by Sarah Zettel
So, next week the latest Star Trek movie comes out. This time, it’s a reboot. They are going to explore the origin stories of James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock and the rest of the Enterprise crew.
All I have to say is they better get this right. This isn’t some second-rate seventies series or a BBC kiddie show they’re messing with this time. This is Star Trek. This is one of the most enduring pop culture icons SF ever produced, not to mention some of the best science fiction that’s ever been on television.
I am, as you may have noticed by now, a huge fan of the original Star Trek series. I have seen every episode multiple times. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest were on the screen right after dinner every Saturday night all the years of my childhood. Star Trek wasn’t just something I enjoyed. It was something that got ingrained in me. I will never be able to hear “Saber Dance” without having a major flashback, and I wasn’t on anything but milk and cookies.
By the time Next Generation came out, I was in college. A bunch of us threw a party to gather round and watch. We were severely worried, but we were willing to go along for the ride to reconnect with the universe, and in the end, for a few seasons at least, we got a good reproduction of the original magic. When Deep Space 9 started up, social media was in its infancy and I was online with other SF writers discussing the pros and cons of the new format. I distinctly remember witnessing Jerry Pournelle musing that writing a Star Trek novel at “Fort Apache in space” might be fun, at which point the then editor of the Trek books practically prostrated himself at the great man’s feet.
After that, I admit my enthusiasm waned, distinctly and sharply. I gave Voyager a solid two seasons, but was only able to watch a couple episodes of Enterprise, despite, or perhaps because of the presence of Scott Bakula.
So when I heard they were going to redo the old series, I was…disturbed.
The original series did one major thing right, and it is something that has not been repeated in any of the variations. They got a whole host of actual science fiction writers to provide scripts. And not just any writers. These were some of the greats, from the pulp era to the New Wave. They knew the ins and outs of the genre, because they’d help create them. Robert Bloch, D.C. Fontana, Norman Spinrad, Theodore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison all contributed episodes. None of the other series has gotten that level of talent to explore the universe and extrapolate on its possibilities. They ranged from pure, satisfying SF tales like “The Devil in the Dark,” and “The Doomsday Machine,” through to some great character pieces like “Amok Time,” and one of the first pieces of eco-themed SF ever to hit TV, the magnificent “The Trouble With Tribbles.”
The ensemble cast gave the show an unusual flexibility. Of course, most of the stories focused on Kirk and Spock, but the supporting characters were fleshed out enough that we not only cared about them, we knew their strengths and weaknesses, and when they had their moments in the sun, it was a treat. That Chekov was there in the middle of the Cold War was a nice little commentary. That Uhura was there at all was, at the time, ground-breaking.
This is not to say that they got everything right. There were some astoundingly goofy episodes. But the thing they got most seriously and severely wrong was the role of women. Star Trek was ahead of its time on a number of issues, but that was most definitely not one of them. Yes, Roddenberry tried in the original pilot to have a female 2nd in command and he was made to change it, but he did not have to do a whole episode about an evil genius woman who dared to want to be a Starship captain. Neither did he have to make the stewardess hopelessly in love with the captain or have Uhura coo “Captain, I’m frightened,” when stranded on a strange planet.
In fact, the role of women has been an ongoing problem in all the series. I mean, in Next Gen, the only woman on the bridge (who lived more than 3 episodes) on even a semi-regular basis wore a skin-tight catsuit. DS9 did a little better, although you will notice that neither of the tough, competent women in command was actually a human. And don’t get me started on Janeway. Please.
I’m not entirely sure what went wrong with the last two Trek series. I do think after DS9, the Bean Counters got into the game in a serious way. DS9, despite being incredibly well-written and well-acted with a solid ensemble cast didn’t draw the audience Next Gen did. And instead of being a piddly little 3 season show, Star Trek was now a huge money-maker for Paramount. So, the next two series attempted to reestablish the formula of the original. There had to be a ship. There had to be an alien crew-member. There had to be different planets and different aliens and different Styrofoam rocks, but what there didn’t have to be was genuine thought or genuine follow-through on the implications of the set-up, particularly in Voyager. Enterprise also suffered from being weighed down by the history and expectations of going back into the serious fan space with Klingons and Vulcans and the rest of the characters at the heart of the Trek mythos, and they just couldn’t stand up to it.
By this time, formula had become more important than story. The charm fled, the whimsy was gone, and so was the innovative writing. As for the movies…they just sort of petered out. None of the Next Generation movies ever matched the sheer fun of Wrath of Kahn. Because they were constantly attempting to replicate the exact feel of the show, the characters were not allowed to grow or evolve. Plus, the ship had to be destroyed at the end of each film, which very quickly went from predictable to laughable.
Despite all this, I am hopeful about this reboot. The remakes of both Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Who have been better than I dared to imagine. Something is going on in the media landscape, and it is a good thing. There are an increasing number of people involved in production who clearly get it. They get that this stuff is cool, and what makes it cool. They are not weirded out by the material, the fans, the tech (or lack thereof). They understand that a space ship is not a bar to a good story or making a good point about the characters in front of you or human nature itself.
There are any number of lines I could sign out on. I could say Warp Six, Mr. Sulu. I could say Beam me up, Scotty or Hailing frequencies open or fascinating. Instead I will cross my fingers and hope with all my fannish heart that there is one line I am not saying next weekend.
Because, reasonably or not, I want this to work. I want these characters to come roaring back reinterpreted and ready to boldly go in the new century.
Please, please, please don’t let it be dead, Jim.
Grew up on STNG, which I think was a real nice platform. In hindsight it was rather safe, and in some regard vanilla, but I did love just about every episode I can remember excluding the Crusher/Traveler thing.
My favorite is DS9 because at it’s peak it was simply IMHO, the best written show – dialogue, character interaction, and the characters themselves were IMHO. It had a SHIT last few episodes with that entire Sisko prophets storylines, and started becoming too over0handed, but the vast majority of DS9 is just gold for me.
No attachment to the original series. I recognize it’s stature and what it did, but you won’t catch me watching an entire episode. Some of the movies are – obviously- classics – love them.
I think not call calling Kira human is nitpicking. Of course she’s not human, but that’s she not isn’t an indictment on women. Dax is close enough, and the original Dax is as strong a character you will find.
Didn’t care at all for Enterprise oe Voyager, and on the latter I remember somebody telling me it’s because of a female captain, but if I was that much a pig I would have watched simply for Jeri Ryan. I just think it was a pretty average show, and when you are following up DS9, that doesn’t cut it. Enterprise was just complete gibberish. I remember watching the first episodes of both Next Gen and DS9 and they just completely hooked me, Enterprise sucks without Al and Ziggy.
I’m not sure if there is any significance attached to having SF novelists write for SF TV or film. I kind of view this in the same way I view comic book movies. I think the skillsets are different, but most certainly could all be had by person. If you look at something like Lost – which is probably the greatest speculative fiction show in history, it isn’t like you had a writing team that consisted of Ursula Le Guin and Michael Moorcock. Hell, the recent Lost material is Brian K. Vaughan related, and he’s (mostly) a comic book writer.
I can’t wait for this next movie though – big time expectations!
I’m really looking forward to this one too. I never really saw the original series so I really haven’t anything invested in the remake. I just hope that it is better than the last couple of Star Trek movies – of which First Contact (the one with the Borg) is by far the best.
Like Jay, my favorite Star Trek show is DS9 – simply because it had the best ensemble (apart from Sisko – I did not care for the actor’s slightly histronic style though he has been very good in other projects).
On a more shallow level I can only say that the guys in the new film are damn fine-looking (and it has Eric Bana as a villain, how cool is that!) and that would be enough to tempt me into the darkness of the movie-theatre. .)
I can’t say enough about most of DS9. It hit bottom about the time they decided to kill Dax, and it never came back. The reason it worked so well, IMHO, was that they tried to do something new, to give it its own storyline instead of re-hashing the old ST/STNG plots.
Jay: normally, I would agree with you about print writers writing for the screen, but in this case, the value here was their grounding in the SF genre. These writers could explore and present ideas that were genuinely good science fiction, which was not something that was being done anywhere else on TV at the time (except occasionally on the Twilight Zone, and Serling was using SF writers too), and Roddenberry was a savvy enough producer to beat what the novel writers gave him into good TV shape.
BTW, if anybody does want to try an old ST ep, I really do recommend “The Devil in the Dark,” it’s a solid SF short story that holds up very well.
Trinuviel: I’m with you. It’s a v. pretty cast.
I had thought the Second Dax character was going to be a tough transition, but I think the actress pulled it off. I believe (and I’m not the fan that remember episodes names) that the episode where she hunted for a killer who was using a weapon (rifle) that can essentially shoot through wall sold me. I thought this was rather crafty, as it seemed self-aware, as it is the episode where she decides she belongs as well.I thik from a pure aesthetic value, she was a perfect foil in the way she looked. You didn’t really want to like any replacement, but the casting choice almost made it impossible not to give her a shake (for me). She just seemed very likable. One aspect that I really did like about Sisko was the his relationship with whoever the host of symbiote was. I think she did pretty well considering that she came around when the show was generally winding down and falling into that Sisko/prophets storyline.
In a way I look back and think Bashir really was the glue because of his multiple, unique relationships with Garak, Dax (both of them), Myles, Quark etc. You combine that with his episodes regarding Section 31 and the Augments and its just an examples at how solid and diverse the stories were for each character, where with STNG (which I loved) sought to rehash the same stories with its characters (Data and Worf especially).
My problem with the 2nd Dax was that in having her there they broke the rules they set up for the Trill, and they didn’t ever give a truly compelling reason why. By rights, the 2nd Dax should not have been allowed anywhere near DS9 because with each new host, there was supposed to be a new life, not a continuation of the previous life. I’m pretty sure that was explicitly stated at some point, but I’ll be hanged if I can remember the episode. But even if it wasn’t, it was _cruel_ to put her there with Worf, and they never really dealt with it on that level, IMHO.
What they did with Julian was fantastic and Garak…oh! I have sung rhapsodies about the wonderfulness of Garak. One of my top 5 eps was “The Wire,” which is mostly just Julian and Garak. When discussing politics my husband and I have been known to quote the wonderful exchange between Worf and Garak. “You would shoot your enemy in the back?!” “Seems the safest way, don’t you think?”
And I’ll tell you what, I did not expect to like the CGIed revisit of The Trouble With Tribbles, but they did a _fantastic_ job with it.
“Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest were on the screen right after dinner every Saturday night all the years of my childhood.”
I assume you’re talking about the years of syndication, because when originally broadcast, Star Trek was on Thursdays at 8 p.m. on NBC for the first two seasons, and then famously was moved to Friday nights at 10, thus helping kill it, since most kids couldn’t stay up that late to see it, and many adults were out. It was never, when originally broadcast, on Saturday nights. But after it went into syndication, of course, it was up to the individual stations as to when to broadast it.
I only got to see the third season erratically, depending on the whims of whether my father would decide to let me stay up that late on Fridays or not, as I was 9 years old until November, 1968, when I turned 10.
You really should check out the fourth season of Enterprise, by the way. They hired Manny Coto to revamp the show, and brought in Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens, and made it a real homage to the original series in just about all the episodes, many of which were terrific revisits and amplifications and foreshadowings of TOS events. It’s much better than the first two, or third (which was different in another way, having one single story arc), seasons.
“I mean, in Next Gen, the only woman on the bridge (who lived more than 3 episodes) on even a semi-regular basis wore a skin-tight catsuit.”
They did put Troi in a regular uniform in the later seasons.
“Plus, the ship had to be destroyed at the end of each film, which very quickly went from predictable to laughable.”
Actually, out of 10 films, that only happened twice: in Star Trek III and in Star Trek Generations (though you could arguably count the first movie as having “destroyed” the tv version). Still, at most that’s 3 out of 10, not “each film.”
“I mean, in Next Gen, the only woman on the bridge (who lived more than 3 episodes) on even a semi-regular basis wore a skin-tight catsuit.”
They did put Troi in a regular uniform in the later seasons.
“Plus, the ship had to be destroyed at the end of each film, which very quickly went from predictable to laughable.”
Actually, out of 10 films, that only happened twice: in Star Trek III and in Star Trek Generations (though you could arguably count the first movie as having “destroyed” the tv version). Still, at most that’s 3 out of 10, not “each film.”
“I think not call calling Kira human is nitpicking. Of course she’s not human, but that’s she not isn’t an indictment on women. Dax is close enough, and the original Dax is as strong a character you will find.”
Ditto. I’d also point to Ro Laren earlier on TNG, and the events of later seasons, in which the doctor got to take command, Troi passed her command exam and got to take command, and so on. But your basic point remains correct that it took them a while, a few seasons, even in the post-TOS generation to get women out of sexist roles.
And otherwise, of the post-TOS shows, DS9 is also far and away my favorite, because moving after the first few seasons to long overall story arcs meant far greater depth of character and story.
But that’s also what limited its commercial success. It’s a problem of tv: the more serial you are in your story arc, the better the quality of the show will be, but only for fervent followers, and the less accessible it will be to those who only tune in occasionally.
I really liked Ezri Dax, myself. Besides, in regard to “My problem with the 2nd Dax was that in having her there they broke the rules they set up for the Trill” is the fact that they broke the rules when they created Jadzia Dax, if you look back to the first episode introducing the Trill. Trill couldn’t use transporters. Trill looked strongly different. The host body made no contribution to the personality, but was merely a shell. And so on.
Besides, all the Star Trek series and movies are filled with a million inconsistencies, and one could spend days listing them. Not that you’re not perfectly entitled to your own preferences, of course. But the fact that there’s an inconsistency is perfectly consistent.
And Garak was a wonderful character.
Sorry for the accidental part-duplication of a comment above; accidentally hit the wrong key, and thought I’d stopped the submission, but I was wrong.