I don't remember when I saw my first Star Trek episode. I've
loved it as long as I can remember thanks to being raised by parents who loved
it first. I watched reruns of previous seasons of the different shows every day
after school, and whichever season was currently airing had my whole family on
the edge of our seats every week. Somewhere in an old family album there's a
picture of me, aged 10, dressed up as Jadzia Dax, spots and all. One time I was
the star letter in Star Trek Monthly and it was one of the proudest
achievements of my young life.
I'm a pretty big Star Trek fan, is what I'm saying. And you
know what, I loved the 2009 reboot film. It was huge amount of fun, it had a
great cast, and seeing the Enterprise soar across the big screen was a huge hit
of fannish glee. Similarly, I can't wait for this summer's offering of Star
Trek: Into Darkness. I look forward to the characters, old and new (though
never mind Cumberbatch, it's Noel Clarke's casting that had me fangirling), and
the chances of me seeing it multiple times in the cinema are pretty high.
And yet. They're fun films, and have reinvigorated
enthusiasm for the universe in a way that's really gratifying, but in a lot of
ways the tone feels like Star Trek Lite - naturally I write this without having
seen Into Darkness, but given the way it's being marketed as an action film,
I'm not expecting a vast departure from the first film with the exception of
the added Darker Tone TM that seems requisite for sequels these days.
Star Trek isn't just phasers and transporters and warp
drives and starships. That's what Star Trek needs. What Star Trek is, is a
vision. Unembarrassed, unbridled hope for the future, a dream of a perfect
world, in which all people are equal.
In the world of Star Trek, the Earth of the future is a
place with no wars, no poverty, no inequality, and no hardship. There's no
concept of currency -- resources are essentially infinite, and people work to
better themselves and their society. Gene Roddenberry's utopian vision
frequently lacks a certain critical engagement, and it has its problems, but
the wholehearted earnestness that drives that vision has a real charm to it.
And a key part of the vision of Star Trek, right from the
start, has been equality and respect for all people regardless of race or
gender -- or species, for Star
Trek is a show fond of tackling equality issues via metaphorical alien races,
bless its heart.
[the cast of the original series of Star Trek]
The casting of the original run of the show in 1966 comes
with kinds of stories. There are a lot of famous anecdotes surrounding Nichelle
Nichols' role as Lieutenant Uhura, communications officer and breakout role for
an African-American woman on US TV at the time. The stories range from Martin
Luther King himself urging Nichols to stay on despite her concerns due to the
impact her role was having on US popular culture, to Whoopi Goldberg seeing
Uhura on TV and being overwhelmed by the site of a black woman who "ain't
no maid" (Goldberg would herself later appear on Star Trek: The Next
Generation as the mysterious Guinan, wearer of the greatest hats in the
galaxy), to Shatner and Nichols' efforts to keep a scene where they kissed in
an episode despite network protests -- they succeeded, and it became the first
interracial kiss on US TV.
In addition to Nichols, there were George Takei and Walter
Koenig as Sulu and Chekov, Japanese-American and Russian characters piloting
the Enterprise side by side in the 1960s, during the Cold War and with Japanese
internment camps on US soil still in living memory -- Takei himself having been
sent to one such camp with his family during WW2.
Many episodes dealt with issues of racism and sexism,
frequently in ways that were heavy-handed or missed the point altogether. There
are a lot of things about the original run of the show that sit uncomfortably
with a modern audience. But it cared about diversity and representation, and it
really did try, and it really did make a difference.
When Star Trek came back with twenty years later, The Next
Generation followed by Deep Space Nine and Voyager, that philosophy remained.
(I admit that I haven't watched enough of Enterprise to be able to comment --
sorry, ENT fans!) There were absolutely problems -- none of the main casts ever
achieved gender parity, Jewish actors were cast to play an alien species that
embodied anti-Semitic stereotypes, disability was frequently portrayed as a
'flaw to be fixed', and much else besides.
And still the overall feeling that I'm left with is a show
that cared and a show that tried.
[the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation]
There was Geordi La Forge, the black, blind Chief Engineer
from TNG, and Tasha Yar and Deanna Troi and Beverley Crusher creating a trio
that showed there was no wrong way to be a woman. Worf, who started out as the
gruff Klingon Security Officer and grew over time to gain complex multi-season
stories over both TNG and DS9, eventually appearing in more episodes than any
other Star Trek character.
[the cast of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]
On DS9, there was Jadzia Dax, the Science Officer whose
understanding of gender and sexuality was decidedly queer and decidedly
wonderful. Ben Sisko became the first (and still only) non-white lead of a Star
Trek show. DS9 is particularly notable for having not a single white North
American character amongst its main ensemble cast. There was Julian Bashir,
played by Sudanese-British actor Alexander Siddig, as the gung-ho wet behind
the ears adventurer who spent a lot of his spare time roleplaying as James Bond
and other dashing, traditionally white heroes, and Kira Nerys, world-weary
freedom fighter who wanted nothing better than to tell her well-meaning
Federation colonial interferers where to shove it. There’s also the acclaimed
episode ‘Far Beyond The Stars’, a metafictional story set in the 1950s, about a
struggling black writer dreaming of being able to publish a sci-fi story with
someone like himself as a hero.
[the cast of Star Trek: Voyager]
On Voyager, it was women who drove the show, passing the
Bechdel test on a regular basis. The dauntless Captain Janeway surrounded
herself with strong women like the adventurous and compassionate Kes, the
fiercely logical Seven of Nine, and the cynical and brilliant engineer B’Elanna
Torres, not to mention their archnemesis the Borg Queen -- the major conflicts
and plots of the show usually originated from the conflicts and cooperation
between those characters, who demonstrated the many different ways that there
were of being a woman in space. Torres’ plots also tackled issues of biracial
-- by which I mean bispecies, because it's Star Trek -- identity. Here, Tom
Paris is the only white male human character, the other white male actors of
the lead ensemble playing an alien and a hologram respectively.
By virtue of the nature of long-running ensemble shows, each
character got rich and rewarding storylines over time. And that matters. The
women of Star Trek were hugely influential to my growing up, because I constantly
watched them achieve anything they set their minds to, often without any
reference to their gender. And the central message of the show was brought to
bear over and over again, perhaps best summarised by Roddenberry himself in a
lecture he gave in 1973:
“The whole show was an attempt to say that humanity will
reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but
to take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life
forms. We tried to say that the worst possible thing that can happen to all of
us is for the future to somehow press us into a common mold, where we begin to
act and talk and look and think alike. If we cannot learn to actually enjoy
those small differences, take a positive delight in those small differences
between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out
into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there. And I
think that this is what people responded to.”
With all of that in mind, a reboot of the original series
seems to rather miss the point. For all that the 2009 film was fun, and this
year's outing looks set to be just as entertaining, it is missing that key
component. It's great watching personal favourite actors of mine like Zoe
Saldana and John Cho take on the iconic roles of Uhura and Sulu, and with Uhura
in particular it is gratifying to see her role in these films become so
central, an issue discussed wonderfully by rawles in her essay examining the
simple yet crucial truth that Nyota Uhura is not a white girl.
And yet. And yet. This Enterprise crew no longer has the
same impact it did back in the 60s -- and that's a good thing! But by looking
to the past, Abrams has failed to embrace Star Trek's key vision of pushing
boundaries and expanding our understanding of ourselves and of others. There's
nothing wrong with a nostalgia trip but I want more from my Trek than a loving
homage.
I want a vision of the future that looks forward again, that
tackles our foremost modern day prejudices. I want more racial diversity, more
gender diversity, more nuanced representations of disability, more queer
visibility, maybe even trans or genderqueer characters who are, gasp, human and
not othered aliens. I want a Star Trek that challenges the mainstream, one that
overshoots and falls flat sometimes and then picks itself up, dusts itself off
and tries again, fails better.
I want a Star Trek that reaches out to those of us who don't
see ourselves elsewhere in pop culture, who are erased from the mainstream
narrative of what heroes should be. I want a Star Trek that tells us that all
of us have a place in the future, just as we are.
There's really nothing all that bold about going where we've
all gone before.
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