SUMMARY
Star Trek is, by far, the longest-lived among television shows: forty-four
years have passed since The Original Series' first episode, Where
No Man Has Gone Before, was aired by NBC, and the franchise is still
far from exaustion: after three spin-off series, 22 animated episodes,
nine movies, and an incredible amount of unofficial stuff like novels,
comics, games and so on, the audience's response to the saga is still
so high that a fifth series is being produced (Star Trek: Enterprise,
now into its second season) and a new movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, is
being released in these days in the U.S.A.
The original concept of Star Trek, as it was meant to be by its creator
Gene Roddenberry back in the Sixties, has been preserved by the first
pilot episode - The Cage - which was rejected by the network because
of its excess of cerebralism; the plot revolved around a starship
Captain's doubts about his career, and his efforts to escape from
a managerie planet where beings from all over the galaxy were kept
prisoner by the Talosians, an alien population who had developed incredible
mental powers, but had lost the ability to fight for life.
They chose to thrive on their captives' dreams instead. In the end,
the hero won by upholding humanity's need for freedom and turning
down the Talosians' alluring offer of a perfect, yet illusory happiness,
as he understood his own drive to explore new, exciting worlds.
The Cage was, in short, an Utopian portrait of humankind, represented
as one of the thousand species roaming the galaxy - not the most advanced
or intelligent either, but the most heroical in its faith in the values
of freedom, equality and progress. Roddenberry's idea was to use the
future setting of Star Trek, with its talking machines and fancy aliens,
to address those topics that couldn't be bluntly spoken of in a common
show: in The Cage, we see Asian and African officers manning the bridge
of the huge starship Enterprise alongside with their white colleagues;
women, too, are allowed to choose a military career, even if this
means having their femininity unrecognized by their male colleagues.
In order to have his second pilot accepted, Roddenberry worked more
action into the new plot, transposing the main clichés of Adventure
and Western shows into Star Trek's sci-fi environment: the series
was launched under the caption "Wagon Train to the Stars", and space
became "the final frontier" to be explored and civilized.
The controversial character of the female Number One was deleted and
many of the most innovative traits of The Cage disappeared, but one
of the few that made it into the new pilot was going to become a cultural
icon: the Vulcan science officer, Spock, who had been described as
"horrible and disgusting" by the test viewers whom the episode had
been submitted, but was valiantly defended by the author, who wanted
him to be the "alien observer" judging humankind from the outside.
Where No Man Has Gone Before, officially the first episode of the
saga, opens on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, now commanded
by a new Captain, James T. Kirk. Commander Gary Mitchell, the Captain's
best friend since their Academy years and his second-in-command aboard
the starship, is hit by an unknown string of energy, which awakens
his latent E.S.P. faculties.
Gary's powers increase esponentially, driving him insane: as his best
friend's delusions of almightiness escalate to the point that he has
to be considered a serious threat to the crew, Kirk has to choose
between killing him or abandoning him on a desert planet as suggested
by the coldly logical Vulcan, or following Dr. Elizabeth Dehner's
advice by allowing him to sire a superhuman offspring. As a psychiatrist,
Dr. Dehner has always been professional and detached towards Gary,
but she feels now intrigued by the evolutionary possibilities she
sees in him and takes his sides: the nearly omnipotent being shares
his power with her, and they set off together to rule the galaxy.
As Captain Kirk hunts down his old friend in order to stop him (and
is nearly killed instead), Elizabeth understands her error and destroys
the madman, but is mortally wounded in turn.
Where No Man has gone Before has an almost mythical feel, as it enacts
the clash between feeling and necessity that is the core of classical
tragedy: friendship is immediately identified as the series' most
treasured value, but it has to be set aside nevertheless, in front
of the overwhelming needs of the many. The Original Series confirms
Roddenberry's optimistical vision of a future of racial equality:
some of the key positions aboard Kirk's Enterprise are held by a Japanese
(Mr. Sulu), a black woman (Uhura) and even a Russian (Mr. Chekov).
Sadly, these characters' roles are purely representative, since the
main plots usually revolve around Captain Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy;
women are portrayed as either "pretty icebergs" like Dr. Dehner or
brainless beauties walking around in short skirts and stiletto heels,
but their mere participation in a military organization like Starfleet
is enough of a defiance for a television show of the Sixties.
The reputation of "modernity" that the fans built around Roddenberry's
creation is largely based on a widespread misunderstanding: The Original
Series deserves praise for daring to address the more controversial
issues of its times, like civil rights, sexual equality, the conditions
of ethnical minorities and the birth of the hippie movement; its conclusions
about the said topics were not, however, necessarily progressive:
many episodes, on the contrary, express a strongly conservative point
of view.
In Turnabout Intruder, we see a woman, Janice Lester, who feels she
has been denied the Enterprise's command because of her sex; she successfully
exchanges her brain with Kirk's, but is immediately discovered by
the crew for her irrational and hysterical behaviour: in the end,
the Captain gets back his own personality and magnanimously forgives
Janice, concluding that she'll forget her bitter feelings when she
will have found "the right man".
The Way to Eden is another example of Star Trek upholding the status
quo: the pacifist, hippie-like ideals of Dr. Sevrin's young followers
are looked upon with a sort of amused tolerance until they steal the
Enterprise in order to reach planet Eden, thus becoming the enemy.
The Original Series' production ended with its third season as the
show's audience ratings were far too low to insure its survival; the
79 episodes entered the syndication circuit and were repeatedly broadcasted
by local networks, gaining new supporters with each new run. Star
Trek fans, proudly calling themselves "trekkers" or "trekkies", organized
into clubs and started to promote their favourite show by producing
fanzines and attending conventions; by 1977, the series' popularity
had grown so much that Paramount asked Roddenberry for a sequel. Star
Trek: Phase II should have been set shortly after the adventures of
the first crew, and such old favourites as McCoy, Chekov, Sulu, Uhura
and Scotty would have figured in it alongside with a new Captain,
a female alien and another Vulcan character. The first episodes had
already been written, the new sets were being completed and the actors
had been chosen when Paramount decided to abandon its plans for a
spinoff series and produce a theatrical movie instead: the existing
elements had to be reworked into a cinematographic plot, which turned
out to be a painful and timeconsuming process requiring no less than
two years. However, Star Trek: The Motion Picture premiered on December
7, 1979, and was so acclaimed by the fans that Paramount kept on producing
a new Star Trek movie every two years - the next one, Star Trek: Nemesis,
will be the tenth.
The movie begins in the middle of the action, when an enormous nebula-like
thing destroys three powerful ships and enters Federation space, setting
its course towards Earth. The refitted Enterprise, now under Captain
Decker's command, is sent to investigate the threat, but Admiral Kirk,
who loathes his new bureaucratic duties, finally succeeds in having
the mission assigned to himself, thus provoking the younger officer's
bitter resentment. As the nebula approaches humanity's homeworld,
Mr. Spock - who has failed in his effort to achieve perfect logic
because of its call, and has gone back into space in order to meet
it - mindmelds with it and discovers its status of sentient machine.
In the meantime, Ilia (the Enterprise's alien pilot and Decker's old
flame) is kidnapped by the entity and replaced with a mechanical copy
who wants to be allowed to speak with "the Creator", or "V'ger" will
destroy Earth.
While an away team beams into the living complex and discovers at
its core the ancient Voyager IV probe, disaster is impending: "V'ger"
will not believe that such limited beings as humans were its original
makers, and is ready to kill them all in order to rid his imaginary
creator of what it considers to be parasites. In the end, Decker awakens
in the robot Ilia some faint memories of their former love and decides
to let "V'ger" absorb himself alongside with his beloved: thus, the
tormented machine effectively finds its God and evolves into a greater
being, in which mechanical logic and human emotions co-exist. Star
Trek: The Motion Picture is a controversial movie: despite its special
effects and spectacular action sequences, the plot is quite weak and
leaves the viewer with many doubts and unsolved loose ends.
This may be due in part to the many variations that the script had
to endure, but the final version was further penalized by the cuts
that director Robert Wise had to employ in order to make the movie
shorter (as it is, its total length is quite remarkable anyway, since
it runs for 130 minutes): among the removed scenes were many essential
dialogues that would have helped to dissipate the confusion. The result
was a chaotic and disorganized narration that forces the viewer to
wait passively for the characters to explain the events to him: it
would be utterly impossible for him to guess what's going on by himself,
since the movie violates the basic rule of mystery writing by refusing
to leave him any clue - or bait - to elaborate upon. What makes Star
Trek: The Motion Picture such a bad sci-fi movie is also the reason
why it is such a good Star Trek movie: to the nostalgic fan, the plot
is but an excuse for seeing his favourite heroes again, and the charcters'
interaction and endless bickering - which has non meaning whatsoever
fot the occasional viewer - is cherished by the trekker as a tribute
to his perseverance. The fact that the movie's main goal is to please
the fans is made very clear by the many hints that link its events
to the established Star Trek continuity: Decker was, for example,
the last name of the Commodore who appeared in the television episode
The Doomsday Machine, which immediately leads the long-time supporter
to deduce that Captain Decker must be the old character's son; Dr.
McCoy grumbling about his former nurse being now herself a doctor
and the cameo appearence of another of the original Enterprise's crewmembers,
Janice Rand, are other examples of this smart expedient to promote
the movie among the trekkies. But the real beauty of Star Trek: The
Motion Picture lies in its melancholy recognition of time rolling
by: the movie doesn't even try to conceal William Shatner's weight
gain or Nichelle Nichols' greying hair; on the contrary, it deliberately
shows how even heroes grow old and plumpy, which adds humanity to
the characters and a nostalgic, almost poetical feeling to their reunion
on the Enterprise. The theatrical chapters notwithstanding, Star Trek
was born as a weekly television show and it was bound to go back to
its origins sooner or later: it happened in 1986, when Gene Roddenberry
was once again brought in to work on a sequel to The Original Series.
Twenty years had passed since the classical episodes had been written,
and the first series looked fairly obsolete: not only the painted
landscapes, rubber masks and special effects that it used to employ
would have hardly fooled a modern viewer, but the values and issues
it addressed were simply not current in the Eighties. The problem
was solved by setting Star Trek: The Next Generation still further
in the future, 78 years after Kirk's five-year mission: this gave
Roddenberry the opportunity to change the political balance of the
galaxy to suit his needs, while at the same time retaining the established
races and technologies that would give the saga a continuity of its
own. It was a tricky solution, at any rate: the series had always
been identified with Captain Kirk and Spock's pointed ears, and the
polls that circulated among the fans showed how difficult it would
have been to make them accept a Star Trek without those characters.
But when Encounter at Farpoint aired in 1987, it figured among the
10 most viewed programs in the U.S.A., and the following episodes
kept their position for the whole run of seven seasons. In Encounter
at Farpoint, the U.S.S. Enterprise 1701-D has just been assigned to
Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and is travelling to Farpoint station to
pick up its new officers when suddenly a huge energy net appears,
preventing it from going any further.
The outraged Captain is confronted by a michievous omnipotent being,
who presents himself as Q and challenges the crew to solve Farpoint's
mystery, or to go back whence they came from. The station is, indeed,
quite surprising: it seems to anticipate people's needs by materializing
what they desire, and the aliens who claim to be its builders adamantly
refuse to explain how they did it. As an unknown starship approaches
Farpoint and tries to destroy it, Deanna Troi (the Enterprise's empathical
Counsellor) feels pain and fury pouring from it and the station: the
strange vessel is actually a sentient being who wants to free his
companion, trapped under the alien station and forced to keep it functioning
through her own life essence. Despite Q's mocking suggestions, Picard
does not open fire against the ethereal, beautiful creatures: the
omnipotent judge recognizes that the Enterprise's crew did the right
thing and allows them to go on with their explorations.
What is immediately evident in The Next Generation is that characters
are very different from the old ones: Captain Picard is an elderly
man, skilled in archaeology and diplomacy, who is far more likely
to win through persuasion and dialogue than by engaging his opponents
in a fistfight; his first officer, William T. Riker, is more similar
to Kirk in that he is an action-oriented character and an untiring
seducer, but his personal interests and tastes are different enough
from his predecessor's that he never looks like a mere copy of him.
The android Data is a key element in Picard's crew, both because he
is the perfect counterpart for Spock (who wanted to suppress his emotions
to achieve pure logic, while Data is a thoroughly rational machine
striving to become more human) and because he provides the most fitting
starting point for exploring the boundary between what is alive and
what is not, and the philosophical and moral implications of thought,
conscience and feeling.
The other characters' main function is to exemplify the new series'
intention to adapt to the unwritten rules of political correctness:
the ship's chief engineer is a blind man who overcomes his handicap
thanks to the "visor", a device that connects directly into his brain;
the Counsellor, chief medical officer and the head of Security are
women, and so different from each other in age, personality and physique
that they represent together the many aspects of modern femininity:
Deanna Troi is a young, unmarried woman; Dr. Beverly Crusher is a
mature widowed mother who manages to share her time among her career,
a teenage son and her personal interests, and Tasha Yar is an experienced
fighter, raised in a very harsh environment (which made her perfectly
capable of defending herself and the others). Finally, there is Worf,
a Klingon: a member, that is, of the same alien race that fought a
long, bloody war against the Federation in Kirk's times, and that
is now considered an honourable and respected ally.
The Next Generation is far more "choral" than The Original Series,
since it gives each of the characters his own abilities, weaknesses
and even irrational dislikes; even if Picard, Riker and Data - the
most popular among the new crew - get far more attention than the
others, all the seven bridge officers get a fair amount of episodes
centered around themselves: many more than minor characters like Chekov
or Sulu could have hoped for in the old series, overwhelmed as they
were by the personalities of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. It is also a more
mature series, in that it exalts dialogue dialogue above conflict
and thought above action: Picard's strict abidance by Starfleet's
regulations is the signal of a new awareness of personal responsibility,
which in turn reflects the mentality of the Eighties, far more politically
oriented than that of twenty years before.
Every sentient being, even a mechanical one like Data, is cherished
by The Next Generation's characters as unique and distinctive; humanity's
not to be praised above other races, whose ideals and values are as
worthy of respect as ours: thus, the Federation begins to look like
an utopical melting pot in which different cultures can co-exist without
being crushed by the most powerful ones. The production of the third
series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, started very soon since, as The
Next Generation's ratings were showing, the saga did not need Kirk
and Spock in order to succeed: Rick Berman, who had been Roddenberry's
main assistant until his death in 1991, and writer Michael Piller
decided to go one step further by abandoning the classical starship
setting, instead radicating the new characters on a space station.
The third series' opening episode, The Emissary, aired in January
1993, and was so acclaimed by the fans that it too lasted for seven
whole seasons. The new series is set on Deep Space Nine, a Cardassian
space station now run by Starfleet (the Federation has been called
in by the newborn Bajoran government as soon as the Cardassian occupation
of their planet ended): the facility is assigned to Commander Benjamin
Sisko, who is unhappy about the job since he has recently lost his
beloved wife and would rather retire, in order to bring up his only
son. As he arrives on the station, Sisko discovers that the Bajoran
representative, Major Kira Nerys, strongly resents the Federation's
patronage and dislikes him violently; but as Kai Opaka - the supreme
religious authority among her people - greets the human as "the Emissary",
Kira changes her mind and decides to support him. Opaka gives Sisko
an ancient Bajoran relic, which grants him a vision of his own past
life: he brings the sacred artifact on the station and asks his science
officer, Jadzia Dax, to analyze it. Dax discovers the precise location
where it had been found in ancient times by the Bajorans, and escorts
the Commander on the spot: a wormhole opens in front of them, and
they find themselves at the other side of the galaxy. As they fly
back into the anomaly, Sisko is abducted by its inhabitants, whom
the Bajorans worship as "the Prophets": they live outside time and
space and do not understand the lesser species' linear existence;
he struggles to explain what it means to be mortal and limited in
the understanding of what is to come, and finally succeeds in persuading
them that he's not to be seen as a threat. Thanks to the Bajoran wormhole,
Deep Space Nine is going to become a crucial location for both the
Federation and the unknown races of the Delta Quadrant: Sisko understands
that his place is on the station and chooses not to leave Starfleet.
Deep Space Nine's most peculiar feature is its development into a
single story arc, encompassing its whole seven seasons: thanks to
the statical setting of the show, the characters have to deal with
the consequences of their own actions, so that their individual sub-plots
intersecate the epic events of the discovery of the Bajoran wormhole
and the subsequent war against the imperialistic invaders from the
Delta Quadrant; the internal consequentiality is so strong that that
it's almost impossible for the occasional viewer to understand an
episode, since it obviously presents the results of the political
and religious intrigues woven in the previous ones, and may even foreshadow
their future outcomes. The characters themselves are almost thirty,
and the psychology and motivations of the recurring ones are so clearly
defined as the protagonists'; the series shows an interest for their
internal conflicts as well as for their role in the events, so much
so that many episodes take place entirely in somebody's mind (The
Emissary itself is largely constituted by Commander Sisko's own mystical
experience).
To add a further level of complexity to the show, it is revealed -
late in its sixth season - that Deep Space Nine and all its inhabitants
are but the dream of an African- American science fiction writer of
the Fifties, struggling to get his story published despite his editor's
conservativism and the hostility of racist readers. Deep Space Nine's
topics are quite new to Star Trek, since its concern with politics
and diplomacy is unprecedented: this also forces the fans to accept
the darker, unsavoury aspects of the Federation, from dubious alliances
to espionage and outright warfare and political assassination. Religion,
too, is analysed by the series, both in its positive and negative
aspects: the Bajoran faith is a source of inner peace for Kira and
a powerful unifying force for her people, but it turns into a dangerous
tool into the hands of Kai Winn, who uses it to achieve her personal
goals and unwarily taps into its forbidden lore, thus setting free
an ancient evil which destroys her in the final episode. The many
attitudes towards religion are also explored by showing how different
characters relate to prophecies and visions: the same event may be
seen as a coincidence by the scientist Dax or as the fulfilment of
a prediction by Kira; the series never sides up with either interpretation,
not even when Sisko discovers to be a Prophet himself - since the
gods of the Bajoran faith might be "just another omnipotent species"
to somebody else.
The fourth series, Star Trek: Voyager, debuted in 1995 and brought
the saga back to its most familiar setting - a new starship, the U.S.S.
Voyager. The new show's aim is to reassure those fans who had been
appalled by the previous one's gritty atmosphere, but it doesn't entirely
give up the element of internal conflict and dissent: Voyager's crew
is composed by both Starfleet officers and Maquis rebels, whose main
concern is not "to find out new life and new civilizations", but to
find the way back to home. The Caretaker opens on a Maquis ship entering
a turbulent sector of space in order to force its Cardassian pursuers
to back away; suddenly, a powerful bolt of energy hits the ship, which
disappears mysteriously. Captain Katryn Janeway is determined to find
the Maquis ship, since her Security officer was aboard on an undercover
mission: with the help of an ex-rebel arrested by Starfleet, Janeway's
ship - the U.S.S. Voyager - finds the lost vessel's last known location,
but is hit in turn by such a vicious bolt that many crewmembers die
in the impact. As the survivors manage to repair their ship, they
find out that they have been sent to the other side of the galaxy,
alongside with the Maquis: they will need 80 years to go back, unless
they understand what happened in the first place. Their only clue
is a huge alien structure, but as they try to investigate it, Ensign
Kim is kidnapped; the Maquis, too, have lost a crewmember, B'Elanna
Torres. Janeway and the rebel Captain Chakotay join their efforts
in order to get back the abducted officers; in the meanwhile, Kim
and Torres are being subjected to strange medical experiments: as
they ask the alien doctors for an explanation, they discover that
there is no cure for their "illness", but the Ocampa are willing to
treat them by order of "the Caretaker". Janeway hires Neelix - a local
merchant - as a guide and discovers "the Caretaker" to be a powerful,
yet dying alien, who accidentally turned the Ocampa's planet into
a desert and is now providing them with food and protection; the abductions
were his only way to find a compatible mate, in order to make sure
that his protegés would not be alone: the Captain persuades him to
let his "children" grow up and promises him to destroy the structure
after his death so that nobody will use it against the Ocampa. As
Kim and Torres run away from the hospital, Janeway keeps her promise,
thus destroying the fastest way to return home; the Maquis join the
Voyager crew, and even Neelix and his Ocampa girlfriend, Kes, decide
to share their adventures. What is most noticeable in Voyager is its
strict adherence to the rules of political correctness: both the starship's
Captain and its chief engineer - two roles traditionally associated
with male characters - are women; among the joined Starfleet/Maquis
bridge personnel there are an half-Klingon (B'Elanna), a black Vulcan
(Tuvok), an Asian officer (Harry Kim), a Native American (Chakotay),
an alien couple (Neelix and Kes) and even an hologram. The problem
is, the characters' potential for conflictual interaction has been
exausted too early into the series: the Maquis accept to follow Starfleet
regulations and, despite some comical grumbling from B'Elanna and
Chakotay, Janeway's decisions are never seriously questioned; Paris'
attraction to Kes and Neelix' subsequent jealousy are barely hinted
at; Torres turns from the strong-headed rebel that she was supposed
to be into Janeway's favourite "problem child", and the doctor is
given such control over his functional limits that he's practically
undistinguishable from his "real" colleagues by the end of the first
season, and from that point onwards he is employed as a purely comic
character. The series' main theme is the clash between moral duty
- which is, of course, represented by Starfleet's ethical code - and
personal interest (usually some means to get back to the Alpha Quadrant,
to be acquired by bending or violating the regulations): unfortunately,
the conflict's outcome is fully predictable, since the crew will always
do "the right thing" for seven whole seasons. Star Trek has managed
to keep its identity through all these transformations, which is the
reason of its long-lasting success: Umberto Eco calls this crucial
feature "sgangherabilità" ("ricketiness"), and describes it as the
possibility "to use something through its disassembled pieces, each
one of those turns into a quotation, an archetype". This is especially
true for Star Trek, since it gives the viewer so many elements to
play with (ships, aliens, uniforms, situations and captions, and characters
who are, in turn, an endless source of typical gestures, expressions
and attitudes): by taking some of these "pieces" and working them
into their own creations, the fans can do whatever they like in their
Star Trek-related fanzines, parodies and role-playing games, while
producing something that is still recognizable as a part of the saga
- although, of course, an unofficial one. Star Trek, in short, has
turned into a modern myth not only because it summarizes and upholds
the better tendences and values of contemporary society, but mainly
because - as the ancient myths - it can be enacted by the individual
fan, who is able to enjoy it as a creation of his own by using the
tools that the show itself has provided him with.
