Sputnik
Saturday, August 19, 2006
I was 11 years old. (So was Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Steven Speilberg would turn 11 in a couple of months. George Lucas was 13. ) I was at home, just outside a small town in western Pennsylvania. I was in my room, sitting at the heavy, dark-grained hand-me-down wooden desk that was surely older than I was. I had set aside the brown notebook in which I was writing a story about an alien invasion called “The Desert Menace,” to concentrate on my homework. It was already dark outside, and most of the room was dark as well, except for a circle of bright light from the lamp hovering over the desk, a green-shaded bulb at the end of a long, multi-jointed arm. It was quiet, and I didn’t even notice the muffled sound of the television set beyond the far wall behind my bed.
My door opened suddenly and startled me. It was my father, who seldom knocked. He and my mother were watching TV in the living room. I knew it wasn’t time yet for “The Life of Riley,” which our family often watched together on Friday nights, sharing a bowl of popcorn. My father asked if I’d been listening to the radio. I glanced up at it—a supposed “short wave” radio he’d assembled from a kit, but despite its impressive dials, slate gray face in front of exposed glowing tubes, transistors and resistors, it seldom pulled in more than the local AM station. It sat on the bookshelf just above my desk, next to the globe. I answered, “no,” defensively, thinking he was checking on my attention to my homework. But that wasn’t it. He told me that they’d just said on television that the Russians had launched a satellite into space, and it was in orbit around the earth at that very moment. They’d broadcast the actual sound of the signal coming from the satellite, called Sputnik.
I was too amazed to move. Nothing like this had ever happened before. After my father returned to the living room I turned on my radio, and eventually I did hear the eerie, even-toned beeping sound from space. Even though many people—even other kids—made fun of the whole idea of spaceships, I was already fascinated by anything to do with rockets and outer space. Besides Saturday morning science fiction on TV and Saturday matinees at the movies, I’d seen the “Tomorrowland” program on Disneyland with Werner von Braun, that went step by step through the history of rocketry, the problems that had to be solved in order to get into space, ending with an animated dramatization of the first manned space shot.
In school I read about the International Geophysical Year going on this year, and I was always looking for news about the satellite the U.S. hoped to rocket into orbit as part of it. I’d even heard one of the smartest men in America, the quiz show champion Charles van Doren, talk about it on a television documentary about the IGY. The newsman asked him if the Russians might orbit a satellite first. He just chuckled.
But now the Russians had. I had absorbed enough of the Cold War mentality to be alerted and perhaps a little afraid. I couldn’t think of anything to do but record my thoughts that moment in my brown school notebook:
"The Russians, Conquerors of Space. Oct.4, 1957. I have just heard some news which will affect my whole future. Russia has just successfully launched the first man-made satellite into space…How did the Russians do it? Out of their own ingenuity? Did they get information from a spy in America? A traitor? All the work our scientists and top brains did, what for? Will the Russians take advantage of this and use it to start a war?"
The technical achievement of humans sending a rocket into space to deliver an artificial satellite into orbit around the earth marked a monumental moment. For some, this very fact was profoundly shocking. “It is hard for people now to realize how stubbornly the idea of any form of space travel was opposed before that date," wrote Brian Aldiss, “and not only by the supposedly ignorant.”
But besides boys with stars in their eyes, many of those who had flown sophisticated aircraft high into the darkening sky, and those who had read and written science fiction, must have felt some universal thrill at the news. Gene Roddenberry of course had done all of those things (his proposal for a Science Fiction Theater episode the year before had been turned down, but the basic idea would someday recur in the holodeck of the Starship Enterprise-D.) He may well have noted that an important threshold had been crossed, from science fiction into reality that would transform the future.
My door opened suddenly and startled me. It was my father, who seldom knocked. He and my mother were watching TV in the living room. I knew it wasn’t time yet for “The Life of Riley,” which our family often watched together on Friday nights, sharing a bowl of popcorn. My father asked if I’d been listening to the radio. I glanced up at it—a supposed “short wave” radio he’d assembled from a kit, but despite its impressive dials, slate gray face in front of exposed glowing tubes, transistors and resistors, it seldom pulled in more than the local AM station. It sat on the bookshelf just above my desk, next to the globe. I answered, “no,” defensively, thinking he was checking on my attention to my homework. But that wasn’t it. He told me that they’d just said on television that the Russians had launched a satellite into space, and it was in orbit around the earth at that very moment. They’d broadcast the actual sound of the signal coming from the satellite, called Sputnik.
I was too amazed to move. Nothing like this had ever happened before. After my father returned to the living room I turned on my radio, and eventually I did hear the eerie, even-toned beeping sound from space. Even though many people—even other kids—made fun of the whole idea of spaceships, I was already fascinated by anything to do with rockets and outer space. Besides Saturday morning science fiction on TV and Saturday matinees at the movies, I’d seen the “Tomorrowland” program on Disneyland with Werner von Braun, that went step by step through the history of rocketry, the problems that had to be solved in order to get into space, ending with an animated dramatization of the first manned space shot.
In school I read about the International Geophysical Year going on this year, and I was always looking for news about the satellite the U.S. hoped to rocket into orbit as part of it. I’d even heard one of the smartest men in America, the quiz show champion Charles van Doren, talk about it on a television documentary about the IGY. The newsman asked him if the Russians might orbit a satellite first. He just chuckled.
But now the Russians had. I had absorbed enough of the Cold War mentality to be alerted and perhaps a little afraid. I couldn’t think of anything to do but record my thoughts that moment in my brown school notebook:
"The Russians, Conquerors of Space. Oct.4, 1957. I have just heard some news which will affect my whole future. Russia has just successfully launched the first man-made satellite into space…How did the Russians do it? Out of their own ingenuity? Did they get information from a spy in America? A traitor? All the work our scientists and top brains did, what for? Will the Russians take advantage of this and use it to start a war?"
The technical achievement of humans sending a rocket into space to deliver an artificial satellite into orbit around the earth marked a monumental moment. For some, this very fact was profoundly shocking. “It is hard for people now to realize how stubbornly the idea of any form of space travel was opposed before that date," wrote Brian Aldiss, “and not only by the supposedly ignorant.”
But besides boys with stars in their eyes, many of those who had flown sophisticated aircraft high into the darkening sky, and those who had read and written science fiction, must have felt some universal thrill at the news. Gene Roddenberry of course had done all of those things (his proposal for a Science Fiction Theater episode the year before had been turned down, but the basic idea would someday recur in the holodeck of the Starship Enterprise-D.) He may well have noted that an important threshold had been crossed, from science fiction into reality that would transform the future.
I know I was thrilled to imagine it, but my eleven year old mind had also seized on what would be the predominant message in America, and would in fact affect my future. Men of Roddenberry’s age and military experience must have grasped its importance immediately.
They would have understood especially what the next Sputnik launch meant, just a month later. Sputnik II not only carried a live being into space—a dog—but the orbiting satellite weighed over 1100 pounds. No U.S. missile even on the drawing board could carry an object that heavy, let alone send it into orbit. The military significance was enormous.
Although the U.S. had exploded the first true hydrogen bomb, it was too large and fragile for a weapon. The bomb the Soviets designed and exploded the next year was not as powerful, but it was already a weapon. The U.S. soon had created useable hydrogen bombs, but the Soviets had a brief advantage which had shaken the military establishment.
Now it seemed the Soviets had leapt ahead and were a much greater threat. Until then, an attack on the U.S. or Russia could be conducted only by using bombers. Although the U.S. was rapidly developing guided missiles, Sputnik proved the Soviets had built missiles capable of reaching the U.S. and delivering atomic bombs. Sputnik itself was beeping over America to remind them.
Missiles were much faster than bombers and harder to detect. Airplanes could be shot down, but not guided missiles. Hydrogen bombs didn’t have to be delivered to precise targets. To destroy New York or Moscow might require as many as 24 atomic bombs. The first hydrogen bombs were each as powerful as a thousand Hiroshima bombs. New York could be destroyed by one of them, which would also produce radiation lethal to the population of Washington, D.C., and would contaminate most of the Northeast, into Canada. The "lethal zone" in H-bomb tests in the Pacific after the Bravo test proved so powerful was equal to 20% of the continental United States.
It would take a few years for both sides to make the transition to missiles. But the Early Warning System in Canada and the Ground Observer Corps of volunteers in cities and towns would rapidly become obsolete. (I joined the Ground Observer Corps at the Civil Defense office at the courthouse when I was 12. Volunteers stood on the roof of the county hospital and scanned the horizon for unauthorized airplanes, even though we were many hundreds of miles from an ocean or an international border. I was too young to be a scanner, so I was designated a Messenger. I was never called to do anything, and the organization quietly melted away.)
For Gene Roddenberry’s generation (which was my parents’ generation) the missile threat evoked images of the sneak attack, the bolt from the blue that brought America into World War II. Only now, everywhere was Pearl Harbor. Now the sudden flash of light that preceded nuclear fire could come at any moment, with little or no warning. We were potentially fifteen minutes from the end of the world, every day.
My generation had been schooled on filmstrips projected in our classrooms that showed a huge white cloud suddenly blooming, then ferocious wind, buildings bursting and flying apart, before the cartoon Bert the Turtle told us how to protect our little heads against atomic bombs. We’d dutifully practiced our "duck and cover" techniques under the old desks bolted to the floor at Sacred Heart School, perhaps glancing up at the initials scratched on the hidden wood by former students who were probably deep into the lives we might never have. We didn’t do that as much after Sputnik. Thermonuclear apocalypse became a daily possibility that we were now supposed to forget. Nevertheless, some children had recurring nightmares about nuclear attacks. Writer Landon Jones described it as “a vague, ceaseless anxiety…The doomsday dread was pervasive in the baby boom generation.”
They would have understood especially what the next Sputnik launch meant, just a month later. Sputnik II not only carried a live being into space—a dog—but the orbiting satellite weighed over 1100 pounds. No U.S. missile even on the drawing board could carry an object that heavy, let alone send it into orbit. The military significance was enormous.
Although the U.S. had exploded the first true hydrogen bomb, it was too large and fragile for a weapon. The bomb the Soviets designed and exploded the next year was not as powerful, but it was already a weapon. The U.S. soon had created useable hydrogen bombs, but the Soviets had a brief advantage which had shaken the military establishment.
Now it seemed the Soviets had leapt ahead and were a much greater threat. Until then, an attack on the U.S. or Russia could be conducted only by using bombers. Although the U.S. was rapidly developing guided missiles, Sputnik proved the Soviets had built missiles capable of reaching the U.S. and delivering atomic bombs. Sputnik itself was beeping over America to remind them.
Missiles were much faster than bombers and harder to detect. Airplanes could be shot down, but not guided missiles. Hydrogen bombs didn’t have to be delivered to precise targets. To destroy New York or Moscow might require as many as 24 atomic bombs. The first hydrogen bombs were each as powerful as a thousand Hiroshima bombs. New York could be destroyed by one of them, which would also produce radiation lethal to the population of Washington, D.C., and would contaminate most of the Northeast, into Canada. The "lethal zone" in H-bomb tests in the Pacific after the Bravo test proved so powerful was equal to 20% of the continental United States.
It would take a few years for both sides to make the transition to missiles. But the Early Warning System in Canada and the Ground Observer Corps of volunteers in cities and towns would rapidly become obsolete. (I joined the Ground Observer Corps at the Civil Defense office at the courthouse when I was 12. Volunteers stood on the roof of the county hospital and scanned the horizon for unauthorized airplanes, even though we were many hundreds of miles from an ocean or an international border. I was too young to be a scanner, so I was designated a Messenger. I was never called to do anything, and the organization quietly melted away.)
For Gene Roddenberry’s generation (which was my parents’ generation) the missile threat evoked images of the sneak attack, the bolt from the blue that brought America into World War II. Only now, everywhere was Pearl Harbor. Now the sudden flash of light that preceded nuclear fire could come at any moment, with little or no warning. We were potentially fifteen minutes from the end of the world, every day.
My generation had been schooled on filmstrips projected in our classrooms that showed a huge white cloud suddenly blooming, then ferocious wind, buildings bursting and flying apart, before the cartoon Bert the Turtle told us how to protect our little heads against atomic bombs. We’d dutifully practiced our "duck and cover" techniques under the old desks bolted to the floor at Sacred Heart School, perhaps glancing up at the initials scratched on the hidden wood by former students who were probably deep into the lives we might never have. We didn’t do that as much after Sputnik. Thermonuclear apocalypse became a daily possibility that we were now supposed to forget. Nevertheless, some children had recurring nightmares about nuclear attacks. Writer Landon Jones described it as “a vague, ceaseless anxiety…The doomsday dread was pervasive in the baby boom generation.”
But this was also the era of big, colorful cars with enormous tail fins, situation comedies and growing prosperity, ever-bigger houses in the suburbs, and rock & roll on the transistor radio. There were few psychological studies of public feelings about nuclear war. Eventually, the government quietly sponsored research into why the public wasn't reacting. The theories ranged from "cognitive dissonance" to a kind of apathy later identified as "learned helplessness," to the simple but powerful psychological defense mechanism known as denial.
But the Cold War had clearly intensified, and along with Sputnik, provided new nuclear themes for the drive-in and Saturday matinee outlets for suppressed anxieties. Besides the mutation monsters (a number of them hitting the screens in 1957), the instantly deadly bolt from the blue came in the form of invasion from outer space, usually by technologically superior aliens with no conscience or aim other than destruction.
Many of these films predated Sputnik, for the fear of the Soviet threat was cultivated from the beginning of the atomic era. "In order to make the country bear the burden, " said President Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, referring to the arms race of the Cold War, "we have to create an emotional atmosphere akin to a wartime psychology. We must create the idea of a threat from without." But the fear that had been subsumed in early alien invasion films became more potent when that satellite beeping overhead added its alarm.
The aliens were technologically superior but otherwise mindless and implacable: instead of monsters created by radiation, they were monsters with ray guns and death rays as radiation weapons. Most rose or fell on how convincing their effects were, while their plots were all in their titles: Earth v. the Flying Saucers, Phantom from Space, Invaders from Mars, Killers from Space, Target Earth, It Conquered the World, It! The Terror From Beyond Space.
The best of the alien invasion films, and the one with the most visceral Cold War themes, was producer George Pal’s 1953 “War of the Worlds,” adapted from the H.G. Wells story. Set this time in contemporary California, it updates the technology and Americanizes the characters, and the protagonist is a credentialed scientist—a physicist, like the fearsome geniuses behind the Bomb.
It remains a remarkable film for its bright technicolor humbling of humanity. Neither our technology, our innocence (up to and including the atomic bomb) nor our religious faith could stop the mute Martian invaders and their death machines that floated in the air. The first victims of the Martian death ray were turned into piles of cinders on the ground with human outline, a clear reference to Hiroshima. The scientists who in most alien invasion and monster movies would figure out the enemy’s weakness, are in this film savagely beaten by a mob on their way to their laboratory with promising research. There is heroism, love and a happy ending, but once again this story has the power to tap into the solemn fears of the moment.
Some movies showed the aliens invading not by overwhelming force but by stealth; not by killing humans but by inhabiting them, “taking them over.” “Red Planet Mars” (1952) and “I Married a Monster from Outer Space” (1958), for example, were fairly explicit parables of alien subversion. The classic of the genre, Jack Arnold’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1955), showed the slow horror of alien plants turning a town’s population into pod people. The danger of being “taken over” by Communist subversion was a relentless theme of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who was an important public figure in the 1950s.
But the Cold War had clearly intensified, and along with Sputnik, provided new nuclear themes for the drive-in and Saturday matinee outlets for suppressed anxieties. Besides the mutation monsters (a number of them hitting the screens in 1957), the instantly deadly bolt from the blue came in the form of invasion from outer space, usually by technologically superior aliens with no conscience or aim other than destruction.
Many of these films predated Sputnik, for the fear of the Soviet threat was cultivated from the beginning of the atomic era. "In order to make the country bear the burden, " said President Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, referring to the arms race of the Cold War, "we have to create an emotional atmosphere akin to a wartime psychology. We must create the idea of a threat from without." But the fear that had been subsumed in early alien invasion films became more potent when that satellite beeping overhead added its alarm.
The aliens were technologically superior but otherwise mindless and implacable: instead of monsters created by radiation, they were monsters with ray guns and death rays as radiation weapons. Most rose or fell on how convincing their effects were, while their plots were all in their titles: Earth v. the Flying Saucers, Phantom from Space, Invaders from Mars, Killers from Space, Target Earth, It Conquered the World, It! The Terror From Beyond Space.
The best of the alien invasion films, and the one with the most visceral Cold War themes, was producer George Pal’s 1953 “War of the Worlds,” adapted from the H.G. Wells story. Set this time in contemporary California, it updates the technology and Americanizes the characters, and the protagonist is a credentialed scientist—a physicist, like the fearsome geniuses behind the Bomb.
It remains a remarkable film for its bright technicolor humbling of humanity. Neither our technology, our innocence (up to and including the atomic bomb) nor our religious faith could stop the mute Martian invaders and their death machines that floated in the air. The first victims of the Martian death ray were turned into piles of cinders on the ground with human outline, a clear reference to Hiroshima. The scientists who in most alien invasion and monster movies would figure out the enemy’s weakness, are in this film savagely beaten by a mob on their way to their laboratory with promising research. There is heroism, love and a happy ending, but once again this story has the power to tap into the solemn fears of the moment.
Some movies showed the aliens invading not by overwhelming force but by stealth; not by killing humans but by inhabiting them, “taking them over.” “Red Planet Mars” (1952) and “I Married a Monster from Outer Space” (1958), for example, were fairly explicit parables of alien subversion. The classic of the genre, Jack Arnold’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1955), showed the slow horror of alien plants turning a town’s population into pod people. The danger of being “taken over” by Communist subversion was a relentless theme of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who was an important public figure in the 1950s.
Moviemakers were not alone in expressing these anxieties. A steady flow of novels and short stories dealt with these themes, including best-sellers. They envisioned a future of technological oppression, as in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948) and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953.) Orwell’s message according to one critic “is simply that our industrial machine civilization is tending to deracinate and debilitate us, and will finally destroy us…”
Some writers tried to imagine the nuclear apocalypse itself, and its aftermath. As early as 1950, Judith Merril examined the impact of nuclear war on a single American home in Shadow On the Hearth. In The Last Day (1959), Helen Clarkson wrote about the immediate aftermath of a thermonuclear attack on a family and relatively isolated community (the 1983 film Testament had a similar story.)
Science fiction authors and magazines were particular obsessed with the ramifications of nuclear apocalypse. Poul Anderson wrote one apocalyptic fiction after another, with titles that told his attitude: Un-Man, Cold Victory and After Doomsday among them. As he emphasized in his non-fiction book, Thermonuclear War (1961), these times were “the most dangerous in the history of mankind.”
“Astounding after the war was a very black magazine,” science fiction chronicler Brian Aldiss writes of the premier sci-fi pulp. “Many stories were of Earth destroyed, culture doomed, humanity dying, and of the horrific effects of radiation, which brought mutation or insidious death.” He cites titles like “Dawn of Nothing,” “And Then There Were None,” “There Is No Defence” (by Theodore Sturgeon.) So pervasive were these themes that even in a science fiction novel for juvenile readers, a teenager’s adventures with an expedition on the moon turned suddenly somber when nuclear war erupts on Earth.
In the movies nuclear problems were beginning to come out from behind the monster and alien metaphors by the end of the decade. There had been several films attempting to portray the immediate aftermath of nuclear war in the early 1950s, but a new level of realism, at least in terms of human reaction, made On the Beach (1959) a major popular and critical hit. With current and upcoming movie stars (Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins) and an A List director in Stanley Kramer, it is credited with bringing a new sobriety and engagement among a broader range of the public.
By the end of the decade, the nuclear cloud blotting out the future became more and more explicit. Working steadily at his expanding career, GR may not have been paying a lot of attention to this yet. But he could hardly fail to absorb it, for it was just about everywhere.
But then, something changed. While this mood continued into the 1960s, there were other events, and a sudden new atmosphere, that inspired a more hopeful vision. Many became convinced again that this bold and human future, this electrifying adventure, could happen-- and even that it was happening, and they were making it happen. The mood and many of the events were centered on a member of Gene Roddenberry’s generation---in fact, another a veteran of the war in the South Pacific--- who came to Los Angeles to talk of a new frontier.
Some writers tried to imagine the nuclear apocalypse itself, and its aftermath. As early as 1950, Judith Merril examined the impact of nuclear war on a single American home in Shadow On the Hearth. In The Last Day (1959), Helen Clarkson wrote about the immediate aftermath of a thermonuclear attack on a family and relatively isolated community (the 1983 film Testament had a similar story.)
Science fiction authors and magazines were particular obsessed with the ramifications of nuclear apocalypse. Poul Anderson wrote one apocalyptic fiction after another, with titles that told his attitude: Un-Man, Cold Victory and After Doomsday among them. As he emphasized in his non-fiction book, Thermonuclear War (1961), these times were “the most dangerous in the history of mankind.”
“Astounding after the war was a very black magazine,” science fiction chronicler Brian Aldiss writes of the premier sci-fi pulp. “Many stories were of Earth destroyed, culture doomed, humanity dying, and of the horrific effects of radiation, which brought mutation or insidious death.” He cites titles like “Dawn of Nothing,” “And Then There Were None,” “There Is No Defence” (by Theodore Sturgeon.) So pervasive were these themes that even in a science fiction novel for juvenile readers, a teenager’s adventures with an expedition on the moon turned suddenly somber when nuclear war erupts on Earth.
In the movies nuclear problems were beginning to come out from behind the monster and alien metaphors by the end of the decade. There had been several films attempting to portray the immediate aftermath of nuclear war in the early 1950s, but a new level of realism, at least in terms of human reaction, made On the Beach (1959) a major popular and critical hit. With current and upcoming movie stars (Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins) and an A List director in Stanley Kramer, it is credited with bringing a new sobriety and engagement among a broader range of the public.
By the end of the decade, the nuclear cloud blotting out the future became more and more explicit. Working steadily at his expanding career, GR may not have been paying a lot of attention to this yet. But he could hardly fail to absorb it, for it was just about everywhere.
But then, something changed. While this mood continued into the 1960s, there were other events, and a sudden new atmosphere, that inspired a more hopeful vision. Many became convinced again that this bold and human future, this electrifying adventure, could happen-- and even that it was happening, and they were making it happen. The mood and many of the events were centered on a member of Gene Roddenberry’s generation---in fact, another a veteran of the war in the South Pacific--- who came to Los Angeles to talk of a new frontier.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
The Trekkersphere
From now through early September, the blogosphere becomes the Trekkersphere, as bloggers join the tributes and celebrations, while contributing thoughts and experiences to the vast Star Trek data bank.
When I agreed to participate in the blog leading up to the Planet Xpo 40th Anniversary convention in Seattle, I had no idea Soul of Star Trek would be in such august company. My fellow bloggers at the site include Arthur C. Clarke, Walter Koenig, George Takei and Jeff Greenwald. Writing about technological innovations influenced by Star Trek are Dr. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute (Gene Roddenberry was an ardent supporter) and Martin Cooper, inventor of the personal cell phone.
Other bloggers include Pat Hoar from Space Adventures, Inc., Kris Smith (a friend of DeForest Kelley) and Marc Rayman of NASA, writing about DS9. But some of the most interesting stuff is bound to be contributed by fans, and that's already begun. You can find the 40th Anniversary blog here.
And transport here in the coming weeks for new posts on Star Trek beginnings and what it's all meant over the years, with ideas and observations you may not have seen before.
From now through early September, the blogosphere becomes the Trekkersphere, as bloggers join the tributes and celebrations, while contributing thoughts and experiences to the vast Star Trek data bank.
When I agreed to participate in the blog leading up to the Planet Xpo 40th Anniversary convention in Seattle, I had no idea Soul of Star Trek would be in such august company. My fellow bloggers at the site include Arthur C. Clarke, Walter Koenig, George Takei and Jeff Greenwald. Writing about technological innovations influenced by Star Trek are Dr. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute (Gene Roddenberry was an ardent supporter) and Martin Cooper, inventor of the personal cell phone.
Other bloggers include Pat Hoar from Space Adventures, Inc., Kris Smith (a friend of DeForest Kelley) and Marc Rayman of NASA, writing about DS9. But some of the most interesting stuff is bound to be contributed by fans, and that's already begun. You can find the 40th Anniversary blog here.
And transport here in the coming weeks for new posts on Star Trek beginnings and what it's all meant over the years, with ideas and observations you may not have seen before.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
TrekCheck: The Future Beyond Trek XI
The Star Trek 40th anniversary festivities are just now poised to begin, so before looking back let's pause a moment for a brief glimpse into the Star Trek future.
With the first poster and a round of interviews, the Abrams' Star Trek XI film is gathering momentum. There was also this remarkable statement from longtime Trek insider, Paula Block, at comicon:"The people at CBS are very excited to have inherited the franchise, and they want to do a lot with it. There are a lot of things we're doing behind the scenes that we can't tell you about yet because we don't know if they'll come to fruition or not, but we're very excited about them."
So even television may again be part of the mix come 2008, when Trek XI is expected to hit theatres. So it's my guess that the movers and shakers are looking at Trek XI and its story not in isolation, but in terms of how it might fit into the saga's future. Without knowing what's being discussed in terms of television, it's still possible to speculate about how Trek XI might pave the way for Trek XII and so on.
This is another area where a prequel movie raises a lot of questions. Is it going to be a one-time deal, a movie about, say, how Kirk and Spock met, were perhaps part of the same adventure but serving on different ships, ending with them getting posted together on the Enterprise? The idea would be to test the waters, see if there is a market for a revived Star Trek, and whether audiences will go for a new Kirk and Spock.
But if they do, and the movie is a hit, then what? Will the new actor playing Kirk become the new Kirk, or will Kirk become James Bond, a mythical figure played by a series of actors? And what kind of limitations does a prequel present---is there enough room before the original series time frame for a series of movies? Or will these become the new adventures of the Enterprise with a new Scotty, a new Bones, etc.? I'll bet somebody is thinking about these things, or should be.
The history of past Trek movies is that, at least before the TNG era, each Trek movie could well have been the last. Nobody was really thinking ahead, but then, what was there to think about? They had a nearly infinite universe to play with--and almost a century before bumping into the TNG universe. But now, things are a great deal more complicated with so much of the Trek timeline filled in.
If you want to keep the same Kirk for a few films, can you count on a major star to be available? Past Trek films that succeeded financially did so by keeping costs down well below blockbuster budget levels. Are they going to up the ante?
Then there’s age. People worried about the original series actors being too old for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. They all went on diets, yet Kirk’s aging became a plot point. Given that they kept on going for another decade makes it all seem fairly silly. But at least they didn’t have to worry about getting older than their later selves. As I pointed out here before, Matt Damon is about the age that William Shatner was when he started playing Kirk as Captain of the Enterprise. Can prequel actors maintain credibility if they get older than the crew they are supposed to be younger than? Always a headache, these time paradoxes!
The Star Trek 40th anniversary festivities are just now poised to begin, so before looking back let's pause a moment for a brief glimpse into the Star Trek future.
With the first poster and a round of interviews, the Abrams' Star Trek XI film is gathering momentum. There was also this remarkable statement from longtime Trek insider, Paula Block, at comicon:"The people at CBS are very excited to have inherited the franchise, and they want to do a lot with it. There are a lot of things we're doing behind the scenes that we can't tell you about yet because we don't know if they'll come to fruition or not, but we're very excited about them."
So even television may again be part of the mix come 2008, when Trek XI is expected to hit theatres. So it's my guess that the movers and shakers are looking at Trek XI and its story not in isolation, but in terms of how it might fit into the saga's future. Without knowing what's being discussed in terms of television, it's still possible to speculate about how Trek XI might pave the way for Trek XII and so on.
This is another area where a prequel movie raises a lot of questions. Is it going to be a one-time deal, a movie about, say, how Kirk and Spock met, were perhaps part of the same adventure but serving on different ships, ending with them getting posted together on the Enterprise? The idea would be to test the waters, see if there is a market for a revived Star Trek, and whether audiences will go for a new Kirk and Spock.
But if they do, and the movie is a hit, then what? Will the new actor playing Kirk become the new Kirk, or will Kirk become James Bond, a mythical figure played by a series of actors? And what kind of limitations does a prequel present---is there enough room before the original series time frame for a series of movies? Or will these become the new adventures of the Enterprise with a new Scotty, a new Bones, etc.? I'll bet somebody is thinking about these things, or should be.
The history of past Trek movies is that, at least before the TNG era, each Trek movie could well have been the last. Nobody was really thinking ahead, but then, what was there to think about? They had a nearly infinite universe to play with--and almost a century before bumping into the TNG universe. But now, things are a great deal more complicated with so much of the Trek timeline filled in.
If you want to keep the same Kirk for a few films, can you count on a major star to be available? Past Trek films that succeeded financially did so by keeping costs down well below blockbuster budget levels. Are they going to up the ante?
Then there’s age. People worried about the original series actors being too old for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. They all went on diets, yet Kirk’s aging became a plot point. Given that they kept on going for another decade makes it all seem fairly silly. But at least they didn’t have to worry about getting older than their later selves. As I pointed out here before, Matt Damon is about the age that William Shatner was when he started playing Kirk as Captain of the Enterprise. Can prequel actors maintain credibility if they get older than the crew they are supposed to be younger than? Always a headache, these time paradoxes!
What about the Future?
The whole idea of a prequel movie doesn’t sit well with several members of the Next Generation cast. In a discussion on her site, Marina Sirtis said "Gene Roddenberry always said that Star Trek should go forward." Michael Dorn echoed this in an interview, and LeVar Burton has said as much in the past.
Invoking Roddenberry in this way reminds me that sadly, these actors (who collectively have also been Trek directors, producer and writers) are the last to have learned Star Trek directly from Roddenberry. You can hear it in their voices and see it in their body language—through individual personal contact, Roddenberry instilled his vision of Star Trek in them at the very beginning, and embodied Star Trek for them.
But it's not just nostalgia-- it does matter that this will be the first Star Trek that isn’t being developed by either GR or someone who worked with him, with his personal guidance. It may even be important in whether Trek ever goes forward rather than just back to the beginning of its future.
For the 23rd and 24th centuries were GR’s creation—with major creative input from others, but with his final say. Even the 22nd century of Enterprise was based on GR’s future, though it may have relied too much on some of its successful components (like introducing the Borg and the Romulans long before they should have shown up.)
It isn't that nobody but GR could come up with Star Trek ideas. New blood can infuse new life, and naturally the new generation wants to separate itself from the old. (Even in small ways---I remember Enterprise showrunner Manny Coto getting into one of those little motorcarts on the Paramount lot, making fun of the old guy, Rick Berman, always saying, 'why when I came to Paramount, none of this was here!') But to take Star Trek into the future requires more than both knowledge of the Trek past and ideas about how to make more exciting contemporary entertainment. GR thought about and cared about the future, both about what it could be and what it must be, if humanity is ever going to get there.
In the last exhausted years of the old Star Trek regime, it seemed that no one involved had the vision and the confidence to invent a farther future, a 25th century or beyond. Does the new regime include people who do? It's a question vital to whether Star Trek's future has a future.
GR may have been just a TV writer, as many of these people are, but he had other lives before that in the military and the police, and when he created Star Trek, he systematically created a workable future (or at least a framework that the creativity of others could work with.) He thought about a plausible future. He consulted scientists, and science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke and Issac Asimov, who were scientifically literate futurists as well as imaginative writers. He also consulted writers like Ray Bradbury who imagined the human responses to technological change, as well as knowing how to use science fiction to explore contemporary issues.
Because of what he created and how he created it, GR eventually was asked to speak before scientific groups as well as at places like the Jung Society. The resulting framework and especially how he communicated it to fellow creators, is the basis for why the Star Trek saga constitutes the best known vision of the future on the planet Earth.
Are there people among those thinking about Star Trek for Paramount and CBS who realize this? Who think in these terms, as well as how to wow kids into buying Trek merchandise? Or maybe no one is going where no Trek has gone before because they aren’t up to it.
As for the Next Generation, which never got the respect it deserved, it's not good times. While the original series makes its transition from science fiction (on the Sci-Fi Channel) to nostalgia (on TvLand in the fall), and while Enterprise takes up the Sci-Fi Channel contemporary slack, TNG is marooned in the Spike TV quadrant, light years from civilization. (As for G4, I’m not sure where the line is between “interactive” and “annoying, distracting and deadening” when a story is being told, but it's not available in my neck of the woods anyway.)
Next Gen's movie fate is still something of a mystery to me. TNG was the best of the Star Trek TV series, yet their movies generally speaking didn’t soar as they should have. I’d argue that the opposite happened with the original crew: their movies were better than the TV series, though it’s probably true that the TOS films wouldn’t have been as successful without the history of the TV series.
I’ll have to wrestle with that impression when I finally get back to completing my “Trekalog” essays on the first 10 films. But I do have this modest proposal. Next year (2007) will be TNG’s 20th anniversary. If Paramount isn’t going to give the TNG crew a proper final film on the big screen, why not at least do it for television? A two hour movie with production values good enough to sell on DVD and the Internet. Use the additional history of the movies to inform the story, and give this crew the final adventure they deserve.
Sure, there are financial and logistic problems but they can be overcome. A good enough script will go a long way towards reuniting a group of actors who still love each other. There are all kinds of ways to add to its commercial appeal with cameos and guest appearances. It might even be a way to suggest a future direction, beyond the prequel and the reboot. There are unexplored areas of past Star Trek space that can yield great and provocative stories, and maybe that's where the saga should stay. But if the Star Trek future is to have a future, maybe this is where it should start.
The whole idea of a prequel movie doesn’t sit well with several members of the Next Generation cast. In a discussion on her site, Marina Sirtis said "Gene Roddenberry always said that Star Trek should go forward." Michael Dorn echoed this in an interview, and LeVar Burton has said as much in the past.
Invoking Roddenberry in this way reminds me that sadly, these actors (who collectively have also been Trek directors, producer and writers) are the last to have learned Star Trek directly from Roddenberry. You can hear it in their voices and see it in their body language—through individual personal contact, Roddenberry instilled his vision of Star Trek in them at the very beginning, and embodied Star Trek for them.
But it's not just nostalgia-- it does matter that this will be the first Star Trek that isn’t being developed by either GR or someone who worked with him, with his personal guidance. It may even be important in whether Trek ever goes forward rather than just back to the beginning of its future.
For the 23rd and 24th centuries were GR’s creation—with major creative input from others, but with his final say. Even the 22nd century of Enterprise was based on GR’s future, though it may have relied too much on some of its successful components (like introducing the Borg and the Romulans long before they should have shown up.)
It isn't that nobody but GR could come up with Star Trek ideas. New blood can infuse new life, and naturally the new generation wants to separate itself from the old. (Even in small ways---I remember Enterprise showrunner Manny Coto getting into one of those little motorcarts on the Paramount lot, making fun of the old guy, Rick Berman, always saying, 'why when I came to Paramount, none of this was here!') But to take Star Trek into the future requires more than both knowledge of the Trek past and ideas about how to make more exciting contemporary entertainment. GR thought about and cared about the future, both about what it could be and what it must be, if humanity is ever going to get there.
In the last exhausted years of the old Star Trek regime, it seemed that no one involved had the vision and the confidence to invent a farther future, a 25th century or beyond. Does the new regime include people who do? It's a question vital to whether Star Trek's future has a future.
GR may have been just a TV writer, as many of these people are, but he had other lives before that in the military and the police, and when he created Star Trek, he systematically created a workable future (or at least a framework that the creativity of others could work with.) He thought about a plausible future. He consulted scientists, and science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke and Issac Asimov, who were scientifically literate futurists as well as imaginative writers. He also consulted writers like Ray Bradbury who imagined the human responses to technological change, as well as knowing how to use science fiction to explore contemporary issues.
Because of what he created and how he created it, GR eventually was asked to speak before scientific groups as well as at places like the Jung Society. The resulting framework and especially how he communicated it to fellow creators, is the basis for why the Star Trek saga constitutes the best known vision of the future on the planet Earth.
Are there people among those thinking about Star Trek for Paramount and CBS who realize this? Who think in these terms, as well as how to wow kids into buying Trek merchandise? Or maybe no one is going where no Trek has gone before because they aren’t up to it.
As for the Next Generation, which never got the respect it deserved, it's not good times. While the original series makes its transition from science fiction (on the Sci-Fi Channel) to nostalgia (on TvLand in the fall), and while Enterprise takes up the Sci-Fi Channel contemporary slack, TNG is marooned in the Spike TV quadrant, light years from civilization. (As for G4, I’m not sure where the line is between “interactive” and “annoying, distracting and deadening” when a story is being told, but it's not available in my neck of the woods anyway.)
Next Gen's movie fate is still something of a mystery to me. TNG was the best of the Star Trek TV series, yet their movies generally speaking didn’t soar as they should have. I’d argue that the opposite happened with the original crew: their movies were better than the TV series, though it’s probably true that the TOS films wouldn’t have been as successful without the history of the TV series.
I’ll have to wrestle with that impression when I finally get back to completing my “Trekalog” essays on the first 10 films. But I do have this modest proposal. Next year (2007) will be TNG’s 20th anniversary. If Paramount isn’t going to give the TNG crew a proper final film on the big screen, why not at least do it for television? A two hour movie with production values good enough to sell on DVD and the Internet. Use the additional history of the movies to inform the story, and give this crew the final adventure they deserve.
Sure, there are financial and logistic problems but they can be overcome. A good enough script will go a long way towards reuniting a group of actors who still love each other. There are all kinds of ways to add to its commercial appeal with cameos and guest appearances. It might even be a way to suggest a future direction, beyond the prequel and the reboot. There are unexplored areas of past Star Trek space that can yield great and provocative stories, and maybe that's where the saga should stay. But if the Star Trek future is to have a future, maybe this is where it should start.
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
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.
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.
Monday, July 24, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
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.
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.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
The Inner Light, The Outer Darkness
by William S. Kowinski
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
A consideration of the 1950s classic, Creature From the Black Lagoon, at The Boomer Hall of Fame.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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