Star Trek Into Darkness of Its Soul

My concern here is the soul of Star Trek, and that’s the focus of my comments after a first viewing of Star Trek Into Darkness. I saw it at a local theater on Memorial Day weekend. Frankly, I enjoyed it more than I expected. But this isn’t a review—not even a review of reactions—so don’t expect anything on Alice Eve’s underwear or the Starship Budweiser scenes, or even the many fine performances, effects, etc. And this is just a first take, after one viewing.  Also be advised if you haven't seen it: this is full of spoilers.

 The first JJA movie set up an alternate Star Trek universe. With the second film, it’s clear that this remains a different universe. It is different not only because that’s how the writers made it. It’s different because this is a big budget movie in 2013.

Movies have changed. The reining cultural mythology of heroes includes Star Wars and Star Trek, but it is dominated by the superheroes with origins in comic books. Thanks also to digital visual effects, the action in most of these action movies is cartoon action, the violence is cartoon violence.

This isn't entirely new, of course, just more exaggerated. There was always an unreality in movie heroics, going back to the serials and their episodic cliffhangers. J.J. Abrams loves to literally position his characters hanging from various kinds of cliffs, several times during the same movie. They hang and are hoisted up in ways that are unlikely if not virtually impossible.

 Like Speilberg and Lucas action films, the cartoon superhero films show heroes fleeing explosions and never getting hit by debris or flying glass, and they fire weapons in small spaces that would actually be suicidal. This is the movie environment for a 21st century Star Trek JJA film.

 There are a few other elements to that environment that are a little more reminiscent of the Roddenberry Star Trek era. The first is the prominence of violence in movies and TV, at the same time as relentless violent images from the real world.  The actual imagery then couldn't compare to the sheer amount and ferocity of violence in movies and on TV today, and in movies it is so much faster, more intense and unrelenting.  But the effect is similar--a pummeling of the senses that glorifies violence while minimizing its consequences.

 The second is the apocalyptic fervor. Doom was in the air in the Vietnam 60s of TOS and the nuclear buildup 80s of TNG. Now doom has become the default future. It’s the premise for new television. It’s there in the previews for World War Z that show before Star Trek Into Darkness. Apocalypse is popular partly because it’s the easy choice—it’s high-adrenalin action and violent struggle to survive. But beneath the visual effects attraction, there is a real unease about what the future holds.

 That’s what made Star Trek so important and so emotionally powerful in the 20th century. And that’s why, even if this Star Trek doesn’t confront the issues with the same focus as Trek prime, it’s important that Star Trek remains an alternative—of moral seriousness, of a model for a hopeful future.

 Star Trek Into Darkness is Star Trek in a different universe. It’s a different Kirk and a different Spock. They’re younger—probably in Trek prime, they hadn’t even met at this age. Spock in particular is different—more aggressive and angry, behind the apparent innocence of his logic. Spock prime had the dignity of controlled pain, an emotional aloofness and gravitas that this Spock doesn’t have. He's Spock, but different.

 This film shows Kirk and Spock bonding. When TOS began, with the Enterprise already on its five year mission, that bond was not evident. Shatner’s Kirk was curious about Mr. Spock, he had good will towards him, but he was evidently still figuring him out. Spock was the alien among humans, and it was awhile before his commitment to Starfleet and the Enterprise added a clearly personal commitment to Kirk.

 Spock’s famous death scene in the second feature film (The Wrath of Khan) had years of history preceding it, which made it so moving that the film crew was weeping during the shoot. Here the reboot and reversal comes at a much earlier stage. Yet it didn’t feel phony or contrived. Within this Star Trek universe, it worked, but differently. (It helps that it was well shot and edited.)

 There are differences in the other characters, too, all revealed in action that is faster and more unrelenting than in any Trek prime TV or movie adventure. Still, they are appealing characters, and there’s enough of the feeling of the Enterprise to make this feel like Star Trek, only different.

 But apart from the mutual respect and emotional commitment of the crew, what really makes it Star Trek is an underlying moral seriousness that wasn’t really present in the first JJA film.  It's perhaps not as prominent or as articulated as it could have been, but it's there.

 The premise of this film is that Starfleet has ventured into darkness, into the dark side, in anticipation of a Klingon threat. That’s only suggested at first, perhaps with those nasty Nazi style Starfleet hats and uniforms. There’s a line about Starfleet becoming more military than explorers.

 Then Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) mentions Section 31, the Starfleet equivalent of a covert branch, a military CIA, which in prime Trek didn’t enter storytelling until Deep Space 9 and the Dominion War, although it acquired its own mythology in Trek novels.

 The movie begins with acts of terror manipulated and committed by a Starfleet Section 31 renegade named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch.)  The often confused, contradictory and deliberately disingenuous pre-release information nevertheless suggested that terrorism would be this film’s real world anchor, its “current issue,” which greatly lowered my expectations and desire to see it.

 The despicable act of terrorism known as 9/11 succeeded in terrorizing this country for more than a decade, beyond reason, and to make a film exploiting it now seemed depressingly grotesque, however easy. But if there is an underlying issue in this film, it is not 9/11 and terrorism but precisely the response to 9/11, particularly in the years immediately following it, when the U.S. aggressively violated its own essential values far beyond the need, and did so with frightening alacrity.

 This was really the subject of the second (prequel) trilogy of the Star Wars saga, the last Star Wars stories apparently to be told by George Lucas. It was about (quoting Lucas)" how a democratic society turns into a dictatorship, and how a good person turns into a bad person."

 Star Trek Into Darkness avoids many direct parallels to post-9/11 America—there’s no torture, indefinite detentions without trial, no general abrogation of civil liberties, no sudden invasion based on false pretexts. Some see a parallel between Admiral Marcus ordering Kirk to fire torpedoes at Harrison in hiding on the Klingon home world and the U.S. drone program, and that’s a justifiable analogy. Certainly the first moral note—absent from other blockbuster adventures—is that Harrison should be captured and returned for trial.

 Eventually it is revealed that Harrison is a genetically engineered human who had been in unconscious stasis for 300 years. His real name is Khan. It is further revealed that this Khan, like the one in Star Trek prime, was “frozen” after committing unspecified but presumably big crimes, together with 72 of his genetically engineered compatriots. This time, however, they have survived in their sleep state.

 Looking for an edge to prepare for what he saw as the Klingon threat, Admiral Marcus woke Khan, promising that he would revive the others if Khan cooperated. Khan’s motive this time is not personal vengeance for the death of his wife (a motive already used for the villain in the first Star Trek JJA) but for Marcus’ betrayal, and the Admiral’s attempt to destroy his compatriots.

Marcus is creating superweapons apparently even secret from Starfleet, and has all the zeal of a military dictator.  He is even willing to destroy the Enterprise and everyone aboard to further his warmongering.

Of course, the fight of Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise against Khan and the warmongering zealot (as well as a small battle with Klingons) involves a lot of violence.  This looks like cinematic having your cake and eating it too, and some observers saw it as dominant.  "But all the same, it’s hard to emerge from 'Into Darkness' without a feeling of disappointment, even betrayal," wrote A.O. Scott in the New York Times. "Maybe it is too late to lament the militarization of “Star Trek,” but in his pursuit of blockbuster currency, Mr. Abrams has sacrificed a lot of its idiosyncrasy and, worse, the large-spirited humanism that sustained it."  Perhaps he missed the point I am making here, or perhaps he saw the bulk of the film as undermining it.

 This movie concludes with Khan’s capture and “re-freezing,” along with his companions (with the depressing possibility of a sequel I suppose.) Captain Kirk makes the overall point explicit at the rededication of the repaired Enterprise when he says that Starfleet was becoming the evil it opposes, that it was sacrificing its own values.

 The movie ends with Starfleet’s return to exploration, and the beginning of the fabled five year mission “to boldly go where no one has gone before.” To emphasize this full circle, there’s extensive use of the original Star Trek music at the end, and imagery suggesting the original openings to the various series.

 This is perhaps a more striking affirmation than it might seem at first. For after Gene Roddenberry’s death, Star Trek storytelling turned more and more towards duplicating decades of war stories, especially in DS9. Then when the Enterprise series seemed to return to the theme of exploration, the impact of 9/11 changed its trajectory, and so there were more war and fighting terrorism stories. This became even more prominent in the Star Trek novels of the next decade.

 2016 is Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, and the word is that Paramount wants a new Trek movie to celebrate it. Will the JJA group, in whatever configuration, honor its origin by returning to stories of exploration, and relevance to issues other than terrorism and war? A number of comments and reviews in response to this movie suggest a hunger for that kind of Star Trek. In this movie business environment, that would be boldly going indeed.

Space Reality

A lot of movies opening this week, including you know what.  But will any be better than this one?  A classic song about space sung in space.  When astronaut Chris Hatfield sings that he's "floating in a most peculiar way," he actually is.  The speed-up orbit of Earth at night is as good as any fake special effects, and better than most.  This 5 minutes has it all--even lens flares.  Not to mention a Canadian Captain.  Make sure to watch this on the biggest screen you've got.

The Original Inspiration

As other sites cover every publicity tremor in advance of the new Trek movie, I continue to be impressed by the continuing power and presence of The Original Series and The Next Generation.  Frankly I had expected  that once the first JJA movie came out, the new actors would quickly replace the first TOS actors in general consciousness, but that has not happened.  At all.  Fascinating.

Also fascinating is how TOS continues to fuel the future through those still working to create it.  There are lots of examples of technologies that were imagined in TOS and are in the works or have since been realized in daily life. Every once in awhile as I stride confidently towards a closed supermarket door, I remember how amazing the idea was for a couple of decades of doors that whoosh open when you approach them.

  Some innovations (like the flip phone) even borrow a Trek look.  But I ran across an instance that is even more direct in Trek inspiration, in this Slate article on Google that carries this subtitle: Google has a single towering obsession: It wants to build the Star Trek computer.

The writer, Farhad Majoo, begins by noting that he heard people at Google refer to the Star Trek computer in 2010 in reference to their Android phone, but filed away the reference as just another publicity metaphor. "I dismissed it as a gimmick to attract media attention for a struggling brand. Not that he was totally wrong—in 2010, asking your phone to search for something, rather than typing in your query, was pretty cool. It just wasn’t Star Trek-cool."

But he kept hearing Googlers talk about the Star Trek computer, and he kept dismissing the importance of the reference. "After all, Google is very likely the nerdiest large company on earth; of course its employees like Star Trek."  And then: "in March, Amit Singhal, who heads Google’s search rankings team, gave a talk at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival—and Star Trek took center stage. Singhal told the crowd that the original series was one of his favorite all-time shows, and he longed to one day meet William Shatner, “as long as he doesn’t sell me a hotel room.” Then Singhal added: “The destiny of [Google’s search engine] is to become that Star Trek computer, and that’s what we are building.”

Now it seemed serious so Majoo went to Google  and they confirmed it.  “The Star Trek computer is not just a metaphor that we use to explain to others what we're building,” Singhal told me. “It is the ideal that we're aiming to build—the ideal version done realistically.”

The idea, Majoo writes, is to redefine "search engine" towards the Star Trek computer model of high order interactivity so it converses with you.  It will answer your questions, rather than show you lists of places where you can look up the answer.

Another article, this time in the Guardian by Tim Adams, comes to the same conclusions.  It quotes Amit Singhal, "Google's Mr. Search": As a boy in India, "I watched way too much Star Trek, to the extent that I could remember episodes by heart...and I deeply believe now that shaped my thinking.  The fascination with flying through galaxies and talking to a computer that could answer any question was always there for me."  The analogy of search is "the dream has been the old Star Trek one of providing the right answers to what you think you want to know even if you don't know quite how to phrase the question."

It's not as clear to me as it seems to be to Majoo and Singhal that the Google vision really matches up with the Star Trek computer.  For one thing, I don't think the Star Trek computer requires as much personal information about Captain Kirk as Google wants to collect in order to respond to users.  But that this is an aspiration for this huge and influential company is notable.

Now if only an institution with those kind of resources would focus on creating a Star Trek universe beginning with a peaceful Earth united in solving its greatest problems.  On this topic, LeVar Burton was (again) eloquent at the TNG reunion at Comicon Toronto: "I was happy to be part of Gene's vision because it is one where unity is achieved, where people stop competing and begin cooperating a bit more, and that's a very valid way to look at the future.  If it's true that a lot of the technology invented for the purpose of Star Trek storytelling is now part of our everyday world, then why cannot that philosophy sort of seep in?  As you dream so shall you be--this is an experiment, you all."

Captain's Log: Senator Lefler and other political Treks

Another week of Star Trek Into Politics and the issues that update the Star Trek vision...An unconfirmed story made the rounds that Ashley Judd is set to announce that she's running for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky.  After appearing on TNG as Robin Lefler and becoming a prominent screen actor, she earned a Masters in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and became active in environmental and women's issues.  She supported the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.  If elected, she would hold the highest public office in the U.S. among Star Trek alums. [Update: Ashley Judd announced she would not run this time.]

Speaking of President Obama, at the Gridiron Dinner over the weekend--another press club gathering in which prominent guests tell jokes--he poked fun at his own "Star" mixing of Jedi and mind meld in a press conference (see previous post.)  He ended his speech with this:  "And in the words of one of my favorite Star Trek characters — Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise — 'May the force be with you.'"

And speaking of women's issues, the actor who played another Captain of the Enterprise, Sir Patrick Stewart  hosted the launch of a global campaign to encourage men to take action to combat violence against women.  At the UN Hotel in New York, Stewart talked about his own childhood experience with such violence. "I became an expert," Stewart said. "I knew exactly when to open a door and insert myself between my father's fist and my mother's body."

“Violence against women is the single greatest human rights violation of our generation,” he proclaimed, and issued a call to action:  "--not an action that will make things better in six months' time or a year's time," he continued, "but action that might save someone's life and someone's future this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow morning."

Mind Meld Trick

 Hot on the heels of William Shatner's return as Captain Kirk comes Leonard Nimoy to the news as Mr. Spock.

It happened because of President Obama in his press conference Friday.  He started to refer to the "Jedi mind..." and hesitated, then hit on kind of the wrong word, "meld."

Yes, despite his Vulcan heritage, he was referring to a Jedi mind trick.  But who came to save the day but Spock himself.  Leonard Nimoy promptly tweeted,  "Only a Vulcan mind meld will help with this congress."

Then the White House itself got into the act with the following illustration.  Note the appropriate Star Wars and Star Trek typefaces.  Somewhere J.J. Abrams must be smiling.

Captain's Log: Captain Kirk at the Oscars, Meteor Meets Siberia

The talk of Trekdom has to be Captain Kirk visiting the 2013 Oscar ceremony from the 23rd century.  William Shatner's dialogue with host Seth McFarland opened the event.  He was there to warn McFarland that his first numbers were going to earn him terrible reviews.  He used newspaper headlines to prove it, somewhat reminiscent of how Spock used newspaper stories as evidence about Edith Keeler  in "City on the Edge of Forever."  

The responses on Trek Movie ran the gamut from joy to embarrassment.  Many noticed that even given the new JJA movies, William Shatner is still the real Captain Kirk.  One post pointed out that the Oscars' huge international audience (upwards of a billion) meant more people may have seen Shatner as Captain Kirk on that night than ever before, perhaps in total.  I'd say, surely never as many at one time as the Oscar telecast.  But in total, maybe not as many.  In the 90s it was estimated that Shatner as Kirk was known to a quarter of the planet's population, and that's several billion.

Still, if you needed evidence of Star Trek's enduring hold on the planetary imagination, this might suggest it.

In other possible Edith Keeler news, political scientist, movie buff and Trekkie Jonathan Bernstein blogged about a 1933 movie called Men Must Fight, and suggested that the leading female character--a pacifist--might be the inspiration for Keeler.

Meanwhile on Earth, a huge meteorite streaked through the sky of Siberia, and caused a sonic bomb that did considerable damage.  There was a flurry of excitement afterwards for a few days, with people wondering how endangered the planet is from such impacts, or what the relationship was to the asteroid that was passing close by at the time (scientists so far say none.)  

This also inspired several sites to reminisce about asteroid doomsday movies.  Here at The Credits, scientists describe their favorites (while the Bruce Willis Armageddon was more popular, its 1998 rival Deep Impact was more scientifically accurate.)  Meanwhile, the New York Times interviewed science fiction writers (including Star Trek Into Darkness co-writer and producer Damon Lindelof) on yarns the meteor impact might inspire.

Stephen Baxter suggested that the most prophetic of such tales was H.G. Wells' "The Star," in which Earth watches a wandering star come closer and closer without any means to prevent it.  We're probably closer to that situation he said than the wish fulfillment of Armageddon.

The biggest impact on me was seeing a CNN interview with Lawrence Krauss, physicist and author of The Physics of Star Trek among many other popular science books.  Krauss explained how the damage in Russia was caused by the sonic boom.  But the CNN reporter had no idea what he was talking about.  Apparently the idea that sound could create physical force was a new concept to him.  People can make fun of the obsessions of Trek fans with techno-babble and geeky points of science.  That seems infinitely preferable to the blithe ignorance that is going to be unnecessarily shocked by, for instance, global warming causing bigger snow storms.

The Director of Stars

Apparently there is only one person in the known universe capable of directing a movie with "Star" in the title.

But when imagination is limited to imagining cash flow, Hollywood is easier than ever to figure out.

J.J. Abrams, who previously announced that he had turned down an offer to direct the next Star Wars movie out of loyalty to Star Trek, has now announced that he's directing the next Star Wars movie.


Paramount says he's committed to a third Star Trek movie, in some capacity, and also the next Mission Impossible.

Disney, new owner of  Star Wars Inc., hinted that Abrams may direct the next Toy Story movie and definitely the next Pinocchio.