Gene Roddenberry was wrong....
The title of this maiden entry may be odd for a blog whose name derives from the motto of Starfleet Academy, and (I'll admit) was a little bit of clickbait. Don't get me wrong: I love Trek enough to warp back to the blogsophere about it, but a spark that got me back to blogging was a ponder over why it isn't so mainstream anymore, or--dare I type it--why it seems to languish in irrelevance. This of course isn't really true: Trek is still relevant, the new film series gets plenty of mainstream attention, and TNG and DS9 remain much beloved series for much of fandom. Part of my ponder involved the fact that 2015 marks what I've ceremoniously dubbed the "Seventh Star Wars Year," as in the 7th year a new film in the Saga shall be released, and Lucasfilm's new Disney Overlords are doing an incredible job generating energy and excitement for the franchise as a whole.
The thing is, they don't need that much help. The excitement around Star Wars is fan-based more than anything, as most recently demonstrated here, here, here and here (yes, I spent all weekend watching this because I'm as swept up in it as anyone else). At the risk of oversimplification, it strikes a chord in our culture, one that TOS, TNG, Voyager and Enterpise only attempted to do, and occasionally at that. The Saga is a cosmic battle between good and evil, with ancient prophecies, supernatural Force(s), millenia-old Orders and institutions and the very fate of the galaxy all in play. Yearning for transcendent metaphysical drama has been at the core of human nature, and its something that--for better and for worse--is getting better airplay in our day. By contrast, the United Federation of Planets and the burgeoning optimism it spawns in the hearts of its bravest explorers are built on something very specific to 1960s American liberalism. It's based on the idea that war, disease, poverty and general hardship would all be eliminated if we let reason, science, the inevitability of progress, the ever-constant human ascent to the stars, the rule of law and democratic order just show us the light.
Its a nice idea, and one that we can't utterly jettison, but its one that we by-and-large simply don't believe in anymore. Its an idea that suffered a crippling blow with Vietnam, then with Watergate, then with the OPEC Oil Crisis. We thought it rose triumphant with the collapse of that "evil empire," only to take its final, fatal hit when a pair of airplanes flew into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon. The War in Iraq and the 2008 recession were simply fallout. Roddenberry may have understood this, and TNG, VOY and ENT at their best both depict this collapse and salvage the goods of our democratic heritage. But there are a lot of irrelevant duds in the mix, including many a Voyager and Enterprise episode, and most emblematically the Film that Shall Not Be Named.
Eight years before 9/11, and two years after Roddenberry's death passed on his legacy to other hands, Deep Space Nine presented a radically different type of Trek and directly challenged Roddenberry's vision. In the pilot, Sisko himself didn't know quite how to handle the Prophets of Bajor, but he definitely erred towards seeing them simply as powerful aliens residing in the wormwhole, and he certainly refused to believe that he was their Emissary. The biggest departure from Roddenberry right off the bat was found in the way Kira and her Bajoran compatriots fully and seriously embraced the belief that the Prophets were the Divine Protectors of her people. In Religions of Star Trek, Kraemer et al. note that in Roddenberry's Trek, "religion appears almost exclusively as an aspect of 'the Other'--and usually the 'primitive Other' at that." (p. 3) With the Bajorans, we have a culturally sophisticated, technologically advanced and highly intelligent people who seriously uphold public, supernatural beliefs that sustained them through the hostile Cardassian occupation, and continue to sustain them as they heal from that occupation. By the end of the series, Sisko's own drama shows us how Deep Space Nine is really centred on a cosmic battle between good and evil, with ancient prophecies, supernatural forces, millenia-old Orders and institutions and the very fate of the galaxy all in play. Like Palpatine's rise as Galactic Emperor and his great defeat at the Rebel's hands--and those of Anakin Skywalker--the Dominion War is merely a part of a much greater and deeper whole.
So Deep Space Nine struck a chord, shedding much of Roddenberry's vision and embracing the yearning for a more transcendent metaphysical drama. (I'll do a further contrast between DS9 and the rest of Trek in another post). Incidentally, the incredible (and quite agnostic) Terry Farrell told us at Toronto Comicon that DS9 was initially billed as the "Trek version of Star Wars." That's about as accurate as claiming that Trek itself is irrelevant, but we can see that the publicity team that ran that line struck deeper than they might have known.
The thing is, they don't need that much help. The excitement around Star Wars is fan-based more than anything, as most recently demonstrated here, here, here and here (yes, I spent all weekend watching this because I'm as swept up in it as anyone else). At the risk of oversimplification, it strikes a chord in our culture, one that TOS, TNG, Voyager and Enterpise only attempted to do, and occasionally at that. The Saga is a cosmic battle between good and evil, with ancient prophecies, supernatural Force(s), millenia-old Orders and institutions and the very fate of the galaxy all in play. Yearning for transcendent metaphysical drama has been at the core of human nature, and its something that--for better and for worse--is getting better airplay in our day. By contrast, the United Federation of Planets and the burgeoning optimism it spawns in the hearts of its bravest explorers are built on something very specific to 1960s American liberalism. It's based on the idea that war, disease, poverty and general hardship would all be eliminated if we let reason, science, the inevitability of progress, the ever-constant human ascent to the stars, the rule of law and democratic order just show us the light.
Its a nice idea, and one that we can't utterly jettison, but its one that we by-and-large simply don't believe in anymore. Its an idea that suffered a crippling blow with Vietnam, then with Watergate, then with the OPEC Oil Crisis. We thought it rose triumphant with the collapse of that "evil empire," only to take its final, fatal hit when a pair of airplanes flew into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon. The War in Iraq and the 2008 recession were simply fallout. Roddenberry may have understood this, and TNG, VOY and ENT at their best both depict this collapse and salvage the goods of our democratic heritage. But there are a lot of irrelevant duds in the mix, including many a Voyager and Enterprise episode, and most emblematically the Film that Shall Not Be Named.
Eight years before 9/11, and two years after Roddenberry's death passed on his legacy to other hands, Deep Space Nine presented a radically different type of Trek and directly challenged Roddenberry's vision. In the pilot, Sisko himself didn't know quite how to handle the Prophets of Bajor, but he definitely erred towards seeing them simply as powerful aliens residing in the wormwhole, and he certainly refused to believe that he was their Emissary. The biggest departure from Roddenberry right off the bat was found in the way Kira and her Bajoran compatriots fully and seriously embraced the belief that the Prophets were the Divine Protectors of her people. In Religions of Star Trek, Kraemer et al. note that in Roddenberry's Trek, "religion appears almost exclusively as an aspect of 'the Other'--and usually the 'primitive Other' at that." (p. 3) With the Bajorans, we have a culturally sophisticated, technologically advanced and highly intelligent people who seriously uphold public, supernatural beliefs that sustained them through the hostile Cardassian occupation, and continue to sustain them as they heal from that occupation. By the end of the series, Sisko's own drama shows us how Deep Space Nine is really centred on a cosmic battle between good and evil, with ancient prophecies, supernatural forces, millenia-old Orders and institutions and the very fate of the galaxy all in play. Like Palpatine's rise as Galactic Emperor and his great defeat at the Rebel's hands--and those of Anakin Skywalker--the Dominion War is merely a part of a much greater and deeper whole.
So Deep Space Nine struck a chord, shedding much of Roddenberry's vision and embracing the yearning for a more transcendent metaphysical drama. (I'll do a further contrast between DS9 and the rest of Trek in another post). Incidentally, the incredible (and quite agnostic) Terry Farrell told us at Toronto Comicon that DS9 was initially billed as the "Trek version of Star Wars." That's about as accurate as claiming that Trek itself is irrelevant, but we can see that the publicity team that ran that line struck deeper than they might have known.
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