Reflections on Star Trek

by James Hoover

With Star Trek XI just over the horizon, now is an appropriate time to reflect on the different eras of Star Trek with the aim of deciding what worked, and what didn’t. When I first saw Star Trek as a very young child (the episode was “The Trouble with Tribbles”), I admit I was captivated. The bright uniforms, the camaraderie of the Star Fleet officers and the humor of the scripts produced an intellectual buzz in my brain that was impossible to ignore. Best of all, each episode they explored a new world. And thanks to syndication, the show was on every afternoon. Being young and not understanding how this worked, I assumed the episodes were being produced at breakneck speed, like a soap opera! But of course only three seasons of the original series were produced—just enough for syndication. Over the years, after countless repeated afternoon viewings of those 79 episodes, I became so familiar with them that I could identify the episode based on the color of the planet the Enterprise was orbiting in the opening shot.

Obviously, The Original Series, as we call it now, has stood the test of time. The scripts, the acting, everything about the production engages the viewer just as much now as back then. Considering the other sci-fi shows televised at that time (The Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants come to mind), you realize just how powerful and timeless the concept and execution of Star Trek was. Of course, there were some episodes that didn’t work, but the majority of them did and they were dynamite.

CBS recently remastered those original episodes with new computer-generated special effects shots. I was surprised to see that the old shots often work better than the new shots. CGI models of the Enterprise seem to communicate neither the scale of the ship nor the beauty of the design. The 1960s studio miniature of the U.S.S. Enterprise was eleven feet in length. Some miniature! And Matt Jefferies’ design for the Enterprise was unlike anything ever seen. People who complain that the design of the Enterprise is ‘too 1960s’ don’t realize that most of the other spaceship designs from that period resembled Hitler’s V-2 rocket.

It’s fascinating to compare the three seasons of Star Trek: The Original Series. The first season had a very hard edge. They wanted to prove that a successful science fiction show could be made that was not directed at little kids. It could be unsettling and moving. Remember when an angry “Charlie X” hears a girl laughing around the corner and mutters something like “No laughing!” and walks on. Moments later the girl, now silent, feels her way around the corner and she has no face. That’s not something you will see on reruns of Lost in Space! The scene still gives me the shivers.

For season two, the high quality was maintained, but there is a laid-back aspect to things now that the production staff knows people are tuning in. (Supposedly, for people with new-fangled color TVs, Star Trek was the number one show.) Season three, well…what can you say about an episode like “Spock’s Brain,” which was written as a comedy but turned into a drama at the last minute at the behest of the new producer? Season three wasn’t all bad. I still smile at the thought of Kirk fighting alongside his hero, Abraham Lincoln, in “The Savage Curtain.”

Paramount took a long time to follow-up on the unprecedented success of Star Trek in syndication. Perhaps inevitably, they screwed it up.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture was rushed to theaters while the film was still wet. There was no time for an audience preview. Too bad, because it needed one. The picture is long on special effects and short on humanity. And everyone looks unconfortable. If you can find The Director’s Cut, which was released twenty-two years after the film’s premier, do so. Robert Wise attempted to redeem the film by actually finishing it; and honestly, for the sake of posterity, it should replace the earlier movie.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was praised upon release, and is now considered one of the great sci-fi films. It has an actual science fiction premise: a device that destroys worlds and then recreates them according to a pattern. Also, it has a human premise: generically-engineered Khan wants revenge against his imprisoner, James Kirk. In contrast to the previous film, this film is lively and imaginative. The beige uniforms are gone, replaced by colorful naval uniforms. The actors are allowed to act. And Spock’s death is handled just right. At the time, People magazine wrote that Ricardo Montalban was “ridiculously miscast” as Khan. Really? Look at that guy’s chest in the movie and tell me he isn’t a GMO!

Star Trek III:The Search for Spock continues in the same vein as Khan. It’s classy and enjoyable, and further is a film about friendship and the sacrifices that friendship sometimes requires.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was a crowd pleaser and a time travel story done the right way: for fun.

Then we come to Star Trek V: The Film That Was So Bad Everyone Kind of Pretends it Was Never Made. In Star Trek V the crew of the Enterprise goes looking for God who is trapped on a planet somewhere, or something. The film has a cheapness to it. For example, the special effects shot of the shuttle crashing looks third rate. Hint: any time a spaceship crashes in a sci-fi film, it had better look good. Also, this film doesn’t take us somewhere that feels new or inspires wonder, like any Star Trek film should. 

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was a sometimes wobbly return to previous form. A little stale perhaps (Again with the Klingons?), but well-crafted and topical (it was about Glasnost).

Star Trek: The Next Generation was popular and lasted seven seasons. The cast was a smorgasbord of interesting characters, but, perhaps by design, strong leads and deep relationship chemistry never emerged (à la Kirk, Spock, and McCoy). The Enterprise set at the time was criticized as resembling a Howard Johnson in space (wood paneling, astroturf), and the new exterior design of the starship, after the glorious movie Enterprise, looked like an slow, overweight porker. (Although it looks like a beauty queen next to the STXI design.)

Well, to quote Nimoy on the subject, lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place, so perhaps comparison to Star Trek: The Original Series is unfair. I’ll do it anyway: the music in the new show sounded generic and unrelated to the scenes it accompanied; the lighting appeared flat; the direction was often formulaic and the scripts tiresome.

The one iconic concept that did emerge here, powerful because it is true, is the Borg. The Borg are Microsoft, they are WalMart, they are the national chain that just put you out of business. You’re working for them now. Everybody got this, and so everybody loved to hate the Borg.

Star Trek: Generations (the first movie with the cast of The Next Generation) was too sprawling and unfocused to be a classic, but it has a nice feel to it. Patrick Stewart’s acting, when Picard learns of the death of his remaining family, really plays true. I think the only problem with the film (apart from a lack of explanation about what ‘the Ribbon’ is and who made it) is that the disaster that befalls the starship Enterprise produces an unintended climax about two-thirds into the film. That sequence was so well edited and so intense that people in the audience popped out of their seats and were standing at the end of it. I heard one guy saying, “What a ride...what a ride!” How do you top that?

Star Trek: First Contact is everything a Star Trek film should be, and more. The Borgification of the Enterprise is fascinating and terrifying. The Borg Queen is the apex of attractive and repulsive. (I thought Alice Krige’s accent was Chicago, but I read she’s from South Africa. Hmm.) The hero of Star Fleet history, Zefram Cochrane, spends most of the movie hiding and drinking. Picard has a romance with Alfie Woodward’s character that is totally innocent. I could go on. The movie is a delicious study in contradiction.

There was not a thing in the world wrong with Star Trek: Insurrection, except that it did not really cover any new territory. I can remember enjoying the film, but there was nothing to grab onto and take home. No new memorable characters, or planets, or concepts. As I previously mentioned, you kind of need that in a Star Trek film.

Star Trek Nemesis had a story that struggled to make any sense. There were holes in the plot large enough to fly the Enterprise-D through. Why would the Romulans accept the authority of a human, much less Picard’s double? How did the enslaved Remans build that huge starship, which is like fifty times the size of the Enterprise? Will we really be driving dune buggies around in the 24th century? What was Data’s spare head doing in the middle of the desert? Did they ever even explain that? And why the frak is everyone so relieved that the status quo is reestablished at the end of the film. The Remans are slaves, dammit!

Brent Spiner, who had a hand in writing the story, is on record complaining that the filmmakers tried to give Star Trek fans what they wanted, so why didn’t they buy tickets? Rather, I think this movie is proof that without a good story or script, you got nothing.

Back to the TV series…

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine took the Star Trek concept in a new direction. The uniforms, formerly brightly colored with black epaulets, now became mostly black with colored highlights. The entire tone of the series followed this shift toward chiaroscuro. The Star Fleet crew were assigned to an impressive but uncomfortable space station built by an enemy of the Federation. Goodbye, Howard Johnson in space! Instead of randomly traveling around the galaxy, the show concentrated on developing a new mythos during its seven seasons (including ancient Founders, legendary Changelings, drug-addicted Gem’Hadar soldiers, and the elfin Vorta). DS-9 also introduced the concept of Star Trek as space opera, with individual episodes contributing to one vast story; along with this came a certain homogeneity to the series that could be stifling, since episodes never veered too far from the story arc (and those that did seemed like annoying tangents rather than stories that mattered). Back then, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine seemed unimpressive, but in retrospect it was a well-conceived show that was always watchable and had an excellent cast.

In regard to Star Trek: Voyager, I quote Kirk’s final words, “Oh my….” This should have been a return to the theme of exploration and discovery that made the original so captivating. But Voyager remained a show in search of a vision. With crummy scripts and half-baked characters, the actors were never given anything interesting to do. Basically, they were there to advance the plot. The style of the show seemed to go whichever way the wind was blowing. One week they would emulate The X-Files, the next week something else. Voyager foisted on viewers the worst script in the Star Trek cannon: In “Threshold,” Paris and Janeway are caused to ‘evolve’ into what humans will become millions of years from now—as if evolution was something that occurred apart from outside influences! So they evolve into giant lizards. Wha—huh? This problem is solved by filtering the ‘evolved DNA’ out of their systems which returns them to their former selves. Ah, I see.

Really, this series lacked ideas, and the ones they had were bad. Remember when they introduced the Kazons, a warrior-like race with bumps on their foreheads? Hey, isn’t that just like the Klingons? After floundering for a couple of seasons, the producers settled on the Borg as the baddies. After all, why do something original when you can reuse a good villain over and over? One more example. Remember in the pilot episode when two characters on the bridge use their communicators to whisper to each other, because the bridge set is so large it precludes human interaction? Sad.

Enterprise was a prequel series assigned the thankless task of exploring Star Trek’s already very familiar concepts (starship, transporter, warp drive, etc.). It tried to introduce a large story arc in the form of a ‘Time War,’ but the mysterious enemies were largely faceless, and since Captain Archer never knew what was going on, neither did the audience. I enjoyed the focus on Archer and T’Pols working relationship, which was basically a ‘reboot’ of Kirk and Spock. But the result of all this was a bit lackluster. As with Voyager, I missed entire seasons of this show because I just didn’t feel compelled to watch it, and later caught them in re-syndication. Coming from a Star Trek fan, that’s pretty damning.

So, as I look back on Star Trek’s long history, I see that apart from the usual elements that matter: Story, Script, Cast, Director, Producer, Music, Costumes, Sets, Cinematography, and Lighting, Star Trek has some very specific requirements. One is the focus on relationships and friendships. Two is to take us somewhere or show us something we haven’t seen before. Three is to make us think just a little bit, either through science fiction or in some other way. Four is to have strong ‘guest stars’ whose characters the cast can play against. Five, nice visuals (will a computer generated Enterprise ever look as fine as the beautiful, pearlescent Enterprise of The Motion Picture?). Six, whatever the incarnation of Star Trek, it needs a vision, or rather the producer needs a vision, one that will inspire everyone involved.

While the concept of a ‘reimagined’ Star Trek in Star Trek XI does not inspire confidence or optimism, I say, may lightning strike in the same place twice!

18 March 2009

jnrh2001 [at] yahoo [dot] com

The images in this essay were created by taking pictures of the Bandai model kit, then photoshopping those images onto backgrounds from NASA and from the Artmatic software demo.

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Addendum, 31 May 2009

I finally saw Star Trek. The experience reminded me a bit of watching the Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory remake/reimagining by Tim Burton. It was interesting and added some original elements, and was competently made, but it left me disappointed and pining for the original.

I have to ask how anyone can spend $150 million dollars making a movie and not sit down at some point to weed the stupid out of the script. Such as:

• One drop of ‘red matter’ can suck in a planet, but 1000 times that amount just creates a blue swirly thing in space that traps the Romulan ship, kind of like space quick-sand.
• Plus, the Enterprise almost gets sucked into the resulting black hole, which appears to be only several hundred meters away. Its warp drive, although strong enough to propel the starship at many times the speed of light, is useless. So, Scotty ejects the warp cores which explode and blast them away from the black hole. That’s some powerful hack writing! In an interview the makers boasted that in *this* Star Trek, they actually cared about the science and brought in technical advisors. Um, fire the advisors. Or read the Wikipedia entry ‘Black Hole.’ Remember Disney’s blue swirly thing in space Black Hole? That was the 1980s and people criticized the bad science *back then*.  
• They didn’t really go into what Star Fleet and the Federation is about: exploration, making friends with other advanced species, and not invading other non-nuclear nations lesser advanced planets with the intent to control them. So Roddenberry’s vision was kind of ignored, even though right now it is more topical than ever! They could have done an allegory on Iraq…made it a planet the Federation tries to ‘help’ but ends up ruining. Instead we got the typical 'bad guy' movie.
• What is up with the obvious low technology? I’m talking cinder blocks, fluorescent lights, valves and conduits, and thanks goodness the Enterprise has all that water to cool her engines, just like a Harrier jump jet! Why was Uhuru working in engineering when inarticulate Kirk finds her, anyway? She's a linguist.
• Why the crab monster on an ice planet? Why was any monster needed? In fact, wasn’t Delta Vega in the original series a desert planet? And, like, really really far from Vulcan? Why use established names of planets as a tribute/homage, but make no effort to actually use them correctly?
• Spock and Uhura…an item? Whatever.
• The federation vessels are now so large they hold two dozen shuttlecraft (the U.S.S. Kelvin); yet the Romulan ship was many times the size of the Enterprise. In essence, the Romulan ship was a ‘tribute’ to Star Trek Nemesis’s ginormous Romulan ship, whose incredibly vast size made just as much sense. Note: making the bad guy’s ship bigger doesn’t really make him badder. Could you justify a ship that big for mining? And armed to the hilt, apparently…for mining (it sliced and diced a fleet of starships).
• Why is the viewscreen now just a big window…that cracks all the way across like the windshield of uncle Fred’s old pickup? Isn’t a window kind of the step backward from a viewscreen? I mean, it cracks!
• A cool thing about Uhuru in the original series was that, despite the skimpy outfit, she was a level-headed officer and a professional, not a sex kitten. I guess we’ve moved beyond that in our society. Whew!
• I got a bit tired of the hand held camera work.
• The music was lackluster. It had no melody, but was generic action movie music. Star Trek past always had powerful music that stuck with you.
• Star Trek made a couple of good time-travel stories (“City on the Edge of Forever”, “Trials and Tribble-ations”), but they could have done a reboot without the time travel thing, which is hackneyed now.
• The new starship Enterprise design reads well on the screen, but I still think it’s ugly compared to the gorgeous original.
• Some things I liked:
• I enjoyed the new interpretations of the familiar characters.
• I loved the costumes.
• The lighting and lensing was pretty and reminded me a bit of how it was done in the 1960s.

Conclusion:

This is Star Trek 'lite.'