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The (First) Final Frontier: The Enduring Appeal of Star Trek and The Moral Imagination
One of the things that has been keeping me sane in (solitary) lockdown is movie nights with my friends. With two close guy friends from high school, in particular, I have a weekly date for a movie at 8 p.m. EST (1 a.m. GMT) and this week it was my turn to pick the film. I had given the selection a fair bit of thought ahead of time, and presented them with a few options that I thought would be fun to watch; we settled on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
One of my friends had never seen any Star Trek property, and the other had only seen the new films, although his dad had been pressuring him to try the older ones. At the end of the film, they were so taken by what we had watched that it was decided we are going to Zoom again to watch an episode of The Original Series (any of my selection) and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock on Friday.* Such an enthusiastic response left me wondering, what exactly is the magic of the original films and show?
I am not much of a sci-fi fan and tend to be picky about TV because I don’t watch particularly much, so it surprised even me how much I enjoyed TOS the first time I watched it in high school. Although I’ve dabbled in the other properties, none of them ever provoked the lasting affection or interest that the ‘66 series and its movies did for me. Likewise, the friend that had seen the new J.J. Abrams films had never bothered with the originals because, though he thought the new movies were good, he didn’t think they were special.
At its core, I think that the most outstanding part of the films and show is their fundamentally conservative message and embrace of the moral imagination. By a conservative message I don’t mean that TOS subscribed to the economic principles of Milton Friedman or celebrated the thought of Russell Kirk, but that, within the framework of a quite progressive society, it had surprising fidelity to some very Burkean ideals and ideas about man and his nature.
Part of what brings this message to the forefront is the setting of the show. A lack of physical money and the presence of the United Federation of Planets, among other things, suggests to viewers that the crew of the Enterprise hails from a post-scarcity system, something some fans describe as a “utopia.” They, though, have escaped the utopia and traded the sure and steady for danger and adventure. As much as anything, Captain James T. Kirk is a cowboy, setting off for brave new worlds armed with a phaser and a set of quite traditional principles (duty, honor, honesty, etc.) that he intends for both himself and those under his leadership to live by. Such an openly paternal, though not condescending, figure might find little affection among critics today.
And the crew of the ship is as much bound by personal fealty and love as shared ideals. Indeed, it is the true diversity of viewpoints resident on the vessel, especially among the three main characters (headstrong Kirk, logical Spock, and compassionate McCoy), that allows it to operate as smoothly and successfully as it does. I’ve always thought the conception of the triumvirate as the divided parts of a whole both beautiful and valid, and the idea of the divvied up heart, mind, and soul speaks to a view of man as a creature that needs more than reason to thrive, and at the same time benefits from control and strong moorings.
Those relationships form the most obvious manifestation of that conservative message, showing that even hundreds of years in the future, in space, and among aliens, the fundamental need of man for love and companionship has not perished (very Burkean, indeed). Each man judges the other for his actions and ideals, not his position on the ship or status as a part of a particular race (much as McCoy antagonizes Spock for his duel heritage, he extends the same fierce protectiveness and exasperated affection to the alien, albeit with a different flavor, as he does to Kirk), and they are improved by their tripartite bond. Purely as a viewer, this evolving, complex relationship is the most compelling part of the series, a high wire act of mutual love, annoyance, fear, and hope that becomes its narrative and emotional core.
I think it’s instructive to explore one episode for an example of the holistic reality of this message. Take “The Empath,” from Season 3. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy encounter and are imprisoned by a race of science-oriented, emotionless humanoids on a dying planet, and, after a series of failed escape attempts and injury at the hands of their captors, the captain must choose which of his two officers will undergo an “experiment” that has a high chance of rendering him either dead or insane. The morality play that ensues, both between McCoy and his superiors and Kirk and the Vians, would be, at its fundamental level, as at home in Shakespeare as in outer space. In other words, “human” nature, across species and time, never fails to assert itself, and the moral quandaries which plagued Elizabethan noblemen do likewise to 23rd-century space officers, their answers coming from a similarly ancient source.
Certainly, there is much to make fun of in the original Star Trek series. William Shatner’s sometimes hammy acting, and seemingly pathological need to be shirtless at least once an episode, aliens that look curiously like small dogs donning party store horns, Leonard Nimoy’s heavy eyeshadow, and Kirk-fu all strike a less-than-serious chord and render some parts of the series basically unwatchable, but its fundamental message, skillfully conveyed in so many aspects, makes it a special cultural product despite these shortcomings. The magic of Star Trek is in the world that it builds, full of fresh possibilities and diverse, full characters who encounter the inevitable challenges of every human life with all of their flaws and triumph and fail.
*Update: We watched The Search for Spock and, after some negotiation, an episode of TOS, “The Enemy Within,” last night/this morning (there’s a time difference between us and it was 5:30 a.m. by the time I got off the call), and I am happy to report that all enjoyed the movie and the show, and we learned the valuable life lesson that you can tell the evil product of a transporter accident by the (frankly unsightly) amount of eyeliner he is wearing.
Published in General
It rained. Their clothes all shrank. Look at those pant legs.
I was a kid and mostly saw reruns. I loved Tribbles. It’s the only episode I know by name.
That was Harcourt Fenton “Harry” Mudd’s second episode.
Star Trek TOS inherited a sci-fi tradition of the 50s, and made some interesting changes. The popular sci-fi that preceded ST had all the same elements – FTL ships, military structure, analog tech complete with technobabble. What made Trek different was a spirit of professionalism that extended throughout the whole crew. Radio and TV shows that came before had lots of below-deck enlisted types; everyone on the Enterprise had a college degree. It’s a small shift, but not insignificant.
Star Trek (the original) is one of the most American television series I can think of. It constantly articulated American views of liberty, equality, individuality, freedom of thought, in a setting with a cowboy space captain out on the frontier. Today, that makes it almost over-the-top conservative. I’m pretty sure that if Star Trek were made today it would be targeted by the woke and driven off the air.
Yet the left thinks it owns Star Trek, and some idiots think conservatives are just too stupid to realize that Star Trek is not for them and they only enjoy it because they’re too dumb to understand it, as evidenced in this ridiculously offensive thing:
I’ve always thought the enemy that would finally defeat Kirk and the Federation was Interstellar Herpes Simplex Kobyashi Maru, The No Win STD Scenario.
I think it’s particularly significant that Kirk is an Iowa farm boy made good. It’s a very beloved American trope about meritocracy and the heights that even the most ordinary people can rise to in a society that rewards hard work and self improvement. The newer series, especially Discovery, do I think fall into more of a rote progressive model.
That’s great, I’m totally pitching it to my friends as a title for their proposed series (with credit where credit is due) when we watch III and an episode of TOS tomorrow night!
I think TNG is more popular with a lot of fans than TOS, especially people of my generation, who see Picard as progressive and peaceful counterpart to Kirk (although some younger people seem to really like the reboot movie Kirk). I have nothing against TNG, but I never connected with it in the way I did with TOS.
Somewhere on the internet I saw a critic point out that the producers of the new Star Trek don’t know anything about Trek. One reason is that they don’t know how shows are abbreviated and named the new show Star Trek Discovery.
The idiot in the video above who thinks conservatives shouldn’t be fans of Star Trek, says that one of the problems is that conservatives believe it’s just a silly action/adventure show.
The “wokesters” who created Discovery want to make it all politically meaningful, but they’ve essentially turned it into a silly action/adventure show.
Well, considering how good the show is, that seems like an appropriate acronym. It’s about as pleasant as one.
I confess that except for the awkward insertion of the effenheimer, and the unbelievably chemistry-free gay couple (neither of whom can act), I actually enjoyed the first season. I haven’t watched past that, though.
You’re better than I am, I only made it an episode. But according to this there isn’t necessarily much point in watching past that first season, because the second doesn’t get better and the finale in fact writes everything that has happened up to that point out of existence.
CBS (which has say over any TV ‘Star Trek’ series, even though they’re merged back together with Paramount again) and the producers of the recent All Access ST efforts, including Alex Kurtzman, having been touting their next proposed series featuring the pre-Kirk Enterprise, which they swear will be more episodic, with fewer multi-show or season-long story arcs, and is supposed to also get back to basics by being more optimistic, in ways that ‘ST:D’ and ‘Picard’ have not been. We’ll see if they can actually manage that, as well as trying to avoid mistaking convoluted plots for ‘deep’ plots (or if they can manage to keep the original series’ timeline separate from the timeline of the reboots over the past 11 years, something they couldn’t manage with ‘Picard’).
Agreed. I can’t believe I watched 8:38 minutes of it. He wasn’t even talking about star trek. He used ST as a bludgeon.
Talk about a$$holery.
People from Iowa are ordinary?
My guess is that the writers of Star Trek thought it was ordinary in the everyman sort of sense, in that Kirk didn’t have the cynicism stereotypically attributed to someone from a city/or a coast, and comes from a very normal kind of family. In contrast to Spock’s obvious extraordinariness in being a hybrid, and Bones’ very distinct regionalism, Kirk has a more universal feeling.
They speak with the standard American pronunciation.
I suppose Kirk represented Everyman.
No need to apologize. Something either captures your imagination or it doesnt. Star Trek failed you. I could not for the life of me read “Lord of the Rings” I could barely read the first chapter – it was demoralizing to read – the book was so thick it seemed like it would take forever to read. Maybe if it was on a tablet it would’ve been easier – because it wouldnt be such a trauma to realize how much is left to read like the thick book is.
The place to start with Star Trek, is indeed Star Trek ii the Wrath of Khan. Easily the best Star Trek movie, and often listed as one of the best science fiction movies ever made.
That is really true and great advice! I didn’t start with it (I started with TOS, though I watched out of order and skipped around a lot), but this is what I did with my friends and they were hooked, wanted to watch some of the show so they could understand the background and the rest of the movies. If you do watch/like Wrath of Khan, it’s neat to then go back to the earlier movie or show and see how the dynamic that the movie portrays so well developed.
Gene Roddenberry’s original elevator pitch to CBS (who declined because they had Lost in Space in development) was “Wagon Train in space.” Above everything else he just wanted to tell stories, not parables or sermons.
I think the biggest regret of the folks on the original series is that, looking back at the props, everything was just too damn big! The “tricorder” was the size of a first generation cassette recorder and probably was envisioned to do less than our cell phones.
The Enterprise was way too big as well. The size of the corridors were dictated by the size of the camera dollies.
I grew up on TOS, watching it after school in the late afternoon when it was in it’s first syndication. In college, I watched and recorded the whole thing late at night when it came on at 11:30pm.
For good or for bad, the lessons and the corn is with me forever.
You must have tried reading the omnibus edition – the one that had all 3 books in one. I tried to read that one in college and couldn’t make it through it. Years later, when the movies started coming out, I read the individual books with Mr. Weeping. I did make it through those but probably only because Mr. Weeping and I were reading them together. Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t have finished them then either. That was another series that didn’t really interest me. Sigh.
Majel Barrett was the voice of the computer and Gene Roddenberry’s wife.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majel_Barrett
Watching on Amazon, they have the audio balance off on the introduction. Kirk’s voice is too low when the episode starts.
We are watching Spock’s Brain.
Notice that, even here, Kirk is the one trying to get his shirt off.
Spock’s Brain had a couple memorable lines. About all I remember was the look in Morg’s eyes when he said these lines:
KIRK: Who are the Others?
MORG: Givers of pain and delight.
KIRK: Do they live here with you?
MORG: No. They come. They give pain and delight.
I was about ten when I first saw this, but I think I knew what they were talking about.