Of Gods and Men poster

Star Dateline News

The official Star Trek site, Startrek. com, has been designated also as the official site for Trek XI, at least so far. But other fan-run sites are springing up, such as The Trek XI Report which features news and video clips, and is already in the thick of the media frenzy by publicizing the premature casting of Matt Damon as Kirk on the Internet Movie Database. The usually reliable IMDb doesn't have a great track record on Trek XI anyway, having for years designated Nick Meyer as its director. I asked Meyer about this a couple of summers ago, and he professed surprise, although he did seem interested.

As some predicted, the lack of new Trek TV or film in production has left a space for unofficial efforts, like Of Gods and Men, which has some new teaser banners on its site. But some can't wait for costly productions, and are creating new Star Trek stories and posting them as scripts for "virtual" fan films, such as those found at Star Trek (Reborn), where fans can also discuss the stories online.

Meanwhile, the site for PlanetXpo's Star Trek 40th anniversary convention in Seattle has added a blog to start the discussion on how Star Trek has changed the world in the past 40 years, a theme of the convention.

first Trek XI poster logo

News Update

Both Trek Today and TrekWeb have noted Morgan Gendel’s comments on “The Inner Light” here (see below.) Jeff Ayers, author of Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion, forthcoming in November, emailed to say he's interested in Morgan Gendel getting in touch with him for a project he's working on with Trek fiction writer Kevin Lauderdale. I’ll pass on that info through "captainfuture" at sbcglobal, dot net.

Planet Xpo has just released more information on the Star Trek 40th Anniversary Celebration and Conference, September 8 – 10 at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle. “The weekend will feature three days of presentations and panels by actors, authors, entrepreneurs, and scientists exploring how Star Trek has changed the world over the past 40 years.”

Some of the scheduled highlights: a live presentation of a staged radio play, starring Jason Alexander as an “evil Captain Kirk,” with a cast of Star Trek alums. The play was written by Walter Koenig and Tracy Torme, both of whom will be at the convention.

Also the world premiere of "To Serve All My Days," introduced by and starring Walter Koenig; director Robert Burnett's presenting "Free Enterprise," Tim Russ' presenting "Roddenberry On Patrol" and Nichelle Nichols' presenting the trailer for her new forthcoming movie, "Lady Magdalene.”

Besides the aforementioned Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Alexander, Russ and Torme, there will be appearances by the Rikers--Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis—George Takei, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, Rod Roddenberry, Gary Lockwood, Grace Lee Whitney, Garrett Wang, John Billingsley, Alan Ruck, Star Trek physicist Dr. Lawrence Krauss, science fiction authors Greg Bear, Jeff Greenwald and David Marinaccio, and others.

There are numerous panels, two evening events, dealers rooms and so on, but the number of attendees is limited, so check out planetxpo.com for details and reservations.

TrekCheck: The Latest From J.J. (and other matters)

First a bit of site news. The post on the TNG episode "Inner Light" got a long comment here from Morgan Grendel, who wrote the episode. He provides more history, confirms the title's source, and suggests a follow-up episode he pitched but which was never made. Check it out.

Also old business: I saw the rest of the 2005 Eccleston Doctor Who episodes I'd missed, and viewed several again I'd seen before. My admiration has only grown. But I also noted two Trek references. In "The Empty Child," Rose has to explain who the Doctor is to Captain Jack, and is befuddled because he doesn't give a name. Just the Doctor--"what is that about? Doctor who?" So what is the name Rose chose for the Doctor? "Mr. Spock."

So Rose is a Trek fan, which pays off in the second episode in this two-parter, "The Doctor Dances," when Rose volunteers to distract a soldier but Jack tells her he's the one to do the distracting. His any-gender sexuality, the Doctor says, is the way humans are in the 51st century, only it's also any-alien. Rose says something to the effect that is this what humans do? "Seek out new life and..." mate with it is the jist. The Doctor confirms it. So it looks like Captain Kirk had the right idea all along.

Okay, J.J. Abrams. A number of interviews have recently been published, with slightly different things to say. Some of the difference may reflect the time elapsed since the interview was given. But in what is likely to be the most recent, in TV Guide, Abrams says the writing is surprisingly far along--they must have the basic story--and he may be ready to go with the movie before Paramount is. None of the interviews deal with the rumor that Matt Damon is preferred to play the young James T. Kirk (although how much younger is Damon than Shatner was when he played Kirk? The answer: he isn't. Shatner was 35 when he started playing Kirk in 1966. At the scheduled release of Star Trek XI in 2008, Damon will be 38.)

Abrams is not confirming the Paramount announcement of a story about Kirk and Spock at the Academy, but the first poster released on startrek.com, with the original series style and the gold and blue of that series' command and science uniforms, tends to support it. But as some fans wrote on the Trekweb board, that doesn't mean we won't see a TNG-style poster added in the coming months. That would really start people talking.

In answering the all-important question of what makes Star Trek special, he told TV Guide:
"It was incredibly smart television. The original series and Next Generation were about something - human nature and the idea of coming up against the unexpected and the often terrifying. It was a good story that happened to be science fiction. When I watch episodes with my 7-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter and see them so vitally respond to a show that was made the year I was born - it's not because it takes place on a spaceship. What endures isn't a genre, it's character and emotional connection. "

This tends to support the impression that the movie is going to deal with something "unexpected and terrifying," which he's mentioned as what he liked in the original series but what he found missing in Trek movies. As he told Variety: "[Trek] was always my favorite when it was a little bit scary, when they would deal with beaming something on the ship that was an incredible mystery or there was a clear threat.

He also told Variety: Star Trek to me was always about infinite possibility and the incredible imagination that Gene Roddenberry brought to that core of characters," he says. "It was a show about purpose, about faith vs. logic, about science vs. emotion, about us vs. them. It was its own world, and yet it was our world.

The "us vs. them" concerns me. Dealing with those issues is one thing, but re-starting Star Trek with a simplistic us vs. them story would be contrary to the real achievement of the saga, the part of GR's vision most important to him, and a real disappointment. Trek began at a time that Us vs. Them was the plot of the usual science fiction film, and when it was a time of Us vs. Them conflicts in America and involving the U.S. abroad. Trek was able to create strong stories and conflicts, without resorting to the brutalizing oversimplifcations of Us vs. Them.

We're in another period like that now. We need the vision of another way reconfirmed for this generation. The diversity on the Enterprise bridge, including the "Thems" of racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes, as well as the sci-fi "Them" of the alien, was the key to Trek's soul. I'd like to see this infused with fresh meaning for our time.

Fans will be reassured that Abrams and others on his team are insisting they know the Star Trek universe and the "canon" of previous stories, and will respect them in their story. They confirm that they respect the fans as a key to their success. Abrams has apparently talked with William Shatner about the project, and he's said very laudatory things about Leonard Nimoy. He went so far as to menton that Nicholas Meyer attended his bar mitzvah.

It seems Star Trek XI will be true to Star Trek's history. I'm hoping it will also be true to its soul.

Walter Koenig and Alan Ruck will reprise their Enterprise B era roles (from "Generations") in "Star Trek: Of Gods and Men," shooting now.

Action!

Today in New York, shooting begins on the biggest of an accelerating series of big Star Trek "fan films," Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, produced by Sky Douglas Conway and directed by Tim Russ (of Voyager), the team that did the affectionate non-documentary, Roddenberry on Patrol. (I came in late to a screening of this at the Scotty convention, but what I saw was terrific--smart and a lot of fun.) This production is also in association with James Cawley of “New Voyages," and is making use of their sets in New York. Other filming will take place in Los Angeles

Starring in this adventure are Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig and Grace Lee Whitney of the original series, Alan Ruck reprising his role of the captain of the Enterprise B in Star Trek Generations, plus other Trek alumni including Chase Masterson, JG Hertsler, Gary Graham, Crystal Allen, Tim Russ and Garrett Wang (who will play a villain.)

You can read the full press release at Trebweb, but I was especially taken with this paragraph: And it’s not at all about money. What makes Star Trek: Of Gods and Men special is that all these creative talents have united because of a common vision. They all believe in a series that was created by a visionary named Gene Roddenberry and the philosophy that it promoted – that all individuals are created equal and that one day all the peoples of the Earth will unite to live, work and play in harmony.

This really is the amazing thing. It's true that although people don't generally realize it, well-known actors in Hollywood and New York, including very big stars, do spend a lot of time workng for free or very little--doing readings, plays and small films, for a varety of reasons: to encourage new writers and their work, to give back to their art form, to express skills of their craft that may not be fully used in the roles they get in TV or film (where playing cops and criminals can get old fast), or for a cause they believe in. But it is still extraordinary that so many people would contribute their time and talent to keep expressing a vision that has inspired so many, beginning forty years ago this fall.

In this case, those donating their services include writers (Sky Conway, Jack Trevino and Ethan H. Calk) and all the other creative and tech people. It is further evidence that Star Trek was always a product of a shared vision and commitment, of many hands that worked together to create this story universe.

These productions are getting so professional that there needs to be a new name for them. Fan films won't do anymore. Tim Russ calls it a "nostalgia-based production," which is closer, but nostalgia has the connotation of something that's over. Paramount may think so, but for many people and well as many fans, the human adventure continues in the Star Trek story universe.

The finished film is expected to be available in three 30 minute episodes, downloadable from the Internet, by year's end. For more information, visit Star Trek: Of Gods and Men.

Tim Russ in "Generations"

Jay Chatterly's pennywhistle flute air became one of the best remembered pieces of Trek music.

The Inner Light, The Outer Darkness

by William S. Kowinski

Update: The first and last sections that follow deal with the Climate Crisis and its outcome if we don't meet this challenge. For a practical and hopeful view of how things might be changed, there's a new Rolling Stone interview with Al Gore that makes the case better than anything I've seen.

As the first run of Star Trek: The Next Generation came to an end, fans voted for their favorite episodes. Only the two-parter about the Borg invasion, “The Best of Both Worlds,” and “Yesterday’s Enterprise” were voted ahead of “The Inner Light.” It won a 1993 Hugo Award, the first TV episode to win one since the TOS story, “City on the Edge of Forever”. In the years since, esteem for this fifth season episode has only grown. Some now consider it is the best of the Next Generation, and even the best episode of any Star Trek series.

But I’ve been thinking about it recently not because of its excellence, though I’ve always admired it since I saw it the night it first aired. I’ve been pondering it lately, and drawn to see it again on DVD, by thoughts I’ve been having about the real and fairly immediate future of the earth.

Others may be thinking about it, too, right about now. “An Inconvenient Truth,” the documentary film about the Climate Crisis featuring Al Gore, is gradually opening in more and more places. In its first week it was #11 at the box office, despite being in only four theatres. The #10 film was in 1265 theatres. A couple of weeks later, it broke into the top ten, though it was still in only 77 theatres. Its per-theatre take was higher than that of the #1 movie that week---and higher than X-Men 3. The book version is high on the best seller list. (Here's the web site.)

The future it depicts, as determined by the phenomenon known as global warming, is dire. The changes are already underway, caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases. Glaciers and icepacks in the Arctic, in Greenland, in the Antarctic are melting. They are likely to cause sea levels to rise, flooding coastal cities. They may cause shifts in major ocean currents that will in turn cause radical changes in climate. On the day I write this, a new report by the National Center for Atmospheric Research confirms that “global warming accounted for around half of the extra hurricane-fueling warmth” in 2005, so Katrina and the record hurricane year were largely a product of the Climate Crisis, and not natural variations. Storms like these are likely to increase in number and ferocity, in various parts of the world.

Heating is already changing ecologies. Various studies suggest it will bring new diseases to larger areas, change rainfall patterns and create drought in some places, if it is not doing so already. Because of time lags between cause and effect, these current effects are from greenhouse gas buildups that occurred perhaps decades ago. The planet will feel the effects of current greenhouse gas emissions in decades to come. And if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t curtailed dramatically soon (some say five years, some say twenty, but most say 10 years), the climate change may reach a “tipping point,” after which nothing can stop a phenomenon that feeds on itself until it plays itself out. The result could very well be an inexorable dying away of life on earth as we know it.

“The Inner Light” is not strictly speaking about a planet suffering from global warming. Its sun is going nova, causing a gradual global drought. The sun's flaring and dying eventually will extinguish all life. Even at worst, the actual effects of our global warming are likely to be different, especially in different places on earth. But the applicability of this story to fears for our future is inescapable.

With great and concentrated effort, humankind may be able to prevent the worst effects of global heating in the future, and create remedies for the major problems it will cause in the next few decades. It looks very much like a challenge that human civilization must meet in order to go forward.

But what if humanity doesn’t respond? What if all an individual or a family can do, perhaps living in a town outside the great places of power, is watch, measure the changes, and await the end?

The Kataan probe--yin and yang,
as above so below, the Tao of space?

Picard gazes on the village of Ressik, paintng by Dan Curry.

The Story

On their way to report on a magnetic wave survey, the Enterprise encounters a probe of unfamiliar design that suddenly emits a nucleonic beam that knocks Captain Picard to the floor, apparently unconscious. He awakens in a strange room, wearing strange clothes, and being attended to by a strange woman, who tells him he is home.

Her name is Eline, and she insists he is Kamin, her husband, who has been ill with a high fever. Picard leaves the house and finds himself in a village square. He sees someone dedicating the planting of a tree as an “affirmation of life” during a long drought. This man is Batai, who claims to be his (Kamin’s) friend. He learns he is in the village of Ressik on a planet he’s never heard of, called Kataan.

He continues to reconnoiter, realizing he is not a prisoner of these people, but there is nowhere to go. At nightfall he returns, exhausted, to the only place he knows--the house where he woke up, and to Eline. She remains convinced he is Kamin. When he says with morbid humor that he supposes his hunger proves this isn’t a dream, she asks incredulously, “You think that this-- your life-- is a dream? “

She gives him soup, which he tastes gingerly. “This is delicious,” he says. Eline, a handsome woman in her thirties or forties, beams and says softly with delight, “You always say that.” In a look and a few words she had communicated fully her good heart, her love for Kamin, and the warmth of their relationship.

Picard gently probes for answers. He learns that Kataan is not a spacefaring planet, that Kamin is an ironweaver but prefers playing the flute. Eline shows it to him. “When did I learn to play it?” Picard asks, meaning Kamin. “I’m afraid you never did, dear,” Eline says. “You do keep trying.”

On the Enterprise, Data says that a narrow beam is now focused on the supine Captain. Picard’s vital signs are strong, and Doctor Crusher advises that the beam not be disrupted until she can figure out what it’s doing. Riker wants to identify the source of the probe.

But when we return to Kataan, five years have passed. Eline is losing patience with Kamin/Picard and his recollections of another life on a starship. “It was real,” he insists. “As real as this is. You can’t expect me to forget the lifetime I spent there.” “Yes, I can,” she says.

As real as this is—so Picard has accepted the reality of his life on Kataan, and has responded to Eline’s love. He is clearly torn by her need to have him be fully in this life, and for them to begin a family.

He also has become part of the community, and befitting his Picard personality, he has studied this planet’s drought problem and will now push for a solution. He goes with Batai to the town square to meet the regional Administrator, who is curious about the tree flourishing in the midst of drought. Batai explains that everyone contributes part of their water rations to keep it alive, as a symbol of hope. Kamin tells the administrator that their crops will die without more water, and asks for an atmospheric condenser to be built. The Administrator says it is a large undertaking, but he will take the idea to the central government. Picard/Kamin knows nothing will come of it, and tells Batai they should plan to build their own.

Later that day, hy proposes to Eline that he build a nursery. So he commits to starting a family. He has left Picard behind (even though the melody he has just been playing on his flute is Frere Jacques, which Picard sang with a group of stranded children in an earlier fifth season episode, “Disaster.”) He is Kamin now.

Kamin and son, played by Patrick Stewart and his son, Daniel.

Kamin and his doomed grandson.

On the Enterprise, Data has discovered a way to disrupt the beam. Crusher is opposed, but Riker decides to go ahead.

On the planet, seven more years have passed. With his daughter playing nearby, Kamin is presiding over the naming ceremony of his infant son by playing his flute. The melody he plays becomes the theme for the episode, and probably the best known and most fondly remembered piece of music (apart from the opening theme) in any Next Generation episode.

Kamin seems completely in this life, but as he gazes at his son (named Batai, after his friend who has died) he says words that could have come from Picard: “I’d always thought I didn’t need children to complete my life. Now I can’t imagine life without them.”

But suddenly Kamin crumples to the floor, as Picard’s life begins to ebb on the Enteprise when the beam is disrupted. Data restores it, Picard returns to normal, and Kamin’s life resumes.

On the planet, Kamin’s now-sixteen year old daughter Meribor is discussing the results of her soil samples with a now visibly older Kamin. She has concluded what he already knows: There is no bacterial life in the soil. Their planet is dying. “It saddens me to see you bear the burden of knowing things…things you can’t change,” he says. She decides that she should marry the boy who has been pursuing her “sooner rather than later.” Kamin responds with passion: “Seize the time, Meribor. Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.”

The Enterprise has traced the probe to its origin, to a planetary system where all life was destroyed a thousand years before, when its sun went nova.

More years pass on the planet. Kamin’s son Batai becomes a young man and wants to pursue music. Kamin blusters a bit because Batai keeps changing his mind about what he wants, but can’t deny him whatever joy he can find. “Who knows how much time he’ll have to follow any dream?”

Kamin makes one last attempt to get the now aged Administrator to listen to his findings but their scientists already know the planet is doomed, and there’s nothing they can do. Their technology is too limited for space travel. Kamin suggests sending genetic samples into space to at least preserve something of Kataan. The Administrator admits there is a plan in the works. But their conversation is interrupted by young Batai---Elise is dying. She and Kamin have a brief conversation, full of the love and domestic details of a long partnership. As a single tear escapes from the corner of her eye, she dies, and Kamin’s head bows in grief.

More years have passed. Kamin is playing with his grandson, Meribor’s child. As Meribor and Bataii try to coax Kamin into coming with them to the town square to watch the launching of a missile, Kamin confesses that seeing his grandson breaks his heart. “He deserves a rich, full life, and he’s not going to get one.”

But Kamin goes with them, and in his obstreperous old man way, demands to know what they are launching. “You know about it, father,” Meribor says, “you’ve already seen it.” It’s a probe sent out to find someone in the future who will learn about the lives on Kataan and preserve those memories.

Now in the terminally hot sun and the haze of advanced age Kamin suddenly realizes what his long-ago starship dreams were all about. “It’s me, isn’t it? I’m the someone. I’m the one it finds…That’s what this launching is—a probe that finds me, in the future.”

His friend Batai and his wife Elise, both restored to their youth as when he first saw them, explain to him the intentions of the probe. As Kamin sees the woman he loved, Picard hears her say that they have all been dead for a thousand years. “If you remember what we were, and how we lived…then we’ll have found life again… Now we live in you. Tell them of us, my darling…”

Kamin watches the rocket ascend, as Picard begins to stir on the bridge of the Enterprise. He learns that he has been unconscious for twenty-five minutes. He has lived more than thirty years of another life.

Later in his quarters, Riker tells him they have taken the probe into the shuttle bay, no longer functioning. But inside it they found a small box, which Riker gives to Picard, and quietly leaves. Inside is the Ressikan flute. Picard holds it to his heart as he takes it to face his windows into space, and begins to play the melody he composed for Kamin’s infant son’s naming ceremony.

Eline, played by Margot Rose.

Inside the Magic

H.G. Wells explained how his science fiction stories worked: a plausible or at least fascinating “magic trick,” in a self-consistent world with recognizable characters. The science fiction in “The Inner Light” is a beam that causes a man to experience himself as someone else, and live more than thirty years of a life in less than a half hour in real time. This remarkable idea is both somewhat plausible (our science says that damage to the brain or electrical stimulation can alter a person’s perceptions and memories; chemicals can cause hallucinations) and intriguing, because we are all fascinated with dreams that seem to be real. We’re also especially fascinated with how we experience the passage of time, in dreams or in various circumstances in our waking life.

The “magic trick” works, Wells says, only if you don’t look too hard at it. In this case, we aren’t supposed to speculate on how a society that isn’t capable of interplanetary travel can create a device capable of projecting into an unknown being such a completely felt and experienced hallucination. Besides, in the context of a television series, we often accept any excuse to see a well-known character in an entirely different situation or life, caused by anything from fever-dreams to mirror universes.

A more serious problem would be if we didn’t believe that Picard could forget who he was, and become someone else so completely. But the careful writing and wonderful acting makes this magic trick successful---we believe it entirely. Not only was this one of Patrick Stewart’s best performances, but Margot Rose was perfect as Elise. She seldom gets the credit she deserves for the success of this episode.

In some ways, the episode harks back to the original series in its bounded simplicity. Though it is beautifully lit and photographed, and filled with scenic detail, the world we see could be physically contained on a theatre stage. There are a few rooms in a modest house, a backyard, and a town square a few yards or feet away. Except for one matte painting, that’s all we see of Ressik. So like many TOS episodes, this is more like a stage play than the usual outer space, hardware-driven science fiction.

In fact I remember being a bit bothered by this constrictedness, this seeming artificiality when it first aired. But its emotional power was always there, and the subtlety of its structure became more apparent on subsequent viewings. Like certain fables or myths, it is deft and economical in its storytelling.

As a story about Picard, it is fascinating to those who know about his past in the series, and now, to those who can see how this experience changed him, as seen in later episodes and films. The life Picard leads as Kamin is almost the opposite of his life as Picard. Instead of an explorer through space, he stays in one place, and his explorations are in time. Instead of a commander of many, with high technology at his command, he is a relatively powerless man living a modest life with very little technology. But the most important difference, of course, is that as he himself observes: Picard he had no wife or children, and felt his life could be complete without them. But as Kamin, he cannot imagine his life without his family, and the love of a partner.

That Picard experienced being a father and then a grandfather, stayed with him even after he returned to his real life. We see his longings for family recur in the feature film, “Star Trek:Generations.” There are specific echoes of Kamin’s observations in what Picard says in that film as well. When Picard learns of the death of his nephew, he mourns the loss of all the experiences the boy would have had in the same terms as Kamin mourns the lost future of his children and grandchild. And Kamin’s words to Meribor to “live now…Make now the most precious time. Now will never come again” are virtually repeated by Picard to Riker at the end of Generations.

There are echoes and references even before that, notably in the sixth season episode, “Lessons,” when Picard plays the Ressikan flute with a woman he allows himself to falls in love with, (creating a duet with her around the melody of Frere Jacques), perhaps looking for a relationship like the one he had experienced as Kamin. The realities of Starfleet and serving as officers together on a starship, however, proved too difficult to sustain that dream.

But in our time especially, more than a decade after this episode first aired, what seems most relevant about it is the situation of the planet Kataan, and Kamin/Picard’s response to it, which also involve the episode’s mysterious title: “The Inner Light.” What could it mean, and what could it mean for us now?

Kamin understands

The return: Picard and his flute from another life.

Inner Light Sources

In this episode written by Morgan Gendel and Peter Allan Fields, from a story by Morgan Gendel, there’s no internal reference to an “the inner light.” (In the shooting script, there’s some conversation before the Enterprise encounters the probe about an Admiral who liked attending the entire 9 hour “Ring” cycle by Wagner, but it has only a tenuous thematic relevance as a long story compressed into a single experience. And it doesn’t appear in the filmed story.)

The most obvious reference is to a song titled “The Inner Light,” written by George Harrison and originally released in 1968 on a 45 rpm single as the “B” side to Paul McCartney’s “Lady Madonna.” It was pretty obscure for a Beatles song--except for a mono version on a 1978 collection of “rare” tracks, it didn’t make it onto an album until 1988, and the U.S. Beatles CD “Past Masters Vol. 2” in 1990, a couple of years before this TV episode aired.

Its sound is heavily influenced by music of India, with Indian musicians and instruments recorded in Bombay (Harrison was writing in this idiom at the time for a movie soundtrack.) According to the Ultimate Beatles Encyclopedia, Harrison received a letter praising his first song influenced by Indian sitar and Eastern philosophy, “Within You, Without You” on the Beatles Sergeant Pepper album, from Juan Mascaro, a Sanskrit teacher at Cambridge University, who has translated many Eastern religious texts including the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. Mascaro also sent his book, Lamps of Fire from the scriptures and wisdoms of the world, which included a translation of part of the Te Tao Ching (or Tao Te Ching) by Lao-tzu, which he apparently titled “The Inner Light.”

That particular book by Mascaro is out of print, but Verse 47 of the Tao Te Ching is the probable source for “The Inner Light” translation and Harrison’s song. Harrison uses some of the lines from this section, and adds several more verses in the same vein for his lyrics.

I always figured this song had something to do with this episode’s title, but it took a recent email from Nick Sagan to open my eyes to why. Though Nick isn’t claiming inside knowledge, he guesses this song is the source because the lyrics (“Without going out of my door/I can know all things of earth./Without looking out of my window/I could know the ways of heaven”) suggest the “ability to experience many things without actually going anywhere---and that’s what happens to Picard.”

It’s the kind of comment that has you hitting yourself in the head. Of course! While he’s lying on the floor of the Enterprise bridge, he experiences an entire lifetime on another planet.

“Arrive without traveling/See all without looking”

There’s also a melancholy comment on Picard’s life as an explorer in space:

The farther one travels/the less one knows
The less one really knows

The journey out is not complete without the journey in. But that’s just the beginning of the possible links of the title and its ultimate source (the Tao) to the content of this story. Which is not to say that the writers consciously designed this. They may or may not be surprised to learn of these connections.

For it turns out that some concept of “the inner light” recurs in many religious traditions. Quakers in particular, but other Christians as well, refer to the indwelling of the Divine as the Inner Light. When Eskimo shamans experience a feeling of oneness with the universe, it is accompanied by the flash of an “inner light.”

The Tao is considered a source for philosophies and beliefs in a number of Eastern traditions but particularly in Buddhism, and the metaphor of the inner light recurs there as well. The inner light is the experience of existence, of the is-ness of things, the Now that links the inner and the outer worlds.

I learned some of this by coincidence, for while I was preparing to write about this episode, I happened to be reading The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. Published in 1978 (and a National Book Award winner), it is his account of a physical journey across some of the Earth’s highest and most inaccessible mountains in Nepal and Tibet, which was also a spiritual journey on the Buddhist path.

Since I’d just seen “The Inner Light” episode again, I couldn’t escape being reminded of it as I read this book, especially in a passage like this: “Confronted by the uncouth specter of old age, disease, and death, we are thrown back upon the present, on this moment, here, right now, for that is all there is.”

Matthiessen expresses the Buddhist sense of the Divine in the present moment in several ways, but they eventually come down to this: “All that is or was or will ever be is right here in this moment! Now!”

To really break through to experiencing the fullness of the present moment is enlightenment in the Buddhist tradition. Picard does not quite reach such a sustained spiritual state, but at least on the level of feeling and consciousness he learns to value and cherishes the now above all else. (Picard does get closer to the Buddhist ideal of being in the moment, at least metaphorically, when he learns to “slow down time” in the film, Star Trek: Insurrection.) It is however closer to a spiritual transformation than an excuse on the level of transitory appetites and vain attempts to fill them, which is the negative meaning of living in the present.

For Picard, the solitary traveler through the outer darkness, the light of love and the inner light of living in the present moment is his enlightening experience. This willingness to live in the now also accounts for how Picard gives himself over to his new identity and life as Kamin.

He has learned as well that fulfillment does not require great achievements and honors, rank or medals, or being first in everything. He finds meaning and richness in a relatively simple life in a small village, without a lot of expensive or complicated things, among people of modesty and simple virtue. “Simplicity,” Matthiessen observes in The Snow Leopard, ”is the whole secret of well-being.”

Kamin with daughter Meribor, played by
Jennifer Nash.

Kamin and Meribor discussing their dying planet :
Make Now always the most precious time.

Our Kataan Moment

At this moment in much of America and Europe in the early twenty-first century, most people still live in relative comfort and safety. Not in New Orleans, where much of the massive damage caused by Hurricane Katrina last year has still not been repaired. Not in many other parts of the world, as in Africa, where warfare in places like Darfur and the Congo continue to inflict horrors and massive death. Nor in various parts of the world where old diseases are inexplicably returning, or alarming new ones threatening. Not in areas of Alaska and northern Canada, where the Inuit and others are coping with relatively sudden changes to their environment caused by the Climate Crisis.

But where I am, things are going reasonably well right now, but I have the strong sense they could go badly wrong quite suddenly. I try not to project my own situation on everything. I am relatively healthy and comfortable, though without much in the way of security, and for me personally (as Picard once said) there is less time ahead than there is behind. But that’s how I view this comfortable part of the world. Everything I know about how things are going tells me that what we call civilization has a very difficult future, and not in some distant time. In decades, at best.

I see much of this country and the western “First World” as comfortable, but teetering on the brink of disaster. We’ve had well over a century of accelerated technological progress and accelerated environmental destruction, and the chickens seem to be coming home to roost. Scientists talk of greater technological breakthroughs, especially in genetics and electronics, which could conceivably mean much longer and much healthier lives, with greater mental alertness and adroitness, and keener sensory abilities. And of course, even travel to the stars. But scientists also talk of environmental threats, particularly the Climate Crisis, that could ring down the curtain on all of it.

During this century or so of speedy technological progress and environmental destruction, our political, economic and cultural processes have made some progress, but have not kept up with the nature or reality of our challenges. And in some ways, they and we have devolved. The fate of humanity probably rests on what happens in those realms in the next ten and twenty and fifty years, but with a margin for error that is shrinking by the minute.

Scientists began to suspect the greenhouse effect was threatening the planet’s future in the late 1960s, and the resulting global warming has been persistently studied and publicly discussed for at least a quarter century. Yet more than halfway into the first decade of the 21st century, no effective action is being taken, while powerful corporations and the current American leadership are Climate Crisis deniers. This does not give me great confidence in prospects for the human future.

Yet while we grouse about high gasoline prices and joke about global warming whenever the weather is unusual, we ignore or deny the signs of what's going on, and what is to come (like the imminent decline in oil.) Like Picard/Kamin, scientists accumulate and evaluate their data, but the government denies its validity, and people don't see what can be done.

When the Climate Crisis truly takes hold, things will likely be a great deal more disordered and violent on earth than was Kataan, peacefully making do. Yet the attitude of that fictional culture, and Picard’s realizations as part of it, are a kind of model for me when I wonder how each of us, unable to effect the necessary changes in the big wide world, can deal with this feeling of a foreshortened future.

Even Star Trek, with its reputation for optimism, posits a major disruption in civilization in the mid 21st century, and it could be right on the money. Effects of the Climate Crisis could even include war, as nations bristling with weapons confront depleting resources of food and water as well as energy. But more about that aspect of the Star Trek future another time.

Picard’s emotional experience of partnership and family was sharpened by the surrounding sense of the planet’s mortality. Facing the death of a child—the end of a life before it has reached its fullness---is especially difficult. But facing death, after all, is facing death, whenever it comes. And it is the prospect of death and the reality of suffering that has prompted many religious traditions to search for meaning, most specifically Buddhism, which talks of the Four Noble Truths of suffering and its cessation.

It is in that context that Picard learned to value the present moment. “Make now the most precious time,” not just because it will never come again, but because it is all that there is. Of course, while he was able, Picard/Kamin never stopped working for a better future, because hope is an activity of the present.

The past and the future are also part of our now, but it is the experience of the present moment, on levels simple and profound, that is our life. It is said also to be the doorway to the realization of the permanent in the transitory, the universe in the grain of sand, eternity in the moment, which all add up to the divine in each of us, the inner light in the outer darkness.

New!

A consideration of the 1950s classic, Creature From the Black Lagoon, at The Boomer Hall of Fame.

Everybody lives! A transcendent Chris Eccleston moment
in the revived Doctor Who.

Who's First--What's in it for Trek?

by William S. Kowinski

The first season of the revived BBC series Doctor Who has recently finished its first run in the U.S., on the SCI FI channel (and will be on DVD here this month.) In the last episode, the ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, transformed into the tenth, played by David Tennant. So how did this revival do, and are there any lessons in it for Star Trek's return?

After an absence of about 15 years, the new Doctor Who was an immediate smash hit in England. With several related series and at least one spin-off, plus a pretty sophisticated web site (at least in terms of marketing), Doctor Who has quickly become a major part of the BBC TV presence. In the U.S., Doctor Who boosted Sci Fi Channel’s Friday night ratings by about 50%.

How did they do it? It appears that its creators recognized that over the years, Doctor Who has become an icon transcending its roots as a children’s show, despite its children’s-prime-time 7pm Saturday slot in England, and it could find a niche in the broad international science fiction and fantasy television market. But as an icon, it couldn’t stray too far from its known nature, nor the mythology it built over a quarter century on the air, plus another 15 years of re-runs, novels, conventions and so on.

So the new series uses digital technology for better visual effects, though at times they seem to be a bit childish and tongue-in-cheek, like the aliens with big blue doll-like eyes who take over Downing Street. (They're concealed inside the bodies of large people—perhaps suggesting that, as in the U.S. the average person in England has doubled in size.)

But the updated Daleks were meant to be menacing in today's terms (and were revealed more than ever as a direct ancestor of Star Trek's Borg Collective). Though in appearance the Dalek itself has not changed much from its essentially silly original, the Dalek armada was played for awe. By now, so many generations of British children have been delightfully frightened by Daleks that they qualify as the modern bogeyman.

That each episode is now 50 minutes or so allows for more complex stories, and principal writer Russell T. Davis has taken advantage of those possibilities. The strong individual episodes and deft two-parters also fed the forward momentum of a season that seemed designed as a unit.

Another essential achievement of this first season was to maintain the mood, the élan, of the best Doctor Who seasons (such as the Tom Baker/Douglas Adams period) while adding greater depth and dimension. A lot of the credit for that has to go to Christopher Eccelston as the ninth Doctor.

Billie Piper returns as Rose with David Tennant as the tenth
Doctor. No word yet on when his episodes will air in the U.S.

Eccelston is a skilled contemporary actor, who played the Doctor as emotionally present. His Doctor was quirky, moving from morose and moody to larky and a bit daft in an instant. We saw his anger and glimpsed internal conflicts and violence, and we saw him paralyzed with grief. There was a manic-depressive quality that got very edgy at times, and it was riveting to watch. But besides Eccelston’s masterful acting,what made all this work was portraying this Doctor as "northern" (from northern UK industrial areas like Liverpool and Birmingham and working class. ( These apparently were Eccelston’s own roots.)

The BBC code for this is “real,” but for Americans, it’s a blow to the stereotype of the aristocratic or high middle class Britisher. This Doctor seems the son of the 1950’s playwright John Osborne “Angry Young Men” era, a close cousin to the 1980s punks, the Joe Orton/Sex Pistols era. He had the look, the attitude, the edge of darkness. He still had the old Time Lord arrogance (plus a hint of a Time Lord's torment), but in his first encounter with a Dalek, you could see his panic, and his vengefulness. And a bit of the working class inferiority feeling that often gets expressed as aggression and machismo, but can change instantly to a glowering self-doubt.

But the working class element wasn't all Eccleston did: he played the alienness of the Doctor and his sense of power and authority, as other actors have in the part, but in his own way. He was especially mesmerizing in the decisive moments when the Doctor's confidence seems total. When he tells the Daleks that he’s going to rescue Rose, save the earth and destroy them, it may be tactical but it’s also exuberant.

The working class theme was extended in Rose, his companion (played by Billie Piper.) She escaped her working class life and by the season's final episode, found she couldn’t go back. (After leaving the Tardis, she’s seen eating with her mother and boyfriend, who are talking about a new pizza place. “What do they have?” “Pizza.”) It wasn’t going to all the amazing places in the universe, she said, but that the Doctor did things that meant something, and he never gave up. This extra layer of social context and character refreshed the Doctor Who ethos. Yet the Doctor was still the Doctor, with the same values. He was for justice, for life, and in the end, could not kill the innocent for an arguably greater good (reminding us perhaps that an earlier Doctor had the chance to destroy the Dalek race but couldn’t bring himself to commit genocide. Some standards have apparently changed.)

The working class affect, the emotional complexity, wouldn’t be enough to make this a convincing Doctor Who. It needed the his excitement, his love of life and love of lives. What really made this Doctor work was Eccleston’s otherworldly smile, his joy. “Everybody lives! Just this once, everybody lives!” he exulted, with his whole body, and you suddenly got another window into the mind and heart of a time traveler who sees so much death and destruction.

Thanks largely to Eccleston (though Billie Piper and the other actors were generally first rate as well), the producers and writers were able to establish the character of the new Doctor Who series. They wrote some subtle social commentary and fairly outrageous satire (especially in the game shows and reality programs as a Dalek plot to keep the earth in bondage), that the impatience of Eccleston’s Doctor helped to sell. But they could also experiment with various emotional colors (and sexual tensions), which Eccleston could play convincingly.

Fearing being typecast, Eccleston apparently insisted on a one-year only deal from the start, which the BBC erroneously announced just as the series started airing. We only had a moment of David Tennant so far, but judging from publicity stills and his own statements, he’s going to be closer to the Oxbridge-madcap Tom Baker mold. I can imagine that working, too. In the midst of its second season in England, Doctor Who has already begun work on a third.

Kirk candidate? John Barrowman as Captain Jack.

So what lessons might there be in this for Trek? Some may be tempted to do the “more like Galactica” mantra about a grittier series. But there’s really very little that’s transferable from this Doctor Who in terms of the Doctor’s character: the U.S. class system is too different, and the established Star Trek universe provides different opportunities, and different constraints. The sense of commitment to something larger is very Star Trek, though, and characters coming to realize it might be worth pursuing in a prequel. In any case, Eccleston does open some eyes to what a single actor can do, in conjunction with superior and sympathetic writing. But again, there are substantial differences: there were eight Doctors before him, but there has been only one Kirk, one Spock (at least with lines)-- one of all Trek's iconic characters. Everyone expects each Doctor to be different.

The actual lessons for a Star Trek revival, on the big screen or small, might be more like this: do it right. Give it the resources it needs, both for the show itself and for its marketing. If Paramount and whoever else is involved (like a TV network) isn’t fully committed, and is just trying to test the waters a bit, it probably won’t work.

In fact this Doctor Who revival’s success owes more than a little to the example of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They established the new people, in a new ship (the new Tardis), and then re-connected to the established universe (first, with the Daleks, and next season with other old heroes and villains.)

In terms of Star Trek XI, if indeed it is to be a prequel featuring younger versions of original series characters, this Doctor Who series may have provided an actor to play a young Kirk: John Barrowman, whose Captain Jack became a Kirkian hero. Captain Jack has his own BBC series now, but Barrowman could probably find the time.

Leonard Nimoy joined the Mission Impossible cast for a year after Star Trek's demise.

Trekcheck: Another Impossible Mission?

by William S. Kowinski

Forty years ago a fledging “studio” formed mostly to do something with the gobs of money flowing from the most successful sitcom in television history to that point, was preparing two new drama TV series, both decidedly offbeat. One was called Star Trek (which, legend has it, Lucille Ball believed would be about the travels of celebrities) and the other was Mission Impossible.

One of them became a hit, and then was forgotten for decades. The other failed, and became a legend. The hit was Mission Impossible, and as it prospered, Star Trek’s budgets faded. The two series were filmed next door to each other, and by Star Trek’s third season, its staff was scavenging the Mission Impossible dumpster for props and material to glue together to make alien cities and starship technology. When Star Trek was finally cancelled, one of its stars got a new job immediately—on Mission Impossible.

Forty years later, the fates of the story universes these two shows spawned are again strangely related. (That actually may have begun with the second Mission Impossible movie, its story written by Ronald Moore and Brian Braga, veteran writers and producers for Star Trek: The Next Generation and subsequent series’, and writers for a couple of Trek features.)

For when it was announced that the man in charge of the next Star Trek movie was J.J. Abrams, whose first feature as a director was the as yet to be released Mission Impossible III, the fate of Star Trek became linked directly to the fate of the latest Mission Impossible sequel.

Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 2. Was 3 not the charm?

Now MI3 has been in theatres for several weeks, and the buzz has been that it did not live up to box office expectations. Some stories, such as this one at Fox News, suggest the failure to match opening weekend expectations, and its subsequent fall-off, has induced nothing less than panic at Paramount, leading perhaps to people losing their jobs.

Other stories suggest it’s not that bad---that Paramount came close enough, and that overseas ticket sales were strong enough. Moreover, so far nobody seems to be blaming Abrams. Most fault the off-screen antics and perhaps fading box office appeal of Tom Cruise, star of all three MI features. Reviewers tended to praise the story and storytelling.

But Star Trek fans will recall the rationalizations of the disappointing opening weekend of Star Trek Nemesis, while by now the film is firmly reputed a commercial failure. While MI3 managed to stay #1 against the release of the woeful “Poisedon,” it is currently being blown out of the water by the release of X-Men 3, featuring the star of the failed previous Trek film, Patrick Stewart.

Outside of Washington, Hollywood is the prime place where perception becomes reality, however unjustified by the facts. If MI3 comes to be viewed as a commercial failure, especially within Paramount, how much money it actually makes won’t matter.

The fate of MI3 can influence the fate of Star Trek XI in several ways, but most of them wind up involving budget. Will Paramount express its confidence in Abrams and his team with the budget to do a bigger Trek film than any so far, except perhaps the first? Or is it so bad that Paramount now can’t afford such a gamble?

So did they hire a hot producer-director to do the kind of very calculated, limited budget Trek movies that previous Trek directors and producers had to make? Are they hoping he’s used to television budgets, and hasn’t been spoiled by the major money spent on MI3?

Patrick Stewart in X-Men3

However this goes, it seems likely that the reception for MI3 has made Paramount execs a little more nervous, a little less confident, a little shakier than they might have been if it had been an unqualified hit. They can’t fail to notice that a box office record was set by a film released two weeks later ( The Da Vinci Code), a record itself broken by X-Men3. (Was there a lack of confidence already, since Paramount chose not to release MI3 on a holiday weekend, when it might go head to head with one of these blockbusters?) Even before X-Men3, MI3 had fallen behind an animated feature (with a character voiced by William Shatner---will the ironies never stop?)

It would be natural under the circumstances for Paramount to be reluctant to take chances they might have otherwise taken. While it’s pretty certain that we won’t see Tom Cruise in Star Trek XI, the perceived weakness of MI3 may have also done in Ben Affleck, if indeed he was ever in the running for a role. It’s unlikely they’ll take a chance on an actor whose previous action role (as Daredevil) was itself a perceived flop. Tobey McGuire, on the other hand, they might die for. (Star Trek does have this advantage: a lot of actors are fans.)

Casting is a big part of budgets these days, and how this film is cast may signal what Paramount is willing to spend. Assuming this is still a young Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy story (and recent shying away from the first press release by Abrams and others haven’t really denied this), then the star power is likely to come from actors playing the older parts: officers, teachers, mentors, etc. Though Abrams might like to field a cast of young unknowns, TV-style, this rarely works in movies, especially of this kind.

A lot will unfold in the coming months, but for now it seems like an odd kind of déjà vu in Star Trek’s 40th anniversary year: once again, Mission Impossible may be affecting Star Trek budgets, in a downward direction.

Nick Sagan's new novel concludes his triology.

Nick Sagan's new novel, everfree, has just been published--the third in a trilogy that began with idlewild and continued with edenborn. (Star Trek fans will remember Nick as a writer on TNG and Voyager.)

Nick has agreed to do an interview on this site in the near future. In the meantime, here's my review of his new novel.

The Trek future?

The Shape of Trek to Come

by William S. Kowinski

Paramount’s announcement that they’ve hired a new production team to create the next Star Trek feature film represents the biggest change in Star Trek history of more than 40 years. With no one involved in the project as announced so far with any prior ties to Star Trek, it amounts to a revolution.

All we have so far are names: J. J. Abrams will produce and direct. Damon Lindelof and Bryan Burk, currently on Abrams’ production team for the TV series, “Lost,” will co-produce. Abrams will write the script together with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who wrote the forthcoming Mission Impossible III with Abrams. (This Star Trek announcement seems timed for that film’s publicity.)

We are told as well that the story for the film will be set prior to the original series timeframe, about young Kirk and Spock at the Starfleet Academy and their first space mission. The movie is tentatively scheduled for release in fall of 2008. Startrek.com added rather pointedly that Rick Berman is not associated with this film in any way.

So how different is this Trek film going to be? What kind of a movie is this team likely to make? Will it have the soul of Star Trek as well as the name of the franchise?

[text continues after photo]

A young Spock in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

The Revolution

Except for George Takei (who in fine Takei fashion wonders where Sulu is in this story), no one from Star Trek’s past has yet been quoted responding to this announcement. Nor have any of the new team commented on their plans (and are unlikely to, until after MI3 opens.)

But the first statement or press conference or interview from J.J. Abrams will tell a lot. Will he do or say anything that creates meaningful continuity with Star Trek past, with the Star Trek fan base? Will he hire anyone from past Star Trek productions in any meaningful positions?

He could chose not to, and risk alienating the most activist of fans--an increasingly fractious group—and relate instead to the vague fondness casual fans have for the old Star Trek, with its Tribbles and phasers, its warp speed and beaming up, its Vulcan salute, Klingons and Borg.

There’s one element of this story that perhaps does bode well for the future of this project: it was a complete surprise. There were no rumors preceding it. Arguably the many months of rumors and discussions over every element of Nemesis really harmed the prospects of Star Trek X.

But if this team does not include someone that brings continuity with past Star Trek, it will be the first such complete break in Star Trek’s history. When Star Trek went from a TV series to movies, it had Gene Roddenberry in charge (at least for the first one, and later for guidance) and the original series actors. When Star Trek added an entirely new cast in a new future, GR was the executive producer, and he created a culture of continuity that the Berman regime pretty much followed, enforced by a powerful fan base.

Now so far there’s nobody connecting Star Trek past to Star Trek future. The first press conference or interviews that the new team gives will be crucial in learning whether there will be any continuity of personnel, or how faithfully continuity will be followed, and above all the spirit, the soul of Star Trek.

Scarlett Johansson, slated to star in "Amazon"

The New Team

J.J. Abrams---producer, director, co-writer—will have more power over Star Trek’s future than anyone in its past, perhaps even including its creator, Gene Roddenberry. At least for one movie.

Who is Abrams? At 40 years old (in June), he is currently a very hot commodity. He created two hit TV series, “Lost” and “Alias,” when TV dramas are losing audiences to so-called reality shows. Paramount is apparently pleased with his work on Mission Impossible III, even though the film hasn’t yet been released.

MI3 is his first film as a director. It’s a big budget movie, with a high-powered cast. His past work as a writer for film, however, has not been especially distinguished. On the plus side, he’s been versatile: writing action, drama, comedy and romantic movies. But few of these films were successful, or critical favorites.

He wrote the screenplay for Armageddon (1998), generally considered the lesser of the two asteroid-threatens-earth movies of that year, starring Bruce Willis. He co-wrote a 2001 drama about a psycho killer (Joy Ride), an obscure comedy (Gone Fishin, 1997) for Danny Glover and Joe Pesci, a romantic drama (Forever Young, 1992) for Mel Gibson. Though it was not particularly successful at the box office, his one gem was Regarding Henry in 1991, which featured one of Harrison Ford’s best performances (and just guessing, I’ll bet one of his favorites.)

Abrams also created the TV series about college students, Felicity, that ran 4 years on the WB cable network, and a 2005 pilot for a series about bounty hunters (The Catch) which was not picked up.

His writing partners for Star Trek XI, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who worked with Abrams on MI3, have worked together before. They co-wrote the sequel, The Legend of Zorro (2005), which didn’t measure up critically or at the box office to its predecessor, The Mask of Zorro. They are writing partners on two films slated for release next year, The Transformers: The Movie, and Amazon (Orci is also a producer of this film, to star Scarlett Johansson.) The actual status of these two projects is unknown.

But perhaps most interesting is their early TV work: both wrote for the Kevin Sabo Hercules series, and Orci wrote for its companion series, “Zena, the Warrior Princess.”

All in all, I find more to worry about that to celebrate in the prior work of this team. They certainly are experienced at writing sequels, and working with established characters and fictional worlds. But they’ve never worked with a fictional world as complex, and as dependent on concepts and its internal history, as Star Trek.

If you are concerned about Star Trek continuity, about its history of the future and the key concepts that are crucial to that history, you have to worry about the casual attitude towards history and continuity in the groundbreaking Hercules and Zena series. Their playful use of anachronisms—of very contemporary dialogue and character attitudes in an ancient setting, their casual mixing of periods and places, myth and history in incorporating real historical figures—was a great part of the charm of these shows, and what made them different. But though a vein of knowing humor did work well for the last 3 or 4 TOS cast features, a casual attitude towards Star Trek’s past could play havoc with the Star Trek universe, as created and preserved in 40 years of film, tape and print.

My own perhaps obsessive fear about new Star Trek---that it will use the characters and the Star Trek universe as nothing more than a setting for an action move, a feature film video-game (or video game commercial) —is not exactly assuaged by what I know about this team. Abrams is reputedly a Star Trek fan, but on what level? Treating the Star Trek universe and Trek characters apart from the soul of Star Trek instantly makes it something else. And the revolution becomes an assassination.

Maybe they have the chops to really add to Star Trek not only with good storytelling, with action and adventure, character interplay and development, but by advancing elements of the Star Trek story that articulates its ethos, its view of the future and of the human potential. Or at least, not trashing what Star Trek has come to mean to so many people about a path to a hopeful future. Regarding Henry tells me that’s possible. Armageddon and Zena make me wonder. The idea of Transformers: the Movie makes me cringe.

Harrison Ford in "Regarding Henry" 

Academy Days

There’s a lot of fan debate over whether Star Trek should be going back to pre-original series days for the next film. The idea for a Starfleet Academy film featuring the young Kirk and Spock goes back to another period in which Trek’s future was in doubt after a perceived box office failure, right after Star Trek V. Harve Bennett’s initial proposal was for a story about racial prejudice against Spock but wrapped in a flashy package: the Star Trek version of Top Gun.

More recently William Shatner has pushed for such a concept, and is apparently writing a series of Star Trek novels with this theme. So far, he does not appear to be involved in this project.

According to one story, the Bennett proposal was revived a few years ago, but when it was sent to Rick Berman, he allowed it to be transformed into the Romulan War prequel that was recently axed. There was at least one other project that at least somebody was actively pursuing, a mixed-cast movie set in the 24th century, led by the Next Generation crew. Patrick Stewart was approached, and there were rumors about Shatner’s involvement in a Mirror Universe story.

I admit to a continuing desire for the 24th century story, though I see Q as the catalyst. Although not a lot of fans agree with me, the Mirror Universe concept worked only in its first original series appearance. (I really despised what Enterprise did with it.) But there’s no indication we’re ever going to see the Next Generation crew again.

So what about this Academy concept?

While fans speculate on who might be the younger Kirk and the new Spock, it’s worth remarking that an academy doesn’t have only students---it has teachers. The teachers in the Harry Potter series, for example, are nearly as important as the students in those stories. I expect that there will be at least one older character, a teacher, a mentor, who will be important, and I expect also it will be a big name star. The Harry Potter films again show this potential.

Looking at who Abrams has worked with before, several older stars could be possibilities: Tom Cruise (star of MI3 and the original Top Gun as well as Speilberg’s War of the Worlds) is an obvious choice, perhaps as a flight instructor. Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson are other stars to consider. They no longer carry movies as they once did, so being part of a Harry Potter-like ensemble, or even being the only box office star in the movie, might be attractive.

But the established actor I’d most like to see would be Harrison Ford. As mentioned above, Abrams wrote one of his best movies, Regarding Henry, though it was utterly outside the action genre. But Ford would be a perfect mentor for a young Kirk, with his borrowed flash from his Star Wars and Indiana Jones characters. There is also Spielberg’s new association with Paramount, and Ford is close to him and his associates.

Regarding Henry is an overlooked but quite good movie, interesting in Trek terms because of its theme: a greedy mover and shaker is shot in a robbery, suffers brain damage, and begins life over again as an apparently mentally impaired person, but he turns out to be more loving and more ethical, tuned into the basic values of life.

I’ve said before that while Star Trek often dealt with the perils of power, Dr. Who often dealt with the perils of greed. Star Trek did deal with greed now and again, especially TNG, but this is an opportunity to deal with it more directly. What if resurgent greed on earth threatens the Federations principles?

Or we could see a good classroom scene, in which a professor argues for the rationale of the prime directive, of reversing the history of exploration always also meaning exploitation.

I've only mentioned male stars, but there's potential for established female stars, not just as cadets but as instructors. It will be hard for any writers to resist creating yet another beautiful woman who is quite hopelessly in love with Spock. On the other hand, it might be fun to see young Kirk as a disaster with women. The series hinted he was a more of a scholar than a young Ulysses.

We might even see as an instructor, perhaps in Federation and space law, the descendent of Denny Crane, as played by William Shatner. What a moment it would be if he watches the young Kirk and observes, I don’t know why I like that kid. And another teacher offers, maybe you see in him something of yourself.

Villains? Klingons perhaps. Though something internal to the Academy would be more imaginative.

Perhaps Abrams experience with the college series, “Felicity,” will help with creating a believable Academy. I’d be surprised if we don’t see young Kirk as a solo pilot of some fast space vehicle. I’m certainly not worried that this team will shirk the action adventure. Abrams seems capable of handling character and basic storytelling. My question for them as for anyone: are they going to make a movie with Star Trek-named characters that deletes the soul of Star Trek? Are they going to keep Star Trek in the science fiction of consciousness, or toss it whole into the easy category of commercialized unconsciousness, a big budget exploitation of 40 years of meaning as well as entertainment?

Obviously we won’t know for awhile. But we may get some clues from what Abrams and company say in the coming months.

There is also a remote possibility to consider: since these guys were so good at keeping this a secret until the recent announcement, could the Starfleet Academy scenario be an elaborate deception to keep this movie a surprise, and not what they’re planning at all?