Blog #4

There are a lot of ways to approach a topic as vast as the Star Trek universe. For someone like Lawrence Krauss or Stephen Hawking it is a window into the future of technology and human unerstanding.[1][2] For someone, who might be considered the opposite of the first two, like William Shatner it was a proving ground and a family.[3] While for others still, like myself or Robert Bly, it is a source of irreconcilably large amounts of trivial knowledge.[5] Still for more It is an asorted group up stories and lasting visuals remembered fondly from childhood, young adulthood, and even adulthood.[4]

Some topics regularly covered in Star Trek are still considered far fetched or impossible such as: inertial dampeners, time travel, or something as simple as sound in space.[1] Even with all it’s scientific blunders, however, it plays a significant role in the scientific community.  Stephen Hawking describes his view of Star Trek: “not only good fun but it also serves a serious purpose, the of expanding the human imagination”.[2] Hawking, like many others, recognizes that Star Trek in many ways has been the blueprint that scientist and inventors follow in their own creation. Cell Phones were science fiction in the 1960s when Captain Kirk was gallivanting around the galaxy, but today Steve Jobs would scoff at the communicator as bulky.

William Shatner began his career as Captain Kirk in 1966, but he was not the first captain to appear on the bridge of the Enterprise.  “The Cage”, the pilot episode of Star Trek, was made on a budget of twenty thousand dollars for NBC and featured Christopher Pike in the commanding role.[3] It took a little more time to assemble the troops and by the time the second pilot was shot the only returning character was Spoke, the half-vulcan. After getting the green light after the second pilot Gene Roddenbery took sole responsibility for half the the first seasons episodes. There was so little to draw upon with only the two pilots that Gene felt no one other than himself could yet understand the spirit of what he wanted Star Trek To be.[3] By the end of season one he would have personally written or re-written the script for almost all thirteen original episodes. In his mind he was not only planning out stories for the next episodes; he was engineering entire starships in his imagination and mapping out their vital functions.[3]

Gene was not only the creator of Star Trek, but something of a father figure to much of the crew. Leonard Nimoy talks candidly of guest staring on other shows and wishing for a home that would last more than a few days of shooting. What he finds in Gene is not exactly the validation he hoped for, but it did resemble something like family.[3] Dysfunction is aptly suited to describe his relationship with the management.  With the explosion of popularity with the character Spock he expected praise from his foster father and family, but instead paranoia over what this newly formed star’s demands would be created distance between them. Nimoy requested that a phone be installed in his dressing room at his own expense and this was denied as being “not in the contract”.[3] Shatner theorizes that management was thinking “give him a phone, and he’ll want a car.” Where Nimoy may have found passive agressive father figures Shatner found brothers. While shooting “The Devil in the Dark” Shatner got a call saying his father had died. Travel arrangements made it impossible for him to get to Miami until late that night. The assistant director had said they were going to break for the day, but Bill asked that they keep shooting because he didn’t know what he would do with himself for the rest of the day. He writes fondly of being almost physically propped up by Leonard and Jerry Finnerman (who had recently lost his own father).[3]

For me Star Trek really did inspire me. I can’t help but think it has a large something to do with my chosen (and almost acquired) major of Computer Science. I’m not sure that I wanted to live in a world like Star Trek or create a world like Star Trek. I fantasized almost as often about being part of the team that works on the effects of a Bord Cube exploding as I did about being in engineering getting that elusive last bit of power out of the engines the Geordie always seems to find. Either way I’m glad Gene was around to create something so great and so influential to so many people.

Works Cited

[1] Krauss, Lawrence M. The Physics of Star Trek. New York, NY: BasicBooks, 1995.
[2] Krauss, Lawrence M. Foreword, by Stephen Hawking, xi–xiii.

New York, NY: BasicBooks, 1995.

[3] Shatner, William, and Kreski, Chris. Star Trek: Memories. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1993.
[4] Block, Paula M. Star Trek: The Original Series 365. Abrams, NY: AbramsBooks, 2010.
[5] Bly, Robert W. The Ultimate Unauthorized Star Trek Quiz Book. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1994.

Blog Post #3

    Star Trek has a unique ability to shed light on social topics, analogy being it’s primary tool, that would be far to lofty a goal for most television shows.  In the sixties and seventies Star Trek pushed the bounds by having a hugely diverse crew consisting of  an African woman, a Scotsman, a Russian, a Japanese American, and an alien. What was shocking then is common place now but Star Trek did it first and it did it without apology. Latter in the nineties Star Trek generations tackled everything from drug addiction, homosexuality,  slavery, and discrimination. It is important for us as a society to examine even long held beliefs and, very often, revise them.  It’s an uncomfortable and often painful process. Star Trek can ease us into a place where we can think about those things and just thinking about them Is a large part of the battle.

    In my last post I wrote about the episode in season two “The Measure of A Man”. It explored in an entirely new way the topic of slavery and how we might in inadvertently make slavery live once again if we are not careful.  This admittedly is a problem that is hopefully far enough behind us and probably two far ahead of us to be a problem in our lifetime, but it does have a prophetic sense about it.  Not all topics covered in Star Trek though are so far removed from our current day situations.

In episode seventeen of season five, “The Outcast”, the enterprise is contacted by the androgynous race the J'naii to help find their missing shuttle craft.  In working together Commander Riker begins to have romantic feelings about Soren and she for him. In J'naii culture, however, sexual reproduction has long been abandoned and is considered primitive and a perversion. Soren becomes more and more aware of her feelings for Riker and eventually tells him she finds him attractive. When the affair is found out the leaders of the J'naii force Soren to undergo "psychotectic therapy" for her illness. Riker so distraught at the situation leaves his post on the Enterprise to rescue Soren. When he reaches her she is already too far gone, already convinced she was sick and now is better.

The events don’t end in any grand fashion that would release the J'naii from the oppression many of them suffer through. Riker is not even able to save the one J'naii he loves. What the episode does accomplish is the make the view think about the situation they are seeing and also, maybe even against their will, the situation of the LGBT community here on earth in their own time.  To make people think about topics in a new way without them even necessarily knowing it, or even if they do, is a very powerful thing and a very good reason to learn more about Star Trek.

Not all episodes of moral value are so directly analogous to present day topics. In episode seventeen of season 3, “Who Watches The Watchers”, the Enterprise is resupplying a Federation outpost on Mintaka III.  The outpost is made up of anthropologists who are studying a group of the Mintaka inhabitants who are at an approximate bronze age of development. Because the Mintaka are at such a primitive stage in development the observation must be unknown to them. This non-interference policy applies to all cultures who have not yet developed faster than light travel and it is the corner stone of the Federations mission, The Prime Directive. An accident at the outpost injures one of the Natives. Dr. Crusher is the first to reach him and has to choose weather to leave him and let him die or to violate the Prime Directive and bring him to the ships sickbay. She saves him, but the cost is high. He believes that it is not an advances species who has saved him but god, a religious figure his people abandoned generations ago. No amount of attempts to convince him otherwise work and when he returns to his people this belief is rekindled and spirals out of control eventually ending in the people believing that Captain Picard is God. The injured man believes this so much that he insists that if he shoots Picard with an arrow he will not be injured. Picard seeing no alternative allows himself to be shot. Seeing their God wounded is the key to making them believe that Picard is mortal.

It’s a story about the importance of holding to your convictions and the consequences if you don’t. Picard is so willing to correct the error when contact with the Mintakans is made that he is willing to sacrifice even himself. Star Trek is sometimes a magnifying class that obscures just enough for us to examine a particular topic, sometimes good example of morality at it’s best, and perhaps above all it’s damned good entertainment.

Blog #2

    I think Star Trek is special to me because, other than being a great show, it is a bridge between my childhood and my and adult life. I remember fondly sneaking into my parents bedroom every night before ten and pleading with them to let me sleep on the floor next to their bed and watch Star Trek. Through the bargaining process I would be allowed to sleep on the side where I could not see the television.  In many ways I have idealized this childhood. I was young and blissfully unaware of any problems outside of being hungry and always wanting to watch one more cartoon before dinner. That is not to say that I have a massive array of serious problems now, it is just that in retrospect those times feels like perfection. Later on in high school and my first years of college I found myself with the means to acquire the seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and discovered that I loved the series not only from a nostalgic point of view but in fact on it’s own merits. There are too many episodes that I feel are great to write about them all so I’m going to pick a one and talk about why it in particular is to me important, special, and just plain excellent entertainment.

    Star Trek did not hit the ground running and season one was something of a bumpy start. Perhaps for this reason there are few episodes of note until season two where at episode nine we have “The Measure of a Man". It’s hard to explain the magnitude of the situation to someone who hasn’t seen the series up to this point but I will try.

Data is an android character that we as an audience see develop into very much more than that for the first and part of the second season. By the time that this episodes rolls around he does not feel like an unemotional machine, but a living breathing part of the crew. It’s a sudden and harsh jerk of a realization when cyberneticist Commander Bruce Maddox arrives and wants to take data apart to better examine the technology that makes him possible. The catch is that in Data’s opinion the techniques that Maddox wants to employ would very like kill the essence of what makes data him or in his words: “That while I believe it is possible to download the information contained in the positronic brain, I do not think you have acquired the expertise necessary to preserve the essence of those experiences. There is an ineffable quality to memory which I do not believe can survive your procedure. ”  A refusal from data elicits and order from Maddox which in turn causes Data with much trepidation to resign from Starfleet. It is at this point where things get interesting to me. Maddox claims that Data is property and therefor not permitted to resign.

Captain Picard requests that Starfleet Judge Advocate General for the twenty-third sector, Captain Philippa Louvois, make a ruling that Data is indeed a sentient being and therefore not the property of Starfleet. She refuses to make the ruling without a trial however and because of being understaffed Riker, second in command of the Enterprise, must be the prosecutor and attempt to have Data ruled as property. The case goes somewhat poorly for Picard, the defense, for the first part. During a recess he talks to Guinan, Whoopi Goldberg’s character, and there is this almost magic crystallizing moment when everything is put into perspective. One Data viewed as a tool was sensible, it fit, two even, a hundred, but when you think of the research Maddox wanted to do, creating a entire race of androids born into what amounts to slavery, the decision becomes monumental.  The gravity of the situation causes the judge to falter, and she simply cannot and will not condem and entire sentient race to slavery.

There are many more small but important niches to this story. Riker forced to try prove that his friend is less that human and doesn’t deserve to have control over his own life is gut wrenching. In the end it is clear that Riker can almost not bear to look at himself and Data says to him “your action injured you--and saved me. I shall not forget it." It is a great example of the sheer selflessness of Data and also how much he had come to mean to his human companions.  There is also a sense of helplessness before Guinan helps to clarify things that makes for great entertainment. Most of all what this episode did for me though is taught me that even a small injustice or decision can have huge repercussions in my own life and the lives of the people around me.

Blog Post #1

Star Trek in it’s entirety is a vast collection of almost every imaginable kind of media. It currently includes five live action television series, 11 feature films, numerous novels, countless pieces of merchandise, video games, and even an animated series [1]. In short it’s a commercial brand like many others and like many others it was designed to have every last penny sucked out of it. However, It differs in a very unique and special way. At it’s heart Star Trek, at least at it’s best, has a deep desire to raise public awareness and discussion on a variety of social and political topics[5].  Usually these are the kinds of topics that could not be approached by something so humble as a television show without being laughed at, but by looking at them through the slightly foggy lens of an alien species or the comfortable gap of several hundred years it seems we as people can relax and stop being offended or obstinate just long enough to thing about something from a new perspective.

Star Trek first had life breathed into it in September of 1966 [2]. In it’s own time Star Trek, later renamed “Star Trek: The Original Series”, had low rating and survived only 3 seasons and 79 episodes [2]. Several years after it’s cancellation it became something of a cult classic in syndication. One blog reports that at the peak of it’s popularity in the 1970’s it was more watched by males 18-49 in New York that even Monday Night Football[4]. This fanaticism lead to the re-birth of Star Trek in the form of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”[3]. While the film was not received warmly by critics it did well at the box office and it became clear that Star Trek was alive and kicking once again.

    The Success of the movie lead to a slue of others. There popularity grew so enormous that the salaries that were demanded by both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy prompted the studios to reload and recast with unknown actors and a new television series.[6] Twenty one years after the Original Star Trek a new generation takes to the stars in “Star Trek: Next Generation”. While I have seen my fair share of “The Original Series” and also some “Deep Space Nine”, “Voyager”, and even “Enterprise” none of them has meant so much to me or captured my imagination so thoroughly as the crew on the Starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D).

    The Transition from the original crew to the new one was not without controversy. Fans that grew up with and love the Original crew were unsure that a new cast could possibly fill a void that would be left without James T. Kirk in the captains chair. On top of it all Jean-Luc Picard was in almost every way the exact opposite of everything Kirk was[7]. Misgivings over that change were largely forgotten by the end of the first season making “Stark Trek: The Next Generation” viewer numbers exceed that of even “Cheers” and “LA Law”[7].

    “The Next Generation” aired for seven seasons totalling in 178 episodes. The last one aired in May of 1994 and was soon followed by the first feature film staring the crew of the Next Generation, “Star Trek: Generations”. This was a unique film because it featured both crews and served as a bridge between the old and the new. In two year increments “First Contact” and then “Insurrection” were released finally to be capped off in 2002 by “Nemesis”. This is and likely will remain the last we see of “The Next Generation”. Although there is much to say about the history of trek beyond the end of “The Next Generation” I will stop here. Not because there is not much of value in the remaining Trek universe but simply because I believe that the Next Generation is very much the best generation and so it is what i wish to write about.

    Being born in the late eighties I was hardly able to enjoy “The Next Generation” during it’s original run. I came to it much later in some ways just as a matter of course through my love of both technology and the sci-fi genre in general. Since really watching the show in high school around 2004 I have seen every one of the 178 episodes and lamented that there were not another 178, but in the end I must be happy with what there is. These precious episodes are what I intend to share my thoughts, feelings, wishes, and even a few criticisms about over the course of this class and this blog.

1. “A Short History of Star Trek”, last modified 9-25-10, http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/misc/trek_history.htm

2. “Star Trek”, last modified May 21, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek

3. “Star Trek - The Motion Picture - Trailer”, last modified Dec 8, 2006, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5vK8hCVrFg

4. “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”, last modified 05-22-2011, http://soulofstartrek.blogspot.com/search/label/Star%20Trek%20I%3A%20The%20Motion%20Picture

5. “Is Star Trek Anti-Religion or Merely Ambiguous About It?”, modified May 11, 2011, http://www.screened.com/news/is-star-trek-anti-religion-or-merely-ambiguous-about-it/2212/

6. “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, modified May 22, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation#Syndication_and_ratings

7. “Jean-Luc Picard”, modified May 15, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Picard