take the ship to a safe distance, and tells the young ensign to “prevent this young lady [Mea] from immolating herself.”

Fox has meanwhile beamed down (if something changed about the shields, I didn’t catch it), was captured and is being marched to a “suicide station,” when Spock rescues him, and destroys another chamber. Fox tells him that Kirk is being held in the council room. Spock tells Fox that normal diplomacy is not going to work here. Fox says, “I’ve never been a soldier, but I learn quickly.”

Anan and Kirk in the council room are having another thematic dialogue. If the Enteprise crew doesn’t beam down and give themselves up, Anan pleads, “You will be responsible for an escalation that will destroy everything. Millions of people horribly killed, complete destruction of the culture here, and yes, the culture on Vendikar. Disaster, disease, starvation—horrible, lingering death, pain and anguish!”

Kirk has been playing the wily Ulysses all along, never more so than in this scene.

“That seems to frighten you,” he retorts, in a cool, calm voice.

“It would frighten any sane man!” Anan exclaims, as if Kirk still doesn’t get it.

“You’re quite right,” is all Kirk says.

Anan is so convinced he’s right, he continues to try to get Kirk to comprehend the obvious. “And you understand, Captain, we have done away with all that. Now you are threatening to bring it down on us again. Are those 500 people of yours more important than the hundreds of millions of people on E and Vendikar? What kind of monster are you?”

“I’m a barbarian---you said it yourself.”

“I had hoped I’d spoken only figuratively,” Anan says, pronouncing every syllable.

“Oh, no, you were quite accurate. I plan to prove it to you.”

Ana turns away, and orders that a channel to the Enterprise be opened. “You give me no choice, Captain,” he turns back to Kirk. “We are not bandits. You force us to act as bandits.”

But once Scotty answers, Kirk shouts an order—General Order 24 in two hours.

With Kirk restrained, Anan tells Scotty, he has 30 minutes or the Captain and the Ambassador and landing party will be killed until crew transport begins. He turns to Kirk.

“I mean it, Captain.”

“All it means is I won’t be around for the destruction.” He explains that General Order 24 is to destroy the planet. Anan is aghast. It would mean the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. And then word comes in that Vendicar is complaining that they aren’t keeping up with their casualties.

Anan is again fixated on their war. If Vendikar decides they are violating the treaty, it will certainly mean real war. “I can’t stop it—escalation is automatic!” Anan cries. “You can stop it!”

“Stop it?” Kirk says, this time with attitude. “I’m counting on it.”

Scotty contacts the council to report that the targeting of the planet is complete. Suddenly Kirk overcomes the guards and orders them and Anan to the other side of the room. Meanwhile, Spock and his group break in. Spock, sizing up the situation, utters a classic Spock line:

“I assumed you needed help. I see I’m in error.”

With the landing party, Spock searches for Kirk.

The clock is ticking, and the climax is at hand when the landing crew reclaims their communicators and phasers, and Spock begins figuring out how the Emimiar computers work. Anan watches them, still in disbelief. How can Kirk not understand what he is doing? But he does understand, and explains.

“Death, destruction, disease, horror---that’s what war is all about, Anan,” Kirk says. “That’s what makes it a thing to be avoided. You’ve made it neat and painless. So neat and painless, you’ve had no reason to stop it. And you had it for 500 years. Since it seems to be the only way I can save my crew and my ship” (though by now, this doesn’t seem to be true anymore) “I’m going to end it for you, one way or another.”

As Anan looks on in anguish, Kirk and Spock destroy the computers linked to the computers on Vendikar.

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” Anan says.

“Yes, I do,” Kirk replies. “I’ve given you back the horrors of war. The Vendikar will assume you’ve broken your agreement, and that you’re preparing to wage real war with real weapons. They will want to do the same. Only the next attack they launch will do more than just count up numbers on a computer. They’ll destroy your cities, devastate your planet. You, of course, will want to retaliate. If I were you, I would start making bombs. Yes, Anan, you have a real war on your hands. You can either wage it with real weapons, or you might consider an alternative. Put an end to it. Make peace.”

“There can be no peace,” Anan answers. “Don’t you see, we’ve admitted it to ourselves! We’re a killer species, it’s instinctive. It’s the same with you.”

And now comes one of Kirk’s most famous speeches. “All right, it’s instinctive,” he says. “We’re human beings with the blood of a million savage years, but we can stop it. We can admit that we’re killers, but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes. Knowing that we’re not going to kill---today. Contact Vendikar. I think you’ll find they are just as terrified, appalled, horrified as you, that they’ll do anything to avoid the alternative I’ve given you. Peace, or utter destruction. It’s up to you.”

Anan acknowledges there might be a chance. There is a direct communications link that hasn’t been used in centuries. Ambassador Fox offers his assistance. Kirk cancels General Order 24, and after some repartee on the bridge (during which Captain Kirk points out that had the war been real fewer people would have died, and it would have been over long ago), the Enterprise warps to its next mission.

Scotty and McCoy deal with the sonic attack from Eminiar VII. 

This has become one of the signal stories of Star Trek. If you had 15 episodes, maybe even 10, from all of Star Trek to introduce someone to what Star Trek means, this could very well be included. Gene Coon was producing and writing by this time, and not only were issued joined with sharper writing, but the characters were becoming clearly defined, especially Captain Kirk. The repartee between Kirk and Spock, and Spock and McCoy, was also becoming better and more defining.

But more than producers and writers defined Star Trek stories. We understand these episodes in our context, but our understanding increases when we consider the context in which they were created.

A Taste of Armageddon first aired on February 23, 1967. There were some 338,000 American troops in Vietnam. Close to 7,000 Americans had died in the war so far, with some 40,000 injured. The largest air battle of the war occurred over North Vietnam in January. Extensive damage to North Vietnam from American bombing, including civilian deaths, was documented.

This script is full of this war’s vocabulary. “Escalation” was a relatively new term, widely used for the first time concerning Vietnam. Even Spock’s apparently offhand comment about Mea not “immolating” herself suggests the Buddhist monks in Saigon immolating themselves in protest of the war. And Kirk’s phrase, “throwing a monkey wrench into the machinery” was a metaphor used by young dissidents in the U.S. and Europe, sometimes applied to the “war machine,” sometimes to the larger mechanisms that support war and injustice. The line about the people of Eminiar VII having a sense of duty, and walking into suicide machines, reflects the Vietnam era debate about patriotism versus refusing to participate in the war.

But in its emphasis on total war, the script also speaks to the continuing threat of thermonuclear war. Because missiles could be on their way to their targets before definitely detected, and possibly could destroy the enemy’s bomb-tipped missiles before they could be fired, there was increasing talk of putting computers in control. This led to many films of accidental warfare caused by screw-ups in command-and-control mechanisms, like Fail-Safe (1964) and Dr. Strangelove (1964). Or all-powerful supercomputers launching a war that humans couldn’t stop (War Games in 1983) or simply holding humankind hostage by controlling nuclear weapons (Colossus: The Forbin Project in 1970, directed by Trek director Joseph Sargent.)

This script weds the computerized warfare idea from nuclear war scenarios (the very idea of “scenarios”, projections and using computers to study the future came from attempts to predict nuclear war casualties and effects) with a particular aspect of the Vietnam war: its visibility, yet its abstraction.

In 1967, there were daily body counts reported on the evening news, night after night. The dead were categorized as American, South Vietnamese, and Viet Cong/North Vietnamese. The American casualties were the most accurate, and the enemy casualties the most obviously inflated.

But the war was far away, and Americans were largely unaffected. No bombs fell in American cities, no buildings were destroyed. In 1967 the largest draft calls of the war were still ahead, and not so many families were directly affected by the war as eventually would be. Americans were otherwise pretty prosperous. Until early 1967, they weren’t even feeling an extra tax bite to pay for the war. It was still pretty abstract.

In some ways, Vietnam was an anomaly. It was “the television war,” seen every night on newscasts. The U.S. still honored the rights of news media to cover a war (which they’d done in World War II) so those images were seen every day, eventually dominating the news. As the war went on, the images became more graphic. Bombs fell, napalm flared, soldiers and civilians died onscreen. The TV showed a Vietnam prisoner being suddenly shot, and American soldiers setting fire to a village with cigarette lighters, and the villagers running away, screaming. There were pictures of the wounded in pain, and pictures of body bags, and flag-draped coffins. It was all so real, and yet it was all a TV show. It was all very strange.

But in 1967, that kind of coverage was just beginning. The war was big news, but the news always ended with the body count. It could seem as if soldiers far away walked unseen into disintegration chambers, so that life could go on as usual in the U.S.

Ambassador Fox

The story for “A Taste of Armaggedon” was written by Robert Hamner, but the script was largely Gene Coon’s. He’d recently become Star Trek’s producer, with Gene Roddenberry now as Executive Producer. Coon worked on stories and scripts within the universe Roddenberry created, and told the stories that defined Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek for all time.

Star Trek’s approach to war itself helped to define what Star Trek has always meant since. There was not always, strictly speaking, an anti-war message or theme, yet the very strongly articulated point of view in this story was and is essential to Star Trek, and its unique approach to conflict and war.

And that point of view was knowledgeable and earned. Gene Coon had been in the Marines for four years in World War II and after. He saw combat in the Pacific, and served in occupied Japan and in China. Recently I happened on a paperback copy of The Short End, one of his two novels, this one published in 1964. It’s about the Korean war, and pulls no punches. There is violence of all kinds in it, including soldiers brutally fighting among themselves.

Gene Roddenberry also served in the Pacific, going on bombing raids as a pilot in B-17s, without fighter escort, under fire from the ground and from enemy planes. In the air he also battled weather (flying once into a typhoon, with his plane facing the trough of a giant wave), and he saw military bureaucracy and the stupidity of some commanders cost the lives of men he knew.

Their beliefs about war came from experiencing and knowing war, as well as considering the alternatives. Though we today are nearly 40 years distant from when this Star Trek episode was written and filmed, Gene Coon and Gene Roddenberry were little more than 20 years from their wartime experiences. Both continued to use those experiences in their work for the rest of their lives (which for Gene Coon, was not long. He died of lung cancer in 1973.)

If they had wanted to write “gritty” war stories, they could have done so from their experience of the real thing, not from watching war movies or imagining how it works. But at least in Star Trek, they chose to make this statement about the essential issues. Most of the literature examining the nature of war, including anti-war novels and movies of the 1960s, were created by World War II combat veterans, like Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., or were war correspondents, like Stanley Kubrick. They knew what they were talking about.

And that is a major point of this episode: experiencing the reality of war is the best deterrent to war. This is also the message of other anti-war novels and poems from World War I (All Quiet on the Western Front being among the most eloquent) and before. But of course, these authors didn't mean people had to experience war in order to try to prevent future wars. They didn't write of the horrors of war so that people would start new wars. We can experience those horrors by reading their words, or inhabiting their images.

In this episode, Gene Coon is saying very clearly that the violence and madness of war is very different from anything abstract that can be said about why it is fought. It becomes its own evidence and argument.

In this story, Eminiar VII has found a very intelligent and logical solution to being unable to settle their differences without war. The reason stated in the story is because people cannot rise above their enmities, or resolve their differences without violence. The history of humankind would tend to support this idea. But Star Trek is about learning, including learning from mistakes. It's about starting over, consciously, and creating a new history, with new self-knowledge and a new realization of human potential.

We’ll get back to that point in a moment. But I want to add one more thing about the situation on Eminiar. We see that its leaders value the continuity of their culture over the lives of individuals. They are amazed that the Enterprise people can’t see the wisdom of this. By some premises, it is logical, even scientific. There’s a sense that tradition is preserved, and that artistic and intellectual advances continue---perhaps even evolutionary ones.

This is the kind of thinking that many people do associate with science and logic, and there was a sense during Vietnam that the “best and the brightest” always had logical, even scientific reasons for continuing the slaughter (in the sense that geopolitics, or military science are scientific.)

But the graphic images of the television war, along with the reporting from Vietnam in magazines and books, brought the reality of war---and the feelings generated by imagining that reality—into the public debate. This led to a different kind of logic---more like Mr. Spock’s than Anan 7’s---that destroying countries in order to save them was illogical, and morally wrong.

Television coverage of our most recent wars, including the current one, has been more carefully managed. No flag-draped coffins or body bags are permitted to be shown, and few images of civilians wounded or killed. Much of the imagery we’ve seen is of computer-guided bombs, and computer simulations. War as most Americans experience it has become a computer game. War has become abstract.

Another point to touch on briefly: Star Trek often champions the individual, very important when dealing with sweeping changes or differences in how societies are organized. In this context, it touches upon two widely debated issues in 1967. One was the role of individual citizens in deciding whether their country's war was legitimate. Many people felt even questioning the Vietnam War was unpatriotic, that we had to support and trust our leaders, that they knew things we didn't. The role of individual decisions was even more acute when it came to the draft. Was obeying the draft a civic duty, or did individuals have the right and the duty to refuse to participate in a war they felt deeply was illegitimate and immoral? Draft resistance would become even more of an issue in the next few years, but it was already being raised in the public arena in 1967. The spectre of people voluntarily marching into disintegration chamber cast this issue in a disturbing light.

Beyond the points made in this episode, there is something else to consider about the continuity on Eminiar VII. That means of waging war preserved not only the culture but the power structure. Perhaps Anan faced voters irate about the bad math the computer used in its attacks and defense, but it’s unlikely. The people with real power were secure in an abstract war.

Eminiar VII: the matte painting.

The most famous element of this episode is Kirk’s line “We’re killers—but we’re not going to kill today.” It’s a bit reminiscent of the Alcoholics Anonymous approach of controlling addictions one day at a time (though “twelve-step programs” didn’t become common knowledge until the 1980s, AA has been widely active since the 1940s.) It’s also a bit reminiscent of the time Traveller in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, who when he realizes the Morlocks are helpless, drops his weapon and controls his frenzy of killing. “I struck them no more.”

But the essence of his statement is choice. By exercising choice, even once (“today”), it suggests that choice is possible. Becoming conscious is part of choice: conscious not only of possibility and capability, but of what drives you in your choices. Consciousness itself becomes an important drive: the will to understand your unconscious drives and expressions, and the will to make conscious decisions.

Anan’s argument is an old one, yet it comes in a contemporary guise. Anan talks about the “instinct” to kill; today we might talk about this in terms of genes, or natural selection. But it amounts to the same argument, which is both based on a false premise of human nature, and on a false and defeatist sense of human capability.

Although Kirk agrees with Anan’s premise, that we are killers “with the blood of a million savage years,” he didn’t need to, because in a meaningful way, it’s a false premise.

First of all, we’ve been becoming human for more like two million years. It is of course true that humans, like every other living species, live directly or indirectly from the death of other life. Like most creatures, we kill to live. (Even vegetarians do.)

But we ought to be careful about what we assume or extrapolate. We can look at animals, and see how they hunt and savagely kill. We can look at our history of organized slaughter of other animals and of each other in warfare. And we can devise theories about how all this must be so: it’s in our genes. Survival of the fittest. Every human---every individual and his genes--for himself.

But it’s all pretty oversimplified. Humans, like many other animal species, live by killing but also by cooperation. Individuals in social species don’t survive without each other, and humans are the primate species most dependent on each other to survive. This simple fact flummoxes a great deal of otherwise scientific theory.

There are scholars---the human ecologist Paul Shepard being the one I know best---who tell a much different story of “primitive” or primal humanity in pre-history than we’ll find in our caveman clichés. It is our image of our ancestry that is primitive, as further evidenced by existing Indigenous peoples and their knowledge and traditions. Primal peoples hunt animals, but they feel deeply related to them. They feel fear and awe and gratitude. Humans living in the same environment as animals learn from them. Their attitude about killing them is much more complex than we generally suppose.

We basically extrapolate the origins of our “instincts” and what they mean in terms of behavior from historical time: from our few thousand years of so-called civilization. We certainly have instincts, and our survival often does depend on knowing friend from foe. But how that plays out may have much more to do with our particular civilizations, religions, technologies, and particularly our power structures than with our genes or instincts.

Instincts--and genes--operate correctly when they switch on in correct contexts. But they often are summoned falsely, in inappropriate contexts. And as our lives and relationships with the world and each other get more complex, the inappropriate release of behavior motivated by "instinct" or the unconscious becomes more common, and more of a deadly problem.

But even if you accept Anan’s “we are killers,” as Kirk does, you can still come to same basic human fact of choice. So again, it does not matter if the evil comes from demons outside (as it did in Day of the Dove), or if it comes from instincts inside (as posited in this story.) The essence of human freedom is choice.

That choice can be very basic---“we aren’t going to kill today—“ and knowing that can be liberating. But that doesn’t mean it will be simple or easy, or without cost. We still must know about the real enemies from outside, whether they threaten our lives or our freedom, or they distort reality and deceive us, by pushing our unconscious buttons for their own purposes.

We need to become more conscious of what those buttons are and how they are pushed, and how our unconscious can trick us into believing we’re acting rationally when we’re not. We do that individually, and we do that together (and speaking of primitives and killers, it’s in Indigenous and tribal societies we find the deepest traditions and commitment to talking through problems until a peaceful solution is reached.) We also need to be a little smarter about the people we follow, and whose interests are served when they push our buttons.

Star Trek is basically adventure, and in some ways it is melodrama, because it often pits a hero against obstacles or villains, and usually the hero triumphs and virtue is rewarded. But Star Trek is also an internal adventure, about the human heart and the human soul, and beyond that, the heart and soul of things, of the universe. It is about the mysteries inside as well as out there. I’ve called it the science fiction of consciousness, and these two episodes represent this well.

James Doohan at the Scotty Convention, in his last public
appearance. Kowinski photo.

Another Oscar Snub for Star Trek

In their annual tribute to important figures in motion pictures who passed away the previous year, the Oscars failed to mention James Doohan, despite his 7 Star Trek films and appearances in (by my count) some 19 other movies in a nearly 50 year career.

This was an unpleasant echo of the snubbing of DeForest Kelley in the Oscar tribute for 1999. Kelley's movie career began in 1947, and his last film appearance (voice) was in 1998. Kelley's pre-Trek appearances in many westerns alone merited a mention.

Hollywood awards--especially the Oscars and Emmys--have a long record of ignoring Star Trek except for effects and technical categories. This is especially true of actors, who have never won a major award for their work on a Star Trek series or movie. That for example Patrick Stewart never got an Emmy nomination (even the year that Star Trek: The Next Generation became the only Star Trek to be nominated as Best Drama Series) remains both a mystery and a very sore point with Star Trek fans.

Michelle at Trek Today lists Star Trek alums among the nominated and the winners, noting that Marina Sirtis appears in Crash, which was awarded Best Picture. Actor Brock Peters (Star Trek VI, as well as Deep Space 9) and director Robert Wise (Star Trek: The Motion Picture) were mentioned in the memorial montage, though their Star Trek films were not referenced.

Nor was any shot from any of the ten Star Trek films included in the several minutes of montage of scenes in "epic" films of the past, though there were several from the first 3 Star Wars movies, as well as shots from ET, Back to the Future, Close Encounters, 2001, and Apollo 13.

Those who were mentioned in Sunday's Oscar tribute to those who died in 2005 included several producers, a makeup artist, a production designer and a re-recording mixer. But not the man who created a character known around the world: Scotty in Star Trek. Though the fate of his ashes going or not going into space creates headlines, James Doohan's contributions to Hollywood did not receive the respect he was due from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Trek XI Latest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An entity that feeds on hostility and violence. Has it made a lot of history?

Star Trek: the Nature of Evil
by William S. Kowinski

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

McCoy and Chekhov on the planet's surface.
The florescent pink bushes should have tipped
them off something was wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ever-logical Mr. Spock searches for
the alien entity on the Enterprise.

“Day of the Dove” begins with a landing party on a barren planet, investigating a distress signal from a Federation colony that now seems to have completely vanished. Meanwhile, the Enterprise detects a Klingon vessel heading their way, and the landing party quickly concludes the colony had been destroyed by Klingons.

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

“Go to the devil,” Kirk says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This is war!” Scott cries.

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

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

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

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

McCoy then apologizes to Spock for his racist outburst earlier.

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

Kang on the Enterprise: "Another of Kirk's tricks?"

A wounded crewman, now healed, appears with his sword, crazed to kill Klingons and “even the score” (even though he is no longer hurt.) Kirk and Spock observe the alien hovering above---they note that it grew more vibrant when the crewman expressed a lust for vengeance and violence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

M. Scott Peck, author of "People of the Lie" 

“I know there is evil in the world---essential evil, not the opposite of good but something in which good itself is an irrelevance---a fantasy.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Kennedy in 1968.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kirk finds Kang takes some convincing.

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.

Now what? A Mind Meld with a Tuna? 

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?

Just where have we been warping to?

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.

Spock: his arc was unification of opposites: logic and feeling,
light and shadow, human and alien.

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.

Home Bittersweet Home:Picard and Kirk in the Nexus

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.

From TNG "The Inner Light"

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.

Keeper of the flame?

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.

What would Picard do? Not go after a child singing Christmas carols with a stick, that's for sure.

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.

Picard's Dickens-era Christmas in the Nexus in the feature, "Generations." 

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!"

Joel Grey as the Ghost of Christmas Past in the 1999 Patrick Stewart "A Christmas Carol"

“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.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!