Thoughts on Star Trek

After reviewing JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot, I found myself thinking about what it was about Star Trek (as a franchise) that had such lasting appeal. More than anything else, what stands out in Gene Roddenberry's creation is his optimism; and it is here where, I believe, Star Trek overwhelmingly failed in the years after its creator's death.

While it is obvious that you can't have drama without conflict, it was Gene's belief that this conflict could also teach us a moral lesson and the last thing he could be accused of was subtlety in this regard. While this kind of hammer-over-the-head approach to morality plays (and I'm thinking, particularly, of Let That Be Your Last Battlefield from Season 3 while I type this!) seems terribly dated now, you can't deny that his message got through!

The message itself was pretty simple; if people can just get along with each other, and work for the common good, then the world (or galaxy, or universe...) will be a better place. In fact, his utopian ideals were amazingly close to the ideals of socialism, especially surprising given the US paranoia regarding anything even remotely connected to communism.

So, we have the original series (TOS), where Gene did his best to entertain 1960's audiences with a microscopic budget and a big heart. Many of the scripts were outstanding (i.e. The Naked Time, City on the Edge of Forever, The Trouble With Tribbles), while some were, quite frankly, execrable (Spock's Brain), but all of them were informed by Gene's values. The Next Generation (TNG) carried on in this tradition (including it's own updated version of The Naked Now), while the original cast appeared in movies of variable quality.

Where it went wrong was with Deep Space Nine (DS9). I remember reading about DS9 when it was in the planning stages on FidoNet, and all I could think of was "Which part of the word TREK didn't you understand, people?". Trekking involves, like, moving about, doesn't it? So, how do you move about if you're living on a space station? So, problem one, no trek. Problem two turned out to be the Bajorans. I mean, a story or two about a particular race is one thing, but an entire TV series devoted to a bunch of belligerent religious loonies is not my idea of interesting! Problem three were the Ferengi. I mean, those guys are just irritating. I never met a Ferengi I even came close to liking, and having them as major characters is bound to annoy anyone with any taste.

Anyway, even the producers of DS9 realised, after a while, that Trek without trekking was a bit stupid and gave them a space ship to wander about in, but by then I'd already lost interest.

Meanwhile, the internal tensions within the Federation were becoming major factors in the story; instead of a utopia where problems were almost always resolved within 40-45 minutes, we now had a deeply troubled political system which was cracking up through a combination of internal tensions, external forces, and human frailty. This is NOT the world of Star Trek; this is a thinly veiled attempt to portray some of our own political systems' problems within the Star Trek universe. This is a problem because the Federation in Star Trek was always intended to be a benevolent parent, not a troubled bully. The individual members of the Federation may not be perfect, but the Federation as a whole could be counted on to, ultimately, do the right thing. By the time we got to the 9th movie (Insurrection), the Federation is so corrupt that it's siding with the bad guys against an indigenous population. What the...? Gene would be spinning in his grave!

The 10th film (Nemesis) ended up so far removed from Roddenberry's values that it is almost unwatchable. And they had Riker married to Troi (when every Trekker in the world knows that Troi married Worf). When the people writing this stuff can't even remember what they did 10 years ago, how are we supposed to take them seriously?

Anyway, what this is really about is that I'm very glad to see the new reboot of Star Trek returning to the core values of the franchise, and I earnestly hope and pray that they can maintain this without falling into the trap of using the Federation as a proxy for our current, flawed, political systems. Please, Star Trek producers/writers/directors, whenever you're in doubt, just ask yourselves "What would Gene do?".