Boldly going

Star Trek, subversion and the power of the split infinitive.

“I have no belief that Star Trek depicts the actual future, it depicts us, now…”

Gene Rodenberry

OK, it’s been a while since the last post. Life, as ever, has a habit of getting in the way of the really important stuff like writing about the 60s. In this case the blame lies chiefly on a move from Thailand to Italy and the need to finish a book manuscript in the vague hope that I may be able to earn some money. Anyway, this time I want to talk about another television series from the 1960s. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, most television in the 60s was utter bilge. Dismally dull, the majority of programmes tapped into a seam of sexist, racist, homophobic banality which ran through them like the brown mushy bit in a over-ripe banana. Memorable only for their awfulness, these managed to be both anodyne and offensive at the same time, a difficult trick to pull off. However, there were honourable exceptions and amongst the dreck were a small number of truly inventive, innovative, witty, ironic and cool programmes. Some went even further, and attempted to use light entertainment to confront social, religious and political issues.

One programme which consistently did this was Star Trek (or Star Trek – the Original Series as it’s now known), which was broadcast in three seasons between 1966 and 1969. OK, hang on a moment, don’t stop reading just yet. I know that you probably remember Start Trek only for its risible special effects, acting with more ham than a Ginsters pork pie and silly aliens. But it actually tried to do something significantly different, and occasionally it even succeeded. And just to be clear, I’m not a Trekkie, or even a huge fan of any part of the Star Trek canon but I do think that the original series is worth discussing.

In 1964, Gene Roddenberry, an ex-police officer and screenwriter of scripts for police and western television series, pitched a concept for a science fiction television series to US broadcasting giant CBS, who turned it down. Undeterred, Rodenberry continued to try to sell the idea, and finally NBC commissioned a pilot episode. Which they hated so much that they refused to air it (this episode: The Cage was finally broadcast in 1988). However, someone at NBC clearly felt that the pilot contained at least the germ of a good idea, and a second pilot episode was commissioned. This was more successful, and NBC agreed to fund a further 16 episodes which constituted the first season which was screened in 1966. And the rest, as they say, was history. NBC commissioned two more series, and (after a hiatus until 1987) Star Trek went on to spawn several further television series (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise), a number of movies, an animated series and computer games, comics and novels all set in the Star Trek universe.

Now it appears to me that while the first three series were genuinely original and took some fairly massive gambles, everything subsequent provided rollicking, if fairly bland spacefaring action. Why? My suspicion is that the Star Trek franchise simply became too valuable to try anything risky and settled instead for a safe and emasculated version of the original.

So what made the Original Series so interesting? Well first of all, some of the episodes were created by the best science fiction writers around at the time, including Robert Bloch, Norman Spinrad, Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon. These were writers who weren’t afraid to try something different or challenging and they were aided and encouraged by Rodenberry who also wanted to use science fiction to comment directly and indirectly on social issues of the time. These led to a series which constantly challenged established standards on a number of levels. For example:

Religion. Rodenberry insisted from the beginning that Star Trek should include no mystical thinking, no religion and no reference to a Christian God. The crew of the Enterprise are atheists and seemingly happy to be so, something that attracted considerable negative comment at the time – NBC executives tried to persuade Rodenberry to include a Christian chaplain as part of the crew of the Enterprise. He refused, noting that it was impossible to believe that a single religion would be imposed on a crew from such a range of home planets. Star Trek the Original Series presents a secular universe where Starfleet Command decisions are made purely on a moral and logical basis.

“When you’re out in space, in a dangerous situation. you’re not going to have some female that goes, ‘Ooooh, Captain, save me, save me!'”

Nichelle Nichols (Lt Uhura)

Sexual roles. Rodenberry insisted that female characters should play significant roles in the series. In the initial pilot episode, the First Officer of the Enterprise was a woman (played by Majel Barret, who would later marry Rodenberry and went on to play a role in every subsequent Star Trek series). Here, NBC were insistent: the First Officer had to be male. Petulantly, Rodenberry promoted Spock, a relatively minor character in the first pilot, to be First Officer (NBC had also wanted to drop Spock – “lose the guy with the ears“, ran one ominous communication to Rodenberry). It can even be argued that the original series of Star Trek was the first anti-sexist popular television show – the female characters in Star Trek are almost without exception confident, professional and self-supporting. Working women with careers are common in Star Trek, something that couldn’t be said for almost any other contemporary television series. It was also notable that women were in sexual control in Star Trek – any flirting is initiated by female characters and on the only occasions when Kirk has a physical relationship with a female character, the situation is clearly initiated by the woman. If you can look beyond the occasionally outrageous female costumes, the original series presented women as equally intelligent, powerful, and confident as their male colleagues. In the late 1960s, this wasn’t just different – it was revolutionary.

Race. The Enterprise had a multi-racial crew, something that seems entirely unremarkable now, but was ground-breaking in 1966. Most notable is Lieutenant Uhura, communications officer of the Enterprise, played by Nichelle Nichols. Uhura is not just the highest ranking female officer on the starship, she is also black (though Rodenberry initially also wanted Spock to be played by a black actor). It’s hard to believe, but giving such a prominent role in a major television series to a black actress was major news in 1966. Kirk and Uhura kissed in a 1968 episode, providing television’s first inter-racial kiss and attracting more than a degree of controversy. Also prominent on the bridge was Asian helmsman Mr Sulu, played by George Takei. It has been argued that both Uhura and Sulu are no more than tokens amongst a predominantly white crew. While there may be some truth in this, even such a gesture towards multi-racialism was very unusual in the television of the 1960s.

“All that mattered to them was their hate”

Captain James T. Kirk

Episodes of the original series also provide overt and covert criticism of racism. Notably “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” from 1969. In this episode, the Enterprise encounters a planet riven by racial war based on colour – one group of inhabitants are black on the left side of their body and white on the right, in the other group the colours are reversed. Both groups regard the other as inherently inferior and they end up wiping each other out in a genocidal war. The plot highlights the inherent absurdity of hatred and violence based on nothing more than physical appearance and no-one could have failed to notice the parallels with the civil rights movement in America. Heavy handed though it may be, this episode is used to highlight not just the injustice of racial hatred, but its arbitrary and fundamentally stupid nature. Throughout the Original Series, Star Trek identifies racism as not just abhorrent and harmful, but also as illogical and foolish.

Militarism. Some commentators have suggested that Star Trek was inherently fascistic – it’s easy to see why, with Kirk and the Enterprise acting as universal policemen and showing a worrying tendency to reach for the photon torpedoes when negotiations fail. It has also been suggested that the United Federation of Planets can be seen as representing the Western nations, with the evil Klingons representing the Soviet Union and the scheming Romulans the Asian nations. However, in many episodes the scripts actually point out the dangers inherent in militarism and the assumption of the role of moral and social arbiter. One particular episode was even denounced as treasonous when it appeared to attack US policy in Vietnam. “A Private Little War” sees the Enterprise visit a planet where the hillpeople and the villagers are at war. However, the villagers have more advanced weapons than their state of advancement suggests should be possible, and Kirk discovers that these are being supplied by the Klingons.   Initially, he arms the peaceful hillpeople with equivalent weapons. However, he comes to realise that this will only lead to an escalation in violence and declines any further involvement.

Note that this episode was broadcast in February 1968, at the height of America’s military involvement in Vietnam and during the bloody Tet offensive, where American and South Vietnamese forces (armed by America) were engaged in fighting Northern Vietnamese supplied by the Soviet Union. Just in case anyone didn’t see the very obvious parallels, Kirk justifies his initial arming of the hillpeople by referring to “20th century brush wars on the Asian continent“. This episode makes a very clear case for extreme caution when considering adding weapons to a volatile situation and to encouraging conflict by proxy between major powers. This episode probably attracted more contemporary criticism than any other in the Original Series.

When it was trying to make a particular point, the scripts for the Original Series could be rather heavy handed. However, a few episodes managed to combine thoughtful narrative with exciting and challenging action and a few are absolute classics. One of my favourites is City on the Edge of Forever from the first season. In under one hour this episode illustrates the paradox of time travel, poses a horrible moral dilemma and even gives William Shatner a chance to show that he can actually act when he turns his mind to it. For reasons that needn’t concern us here, Kirk and Spock travel back to 1930s America where they meet a female social and anti-war activist who is determined to improve what she sees as the iniquities and unfairness of contemporary society. Kirk quickly falls in love with her, but is told by the Enterprise (with whom he can still communicate) that a search of historical records indicates she will be killed in a road accident a few days hence. He is determined to stop this happening, but is then told that there are now two possible futures – one where the young woman is killed, and one where she survives to found a pacifist movement which becomes so popular that it delays America’s entry into World War Two and allows the Nazis to triumph. Kirk must choose between saving the woman he loves and causing Nazi domination of the world. It’s a taut, tight, tense and memorable story told with barely a wasted moment by science fiction master Harlan Ellison. It deservedly went on to win the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1968 and should be required viewing for anyone who wants to see how great storytelling can lift cheaply made television drama above its limitations to become something special.

Star Trek the Original Series was far from perfect – the special effects weren’t, obviously recycling sets and props from other NBC shows – Captain Kirk’s Jupiter 8 car from the episode “Bread and Circuses” for example also turned up in episodes of Batman and Bewitched and the same polystyrene rocks made a number of guest appearances during the first three seasons. Some of the scripts didn’t so much clunk as thud dully into place and the costumes worn by female characters often looked, well, a little chilly for hostile alien environments. But despite this, the cast had an undeniable magic, some of the scripts are crackers and many episodes actually tried to directly confront contemporary social and political issues. How many television shows (from the 1960s or now) can you say that about? Ignore the wobbly sets, the occasionally hammy acting and the silly costumes – Star Trek the Original Series really did boldly go where none had gone before.