Star Trek reviews: Discovery season four

I spent the last three months watching the entire run of Star Trek: Discovery on Paramount Plus, finishing up last night. I thought the first season was good but uneven and padded out, the second and third seasons were great, and the fourth one was very good but again dragged in a few places. Here are some thoughts on the show in general and the fourth season specifically.

Discovery is a very character-driven series. One of the benefits of watching all the episodes to date in a relatively short period of time was that it enabled me to see just how much the various characters grew & developed. I feel the writers did a good job developing most of the cast.

From what I gather Michael Burnham played by Sonequa Martin-Green has proved to be a divisive character with some viewers. Her arc has certainly been highly unusual, to say the least. It was interesting to see Burnham at last become Captain of the Starship Discovery in the fourth season. I feel Martin-Green has done a solid job with the material given her, although at times she does perform her dialogue in what I can only describe as “a loud whisper” which comes across as odd to me. Still, she effectively carries the show most of the time.

Something I’ve noticed is that the writers aren’t at all shy about calling into question Burnham’s motives & actions and positioning other characters as adversarial counterpoints to her to push her to engage in some necessary self-evaluation.

Admiral Vance (Ohed Fehr) and President Rillak (Chelah Horsdal) are the two latest figures to do so. At first glance, given the parade of rogue Admirals and corrupt, self-serving politicians that have appeared in previous Star Trek series, one could be forgiven for thinking that Vance and/or Rillak were up to some nefarious purpose. But with both of them it eventually becomes clear that they are decent people attempting to do very difficult jobs under incredibly trying circumstances.

That’s a characteristic I’ve noticed about Disco. The challenge is often not some diabolical mastermind bend on galactic domination (although there have been a few of those); rather it is that you have different individuals who all want to achieve a greater good, but each of them disagrees, often drastically, as to the steps necessary to achieve that outcome, and everyone needs to work to find some sort of common ground within which to work together.

That’s certainly the case with Burnham and Booker (David Ajala) in season four. Both of them want to stop the mysterious Dark Matter Anomaly that is devastating the galaxy, but Burnham wants to try diplomacy, to reach out to the mysterious Species Ten-C to convince them to withdraw their creation, while Booker wants to attack it directly before it can cause any more harm. I found myself agreeing with Burnham’s approach, her desire to avoid escalating the crisis any further. But at the same time I have to admit, if I found myself in Booker’s shoes, with my home planet, my entire family, destroyed by the DMA, it’s quite likely I’d be making the drastic choices he did.

As much as I liked the first two seasons of Disco, I really feel like the show came into its own with season three. Yes, Enterprise and Strange New Worlds are both great shows. But Star Trek has always been at its best when it has looked forward, not backwards. For the first two seasons Disco was a prequel to the original series, and as strong as it was it felt too beholden to past incarnations of Star Trek. Having Discovery and its crew jump forward 900 years to the 32nd Century has allowed Star Trek to go in completely different directions.

I think that’s very well illustrated with the long sought-after reunification of the Vulcan and Romulan civilizations, which has finally been achieved in the 32nd century. It’s also demonstrated with the character of the half-Cardassian, half-human Laira Rillak. In The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine the Federation and the Cardassian Union were bitter foes; now a character who shares the dual heritages of those two once-implacable enemies is the President of the Federation itself.

I appreciated that Disco demonstrated that such change is possible, but also made it clear that it took a great deal of effort and a tremendous amount of time for those changes to be achieved, as well as showing that it is necessary to continually work to maintain that progress.

I also appreciated how Disco season four really leaned into the Star Trek mission statement “To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.” It’s rare that Star Trek has presented genuinely ALIEN lifeforms. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve always liked the original series: despite the limitations of the budget and the primitive special effects, it did attempt to present non-humanoid beings like the Horta, the brain parasites from “Operation – Annihilate,” Korob and Sylvia’s true forms in “Catspaw,” the Tribbles, the Melkotians from “Specter of the Gun” and so forth. Starting with The Next Generation the franchise became too dependent on bumpy-headed aliens.

It’s great to have Species Ten-C, a race that is SO alien that we never even find out their real name. The Ten-C are totally non-humanoid, and the Universal Translators used by the Federation are completely useless in communicating with these extra-galactic beings. It takes concerted efforts by both sides to cross that seemingly insurmountable gap, and when it is bridged, it feels genuinely rewarding.

That’s also why I like Saru the Kelpien, played by Doug Jones. At last we have a regular character serving in Starfleet who looks genuinely alien. Jones gives Saru an “otherness” through his performance & movements, and the make-up is stunning.

Looking at some of the other regulars on Disco, I really want to discuss Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz), the first same sex couple on a Star Trek series. That’s a development that was long overdue, one that both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were ultimately afraid to discuss. Stamets and Culber are both great characters. Like everyone else on the Starship Discovery, the two of them have some serious issues (this has got to be the most dysfunctional Star Trek crew since DS9) and both characters are really performed well by Rapp and Cruz.

I appreciated how the two were introduced back in the first season. When we first meet Stamets he’s an arrogant, impatient egotist. We then meet Dr. Culber, who’s shown to be a caring, empathic individual. And then suddenly there’s a scene where Stamets and Culber are in their pajamas brushing their teeth side-by-side in their shared quarters. My reaction was basically “Oh, wait, they’re a couple? That’s cool.”

I like that it’s underplayed and just treated as an everyday occurrence that Stamets and Culber are married. And the fact that they are in certain ways two very different people has enabled the writers to show all the work they’ve had to put into maintaining their relationship. Which, I suppose, goes back to that whole theme of working to find common ground that permeates Disco.

In any case, Stamets definitely went from being an annoying jerk to a warm, funny, nuanced character in fairly short time, and now he is one of my favorites.

Also great work in the writing and acting department with the character of Sylvia Tilly, played be Mary Wiseman. When we are first introduced to the babbling, insecure Tilly in season one it seems like she’s going to be the show’s comic relief. Instead she gradually grew to become one of the strongest characters on Disco, and by the end of season four she really had come into her own.

I’m looking forward to Disco season five next year because I really do enjoy the series. I’m glad to hear the episode count is reduced from 13 to 10. As I said before, season four had some pacing issues, so hopefully season five will have a leaner structure. I’m sure it’s possible to have a somewhat more streamlined season without sacrificing any of the excellent character work. I definitely want to see more development for the Discovery bridge crew, some of whom are still unfortunately underutilized.

By the way, as I alluded to before, I know there are some Star Trek fans who do not like Discovery. Some even seem to hate it with a red-hot passion! I understand; we all have different interests. I really don’t like Voyager, but I know there are Star Trek fans who do love it, and when they talk about that series, I hold my tongue because I don’t want to belittle anyone’s else’s entertainment choices. You can dislike something without attacking someone who disagrees with you. And I feel that right now there is so much Star Trek material out there that there’s something for everyone. It’s a great time to be a fan.

It Came from the 1990s / Star Trek reviews: Untold Voyages

Here’s a twofer for you, an installment of It Came from the 1990s and a Star Trek review.

In my last blog post I looked at Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which was originally released back in December 1979. So today I’m going to discuss a comic book series which serves as a sort of follow-up to that movie. Star Trek: Untold Voyages was a five-issue miniseries published by Marvel Comics in 1998. Untold Voyages was written by Glenn Greenberg, penciled by Mike Collins, inked by Keith Williams, colored by Matt Webb, lettered by Chris Eliopoulos and edited by Tim Tuohy.

Marvel had previously held the license to publish Star Trek comic books immediately following the release of The Motion Picture. Their Star Trek comic book ran for 18 issues between 1980 and 1982 and was unfortunately not especially well-received. (Apparently Marvel could only use elements that appeared in The Motion Picture, and anything from the actual television series was off-limits.) The license was soon acquired by DC Comics, who between 1984 and 1996 published a number of highly regarded Star Trek comics.

Marvel ended up picking up the license for a second time in 1996. Although they once again ended up holding it for only three years, during this brief period they released several Star Trek books of a high quality. A major aspect of this appears to have been that the terms of the license were much more flexible than they had been in the early 1980s, providing the writers with greater creative freedom.

Untold Voyages is set in the gap between The Motion Picture and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, during a new five year mission for Captain James T. Kirk and crew of the Starship Enterprise. Each issue is set during one of the five years of that mission. As the series progresses we gradually see the transition of the Star Trek universe from the tone of the first movie to that of the second. As critic Darren Mooney observes on the m0vie blog, Greenberg’s stories serve to bridge Gene Roddenberry and Nicholas Meyer’s very different visions of the Star Trek universe.

Greenberg is a longtime Star Trek fan, and if anyone was suited to write a Star Trek series set in the aftermath of the first movie it was him. As he recently stated on Facebook concerning The Motion Picture:

“This was not my first exposure to Star Trek, but it IS what sparked my great interest in the series.”

I asked Greenberg how the Untold Voyages comic book series came about, and he explained its origins:

“Was hanging out in the office of my fellow Marvel editor, Tim Tuohy, who was editing some of the Star Trek titles. I mentioned that he should consider doing something in the post-TMP era, and we jokingly called it The Grey Pajamas Saga. But ideas started pouring out of both of us, in terms of what could be done with such a project, and before I knew it, Tim was telling me to go home and write up a pitch for him. Which I did.”

Reading Untold Voyages, Greenberg’s fondness for both this particular period, and for Star Trek as a whole, is readily apparent. I really feel that he successfully captures both Roddenberry’s optimistic, utopian awe that permeated the original television series and The Motion Picture and the more grounded, skeptical view of the future that Nicholas Meyer introduced to it with The Wrath of Khan. Greenberg successfully balances these two approaches in much the same way that later episodes of The Next Generation and much of the run of Deep Space Nine also did, resulting in some intelligent, thought-provoking stories.

I don’t want to get into too many specifics about Untold Voyages because I’d rather encourage Star Trek fans to seek it out for themselves. The issues can be found on eBay at affordable prices. The miniseries was also reprinted in Volume 120 of the massive Star Trek Graphic Novel Collection published by Eaglemoss Collections several years ago.

I will say that probably my favorite issue was the second one. The title “Worlds Collide” has two very distinct meanings in Greenberg’s story. In the “A plot” an alien planet is threatened with destruction as an asteroid hurtles towards it, leading Kirk and Dr. McCoy into a very heated argument over the Federation’s Prime Directive, and whether they should or should not interfere and attempt to save the world’s inhabitants.

In the “B plot” Spock is serving as a mentor to the young, troubled Saavik. Greenberg utilizes the half-Romulan backstory for Saavik that was filmed for The Wrath of Khan but ultimately never used but which was later explored in several prose novels and the DC Comics series. He effectively parallels Spock and Saavik, each of them only half-Vulcan, each in their turn struggling to find their place, and their identity, in the rigidly logical Vulcan society.

Another stand-out issue is the fourth one. “Silent Cries” sees Lieutenant Commander Hikaru Sulu briefly assume command of the Enterprise. Greenberg wrote this story to show the event that helped place Sulu on the path to eventually becoming captain of the Excelsior several years later.

I’ve often lamented that, due to the realities of television writing & production during the 1960s, outside of Kirk, Spock and McCoy the Enterprise crew were undeveloped. Therefore, it’s good to get a story like this that spotlights one of those other characters. That’s always been a strength of the tie-in media of comic books and novels, it’s enabled writers to flesh out Sulu, Scotty, Uhura, Chekov and the rest of the ship’s crew.

“Silent Cries” also has one of those great moral quandaries that Star Trek is so wonderful at addressing. I’ve always appreciated the series for how it can challenge our assumptions and ask us to reconsider our views.

The artwork on Untold Voyages is very well done. Mike Collins & Keith Williams do a superb job rendering the characters, the technology, and the different alien worlds. I’ve observed before that drawing likenesses in licensed comic books can be incredibly tricky. If the artist is too faithful to the actors there is a danger of the characters not seeming real, instead looking like they were traced from a photograph. It can be more important to capture the personality & body language of the characters than the actual appearances of the actors who portray them. Collins & Williams do an admirable job rendering the rest of the Enterprise crew.

Collins also has a long association with Doctor Who Magazine as one of the artists on its ongoing comic book feature, so he clearly has a great affinity for drawing actors’ likenesses as well as sci-fi elements. I’ve always liked Collins’ work, and I think he’s somewhat underrated, especially compared to a number of his contemporaries who also made their debuts in the British comic book industry during the mid-1980s.

Collins’ layouts & storytelling on Untold Voyages are very strong & dramatic. Williams is a superb inker, and he does a great job on the finishes here.

Going back to “Worlds Collide” I appreciated that Greenberg & Collins created a totally non-humanoid alien species. It’s long been a running joke that in Star Trek most aliens look like human beings with bumpy foreheads or funny ears. Obviously the primary reason for that is the constraints of time, money & technology in creating truly alien lifeforms on live television. But none of that applies to comic books, where the only limitations are the talent & imagination of the artist.

Oh, yes, I cannot discuss Untold Voyages without mentioning Matt Webb’s vibrant colors. The mid to late 1990s was often a crapshoot when it came to comic book coloring as creators struggled to adapt to the brand-new computer coloring technology that was being utilized. There was a lot of gaudy coloring during this period. But Webb did superb work on this miniseries. The coloring is striking without being overwhelming. I love what he does with the warp speed effect.

As I’ve said before, one of the reasons why I like doing these It Came from the 1990s blog posts is that they allow me to spotlight some of the great comic books that came out during a decade that often gets a bad reputation. There are a great many underrated gems from the 1990s, and Star Trek: Untold Voyages is one of them. If you’re a Trekkie it’s definitely worth seeking these out.

Star Trek reviews: The Motion Picture

This month is the 43rd anniversary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which premiered on December 7, 1979. The movie was helmed by veteran director Robert Wise. The screenplay is credited to Harold Livingston, based on a story by Alan Dean Foster, although there were a number of other writers involved in the protracted task of bringing the movie from concept to completion. Over four decades later TMP remains a highly contentious subject among Star Trek fans.

My own personal experience with TMP was that I had only seen it all the way through, from beginning to end, a few times, and always on television. Hey, I was only three years old in 1979, so I was too young to catch it in the theater! In general I found it to be fairly underwhelming.

A few months ago Michele and I finally got our first wide screen television. Over the years some people have argued that TMP works much better on a big movie theater screen than on TV. Since a widescreen television is closer to a “big screen” than I’ve ever had before, I figure it was time to watch TMP in a manner as close to the original experience as possible. In early September I streamed the 4K Ultra HD (high definition) version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Director’s Edition on Paramount Plus. And, honestly, it WAS a brand-new experience for me.

I realize that part of that is also due to the fact that in the late 1970s TMP was an incredibly rushed production, and what ended up on movie screens was little more than a rough cut. Twenty years later Robert Wise was finally given the opportunity to conduct some badly-needed additional work on TMP, resulting in The Director’s Edition that came out in 2001. The 4K Ultra HD version further improves on the picture quality & special effects.

After I finished watching this version of TMP, I had to admit the movie was pretty darn cool. It definitely looked much better on a wide-screen television. This was the first time I really was able to take in the incredible visuals. Also, at 46 years old, I certainly had much more of an understanding and appreciation of the cerebral, philosophical nature of the story. So, yes, certainly the most enjoyable viewing of TMP that I’ve ever had. Here are some of my thoughts about the movie:

First off, whenever I watch the opening credits of TMP my mind automatically starts thinking “Why are they using the theme music from Star Trek: The Next Generation?” Yeah, yeah, I know… TMP came out eight years before TNG made its debut. But TNG was essential viewing for me when I was a teenager, so that theme song is very familiar to me, and I probably never watched TMP from beginning to end until after TNG finished up its run in 1994. Consequently whenever Jerry Goldsmith’s opening theme plays I just automatically think of Picard and Riker and Data and all that.

I understand that for a lot of fans in 1979 what Goldsmith produced was just too different from the already-iconic Star Trek theme composed by Alexander Courage. But the Goldsmith piece is well done, so it makes perfect sense that it was later repurposed for TNG, something that I feel helped that show establish its own distinct identity in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if the Courage theme had been used.

Moving on to the movie itself, that opening scene with the redesigned Klingons (sporting their bumpy foreheads & armor for the very first time) is actually a pretty good way to set up the central crisis. The Klingons were the closest the original Star Trek series had to a “big bad.” So it’s an effective method of establishing just how incredibly powerful & dangerous V’Ger is by having a trio of badass-looking Klingon battle cruisers get effortlessly obliterated in the very first scene. I guess this is an early example of what would later be known as The Worf Effect, which of course takes its name from TNG’s own resident Klingon warrior.

For years I had wondered why Wise had included that extended sequence of James T. Kirk in a shuttlecraft slowly, lovingly admiring the redesigned Starship Enterprise. This was but the first of several sequences that I feel works much better on a larger, wider screen. It really does look impressive.

It’s also important to remember the context. In 1979 Star Trek had been off the air for ten years. Yes, it had been in endless syndication during that time, but this was the first live-action Star Trek in a decade. It was also the very first time the series was ever seen on the big screen. So it makes sense for Wise to really take as much time as he did to spotlight the Enterprise, which literally had never been seen like this before.

I do have to give William Shatner credit for really selling this scene, for showing Kirk’s understated yet nevertheless palpable joy at once again seeing his beloved Enterprise. Shatner would have been looking at a blank wall or something when that scene was filmed, with only Wise’s direction and his own imagination to go on, but he totally sells it. Shatner has an admittedly well-deserved reputation for being a large ham. But given the right material and a strong director he could turn in powerful, subtle performances, and he did good work in this movie.

I still do think the new Starfleet uniforms and interiors of the Enterprise are “Meh.” I don’t know what it was about the 1970s that resulted in such a preponderance of subdued beiges and greys in fashion & decor, but all of it makes the future seen in TMP very bland. The red uniforms that were introduced three years later in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan were a vast improvement.

It feels like new characters Will Decker and Ilia, played by Steven Collins and Persis Khambatta, should be more important, that their ultimate fates should be genuinely dramatic. But neither character is given enough material to really develop within the confines of movie’s roughly two hour runtime. I believe Ilia does get slightly more emphasis in The Director’s Edition — apparently a scene showcasing her empathic abilities was absent from the theatrical cut — but it’s only a slight improvement.

I think both characters had potential, but there just was not enough time in an already-packed movie to develop either of them sufficiently. So I can understand why series creator Gene Roddenberry essentially recycled them in TNG, with young, ambitious Will Decker becoming young, ambitious Will Riker and the empathic Deltan Ilia becoming the empathic half-Betazoid Deanna Troi. A weekly television series certainly afforded more of an opportunity to explore the characters and their complex relationship.

For me the standout element of TMP was Leonard Nimoy’s superb performance as Spock. I feel TMP is essential viewing for Star Trek fans because it is a crucial moment in the character arc of the half-Vulcan, half-human Spock. In the original series Spock was a figure torn between two worlds as he struggled to reconcile his rigidly logical Vulcan heritage & training with his very emotional human heritage.

The first time we see Spock in TMP he has returned to his home planet where he attempts a Vulcan ritual to at last purge himself completely of emotion, only to meet with failure. He then telepathically senses the approach of V’Ger, a being possessing “thought patterns of exactingly perfect order.” And so Spock rejoins the Enterprise because he believes this mysterious entity may contain the solution he has sought for so long.

When Spock subsequently mind melds with V’Ger he confirms the entity is indeed a being of pure logic… yet for all its phenomenal power & knowledge V’Ger’s existence is incredibly barren. Spock discovers that logic alone has not been able to provide V’ger with true meaning & purpose:

“V’ger has knowledge that spans this universe. And in all this order, all this magnificence, V’ger feels no awe…no delight… no beauty… no meaning… no hope…”

For the first time Spock realized just how empty the path of pure logic can be. This really carries over through the remaining appearances in the Star Trek franchise, where he is finally at peace with himself, having at last found a balance between his logical Vulcan and emotional human sides.

DeForest Kelly isn’t given nearly as much to do in his role of Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy. For the most part Bones is his typical curmudgeonly self. But occasionally there are glimpses of the humanistic warmth that lies beneath his irascibility.

When Kirk drags McCoy back into service early on, there’s a great exchange between the two that really establishes the later character:

Kirk: Well, for a man who swore he’d never return to the Starfleet…

McCoy: Just a moment, Captain, sir. I’ll explain what happened. Your revered Admiral Nogura invoked a little-known, seldom-used “reserve activation clause.” In simpler language, Captain, they DRAFTED me!

Kirk: They didn’t!

McCoy: This was your idea. This was your idea, wasn’t it?

Kirk: Bones, there’s a… thing… out there.

McCoy: Why is any object we don’t understand always called “a thing”?

I’ve always appreciated that last line, as it gets right to the heart of what I feel is one of the central tenets of Star Trek: exploring the unknown, seeking to understand that which seems different & frightening.

I also appreciated how in TMP we see how McCoy is the one person who won’t put up with Kirk’s bullshit. Bones readily perceives that Kirk, tired of riding a desk at Starfleet Command for the past two and a half years, exploits the V’Ger crisis to take back command of the Enterprise, in the process trampling over Decker, who was supposed to be the new captain, and the doctor has absolutely no qualms on calling Kirk out on his behavior.

As for the rest of the Enterprise crew… uh, yeah, they really don’t get all that much to do, unfortunately. But I’m sure that it in 1979 it was awesome to see all of them back together. And I appreciated that Christine Chapel and Janice Rand, now promoted to Doctor and Transporter Chief respectively, were among the characters who returned. One way in which the original series is a product of its time is that there were very few prominent regular female characters. So it was good to have Majel Barrett and Grace Lee Whitney appear here, however briefly.

I certainly can’t write about TMP without discussing V’Ger itself… or Voyager 6, as it is revealed to be in the climax of the movie. V’Ger does look absolutely spectacular, and I suppose I can forgive those looooong tracking shots the immense living machine. And in the 4K Ultra HD version we finally get to see exactly what V’Ger looks like.

It’s certainly a legitimate criticism to point out the similarities between V’Ger in TMP and Nomad from the original series episode “The Changeling” broadcast in 1967; they’re both space probes from Earth that merged with incredibly advanced alien technology, becoming immensely powerful beings that threatened the galaxy while seeking out their “Creator.” But whereas Nomad was merely a dangerous foe for Kirk to defeat, V’Ger is ultimately the equivalent of a lost soul, one that is finally helped onto the next step of its evolution by the Enterprise crew.

As I said at the outset, as an older and (hopefully) more mature viewer I now appreciate that the crisis in TMP is ultimately resolved peacefully, and everyone involved emerged with a better understanding of themselves and each other.

So, looking at Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it’s a good yet flawed movie. It had a lot of potential & ambition, but regrettably it sometimes falls short. It sacrifices some of the warmer, human aspects of the show to focus on Big Ideas. At times the movie’s pacing is a bit too languid. I like TMP, but I also agree that the next entry, The Wrath of Khan, is much stronger and ultimately helped to save the Star Trek franchise. I do feel that if you put the two movies side by side it demonstrates the diversity of the series, in that there are a lot of different types of stories you can tell. As far as I’m concerned, that’s one of Star Trek’s greatest strengths.

Star Trek reviews: Strange New Worlds season one

A couple of months ago I subscribed to the Paramount+ streaming service. My primary motivation was that I wanted to finally start watching all of the new Star Trek shows. So far I’ve seen Picard season one, Strange New Worlds season one, and the first couple of episodes of Lower Decks. I didn’t think all that much of Lower Decks, but the show does have its fans, so I’m glad they’re enjoying it. I liked Picard, and I thought Strange New Worlds was great. So I’m going to share a few thoughts on the later.

I knew that Strange New Worlds spun out of Star Trek: Discovery. I asked around to find out if I needed to watch Disco to understand SNW. A couple of people said that the first two seasons of Disco really set the stage for SNW and recommended watching it. On the other hand, my friend Colin had no idea that Disco occurred first, so he just watched SNW, and he had no trouble understanding or enjoying it.

So I just leaped right in on SNW. It was immediately apparent that a number of events from Disco were being referenced or alluded to… but it was so well-written that someone such as myself who had not watched Disco was very quickly able to figure out what was going on and understand the important plot & character development that had occurred previously.

SNW stars Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, who was the Captain of the starship Enterprise before James T. Kirk. Pike was originally played by Jeffrey Hunter in Star Trek’s first unaired pilot “The Cage.” Scenes from that story were then used in “The Menagerie” which revealed Pike became horrifically crippled by radiation saving a group of Starfleet cadets.

I expect even the most casual fans of Star Trek were aware of Pike’s ultimate fate. So rather than just ignoring the elephant in the room, SNW’s writers have tackled it head-on. Before the events of SNW season one (in an episode of Disco, I imagine) Pike is given a vision of his terrible fate a decade in the future. One of the central themes of the first season is Pike wrestling with this knowledge, wondering if he should attempt to change his future, as well as worrying his awareness of his ultimate fate is going to negatively impact his command decisions and jeopardize the crew of the Enterprise.

Anson Mount gives a really solid performance as Pike, bringing all of this internal conflict to life with subtlety & nuance. His version of Pike is intellectual, soulful, contemplative and irreverent, a really solid balance of the serious and the humorous. It was Mount himself who suggested having Pike bonding with his crew over his cooking sessions in his quarters.

Ethan Peck portrays science office Mr. Spock. It has got to be a daunting prospect stepping into the shoes of an iconic, beloved character previously brought to life so memorably by Leonard Nimoy, but Peck does a fine job. He really captures the younger, more uncertain qualities of Spock, who at this point in his life is still not as sure of his footing in attempting to balance his logical Vulcan and emotional human sides.

The third member of Enterprise’s command triumvirate is Rebecca Romijn as Number One, aka Una Chin-Riley, a character previously portrayed in “The Cage” by Majel Barrett. Just like Pike, Una was practically a blank slate. I feel the writers and Romijn did a good job developing a character who many viewers, myself included, found quite intriguing from her one-and-only appearance all those decades ago.

Rounding out the SNW cast are Jess Bush as Nurse Christine Chapel, Christina Chong as Security Chief La’an Noonien-Singh, Celia Rose Gooding as Cadet Nyota Uhura, Melissa Navia as Lieutenant Erica Ortegas, Babs Olusanmokun as Doctor Joseph M’Benga and Bruce Horak as Engineer Hemmer.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of SNW for me was Gooding’s portrayal as a young Uhura, as I watched it just a short time after the passing of actress Nichelle Nichols, who originated the role back in the 1960s. Nichols did a good job with the material she was given, but she sometimes lamented that her character, who was theoretically in a command position and an accomplished linguistic expert, was nearly always reduced to being a glorified receptionist on the Enterprise. I appreciated how SNW gave Uhura the development she was never really afforded in the original series, and Gooding is great in the role.

One of my favorite characters on SNW was actually Ortegas, the Enterprise’s pilot & navigator, who is played by Navia with a wry sarcasm. As the season progressed I kept hoping that Ortegas would receive more material, but she never got to step into the spotlight, other than the very offbeat episode “The Elysium Kingdom.” So I was glad to hear that Navia will be returning in season two, especially as a preview clip shows Ortegas front & center, getting ready to join an away team mission.

Speaking of “The Elysium Kingdom” by Akela Cooper & Onitra Johnson, it was a really enjoyable, moving conclusion to the extended plotline involving Dr. M’Benga’s daughter. The structure of SNW season one consisted of 10 relatively standalone episodes that nevertheless had several subplots and character arcs running through the entire season. As I said, I liked Picard season one, but I felt there just was not enough material to stretch a single story across 10 episodes. So I appreciated how SNW balanced self-contained stories with long-term plotting.

Speaking of balance, I feel like SNW has a nice proportion between the pulpy two-fisted space opera action of the original series and the more cerebral, philosophical tone of The Next Generation.

I know some people were unhappy with the season finale “A Quality of Mercy” as it appeared to show Pike’s humanist approach fail spectacularly. But I think the point was to demonstrate the need for balance & flexibility. Yes, it is vitally important to have empathy & understanding. Tragically, though, there will be occasions when this is simply not possible, when you are dealing with people who are unable or unwilling to respond to either logical arguments or appeals to decency.  I felt like “A Quality of Mercy” was an illustration of the advice “Never start a fight, but always finish it.”

One of the more outstanding episodes this season was “Ghosts of Illyria” written by Akela Cooper & Bill Wolkoff. It had such a mournful, contemplative quality.

Something I have always appreciated about science fiction, and Star Trek in particular, is that it enables us to examine our societal problems from an alternative perspective. In this case, it looks at the Federation’s ban on genetic engineering (due to the horrific events of the Eugenics Wars on Earth during the mid 21st Century) and how, even though it was initially implemented with the best of intentions, such a policy can all too easily lead to fear & discrimination.

As Dr. M’Benga says in this episode:

“Prejudice has kept people from helping each other for centuries with no scientific justification. And after we met our neighbors in the galaxy, we found new bigotries. Human and Vulcan blood. Now it’s human and Illyrian. In any case, they’re meaningless to me. I am a physician.”

Some people were not happy with this scene, because it seemingly flew in the face of Star Trek continuity. The thing is, though, the Federation in the original series was not a utopia. For all its tremendous strides, humanity was still very much a work in progress. As Captain Kirk himself said in “A Taste of Armageddon” written by Gene L. Coon & Robert Hamner:

“We’re human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands, but we can stop it! We can admit that we’re killers, but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes… knowing that we’re not going to kill today.”

“Ghosts of Illyria” reveals that Una Chin-Riley is from a genetically engineered species, something she has concealed so that she can serve in Starfleet. She loves her job, and she is damn good at it, so it’s heartbreaking when in the final scene of the season her secret is discovered and she is arrested by Starfleet. Definitely leaves me on the edge of my seat waiting for season two.

Another great character is Hemmer. At first I thought he was an Andorian, but he’s actually a member of the Aenar, a blind, telepathic offshoot of the Andorians introduced in Enterprise season four. As someone who found Enterprise underrated, I’m glad to see it acknowledged here. Hemmer starts out as a seemingly-unlikable asshole, but he soon is shown, underneath his gruff façade, to be an intelligent, thoughtful, caring individual. I enjoyed the mentor-student relationship that developed between him and Uhura.

Hemmer was also a pacifist… although that did not mean he would just stand on the sidelines while others were in danger. As he explains it:

“Pacifism is not passivity. It’s the active protection of all living things in the natural universe.”

In hindsight, I realize this later ties in to the themes in “A Quality of Mercy,” the idea of striving for peace but being aware that it is sometimes necessary to fight in self-defense.

I grew to like Hemmer, and I was sad that he got killed. Since I watched these episodes a few months after they first streamed I unfortunately had his death spoiled online. But even there I figured he’d get killed at the very end of the season… so when he sacrificed himself to save Pike and the others in episode nine, “All Those Who Wander,” it was still a surprise. I just wish Hemmer had appeared more prominently throughout the season before this, as it would have given his death even more of an impact.

One other character I want to bring up is Spock’s fiancée T’Pring, played by Gia Sandhu. T’Pring was previously seen in the original series episode “Amok Time” where she was very much depicted as a cold, manipulative bitch. It is to SNW’s immense credit that it develops T’Pring into a fully realized, three-dimensional character. As the season progresses it becomes apparent that Spock and T’Pring did at one point genuinely care for one another and fully intended to marry, but over time, as Spock became more and more invested in his Starfleet career, their relationship became strained and they grew apart, their love turning to bitterness. It’s definitely a tragedy, and SNW lets us see it from both their points of view.

SNW was such an enjoyable series that I was disappointed it was only 10 episodes long. On the other hand, I have to acknowledge that back in the day when The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were churning out 24 episodes per season there were inevitable at least a few duds in even the strongest of seasons. Fewer episodes means that the writers & other creative personnel can focus their energies more on producing as many quality stories as possible. On the whole I thought SNW season one was of a high quality, with only one episode, “The Serene Squall,” feeling underwhelming.

It’s interesting: sometimes people can look at the exact same thing and come away with radically different opinions on it. I know there are Star Trek fans who dislike SNW. There’s even a critic & blogger whose opinions I typically find to be highly insightful who refers to SNW as “bad Star Trek karaoke.”  I guess the nice things about having several different Star Trek series being produced nowadays is that hopefully there’s something for everyone.

There are so many other aspects of Strange New Worlds season one that I want to discuss. I could write several paragraphs just on the episode “Lift Us Up Where Suffering Cannot Reach” (and maybe I will one day soon). But then this blog post would be at least twice as long, and I’m already over 2000 words! Suffice to say, as someone who has been a Star Trek fan since I was a little kid watching reruns of the original series in the early 1980s, I really enjoyed it.

Star Trek and Star Wars signings at New York Comic Con 2021

New York Comic Con 2021 was held a couple of weeks ago, and it was a tremendous amount of fun! After a one year absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was great to have NYCC return to the Big Apple.

In addition to a wide variety of comic book creators (please read my write-ups on First Comics News) I got to meet a couple of actors who have been involved in Star Trek and Star Wars.

It’s odd: I’ve been a fan of both series for many years, but until now I’ve never obtained autographs from actors who appeared in those franchises. Well, okay, in the past I met a few people who had appeared in Star Trek, but I got their autographs for other roles. So I’m glad I was finally able to rectify that with two great actors who appeared in Star Trek and Star Wars, respectively.

I’ve been a Star Trek fan since I was a little kid, watching reruns of the original series on WPIX Channel 11 on Saturday evenings in the early 1980s. It was definitely a thrill to meet actor George Takai, who portrayed Hikaru Sulu on the show and in the first six movies. I really admire the fact that Takai has utilized his fame from Star Trek to promote progressive political & social causes.

They Called Us Enemy, the graphic novel George Takei wrote about his childhood imprisoned in an internment camp, is a sad, moving book. I am Jewish, and when I was growing up I was taught about the Holocaust, about the Nazis forcing the Jews into concentration camps. So I remember that when I first learned about the internment of Japanese Americans I was horrified to discover that nearly the same thing had happened here, in this country. It is definitely one of the darkest chapters in American history. Unfortunately I now realize that there are many dark events and periods in this nation’s history. So I am grateful for works like this. They bring those failures to light, and serve as warnings as to what can happen again if we do not learn from the the past. They Called Us Enemy is a great example of how comic books & graphic novels can play a valuable educational role.

Takei came across as a good person. It was a pretty long line to get his autograph, but he took the time to speak with everyone for a minute or two. The day after I got Takei’s autograph, he had a panel discussion at NYCC. He was such an engaging, entertaining speaker.

Another guest at NYCC 2021 was Dee Bradley Baker, the actor who voiced Captain Rex and all of the other Clone Troopers in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series, among his many, many other voice acting credits in numerous other series.

My father and grandfather took me to see The Empire Strikes Back in the theater for my fourth birthday, and I’ve been a Star Wars fan ever since. Admittedly, I only saw a few episodes of The Clone Wars during the original run from 2008 to 2014, and at the time I didn’t really care for it. However, I recently watched the entire series on Disney Plus. While the first two seasons were uneven, there were still several good episodes. The show then got consistently good with season three, and steadily improved from there. George Lucas, Dave Filoni & their collaborators also did a great job utilizing the show to explore adult topics such as war and politics, loss and faith, duty and patriotism. The later seasons are among the best SW material ever.

I was on line to get Dee Bradley Baker’s autograph, and at 45 years old I was literally the oldest person waiting to meet him. Everyone else on line was either in their late teens or in their 20s. These fans literally grew up on The Clone Wars animated series. For them, this is their Star Wars, just as the original trilogy was my generation’s Star Wars. I think it’s great that The Clone Wars became an entry point for a new generation of fans.

So I got Baker’s autograph… but until now I had no idea Momo and Appa were in the Grand Army of the Republic. Hmmmm… Star Wars / Avatar: The Last Airbender crossover, anyone? Now I’ve got this image stuck in my head of Ahsoka Tano riding around on a flying bison!

Seriously, I was saying to myself “Oh no! Did he mean to write ‘Captain Rex’ instead but I distracted him by gushing about how much I loved his work on Clone Wars and Bad Batch?” Eh, whatever the reason, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, it’s still his signature, and I got it personalized, so I’m obviously not going to be reselling it, and I got to meet him, which was very cool. I guess the Avatar reference just adds to the piece’s uniqueness.

Anyway, Baker is incredibly talented, I love his amazing work on the various Star Wars animated series, so it was cool to meet him & get his signature.

Twenty-Five Years of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

It’s a bit difficult to believe that this month is the 25th anniversary of the Star Trek series Deep Space Nine, which premiered on January 3, 1993. Time really does fly.

Unlike other Star Trek shows, DS9 was set on a space station, not a starship. Spinning off from events in The Next Generation, the premiere of DS9 saw the planet Bajor achieving independence after four decades of brutal occupation by the militant Cardassian Union.  The space station Deep Space Nine was originally Terok Nor, a former Cardassian outpost orbiting the planet Bajor.  Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), a Starfleet Commander mourning the recent death of his wife, is assigned to the newly rechristened Deep Space Nine, to help oversee the restoration of the devastated Bajor in the hopes that it can join the Federation.  In this unpredictable environment Sisko also sought to build a new life for himself and his young son Jake (Cirroc Lofton).

Sisko’s assignment appears to be very much a dead end for his career, until a stable wormhole opens nearby, a shortcut to the far distant Gamma Quadrant. The alien beings who occupy the wormhole are worshiped by the Bajorans as their gods, the Prophets.  For seemingly-inexplicable reasons the Prophets have now manifested for the first time in centuries, and have anointed Sisko their Emissary.  Instantly Sisko becomes one of the most important figures in the Alpha Quadrant, in charge of the station guarding a strategic wormhole, the sole individual with whom the entities occupying it will communicate.  Sisko is, to say the least, ambivalent about his position of Emissary, especially as many Bajorans now see him as the representative to their gods.

Star Trek: DS9 had a dual focus. It examined the efforts of Sisko and his crew to aid Bajor in recovering from 40 years of foreign occupation, a task complicated by both the ineffectual, corrupt provisional government and by the continuing machinations of the Cardassians, who were still stinging from the humiliation of being driven from the planet.  The show also concerned itself with the Federation’s explorations of the mysterious Gamma Quadrant, which until the discovery of the wormhole was a region of the galaxy that would have taken decades to reach via normal warp drive.

Due to the fact that it was set in a fixed point in space, DS9 was able to examine how various cultures grew and developed over time. The Bajorans, after spending 40 years fighting a desperate guerilla war to liberate their planet, now had to figure out how to work together to restore a stable system of government.  The return of their Prophets also brought about conflicts between science and faith, further threatening to fragment Bajor’s people.

Meanwhile the Cardassians, after centuries of militaristic expansion, were beginning to enter a period of steep decline, with various factions within the corrupt government attempting to exploit the chaos for their own personal benefit. The proudly nationalistic Cardassian people also struggled to deal with guilt over the crimes their military had perpetrated against the Bajorans, and with the inconvenient truth that if their society did not change then it would eventually perish.

Beginning with the season two finale “The Jem’Hadar” and continuing until the conclusion of DS9’s seven year run, the Federation was faced with an existential threat in the form of the Dominion, a vast alliance of powers based in the Gamma Quadrant that was obsessed with bringing “order” to the galaxy. The Dominion was, in a way, a dark mirror of the Federation.  Whereas the Federation relied upon diplomacy, the gift of technological advancement, and the promise of a “better” way of life to attract new member worlds, the Dominion utilized brute force and terror to expand its reach.  DS9 was a show that was skeptical of institutions & authority, and it would make the case that though their methods differed dramatically, the Federation and the Dominion were alike in each arrogantly believing that their system of government was the ideal one.

The conflict with the Dominion enabled the show to take a close look at the United Federation of Planets. In both the original Star Trek and The Next Generation, the Federation was typically characterized as something quite close to utopia, a near-perfect society seemingly without any significant injustice or inequality.  In spite of its occasional excesses and various blind spots, the Federation was, at least in theory, fundamentally based upon the principle of the rights of the individual.  The Dominion, in contrast, was a fascist structure that demanded absolute obedience from its subjects.  Not only was the Dominion diametrically opposed to the ideals of the Federation, it was also a vastly superior military power.

DS9 addressed the question of what happens when a utopia like the Federation encounters an adversary inimical to its very ideals, a foe that can neither be negotiated with nor outfought. Faced with the very real possibility of its destruction, the question repeatedly arises as to how far the Federation will go to achieve victory, how much it will compromise its principles to ensure its survival.

These ideas were, of course, examined via the regular characters of DS9, how they acted and reacted to the events of galactic importance taking place around them, how their lives were affected over the show’s seven years.

Sisko often saw his principles tested. He was stationed far from the peaceful center of the Federation, commanding a space station occupied by a diverse population of alien species.  Helping the devastated, divided Bajor to rebuild, fighting the dissident Maquis who had dropped out of the Federation, and serving on the front lines of the brutal war with the Dominion, Sisko regularly struggled to live up to both his personal ethics and the ideals of Starfleet.

The season six episode “In the Pale Moonlight” pondered just how far Sisko would go in compromising his morality in his quest to prevent the Dominion from conquering the Alpha Quadrant. All these years later the episode remains one of the most riveting, thought-provoking, unsettling installments of the entire franchise.

Another character who was repeatedly challenged throughout the run of the show was Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor), the station’s First Officer. As a member of the Bajoran militia Kira was often pulled between her loyalty to her homeworld and her responsibilities serving under Sisko.  Additionally, Kira had been born during the Occupation, and has spent most of her life fighting against the Cardassians.  To be blunt, Kira and her compatriots in the Resistance could be regarded as terrorists.  She had a great deal of blood on her hands, having been required to commit numerous violent acts in the struggle to liberate Bajor.  Kira was unapologetic for her actions but at times was nevertheless haunted by her past.  She also struggled with having to shift from being someone who had fought tooth & nail against an unjust status quo to being a member of the establishment.

One of the most fascinating characters on DS9 was Odo (René Auberjonois) a mysterious shapeshifting entity who had been discovered by the Bajorans during the Occupation. Odo had no knowledge of his past.  Surly and brooding, he had fallen into the role of Terok Nor’s chief of security while it was still under Cardassian control, but was trusted enough by the Bajorans to remain in that position once the Federation moved in.  Odo was the ultimate outsider; he was literally one of a kind.  There were times when it seemed the only reasons why he stayed on DS9 were that he literally had nowhere else to go, and because he carried an unrequited love for Kira Nerys.

Odo’s sad story took an even more tragic turn once the Dominion entered the picture. Early in season three Odo was reunited with his shapeshifting people, only to quickly learn that they were the Founders, the ruthless rulers of the Dominion.  Having spent centuries subjected to mistrust, the shapeshifting Founders had established the brutal Dominion, believing that the only way to escape being persecuted was to seize control of the galaxy.  Odo, in spite of his sympathies for the Founders’ cause and his longing to rejoin his people, was nevertheless revolted by the Dominion’s horrific tyranny.  He reluctantly returned with Kira and the other “solids” to DS9.  Despite having found his people, he was in a way now more alone than ever.

DS9 seemed to be a port of call for people who had no roots, no place to call home. Worf (Michael Dorn), the only Klingon to serve in Starfleet, was one of the most popular characters on The Next Generation.  Beginning in season four Worf joined the crew of DS9.  He once again found himself expelled from his own society after he objected to the Klingon Empire’s war against the Cardassian Union.  Worf correctly perceived that the Klingon Chancellor, by making spurious claims that Cardassia had been infiltrated by the shapeshifting Founders, was using the threat of the Dominion as a pretext to invade Cardassia.  Unable to abide by the Empire’s dishonorable actions, he again pledged his loyalty to Starfleet.  Worf was in for a shock, though, as he quickly found the colorful mayhem of DS9 to be very different from the orderly routine of the Starship Enterprise.

Another former member of the Enterprise crew who found himself stationed on DS9 was Miles O’Brien (Colm Meany). O’Brien was very much a working-class everyman who had a grounded, stoic perspective on the strange events that frequently beset the station.  The station’s Chief of Operations, O’Brien had transferred from the Enterprise at the start of season one.  He had hoped to give his wife Keiko and their young daughter Molly a more stable life than on a starship, although he quickly discovered that the station had its own particular brand of chaos.  O’Brien seemed to be a magnet for trouble, often becoming mixed up in all manner of bizarre and horrifying events.  He was undoubtedly the hard-luck hero of DS9.

Deep Space Nine found its feet much quicker than The Next Generation had, generally offering up some pretty good episodes during its first season. Nevertheless the writers did take a while to figure out what to do with the characters of Jadziya Dax (Terry Farrell) and Doctor Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig).  Eventually the show settled down into having Dax as a purveyor of dry wit and confidant to Sisko.

Jadziya Dax was actually a composite of the Trill woman named Jadziya, the very long-lived symbiont slug-like entity Dax, and the memories of Dax’s previous Trill hosts. Dax’s prior incarnation, a charismatic diplomat named Curzon, had been a mentor to the young Sisko.  Now that relationship evolved into a close friendship between the vivacious Jadziya and Sisko.  Eventually, at the end of season six, Jadziya was killed, but the symbiont Dax survived.  In season seven Dax was joined with another Trill, a young woman named Ezri (Nicole de Boer).  This led to an interesting reversal of roles, with the now-seasoned Captain Sisko serving as a mentor to the inexperienced Ezri Dax.

The arrogant, ambitious Bashir, who probably would have been much more suited to service on the Enterprise, was often the odd man out on the dysfunctional DS9. However, as the series became more and more morally ambiguous, Bashir was often used to demonstrate how the ideals of Starfleet were being challenged, and how he refused to let his own ethics to be compromised.  Bashir and O’Brien, in spite of their very different personalities & backgrounds, also developed an odd but endearing friendship over the course of the show’s seven years.

A discussion of DS9 would not be complete without mentioning the Ferengi. Originally conceived as uber-capitalist baddies in the first season of The Next Generation, the Ferengi were an immediate flop, and that series very quickly reduced them to comic relief.  DS9 set out to rehabilitate the Ferengi, to make them into a three-dimensional, believable species.  To a degree the show was successful.  While the Ferengi were still rather implausible, and often silly, they nevertheless came across much better on DS9 than they had on TNG.

One of DS9’s regular characters was Quark (Armin Shimerman) a Ferengi bartender & club-owner operating out of the station’s promenade. Quark was always looking to make a quick buck, and often fell afoul of Odo, who was determined to halt the Ferengi’s extra-legal activities.  As we got to know Quark, however, it became apparent that he did operate according to his own particular code of ethics.  He wasn’t evil; rather his pursuit of wealth caused him to have a number of rather glaring moral blind spots.  Quark’s main failing was that he was often unable, or unwilling, to foresee the negative consequences of his actions on both himself and others, at least until some particular scheme happened to blow up in his face, sometimes literally.  To his credit, Quark would usually attempt to make things right with those he had harmed, albeit somewhat reluctantly, while also trying to recoup as much of his investment as possible.

I could also discuss such fascinating recurring characters as Gul Dukat, Garek, Nog, Winn Adami, Weyoun and Martok, but we would be here all day. Suffice it to say that DS9 had a rich, fascinating, colorful ensemble.

Deep Space Nine had been described as the most multicultural of the various Star Trek series. It was the first Star Trek show to feature a black man, the superb Avery Brooks, in the lead.  Miles O’Brien was played by Irish-born Colm Meany, and Julian Bashir was played by English-Sudanese actor Alexander Siddig.  Nearly all of the other characters on DS9, both regular and recurring, were members of different alien species, with their own cultures and mores, their different perspectives on the events that unfolded.

The show is also noteworthy for being one of the first American genre series to experiment with serialization. Various storylines played out across multiple episodes, and the final season concluded with an ambitious, epic nine-episode serial that worked to resolve as many of the plotlines and character arcs as possible.

Deep Space Nine was produced at a time when American television was at a crossroads. It definitely was a forerunner of the now-standard model of serialization, yet at the same time it was still being made when 26 episode seasons were the norm, to crank out as many hours of television as possible to sell to syndication.  Inevitably each season had at least a few subpar installments.  As the show progressed, and became more involved in long-form storytelling, those surplus episodes inevitably became somewhat more glaring, especially in the final two seasons.

While DS9 has for the most part aged exceptionally well, its treatment of women and sexual relations does feel rather dated. Dax and Kira were the only two significant female characters among the very large ensemble.  Bashir’s almost stalker-ish pursuit of Jadziya Dax in the first couple seasons, Ezri Dax in the final season, and a few other women over the course of the show, sticks out as an especially poor choice in today’s climate.  The relationship between Odo and Kira also has problematic aspects.

Nevertheless, despite certain missteps, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine remains a quality show. For the most part it was well-acted, well-written, and well-produced.  It was actually quite ahead of its time in its examination of the challenges presented by multiculturalism, and its debate concerning liberty vs security during times of war.  It is definitely a favorite of mine.

Thirty years of Star Trek: The Next Generation

Thirty years ago this month, on September 28, 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted with the two hour premiere “Encounter at Farpoint” co-written by D.C. Fontana & Gene Roddenberry. Set nearly a century after the original Star Trek, the series featured a brand new crew headed by Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) exploring the galaxy aboard the starship Enterprise-D.

To be perfectly honest, The Next Generation took a bit of time to find its footing. In the years since the original series aired in the late 1960s, series creator Gene Roddenberry had frequently been lauded by fans for his utopian vision of the future.  It would be fair to say that perhaps Roddenberry bought too much into his press.  When it came time for him to devise the structure of TNG, he approached his role not as a writer or a storyteller but as a philosopher presenting his ideology for humanity’s salvation.

In the first season of TNG, Roddenberry had the Federation presented as a post-scarcity socialist paradise where currency had been eliminated, conflict was all-but-unknown, and human beings had reached mental & emotional maturity. The crew of the new Enterprise was intended to be practically perfect… which seriously hampered the dramatic possibilities of the show.  In those early episodes, each time there was a crisis Picard would calmly convene a meeting of his senior staff to reason out a solution.

Trust me when I say that I very much look forward to the day when humanity matures enough that when an emergency occurs our response will be to form a committee to peacefully resolve the situation. Having said that, it is a fact that dramatic fiction thrives on conflict, and the conflict-free ethos of that first season of TNG often rendered the show cripplingly dull.  As someone who had become a fan of the original show via reruns and the movies, I watched most of the first season on TNG, but I was underwhelmed by it.  When the second season began to air in late 1988 I had pretty much lost interest in the show.

Fast forward to the Summer of 1990… I was 14 years old and going to day camp, where I met two cool teenage girls, Meelise and Renee, both of whom also had an interest in science fiction.  We all spent a lot of time hanging out.  As I recall, Meelise and Renee both mentioned that they were fans of TNG.  Thinking back to that first season, I expressed the opinion that it was a pretty disappointing show.  Meelise insisted that is had become much better.  She lent to me a few VHS tapes on which she had recorded a number of episodes from the recently-completed third season.

I remember taking those tapes home, watching them, and being genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed those episodes. Not only had the plotting gotten better, but the writing for the main characters had all improved tremendously.

Then I got to “The Best of Both Worlds” written by Michael Piller, the riveting season finale which ended with the shocking cliffhanger of Captain Picard assimilated by the seemingly-unstoppable cybernetic Borg.  I was hooked.  That September I was glued to the TV set when “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2” aired, and I remained an avid viewer of TNG up until the series finale was broadcast in May 1994.

With the benefit of both hindsight and a greater knowledge of the behind-the-scenes workings of the show, as well as recently binging TNG episodes on Netflix over the last few months, I can see that there was a actually a gradual increase in quality even before season three. Most of the first year is still very underwhelming, but there were several episodes that offered a glimpse of the series’ potential.  Despite some rough edges, “Where No One Has Gone Before,” “Heart of Glory,” “Symbiosis” and “Conspiracy” each offered the promise that TNG had new & interesting things to say.

It was actually in the second season that the first truly great episode of TNG aired. “Measure of a Man” written by Melinda M. Snodgrass was a challenging, thought-provoking piece that all these years later remains eminently watchable, one of the best episodes of any Star Trek series ever made. Obviously inspired by the material presented them in this script, Patrick Stewart as Picard and Brent Spiner as the android Lieutenant Data both turned in extremely strong performances.  Later that year another amazing episode, “Q Who” written by Maurice Hurley, featured the eerie, tension-filled introduction of the Borg.

I mentioned in my look back at the original Star Trek that, outside of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, the characters were underdeveloped. Picard and Data were the characters to receive the most time in the spotlight on TNG.  That makes a certain amount of sense.  Stewart is one of the strongest actors ever to appear in the regular cast of any incarnation of Star Trek.  It was a genuine stroke of genius casting him as Picard, and it made sense that the show would often focus on the intellectual, cultured Captain.  Data, an android struggling to understand what it was like to be human, to try to grasp the intricacies of emotion, was also a compelling character, well portrayed by Spiner.  Again, it was an understandable decision to anchor a number of episodes around Data’s character.

TNG nevertheless did make an honest attempt to flesh out and develop the other members of the crew of the Enterprise-D, with varied amounts of success. It took the show’s writers longer to find the voices of certain characters.  The female members of the crew were definitely ill-served at times by the plots of certain episodes.

However, in spite of these hiccups, there were some interesting relationships between the characters. One of my favorites was the deep friendship that Data and Geordi LaForge shared.  Certainly any time you put Brent Spiner and LeVar Burton opposite one another you were almost guaranteed to have a really great, funny, warm scene.  All these years later re-watching the show, a smile inevitable breaks across my face when Data and LaForge are paired up.

Besides, when I was a kid I watched Reading Rainbow all the time, so I really enjoyed seeing LeVar Burton on TNG.

Although not as successfully executed, another relationship that had potential was the one between First Officer William Riker, played by Jonathan Frakes, and Counselor Deanna Troi, played by Marina Sirtis. Riker and Troi were ex-lovers, and were now serving together on the Enterprise.  This brought about the inevitable “will they or won’t they” tension, which could have been clichéd, although it seemed to work in this case since Frakes and Sirtis did possess a certain amount of chemistry.

I suppose part of the reason why Riker and Troi never worked as well as they could have was because the writers seemed to struggle with both of those characters. Riker was supposed to be a Kirk-type figure, charismatic and romantic and ambitious, but the dynamics of the show established by Roddenberry required that the First Officer couldn’t be too much of any of that, especially ambitious, because otherwise he could have ended up as a rival to Picard, a challenge to the Captain’s authority.  At times Riker was a study in contradictions, and over the years a lot of fans, using the bits of characterization scattered across seven seasons, have tried to work out their own personal head canon to explain his behavior.

Troi at times fared even worse than Riker. As I said, the writers had trouble giving the female characters strong scripts, and so Troi would get saddled with one implausible romance of the week after another, or get take over by aliens, or other weird stuff.  Troi possessed telepathic powers of empathy, which in theory should have been useful, but again the writers frequently had trouble utilizing this.  Often the Counselor was reduced to telling Picard such near-useless statements as “Captain, I sense hostility and deception coming from the other ship.”

As with certain other elements to TNG, there was potential to both Riker and Troi, but unfortunately the show did not develop either of them as well as it could have. I think that much of the appeal of Riker and Troi is down to Frakes and Sirtis, who both did the best they could with the material they were given.

There was also an interesting relationship between Picard and Doctor Beverly Crusher, who was played by Gates McFadden. Picard and Crusher also had shared history that predated their assignments on the Enterprise, and even though they had never been romantically involved there was an undeniable mutual attraction.  I do think it was to the benefit of the show that Picard and Crusher were usually written as colleagues who were very close friends, and the writers mostly avoided trying to nudge them into a relationship.  Crusher was typically written as a competent professional, which was good to see, although over the course of the series she really didn’t receive too many quality episodes which spotlighted her character.

While on the subject of Beverly Crusher, I should mention her son Wesley, who was played by Wil Wheaton. Initially written as a teen whiz, the character was apparently a fictionalized version of Roddenberry himself.  Unfortunately in the first couple of seasons the show went out of its way to try to make Wesley the smartest person in the room, and many viewers absolutely hated him.  In later seasons, when Wesley was a semi-recurring presence on the show, the writers definitely gave Wheaton much better material to work with, and the character became more interesting & likable, at least in my estimation.

One cannot discuss TNG without mentioning Worf, played by Michael Dorn. The first Klingon to serve in Starfleet, Worf had been orphaned at a young age and adopted by humans.  Much of what he knew about Klingon culture he learned from books, and his idealized view of his people as proud, honorable warriors often came into conflict with the reality of a once-mighty militaristic society infested with political infighting, corruption and treason.  The solemn, brooding Worf was very much a character who was caught between two worlds, too human to be accepted by most Klingons, and too Klingon to fit in with most humans.  Often alone, Worf struggled to discover his own path, to find a way to live up to his own personal standards of Klingon honor and duty while serving in Starfleet.

Probably the most enigmatic member of the Enterprise crew was Guinan, played by Whoopi Goldberg. Ostensibly the bartender of the ship’s Ten Forward lounge, Guinan was a centuries-old alien with nebulously-defined powers whose home planet had been destroyed by the Borg.  Guinan often imparted sage advice to the crew during various personal crises or ship-wide emergencies.  On paper Guinan sounds like the sort of character who could quickly become annoying. However, Goldberg played the character with just the right combination of gravity and mischief that in her occasional appearances Guinan was usually quite charming.

TNG introduced a number of key concepts to the Star Trek universe. Probably the most iconic was, of course, the Borg.  Instantly memorable, the cybernetic juggernaut of the Borg Collective was perhaps too effective as an adversary.  They were such a powerful, formidable foe that, as cool as they were, it was immediately apparent that they needed to be used extremely sparingly, lest they suffer from villain decay.  TNG was mostly able to avoid this, as the few appearances of the Borg after “The Best of Both Worlds” saw individuals or rogue, underpowered divisions of the Collective popping up here and there.

It was a smart decision hold back on once again utilizing the full might of the Borg until the 1996 movie Star Trek: First Contact.  It might have been a good idea for the concept of the Borg to have been put to rest after that, to have them go out on a high point.  Unfortunately they became a reoccurring adversary on Star Trek: Voyager, with the inevitable diminishing results.

At least the writers recognized that TNG needed another adversary that could be used regularly. The ultra-capitalist Ferengi had already been introduced in the first season, but they had landed with a dull thud, never once working as serious villains.  They were very quickly reduced to comic relief, although several years later Star Trek: Deep Space Nine would do a decent job at developing them into a semi-believable culture.  The Klingons, with their political in-fighting, could occasionally be brought in as bad guys, with treasonous factions plotting against the Federation.  Likewise, another adversary from the original series, the Romulans, returned.  They were fairly effectively utilized, with a tense state of cold war existing between the Federation and the Romulans.

Finally, in the Season Four episode “The Wounded” scripted by Jeri Taylor, we were introduced to the Cardassians. A fascist, expansionist empire governed by the military, the Cardassians were involved in a lengthy, bloody war with the Federation.  “The Wounded” opens shortly after the signing of a peace treaty between the two sides, although it quickly becomes obvious that the Cardassians are utilizing the lull in conflict to secretly re-arm.  The Cardassians presented the writers of TNG with an opportunity to explore the less-idealistic, more pragmatic side of the Federation.  Over the course of the second half of the series, we see the Federation and Starfleet making certain decisions that, from both a moral and tactical perspective, are ill-advised, all out of a desire to avoid another full-blown conflict with the Cardassians.

TNG also introduced the Bajorans, whose planet had been brutally occupied by the Cardassians. Both the Bajorans and the Cardassians would become central, key elements of the Deep Space Nine spin-off, where each of their societies would be intricately developed by the writers.

If I had one criticism of TNG that remained consistent throughout its seven year run, it was the writers’ annoying overreliance on techno babble to resolve their plots. It would always drive me up the wall when the Enterprise would solve an emergency by bouncing a particle beam off the deflector dish, or transmitting a phase-shifting tachyon pulse into a planet’s atmosphere, or some such nonsense.  I realize that the show wanted to be more cerebral than the original Star Trek, but if you have to make up a bunch of technical-sounding gobbledygook in order to avoid a fist fight or a shootout then you’re really just cheating.

In certain respects, TNG remains very much a product of its time. The show was produced when one of the primary goals was to re-sell the series over and over in syndication.  This meant cranking out as many episodes a year as possible.  Nearly every season of TNG contained 26 episodes, which required a breakneck production schedule.  Even from the point when the show got noticeably great with season three, there were inevitably a few duds each year.  By the sixth and seventh seasons, with DS9 simultaneously being made, I think the production crew on TNG was beginning to get burned out, and the number of underwhelming episodes began to increase.  The level of quality never dipped too low, but it’s apparent that it was the right call to end the series after seven years, while the good still outweighed the bad.

Looking back on Star Trek: The Next Generation three decades after its debut, it remains a study in contradictions. It was produced at a time when television was approaching a crossroads, when genre shows were slowly beginning to gain popularity in the general public, when serialization and long-form plotting were just beginning to gradually creep into the medium.  At times TNG was clearly looking forward while nevertheless remaining firmly rooted in the established traditions of television production.  Perhaps TNG never quite lived up to its potential, but it was a crucial stepping stone that enabled both the Star Trek franchise, as well as genre television as a whole, to leap into first the 1990s and then the 21th Century.

Fifty years of Star Trek

Star Trek made its television debut 50 years ago this week, on September 8, 1966, when the episode “The Man Trap” aired on NBC.

(For the pedantic-minded, yes, “The Man Trap” was number six in production order, and the actual first episode of Star Trek should have been “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” but NBC decided to instead debut the show with a “monster of the week” first episode. And that’s not even getting into the matter of first, unused pilot episode “The Cage” which wasn’t broadcast in its entirety until 1988.  Okay, I’ll stop now!)

I wasn’t born for another decade, in June 1976, but in the early 1980s when I was a young kid I regularly watched reruns of Star Trek on Saturday evenings on WPIX Channel 11. I was a science fiction fan, and the show was such a thrill for me.  At the time, the concept of an ongoing sci-fi TV series that aired a “new” episode every single week was just so revolutionary.  It’s almost inconceivable these days when there are numerous genre shows on the small screen, but when I was a kid Star Trek was literally one-of-a-kind.

(It’s really no wonder that a couple of years later I also became a huge Doctor Who fan once I discovered repeats airing Monday to Friday on PBS stations.)

I honestly don’t remember my first episode of Star Trek. I have very fuzzy memories of a young me watching Captain Kirk fighting the Gorn (“Arena”) and of Kirk and Spock communicating with the Horta (“Devil in the Dark”), but I certainly couldn’t swear with any certainty that either of those was my absolute first exposure to the show.  The point is that as far back as I can recall, I was watching Star Trek, and enjoying it.

It is interesting to have re-watched many of those episodes over the past decade and a half, to revisit them with adult eyes. Some of them are still classics, while others have not aged well.  And, no, I am not referring to the low budgets or the dodgy special effects.

When you are six years old “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” probably seems an insightful examination of racism; when you’re in your 30s it comes across as a heavy-handed, clunky allegory. When you’re a kid “A Private Little War” strikes you as a tragic tale of good men forced into conflict; when you’re an adult you realize that it’s actually a  defense of the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.

In the decade after Star Trek’s original three season run concluded, its creator Gene Roddenberry was a regular of the sci-fi convention circuit, and he worked hard to propagate the myth that the series was extremely progressive and forward-thinking. This was true to a degree, but certainly not as much as Roddenberry would later claim.  As with any series that was crafted by a number of different writers, Star Trek’s politics were all over the place.  Roddenberry himself could be maddeningly inconsistent, at times genuinely liberal, and at others decidedly right-of-center.

The show is, in hindsight, not nearly as diverse as it could have been, with the three lead characters of Kirk, Spock and Doctor McCoy all played by white males. There is a good deal of  sexism & sexual titillation in many episodes.  Yes, Star Trek did show men and women serving alongside each other in a military organization.  But most of the females in Starfleet were relegated to secondary roles.  The women of Star Trek were often characterized as emotional & irrational, and many of them were clad in extremely revealing outfits.

I doubt it’s any accident that one of the things that everyone remembers about Star Trek are those green-skinned Orion “slave girls” portrayed by Susan Oliver and Yvonne Craig.

(Not that there’s anything wrong with being sexy.  But as they say, everything in moderation.)

It is also unfortunate the most of the crew of the Starship Enterprise was underdeveloped. By today’s standards Scotty, Sulu, Uhura and Chekov are very one-dimensional.  But that was an inevitable reality of the model of American television in the late 1960s.  Watch any prime-time drama from that era and you will see that it is made up of stand-alone episodes that are primarily driven by plot, with extended story arcs and long-term characterization nonexistent.

Nevertheless, for all its flaws, Star Trek was still groundbreaking. It was the unexpected beginning of a decades-long franchise, one that in its various incarnations over the next 50 years would genuinely become more and more progressive.  The original series was the necessary foundation upon which all of the subsequent TV series and movies were built.

Even today, fifty years later, there are aspects of the original Star Trek that hold up. The lead trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy works very well, due to the genuine chemistry that existed between actors William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley.  You definitely see these three men as colleagues who, despite their differing world views and their often passionate arguments over ideology & methodology, possess a genuine rapport & friendship.

I’ve sometimes heard it suggested that Kirk, Spock and McCoy are a Freudian Trio.  Kirk is the ego, the leader.  Spock is the superego, reason.  McCoy is the id, emotion.  Whatever the case, it made for compelling drama.

The writing on Star Trek could also be very good. Despite his flaws, Roddenberry certainly devised a wonderful concept, and his plots could be intelligent & imaginative.  Gene L. Coon and D.C. Fontana are the two writers who probably deserve the most credit for taking Roddenberry’s vision and developing it into a compelling, nuanced, three-dimensional universe.  Other talented writers who contributed quality plots & scripts to Star Trek are George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, David Gerrold, Norman Spinrad and Jerome Bixby.

The costumes, props, sets and models created for Star Trek were also striking & original. The designs conceived by Matt Jeffries and Wah Chang are now iconic.  The Enterprise itself, the crew’s phasers & communicators, the Klingons’ cruisers, aliens such as the Gorn and the Salt Vampire; all are instantly recognizable.

For a television show that lasted a mere three years, constantly teetering on the edge of cancellation, the original Star Trek has had a seismic impact on popular culture. It has simultaneously served as escapist fantasy while providing a lens through which to explore the social & political controversies of the last half century.

Of course there’s also plenty to say about the Star Trek movies, and The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine, and so on, but I think I’ll save those for another time.

By the way, one of my favorite WordPress blogs is the m0vie blog. Among the numerous reviews, its author Darren has written some incredibly detailed, insightful, thought-provoking analyses of the Star Trek franchise. I encourage everyone who is a fan of the series to check it out.

Leonard Nimoy: 1931 to 2015

Leonard Nimoy passed away on February 27th at the age of 83.  It’s odd when someone you literally grew up watching on television and in movies dies.  In the last two days others have written extensively about Nimoy’s numerous, varied accomplishments throughout the decades.  I would certainly recommend taking a look at the piece by Darren at the m0vie blog.  Darren has written some of the most insightful, intelligent reviews of Star Trek that I have ever come across, so of course he offers a worthy appraisal of Nimoy’s life & career.

For my part, I am going to just offer some brief thoughts on Nimoy’s amazing portrayal of the character of Spock on the various incarnations of Star Trek, the science fiction series created by Gene Roddenberry and developed by a variety of talented writers such as Gene L. Coon & D.C. Fontana.

Leonard Nimoy did amazing work bringing Spock, the half-Vulcan, half-human First Officer of the Starship Enterprise, to life. The original Star Trek was broadcast from 1966 to 1969.  This was an era when television series were extremely episodic, characterization was one-dimensional, and there weren’t any sort of extended arcs that developed long-term subplots or depicted the evolution of the characters over a period of time.  Within these constraints, during three wildly uneven seasons of Star Trek, Nimoy nevertheless succeeded in communicating the continuing struggles of Spock to reconcile his Vulcan and human backgrounds, to adhere to the Vulcan ideal of non-emotion while finding a place among a crew of highly emotional human beings.  Spock was in a number of ways the perennial outsider.  He was a character who I expect a great many viewers could identify with.

The chemistry between the three leads in Star Trek was very apparent.  Nimoy as Spock, William Shatner as Captain Kirk and DeForest Kelley as Doctor McCoy all possessed an excellent rapport.  Whereas Spock represented logic, McCoy was the personification of human sentiment, of acting upon feeling, and the two had a very contentious friendship.  It fell to Kirk to listen to Spock and McCoy’s two disparate world views and to strive to find the correct balance between intellect and emotion that was necessary to resolve each episode’s crisis.

Nimoy’s portrayal of Spock was often very moving.  Certain moments invariably stand out, such as from “The Devil in the Dark” written by Gene L. Coon, broadcast on March 9, 1967.  That episode was one of the best examples of Roddenberry’s hopes for a future where humanity would learn to embrace tolerance, understanding and open-mindedness.  Coon’s script sees the Enterprise crew working to prevent a mysterious, deadly alien from destroying the Janus VI mining colony.  As the episode progresses, we learn that the Horta is no savage, mindless killer.  Rather, it is a mother attempting to prevent the accidental destruction of her nests of eggs by the miners.

Spock’s mind meld with the Horta, when the truth about the entity is uncovered, is one of the most iconic moments from the original Star Trek.  Nimoy’s acting in it was an absolutely crucial component in making this scene genuinely believable, in helping to convince the audience that a living rock pile that resembled a giant pizza pie was a thinking, feeling, sentient being.  It is one of the best examples I know of where intelligent writing and quality acting more than overcame the hurtles of primitive special effects and a shoestring budget.

Just a week ago I was watching “The Enterprise Incident” written by D.C. Fontana, originally broadcast September 27, 1968.  I think that “The Enterprise Incident” is one of the most morally complex, cynical episodes of the original Star Trek.  Fontana’s script sees Starfleet sending Kirk and Spock on a covert mission to steal a cloaking device from the Romulans.  In the process they violate the treaty with the Romulan Empire and engage in overt acts of espionage.

(There are some fans of the series who believe that the sixth Star Trek movie and the 1990s spin-off series Deep Space Nine portrayed Starfleet and the Federation in an unfavorable light contrary to Roddenberry’s original intentions.  I would argue that certain episodes of the original series such as “The Enterprise Incident” demonstrated that there was always a morally ambiguous, harshly pragmatic side to those institutions.)

“The Enterprise Incident” features one of Nimoy’s best performances from the original series. Spock’s stoic devotion to logic and duty is apparent in his carrying out his orders and performing Starfleet’s dirty work.  At the end you also witness the tangible regret that he feels at having been required to assume the devious role of a spy & double agent, in deceiving the Romulan Commander (Joanne Linville), who he had developed a genuine fondness for, in order to help Starfleet achieve its goals.  At the end, reflecting on how all of Starfleet’s machinations have probably only achieved a temporary strategic advantage, Spock acknowledges to the Romulan Commander “Military secrets are the most fleeting of all. I hope that you and I exchanged something more permanent.”  Nimoy’s delivery of the line was very effective and thoughtful.

Nimoy’s wonderful portrayal of Spock continued within the Star Trek movies. Spock’s striving towards the purging of all emotion, only to realize the emptiness of pure logic, was one of the few strong points in the uneven Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  Although his character was not a central focus in The Wrath of Khan, Spock’s sacrifice the save the Enterprise at the end of was incredibly moving.  Under the superb direction of Nicholas Meyer, Nimoy and Shatner played the scene perfectly.

Nimoy slipped into the director’s chair for the third and fourth movies, doing quality work.  In the later, The Voyage Home, Nimoy’s performance as the resurrected Spock, once again seeking to find the balance between his dual heritages, was very good.  Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country saw the characters of Spock and Kirk at odds with one another over the possibility of a future where the Federation and the Klingon Empire could be at peace.  Once again directed by Meyer, both Nimoy and Shatner turned in solid performances as Spock and Kirk contemplated the idea of growing old, and of the universe moving on without them.

On a more personal note, as someone who is Jewish, as a child I remember being pleasantly surprised when I learned that Leonard Nimoy was of that faith.  Nimoy very much embraced his heritage, and was proud of his Judaism.  Yet he never let that pride blind him.  He recognized the importance of people from different backgrounds working to find common ground and understanding.  As the co-writer of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Nimoy was inspired by looking at the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as the hostility between Israel and the Arab nations of the Middle East, and by his hope that these different peoples could one day learn to peacefully co-exist.

Nimoy’s character Spock often expressed the sentiment “Live long and prosper.”  Those are certainly words that Nimoy himself lived by.  He will be missed.

Khan Noonien Singh: Star Trek’s “benevolent dictator”

I thought it might be nice to sit down and re-watch my DVD of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan today.  As I’ve written before, it is a really great movie.  The script by Nicholas Meyer, Harve Bennett and Jack B. Sowards has so many fascinating aspects to it.  And then it occurred to me that it had been literally years since I’d actually viewed “Space Seed,” the Star Trek episode written by Gene L. Coon & Carey Wilber to which The Wrath of Khan is a sequel.  I did a Google search, and found that you can view it for free online at Hulu.  Yeah, okay, you have to sit though several commercials, but it’s still better than watching a grainy bootlegged version.

Viewing “Space Seed” and Star Trek II back-to-back, I realized what an amazingly fascinating character Khan Noonien Singh was.  Obviously a major aspect of this is that the part of Khan was portrayed by the amazing Ricardo Montalban, who turns in a forceful, charismatic performance.  But I think that aspects of Khan’s character also speak to a quality present in society, the notion of the appeal of the so-called “benevolent dictator.”

The idea of one unifying individual bringing order to a state or nation, or perhaps even the entire world, is certainly not a new one.  In certain respects, it is understandable.  The alternative, democracy, is an extremely flawed, messy process.  Dozens upon dozens of dissenting voices have to be heard and appeased, compromises need to be achieved that often end up pleasing no one, politicians who are supposed to be the representatives of the people are swayed or outright bought by private interests, and the entire day-to-day functioning of government can be ground to a halt by a small group of elected officials who are unwilling to participate in the process.  One needs only look at the current deplorable state of affairs here in the United States to see this taking place.

But, really, just how much better is the alternative?  Lord Acton stated that “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Or, as Spock (Leonard Nimoy) observes in “Space Seed,” when commenting on the genetically engineered supermen who once nearly seized control of Earth:

“Superior ability breeds superior ambition.”

The crew of the Enterprise, having discovered the cryogenically frozen Khan and his band of followers in outer space, is of two minds about the man.  While Kirk (William Shatner) dislikes what Khan represents, at the same time, looking at the historical record, the Captain of the Enterprise sees that, in contrast to many of his contemporaries, Khan’s dominion over a major portion of the globe was relatively benign & peaceful.  Indeed, over dinner with the ship’s crew, Khan passionately argues that the Earth made a terrible mistake in driving him into exile.  He states that his rule was not tyrannical, but “an attempt to unite humanity.”  He goes on to forcefully declare…

“We offered the world order!”

Khan is certainly an extremely charismatic individual with a magnetic personality.  However, the man’s true side begins to come out in his interactions with Lieutenant Marla McGivers (Madlyn Rhue). The Enterprise’s historian is immediately attracted to Khan and what he represents.  In an early establishing shot, we see McGivers’ quarters are decorated with paintings & sculptures of men of power such as Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Richard the Lionheart.  She possesses a much romanticized view of these individuals, who she considers superior to the males of her time.  And Khan immediately seizes on to that.

In his actions, Khan shows some of the signs of being a sociopath.  He is driven by ego, by the belief in his superiority over others.  He values other people primarily for what they can give him.  He knows how to talk a good game.  And he is superb at reading other people.  Khan immediately identifies that McGivers has this idealized view of individuals such as himself, and that she is attracted to him, both on a physical level and because of what he represents.  No doubt he also notes that she has a rather submissive side to her personality.  He takes advantage of all this, forcefully seducing her, and then ordering her to assist him in taking over the Enterprise.  When McGivers is at first unwilling to do so, Khan then appears to dismiss her, denying her the attention & affection she craves.  It is definitely an extremely unhealthy and twisted relationship built on abuse.

Once Khan and his followers, with McGivers’ aid, take over the Enterprise, his charming, civilized veneer continues to slip.  Khan realizes that Kirk and his crew are not going to easily capitulate.  He threatens Kirk with an extremely slow, painful death by suffocation, and promises to repeat this to the rest of the bridge crew, one by one.  However, if any of them swear to serve him, he will spare their lives.  In this way, at least in his mind, he appears benevolent.  As Khan no doubt sees it, he is basically saying “Look, I can be reasonable and merciful. Just do what I tell you to do and I promise no harm will come to you.”  Of course, the crew refuse Khan’s offer, and remain loyal to Kirk.  This just serves to further enrage Khan.  The more his enemies resist him, the more violent he becomes.  It is this that shocks McGivers into betraying Khan.  Witnessing first-hand the cold, hard reality of the types of men she had admired, she is repulsed, and she rescues Kirk, who organizes his crew to take back the ship.

However, Khan’s ego will not allow him to give up.  He attempts to blow up the Enterprise, wanting to take down everyone with him.  Kirk of course manages to thwart this.  Later, with the super-humans in custody, Kirk offers Khan and his followers the choice of settling on the untamed planet Ceti Alpha V instead of imprisonment by Starfleet.  He also gives McGivers the opportunity to join Khan rather than face court martial.  She agrees, and Khan declares…

“I will take her. And I’ve gotten something else I wanted: a world to win, an empire to build.” 

There is Khan’s ego once more at work.  He forgives McGivers for her betrayal.  And he twists things around so that he can rationalize that despite being defeated he has achieved what he wanted in the first place.

Unfortunately, as we find out fifteen years later in Star Trek II, things turn out really badly for Khan and his people on Ceti Alpha V.  Six months after settling there, the neighboring planet in the system exploded.  Ceti Alpha V’s orbit shifted, turning it into an inhospitable desert, and for the next decade and a half Khan and his followers barely clung to existence.

When the Reliant arrives at Ceti Alpha V, mistaking it for the exploded planet, Khan instantly recognizes its First Officer, Pavel Chekov, formerly of the Enterprise (Yes, I know, Walter Koenig didn’t join the cast of Star Trek until the second season, and so wasn’t in “Space Seed.” Koenig likes to joke that his character was serving on a different part of the Enterprise at that time, and that Chekov accidentally kept Khan waiting an uncomfortably long time to use the bathroom, hence the animosity.)  Here again Khan’s ego immediately comes into play.  Instead of recognizing an opportunity for rescue, he becomes full of resentment.  Looking around at the sorry state he is now in, Khan declares “On Earth, two hundred years ago, I was a prince, with power over millions.”  He is disgusted at the notion that in the intervening years Kirk has been promoted to Admiral, no doubt seeing it as a further insult that his rival has had a successful career while Khan was off rotting in exile.  In fact, Khan places the blame for his circumstances squarely on Kirk for never returning to check up on him (which, admittedly, is a fair enough criticism).  Now Khan sees the opportunity for revenge.  He takes control of the Reliant and sets out to kill his hated foe.

It’s interesting that Khan refers to the death of his “beloved wife,” undoubtedly a reference to Marla McGivers.  I really do wonder if Khan loved her.  It seems somewhat difficult to believe so, based on their relationship in “Space Seed,” where he was manipulating her.  Maybe he genuinely did.  Then again, perhaps Khan merely convinced himself that he loved her, because it fulfilled his self-image as a good man.  Whatever the case, I think that when the opportunity arose to attack Kirk, he uses McGivers’ death as one more self-justification in pursuing his vendetta.

In watching Star Trek II, you do realize that Khan has ample opportunities to take a different course of action.  Instead, he is absolutely hell-bent on gaining revenge.  Even Khan’s utterly loyal right-hand man Joachim (Judson Scott) attempts on more than one occasion to argue that they have their freedom and a spaceship, they can go anywhere in the universe, lead their own destiny once again.  But Khan’s monumental pride simply will not allow it.  He will not let go of the idea of avenging himself on Kirk.

After the Enterprise barely survives an encounter with the Khan-controlled Reliant, Kirk bitterly notes..

“He wants to kill me for passing sentence on him fifteen years ago. And he doesn’t care who stands between him and his vengeance.” 

It eventually transpires that this even includes Khan’s own devoted followers.  He is more concerned with revenge than he is for their welfare.

It’s interesting to note that early in the film we see a copy of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick on Khan’s bookshelf.  No doubt he has had ample time to familiarize himself with the novel during his long exile.  Yet Khan ends up playing the role of Captain Ahab, the monomaniacal captain who leads himself and his entire crew to their deaths in his pursuit of the white whale.  Khan himself obviously recognizes the parallels between himself and Ahab, but he simply does not care.  As he activates the stolen Genesis Device in an attempt to destroy the Enterprise along with his own ship, he even quotes the novel:

“From hell’s heart I stab at thee. For hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

I had never noticed it before, but Khan actually bears some interesting similarities to the comic book character Doctor Doom, who was created by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby in the pages of Fantastic Four.  Like Khan, Victor Von Doom is often described as a “benevolent dictator.”  He is the absolute monarch of the country of Latveria.  In certain respects, Doom has transformed his homeland into a paradise.  There is no crime or poverty in Latveria; of course, neither is there any free will.  Some might argue that the loss of civil liberties is a small price to pay.  The problem is that this seeming golden age is dependant solely upon the whims of Doctor Doom.  Like Khan, he is a creature of immense ego, convinced of his innate superiority.  He claims to love the people of Latveria, and by granting them peace & prosperity it allows him to demonstrate to himself and everyone else that he is right, that he knows what is best for the world.

However, just like Khan, when things don’t go exactly according to plan, off come the kid gloves, and suddenly Doom is an extremely dangerous, petty, vengeful individual.  Certainly his decades-long vendetta against Reed Richards for what is, in truth, a mistake Doom made due to his own arrogance, proves that.  In Doom’s mind, he cannot be wrong; it must be somebody else’s fault.  And he’s pursued his quest for vengeance against Richards, his desire to show everyone that he is the smarter, better man, with a fanatical single-mindedness.

As for the people of Latveria, as much as Doom claims to adore and cherish them, the second they become a liability, the second they stand in his way or cease to be of use to him as a propaganda symbol or a method of stroking his ego, he will casually cast them aside or destroy them.  In the end, Doom comes first, and everything else is secondary.

And that is why, as alluring as the concept of the “benevolent dictator” appears, it is really a terrible idea.  Yes, in the short term a supposedly well-intentioned absolute ruler may be able to create order & stability.  But it is the type of progress that cannot last in the long run, and which is ever subject to the frailties of the all too human egos of those in control.