STAR TREK EVEN VS. ODD: WHERE I STAND

(Originally posted in 2004 on another one of my blogs)

There is a widespread agreement among fans that of the installments of the Star Trek movie franchise (beginning with Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979 and ending just this past summer with Nemesis) the even-numbered ones are good to great, while the odd-numbered ones are pretty much stinkers. (Only Nemesis, which was even-numbered but generally regarded as unsuccessful, seemed to break the pattern.) Where do I stand on this all-important question? I know you are asking.



Devoted Trek fans tend to regard the first movie as an overbloated mistake, and it was the next movie, The Wrath of Khan, directed (and I believe largely written) by Nicholas Meyer that set the gold standard for Trek cinema. The Search for Spock was Leonard ("Mr. Spock") Nimoy's directorial debut and a dismal one too. But he followed it up with The Voyage Home, the most commercially successful film in the series (not coincidentally, Meyer co-wrote the picture, contributing much of the funny material). Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, was William ("Captain Kirk") Shatner's turn at the (directorial) helm and may have led to the final demise of his reputation among fans (assuming his infamous "Get a life" sketch on Saturday Night Live had not quite killed it). It was an embarrassment. The sixth movie (and the final one featuring all the members of the original cast) was again written and directed by Meyer and considered a success.

As for movies featuring the cast of The Next Generation, many fans were disappointed by the Kirk/Picard teamup in Generations; they were elated by First Contact; let down (but by this time it was expected) by Insurrection ... and, sadly, by Nemesis as well.

Me? I have been skeptical about the "every other" hypothesis for quite some time. The Voyage Home may have been a box-office blockbuster but I found it dangerously close to self-parody.The Undiscovered Country pushed this tendency over the edge, with a Klingon quoting Shakespeare and Mr. Spock making a poker-faced quip about Nixon in China. One had the sneaking suspicious (and one had read interviews that confirmed it) that Meyer really didn't think much of Star Trek other than as a source of employment. I remember having been embarrassed by The Final Frontier, but I liked all the TNG installments, even if they were no more than big-budget t.v. episodes.

Last night I watched The Final Frontier for the first time since its initial release and was surprised to discover that it didn't stink. In fact I quite enjoyed it. Why had I been embarrassed the first time around? I can't quite say, other than that originally, it did not live up to my expectations and this time I had none. I enjoyed the camaraderie of the crew, which was stronger than in any of the other installments, and I only wished that the premise of the plot (seeking God at the centre of the galaxy) had been developed more intelligently.

As far as I'm concerned, then, the "every-other" phenomenon (whether it's Star Trek or anything else) is an illusion generated when eagerly anticipated events build up inflated expectations, which the actual event necessarily fails to fulfil. Which leads to more realistic expectations the next time around (when the event is part of a series); to say nothing of the fact that the people responsible for the events may try harder to please.

But once this series of events is comfortably ensconced in the past different perspectives become possible.

(Flashforward to the present, 2010:

The new Star Trek definitively breaks the pattern, as it is odd (whether considered No. 11 or No. 1) but good.)

Bonus: You will gain a new respect for Star Trek V as William Shatner elucidates its meaning for you:

TREKKER'S CONFESSIONS PART IV: RELIGION AND STAR TREK

Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, was not a religious man; and the Star Trek universe he created was not intended to be religious either. This was most explicitly acknowledged in the Next Gen episode "Who Watches the Watchers?", the plot of which has a Federation observation team posted on a "primitive" planet, accidentally observed by a couple of the planet's Vulcan-like inhabitants. These natives, unable to account for the mysterious appearance and disappearance of the Federation team, begin to construct supernatural explanations, and then start to develop a cult. Much to the consternation of Captain Picard, who is not only concerned with the violation of the Federation's non-interference principle, but quite definitely regards the development of belief in gods among this promising people to be an utter catastrophe. His efforts to rectify matters ultimately succeed, and the natives' civilization is left in peace to develop "naturally" in a rational and godless way. Sanity has been restored to the universe!

Like-minded fans may sometimes exaggerate the secularism of the original series. What follows is an online comment from Donna Minkowitz, who bristles with indignation over the theme song for the final ST series, Enterprise. The song was entitled "Faith of the Heart", and was already controversial for being a piece of soft-rock vocal schlock, rather than the traditional pompous or swanky orchestral shlock typifying the preceding series' opening themes that many fans evidently preferred. Ms. Minkowitz's objection to it was political, not aesthetic, and reads: "The titles, set to a hymn that combines the first Christian references ever heard on Star Trek with some boasts about resisting alien domination, show drawings of the ships of fifteenth-century European colonial powers and European maps and globes from the same period... This jibes neatly with the plot, the first ever on Star Trek in which racism is applauded. The normal, virile, white spacemen of Earth are being held back by the ridiculous sensitivities of the Vulcans, pushy, geeky aliens who want them to respect the cultural differences of all the alien races."

Never mind that there are actually no Christian references at all in the song (which would not ordinarily be called a hymn), except possibly for the word "faith": which is plainly used in the ordinary, secular sense of "self-confidence". And never mind the tacit equation of Christianity with nasty colonial exploitation and racism. Never mind whether her standard issue politically correct objections to the series are right or wrong. I would concede many of the points she makes in the article about the series in question, but she's simply wrong to say there were no Christian references in the series until that point.

In the original series, there were quite a few. There were numerous references, for instance, to the Garden of Eden story, as well as other Biblical themes. (It would be carping to say that most of those aren't Christian, but Jewish). Episodes with titles like "This Side of Paradise", "The Devil in the Dark", "The Apple", "The Doomsday Machine", "Journey to Babel", "The Omega Glory", "The Paradise Syndrome", "The Mark of Gideon", "Reqieum for Methusaleh" and "The Way to Eden" all use names and terms that are far more explicitly Jewish and/or Christian than "faith". (I've often thought that an apt title for the whole series would be "Paradise Well Lost" as the theme of the expulsion from the Garden occurs again and again - though the expulsion is generally regarded as a good thing, a move away from infantalism to true human maturity.)

A few more references: Spock is joshingly referred to, or mistaken for Lucifer on several occasions. Kirk is embarrassed to meet a crewmember he was intimate with at the ship's Christmas party. The Enterprise contains a non-demominational chapel, and occasionally the fact that at least some members of the crew have religious faith is alluded to. When the (supposed) god Apollo, in "Who Mourns for Adonais?", attempts to force the crew of the Enterprise to worship him, Kirk responds: "Mankind has no need of gods; we find the one quite sufficient."

That last remark is most probably an indication that the network censors of the time were at work ensuring that no overtly anti-religious sentiments would be broadcast. Nevertheless, my point is that it isn't strictly true to say that there were no allusions to religious belief in the series. In the third season episode "The Empath", a scientist at an outpost can be heard making a suspiciously devout remark for someone supposedly raised in a post-religious utopia :

Scientist 1 (reacting to an earth tremor): I don't think I can stand another week in this godforsaken place.

Scientist 2: "In His hand are all the deep places of the earth". Psalm 95, verse 4. Looks like He was listening...

The plot of the episode concerns a woman with empathic healing abilities who sacrifices her life to save McCoy's: What other story might that remind us of?

If it's objected that Roddenberry wasn't in control during the third season, and so couldn't prevent occasional scriptural quotations (if indeed he would have objected to them at all), what then is to be said of "Bread and Circuses", from the second season, and co-written by Mr. Roddenberry? This is one of those episodes where the Enterprise visits an alternate Earth (the galaxy appears to be riddled with them), where the civilization closely resembles that of Ancient Rome, but with twentieth century technology. Kirk and Co. become involved with an underground group of escaped slaves called "children of the sun", who are pacifists opposed to the Empire. The rest of the story consists of televised gladitorial combats, a sexy slave woman offering her services to Kirk, and challenges to the Prime Directive, while at the end of the show the crew are safely back on the Bridge, having logged another successful mission. It is then that Uhura, being an expert in linguistics, makes the astonishing connection: The "children of the sun" are actually "children of the Son", Son, that is, of God; that is, Christ! ... One could not imagine a more blatant Christian reference than that.

The question, of course, is what is the significance of these references. As noted before, some of them would have been inserted at the network's insistence, or (as I suspect is the case with "Bread and Circuses") the writers voluntarily threw the Believing Public a bon-bon or two. (In the sixties, many non-believers would have regarded religion as a relatively benign atavism, and were willing to be indulgent. The public face of Christianity then was typified by the likes of Martin Luther King, not Jerry Falwell.) As well, most of the general public were at least passingly familiar with Biblical stories and themes, and allusions to them would have lent the series an aura of seriousness and dignity. Shakespeare and Keats were also used in this way by the writers. ("Conscience of the King", "Is There No Truth in Beauty?").

Pt II: God lives on Vulcan - IDIC and other quasi-religious substitutes

TREKKER'S CONFESSIONS PART III: DON'T LIKE CHRIS PINE

I have to say that while I like the Star Trek reboot now playing in theatres everywhere, the one teeny, tiny thing that I'd change about it is the casting of James T. Kirk. No, I don't like Chris Pine's interpretation of the role at all.

No, he's not Shatner. No, none of the actors were hired on the basis of their ability to impersonate the original cast. But Captain Kirk ought to be larger than life, and this one isn't.

One simple thing could have been done to change that: Hire someone who had training in classical theatre, knows how to speak English correctly and beautifully, and does so. I believe that has been the case with all the starship captains from the various series, with the possible exception of Scott Bakula as Captain Archer of Enterprise (and look what happened there).

Each time Mr. Pine opened his mouth and said things like (I improvise): "Yer not serious, Spack!" I cringed. This totally undermined for me the sense that Kirk is anything more than an arrogant, narcissistic boor. Yes, he comes from Iowa and that (presumably) is the way people from Iowa speak. Yes, he's hardly out of his teenage years and is wet behind the ears. However, as the movie's plot has him assuming command of the Enterprise at this tender age, a development that stretches credulity in and of itself, the least that might have been done is have him act older than his years; something that could have been done merely by having him speak proper English.

TREKKER'S CONFESSIONS PART II: ALTERNATE REALITIES

I am not going to provide a spoiler alert, because if you are a long-time Star Trek fan and you haven't seen the new movie yet, you are a contradiction in terms. Besides, no one protected me in the eighties from learning ahead of time that Spock dies, Spock comes back from the dead, and (from that other series) Darth Vader is Luke's father. And if you aren't a Star Trek fan you won't care anyway.

The new movie manages to take care of any possible inconsistencies between established Star Trek "history" and the new "original crew of the Enterprise" introduced here, by having time travellers alter history - to wit, James Kirk's father is killed by the time travellers just before Kirk's birth, and a couple of decades later these same time travellers destroy the planet Vulcan. Lives are subtly and dramatically altered, the Enterprise is built vastly more shiny and sophisticated, the transporter effect is different, product placement is an unfortunate reality in the 23rd century, it seems (although, strangely, the products are 21st century), and Uhura is bonking Spock.

I'm fairly sure the Internet is abuzz with debates over this. (Note: I never pay attention to the Internet.) Does the new time line replace the old one, so that (in effect) the Star Treks we've known and loved (...in varying degrees...) all these decades never happened? No original series, no Wrath of Khan, no Next Generation, Deep Space Nine or Voyager? Ironically, only Enterprise, the prequel series, escapes this scourge as it took place earlier than the new movie. (As Enterprise for a while unfolded a story arc of a "time war" with the potential to alter history, one can imagine all kinds of complications to established future histories.) Alternately, maybe the new continuity is taking place in a time line that exists parallel to the original one, so we fans can take comfort that everything that has happened, is still happening. Or to put it another way, "All of this has happened before and it will happen again." Then again, the Kirk/Spock/McCoy and company of the "JJ" universe are so genetically dissimilar to their "GR" universe counterparts that it may be that this is an entirely different timeline that existed prior to the time-travelling reset button. I rather favour that theory myself.

What annoys me is how the critics, while applauding this clever ploy, have not yet failed to take a swipe at the old fanbase: We are stick-in-the-muds with an obsessive insistence on continuity, which if it had been catered to, would have made this film impossible. As it is, Abrams has successfully subverted our nerdiness to appeal to a new, hipper generation of fans. The following parody news item from The Onion neatly sums this up:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/trekkies_bash_new_star_trek_film?utm_source=most_pop_pop

Very funny, Onion, but my "inner nerd" insists on pointing out that Klingon dialogue was subtitled most of the time. (Besides, there are no Klingons in the new movie.)

It's also slightly absurd to assume that anyone would knowingly make a Trek movie that they thought would likely alienate the original fans rather than please them. (Well, not totally absurd. Look at the "reimagined" Battlestar Galactica.) "Yes, J.J, we're giving you millions of dollars to produce a revamped Star Trek, because it's been our biggest money-making franchise and we'd like to put new life into it. But we certainly don't think you should worry about the old fans - don't bother with them at all - maybe introduce one of the original cast in a small cameo, just toss them that bone; but we want you to concentrate on the younger generation who basically don't know Star Trek or if they do don't like it."

I'm fairly certain that the "Not your father's Star Trek" publicity campaign was orchestrated merely to take the stink of recent failures (Nemesis, Enterprise) off the franchise. Too bad the critics bought into it.

In point of fact, Star Trek fans have never had a great deal of problem with continuity changes. Speaking of Klingons, in the original series they were depicted as basically human in appearance, with bronze skins, goatees, and arched eyebrows to distinguish them (and make them look evil). For the first movie, their makeup was redesigned to make them look genuinely alien, with forehead ridges giving them a reptilian cast. That became the basic Klingon look for all subsequent series. There were no loud cries of "Bring back the real Klingons!" heard from fans due to this change.

Then there's Mr. Spock, famous for his lack of emotions. In the pilot episode "The Cage" (which was incorporated into the first season two-parter "The Menagerie"), he is portrayed by Leonard Nimoy as rather excitable. That's simply because he was a minor character in the pilot and Gene Roddenberry thought the pointed ears were enough to make him interesting. When he was made First Officer in the revamped series he was reconceived as being half-human, half-Vulcan; as the Vulcans are relentlessly logical and renounce emotions, that made him a good foil for Kirk's impulsive and passionate nature and McCoy's irascibility. And being half human gave him a ready made inner conflict to deal with. Most of us do not think that "The Menagerie" spoiled things with its few seconds of Spock as originally conceived.

Moreover, Trekkers weren't particularly troubled when it was revealed that Vulcans were the race that humans had first contact with (in the Next Generation movie with that title). This had never been hinted at in previous stories. Nor was James Cromwell's portrayal of Zephram Cochrane (inventor of the warp drive) - utterly unlike the character as portrayed in the original series episode "Metamorphosis" - there he was an earnest and serious "square", as opposed to Cromwell's hard-drinking, rock-and-roll loving version.

True, the revelation in Star Trek V that Spock had a long-lost brother didn't please us, but that was because the movie basically sucked.

In short, the continuity changes of the new movie aren't in any sense a problem to us. Star Trek has frequently featured alternate timeline/parallel universe stories. From "Mirror/Mirror" to "Yesterday's Enterprise" to "All Good Things" these have been among the most popular episodes. Placing the new series in an alternate reality was thus completely within Star Trek tradition, and more than acceptable.

TREKKER'S CONFESSIONS PART 1: "STAR TREK: THE MOTION SICKNESS"

With the runaway success of the current "new and improved" Star Trek movie, I thought I'd hark back nearly thirty years ago to the overbloated spectacular that started it all: Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Maybe not quite "started it all": You will recall that the original Star Trek t.v. series ran from 1966 to 1969, when it was ignominiously cancelled by NBC. Then it began to be broadcast endlessly in syndication, which was when it really took off. A distinctive form of fandom was born, consisting not just of people who enjoyed the show a lot, but of many people who made it the centre of their lives. They would attend conventions dressed as their favourite characters from the show. They would write earnest papers discussing alien taxonomy, the mechanics of warp drive and the matter transporter. They would fret over the inconsistencies caused by taking the stardates of each episode literally and arranging them in order. (Stardates were Gene Roddenberry's coy way of avoiding specifying the actual century the series was set in. They were never meant to be taken seriously.) They would write scripts and stories. They would write slash fiction, which is a form of sexual fantasy involving two (or more) of the characters - Kirk/Spock, Chapel/Spock, Spock/McCoy, etc. On the commercial side, not only were the conventions lucrative, but books, comics, and models continued to be produced in homage to this defunct series. (I myself owned in the 1970's all of James Blish's adaptations of the original episodes, Alan Dean Foster's Log series, which adapted the animated series, The Star Fleet Technical Manual, and the blueprints for the Enterprise.) If the series had been a person, it might well have informed its enemies at the network: "You can't win, NBC. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

There was little question that the series would be revived, but in what form? A two-season animated version ran in the early seventies, with most of the original cast reprising their roles vocally. While this was well-intentioned, the animation was severely limited, with overuse of stock shots, stiff character shots and frozen backgrounds; and the stories were mostly embarrasingly poor in quality. Most fans preferred to ignore it. A revived t.v. series (Star Trek: Phase II) was beginning production, when the runaway success of Star Wars led Paramount executives to decide to make a movie instead. Most of the original cast was signed on, with newcomers Persis Khambatta as the exotic and sexy Ilia, and Stephen Collins and the soon-to-be-displaced Captain of the Enterprise, Willard Decker. Robert Wise was the director and Douglas Trumball was in charge of the special effects. The production cost of the movie became notorious - at $45 million, this was the most expensive movie ever made up to that point. Most of this money was spent on the special effects.

Star Trek fans generally love the design of the original Enterprise. Personally, I don't believe that if the series had been set in a needle-nose rocket, a flying saucer or something resembling an aircraft carrier in space that it would been nearly the success it was. The movie Enterprise was redesigned, but only to make it look better, sleeker - the nacelles in particular were flattened from their original tubular shape. This is the version of the Enterprise I like the most, and what I most regret about the movie series is that it was seen so little. Later Enterprises - that of The Next Generation and of the prequel series Enterprise - weren't nearly so cool and classy.

But you do get your fill of the starship in ST:TMP. The newly-refurbished Enterprise is first seen in spacedock, just after Admiral Kirk has announced that he is retaking command of her. Kirk is being flown to her in a shuttle (the transporter isn't working properly). We see from his point of view as he approaches - for the first time we realize the sheer size of the ship. The camera leisurely takes us on a three hundred and sixty degree tour, all the better to salivate over. It's dizzying and perhaps a little nauseating. Eventually, the ride's over and the shuttlecraft approaches a docking port, to which it cleanly connects with a satisfying whump (or some such sound effect). It's virtually pornographic - SFX porn. And just like regular porn, it goes on for far too long.

Which proved to be a keynote of the special effects in the picture. The threat in this movie is a huge cloud of energy, capable of destroying planets, containing at its centre a mysterious entity known as V'ger. It is the mission of the Enterprise to penetrate the cloud and get to the heart of the mystery, thus saving Earth. Several overlong sequences detail the approach. These are somewhat fascinating, but don't (as they say) advance the plot. It's either roiling spacecloud, shapes resembling Mandelbrot sets, or the bridge crew staring at the viewscreen in cosmic wonderment for what seems like half an hour... The sexual metaphor continues when Spock has himself shot through a dilating orifice in order to meet V'ger face to face. To say nothing of what happens at the climax, when V'ger, having assumed the form of Ilia, and lovelorn Decker literally become one, in an explosion of cyber-orgasmic energy.

Fans such as myself were by and large discontented with all this. They protested that the plot was not original, but taken from at least three original-series episodes - The Doomsday Machine, The Immunity Syndrome and The Changeling. We did not like the way the characters were portrayed - in particular, Spock was so emotionally cold for most of the picture that the Kirk-Spock-McCoy dynamic couldn't be reestablished (then near the end, Spock gets all gushy - again, not good). The new characters, Ilia and Decker, while central to the plot, were also given short shrift. Early in the action, Ilia is disintegrated by V'ger and replaced with a machine duplicate that talks in a staccoto monotone; Decker is shoved to one side so Kirk can regain command; and both are literally out of the picture at the end. All this makes them seem curiously pointless. (They were originally intended to be regular weekly characters on the Phase II series.) Not all of us loved Jerry Goldsmith's bombastic theme music, which replaced the original series' swanky romantic theme.

Nevertheless, the movie made back its cost three times over, possibly because the fans, while disappointed, would go to see it again and again. Silly fans! Or is it clever fans? Because due to the possibly undeserved success of ST:TMP, a second movie was made. Then a third, then a fourth. Then a new t.v. series, six more movies, three more series, until finally, this...

BAD SCIENCE FICTION

Bad science fiction - and I mean by that science fiction where the science is bad, and we don't forgive it, because the fiction's bad too - has fascinated me for years. I have named this blog after a perfect example of the genre, an episode of Space:1999; in fact, the second episode of that lamentable series ever to air. No, it wasn't called "Helena's Anti-Matter Ex-Husband", it was called "A Matter of Life and Death". But it was about Helena's a-m ex-husband. He'd been lost in space, you see, presumed dead (not so much her ex-husband, then, as her late husband; however, I refuse to change the title of this blog) but due to a cosmic accident, as plausible as the one that served as the basis of the series^* , had been transformed into anti-matter. Trouble ensues, naturally.

Now, physicists will tell you that anti-matter consists of particles of matter that carry an opposite charge from their "regular" matter counterpart. An anti-electron, or positron, carries a positive rather than a negative charge. An anti-proton carries a negative rather than a positive charge. And so on. When a particle and its antiparticle counterpart come into contact with each other, they annihilate each other, releasing lots of energy (to the tune of e=mc² ). This has been observed in particle accelerators around the world, and scientists have learned much about the nature of physical reality from these observations. Apparently the space around us is bubbling with particles and antiparticles coming into existence and just as quickly popping out of existence, which doesn't pose the slightest threat to our existence - it's been happening since the Big Bang, after all. In fact, as there should for reasons of symmetry be just as much anti-matter in the universe as the regular stuff, it's a mystery to scientists where the missing anti-matter is. Except that, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't missing.

None of that really matters to the writers of bad science fiction. The only thing that they absorb about the concept is that it's disastrous to mix these two substances. MATTER + ANTIMATTER = BIG BOOM!!! What a good story this would make! Obviously, anti-matter is evil matter, and must be stopped, whether by Captain Kirk, Doctor Who, or the morose inhabitants of earth's breakaway moon!

I would hypothesize that we can lay much of the blame for this bad science on the shoulders of an anonymous writer of popular science, writing probably in the nineteen forties or nineteen fifties. This person introduced her readers to the concept of anti-matter, outlining it much as I did in the second paragraph above. But she waggishly closed off the article with a little jest, along the lines of: "So - if you should happen to meet your anti-matter twin coming down the street towards you - remember - DON'T SHAKE HANDS!" Not expecting that anyone would take that seriously, of course.

How wrong she was can be judged from the following examples:

Space:1999 "A Matter of Life and Death". The one that gave this blog its name.

"Is that a positron in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?'


Star Trek "The Alternative Factor". Two twins, one of them psychotic, from alternate universes (ours and the antimatter one) must never meet or they will destroy both universes!




Doctor Who "Planet of Evil". Why is this planet evil? Why, because of the antimatter, silly! It gives Sarah Jane the shivers, and turns a man into a life-sucking monster. Apparently one of the writers of this serial got the idea by reading science magazine articles. I told you so!

^{*In 1999, nuclear waste, deemed too unsafe to keep on earth, is stored on the far side of the moon. (Though of course it's perfectly safe to blast this stuff on a rocket into space to get to the moon- rockets never have accidents.) Due to a freak chain reaction, the nuclear waste explodes, causing the moon to be ejected out of earth orbit at an enormous velocity, then out of the solar system altogether. Suffice to say, as the far side of the moon is always facing away from the earth, according to Newton's third law this explosion should actually have moved it blasted it directly towards the earth, not away. To say nothing of a myriad other scientific absurdities.}