TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY<\/b>: So The Nation<\/i> is taking on the new Star Trek series<\/a>. I haven\u2019t seen the dratted thing (loved concept, couldn\u2019t deal with theme music, read some descriptions of first episode and decided life\u2019s too short, plus I don\u2019t have a TV), and for me, Star Trek means nothing but The Original Series. So the following commentary should not be taken as an endorsement of \u201cEnterprise.\u201d (What a cool, cool name, though\u2013reminding us that the first ship\u2019s name meant <\/i>something. There\u2019s an air of hope, of \u201cwhat will we find?\u201d, of a desire to explore the unknown; and there\u2019s an acknowledgment of danger.) <\/p>\n Donna Minkowitz, who is occasionally an insightful writer<\/a>, dismisses Kirk and crew in the second paragraph, and doesn\u2019t seem to have watched any of TOS. She\u2019s thrilled that the Picardesque future is \u201csocialistic\u201d (though she notes that we\u2019re talking wussy socialism here, \u201cmore a matter of providing food, housing and medicine to everyone than preventing some from getting richer than others\u201d\u2013and if you think the feds do a lousy job on that task, wait till you see an intergalactic bureaucracy!). She also lauds the later series\u2019 focus on \u201cexpanding the list of sentient life forms who are judged to have rights and acknowledged to be persons\u201d (but she means black people and Palestinians, not, say, unborn children). <\/p>\n Minkowitz: \u201cThe titles, set to a hymn that combines the first Christian references ever heard on Star Trek with some boasts about resisting alien domination, show drawings of the ships of fifteenth-century European colonial powers and European maps and globes from the same period. On one is scripted \u2018HMS Enterprise.'\u201d<\/b> First: Minkowitz has obviously never seen the hideous, hideous episode \u201cBread and Circuses,\u201d which actually includes the line, \u201cNot the sun in the sky, Mr. Spock! The Son of God<\/i>!\u201d (aaaggghhh.) But that\u2019s not important right now. Making the colonialism\/\u201dAge of Exploration\u201d theme explicit actually frees the series to investigate all kinds of neat issues\u2013does our drive for knowledge and adventure conflict with other peoples\u2019 needs? Is the rush out into space a replay of European colonial expansion, or will we be able to restrain the desire to exploit the peoples we contact? Should we refrain from contacting some peoples at all\u2013is cultural mixing necessarily contamination? Are some cultures just better?<\/i> Minkowitz can\u2019t even see the possibilities here\u2013she\u2019s too busy being horrified that someone would build a metaphor on the fact that hey, European exploration was driven not just by greed but by the old human longing for the horizon. (That longing often reflects a deep desire to escape reality; you want to leave home because you feel trapped. Sometimes, too, the longing arises because we don\u2019t feel at home, and we think we might find a home if we just traveled far enough.) <\/p>\n Minkowitz: \u201cIn this way, [the Vulcans on \u201cEnterprise\u201d] are straight out of Nazi propaganda about Jews, so that I almost expected to see little comics of Vulcans poisoning the wells of Aryans and strangling Nordic farmers with their moneybags.\u201d T\u2019Pol, the main Vulcan, is \u201ca caricature of a bitter woman of color.\u201d <\/b>This would come as a surprise to the warblogger<\/a> types<\/a> who have deduced that the Vulcans are actually the Europeans, specifically the French (or maybe the British\u2013or the Americans!<\/a>). <\/p>\n I have no idea whether the show\u2019s treatment of women is as despicable as Minkowitz claims; it wouldn\u2019t surprise me, since this is, after all, TV in the year 2002, and we\u2019ve come a long way, baby. But this is just kind of funny: \u201cIn my recollection, this is the first Trek on which Starfleet officers have ever considered buying women.\u201d<\/b> Repeat after me, folks: Green. Orion. Slave. Girls. <\/p>\n The original series was a nifty mix\u2013there was a strong anti-authoritarian streak, best exemplified in the hilarious \u201cTrouble with Tribbles\u201d; a sometimes-cool, sometimes-ridiculous civil-rights subtext (TOS featured the first interracial kiss on TV\u2013Kirk+Uhura, in \u201cPlato\u2019s Stepchildren\u201d\u2013but their minds were being controlled by aliens\u2026 so there you go); and random bits of philosophizing that didn\u2019t necessarily add up. There were many great love-vs.-duty storylines (the best being \u201cCity on the Edge of Forever,\u201d which always tops the fans\u2019 best-of lists), and the series mocked intellectualism (the belief that intellectuals should run the world) while not mocking intellectuals. Pretty much all the aliens were recognizably persons, even when they looked like big angry rocks\u2013they had the same basic desires and fears and possibilities that humans had, even if their cultures responded to those emotions and longings differently. (The episodes featuring Vulcans and Romulans\u2013\u201cAmok Time,\u201d \u201cJourney to Babel,\u201d \u201cThe Enterprise Incident,\u201d and \u201cBalance of Terror\u201d\u2013were particularly adept at showing this.) Yes, the patriotic episodes were cringingly obvious. Yes, the third season sucked like a Hoover. Yes, the future was resolutely religion-free in all but a very few episodes. But at least the original series had vigor, whimsy, and raw emotion, not just bloodless ethical commitments and busty telepaths. If \u201cEnterprise\u201d is getting back to that model, maybe I should give it a spin. <\/p>\n Somehow, I don\u2019t think that was the effect Minkowitz intended\u2026<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY: So The Nation is taking on the new Star Trek series. I haven\u2019t seen the dratted thing (loved concept, couldn\u2019t deal with theme music, read some descriptions of first episode and decided life\u2019s too short, plus I don\u2019t have a TV), and for me, Star Trek means nothing but The Original Series. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n