And so it begins.

Spock: V'Ger must evolve. Its knowledge has reached the limits of this universe and it must evolve. What it requires of its god, doctor, is the answer to its question, "Is there nothing more"?

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Welp, I guess all the serious Star Trek fans in the audience know where THIS is going to end up...

- Sid

 

"Out there... thataway."

A few years ago, I signed up for a membership with the Heritage Auctions web site - not because I wanted to start bidding on things, but because their site was an excellent source of high resolution scans of comic book covers and artwork, book and pulp magazine covers, and movie posters and memorabilia.  

However, over time I've started casually following their auctions - they do dedicated comic book and movie sessions every week, and I've always thought that it would be nice to own original comic book art.  Admittedly, anything I've ever been interested in has been far out of my price range - yes, this is the auction house that auctioned off a Frank Frazetta cover painting for 5.4 million dollars in 2019   and the first comic book appearance of the Batman for 1.3 million at the start of this year - but it's a harmless dream to enjoy while I browse.

However, there are more modestly priced lots available, and every now and then I place a bid, just for fun.  Recently, this resulted in the successful purchase of a set of eight lobby cards from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which debuted in December of 1979.  

It's generally agreed that the first attempt at transferring the original crew to the big screen was not a great success, but it's still a significant moment in Star Trek history, and I like the idea of lobby cards - they don't seem to attract the same amount of bidding as the posters, and and at 11x14 inches they're a convenient size to frame, whereas a 28x40 inch movie poster almost requires you to design the room around it.  (Although, gosh, if I had the wall space and the money...).

To my surprise, I won the items with what I considered to be a relatively low bid of $38 USD.* This bid marked my first successful purchase in this area - I had tentatively placed a bid on lobby cards from the 1956 science fiction classic Forbidden Planet at some point last year, but it quickly got too rich for my blood (I strongly feel that the secret to managing auction participation is to not fall prey to bidding fever).

My purchases arrived today, and now that I'm able to examine them in person, I'm definitely pleased.  Oh, there's a slightly compressed corner here and there, and a hint of yellowing on one or two of the cards, but overall they're in excellent shape for printed items that are over 42 years old.

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I've watched this movie since I saw it in commercial release in '79.  Hmmm...it must be streaming somewhere, right?

- Sid

 

* Okay, this is a lie, as you can see if you compare that with the screen grab at the beginning of this post  $38 is just the auction price.  On top of that I paid a $19 Buyer's Premium, and about as much as those two combined for shipping.  Price of doing business, I suppose - and the original bid was still lower than I expected.

 

To Mars and Back Again: Planetfest '21 - Behind the Scenes of Space TV

"I'm a doctor, not a nightlight."

Robert Picardo, Voyager audition

Day Two of Planetfest '21 starts later, and I only attended two of the sessions being offered, although they turned out to be two of the most interesting talks from the two-day event.

A Conversation: Behind the Scenes of Space TV is exactly what the title says it is: a wide-ranging and entertaining conversation between longtime Planetary Society supporter and member Robert Picardo, who played the Doctor* on Star Trek: Voyager for seven seasons, and Hugo-award winning writer, director and producer Brannon Braga, who began his career as an intern on Star Trek: The Next Generation and eventually became one of the show's co-producers. He continued producing and writing for Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise, and co-wrote the scripts for Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact.

The chat begins with the degree to which Star Trek has found its inspiration in science. Braga's goal as a writer was to avoid a formulaic approach to writing for Star Trek, leading him into an ongoing search for high concept science fiction ideas and themes for the scripts.

He cites the Tuvix episode from Voyager, in which the characters of Tuvok the Vulcan science officer and Neelix the Talaxian are fused in a transporter accident, and how it "started as a ludicrous concept and became something quite profound, and quite controversial."

Braga views Voyager as almost being an anthology show with an ongoing cast of characters: "Each story had its own rhythm - some stories were told backward, some were told in circles." He prefers this approach, and likes the idea of "one story well told" - for example, the journey of the Doctor's character throughout the seven seasons of Voyager.**

An audience member raises the question of Star Trek's future being "an unrealistic utopian dream", but both Picardo and Braga disagree with this characterization.

Braga acknowledges that the show never looks at how its vision of the future was achieved, but doesn't consider Star Trek to be utopian. "But it does depict a future without war, crime or starvation or any of the other earthbound issues that we deal with. I hope that we can vanquish those problems and get to a future where diversity is a strength, not a divisive issue."

Picardo agrees, describing Star Trek as "a positive future", which Braga echoes by calling it, "Optimistic! It’s a future that we can achieve!", and points out that there was an essential optimism to the program across all the versions of the franchise.

That hopeful view of the future may have played a part in the degree to which Star Trek has inspired people to become scientists - as with the Star Trek convention attendee who thanked Braga for her childhood, and then explained how she had been inspired by Star Trek to become a biologist, particularly by Voyager - "that was her Star Trek".

Picardo adds that, "I've had the same experience. A number of people who have gone into medicine over the years have told me that they were inspired by my character."  

Picardo was invited to join the Planetary Society in the late 90s after attending an event celebrating Ray Bradbury's 70th birthday, at which a number of actors did readings from Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Picardo was asked to become an advisor, and was asked to spearhead some of their educational challenges for young people. He became involved in the innovative Red Rover project, where schools exchanged rovers that they had constructed out of Lego™, which would then explore the other school's version of Mars and vice versa.

He also helped to promote NASA's 1999 Mars Millennium program, a challenge for students to create a 2030 Martian village for one hundred inhabitants, and managed to convince Rick Berman, Voyager's Executive Producer,  to allow him to do a PSA from the Voyager set. Years later, he received a thank-you letter through the Planetary Society from a PhD. at JPL who had originally become interested in space exploration because of that announcement and her subsequent work on the project, finally ending up working on the Curiousity mission. "And that makes me as proud of my relationship with Star Trek as anything else."

An audience member follows with a question as whether either of the speakers had been fans of space and science fiction before their involvement with Star Trek. 

Braga was already a science fiction reader more than a Star Trek person before he started working on Star Trek, and has been a huge science fiction reader his entire life. "I love science fiction!" 

Picardo characterizes himself as having read "quite a bit" of science fiction as a young man, but wasn't a Star Trek fan originally.  He was first asked about being a Star Trek fan before his work on Voyager at a Star Trek convention, and after a "deer in the headlights" moment, decided that "If I lie now, I'll have to lie forever."

Braga interjects, "Star Trek fans were nerds. We were the horror people, they thought we were nerds. Dungeons & Dragons players thought we were both nerds, they were the REAL nerds.

"But the thing is, once you work on Star Trek, you become a fan for life. It's in your DNA forever. It really changes you."

Picardo agrees, and mentions watching Lost in Space and having a crush on Angela Cartwright: "Star Trek, I guess the women seemed too old for me at 14.  But I missed all of Star Trek the first time around. I remember ridiculing friends of mine from Yale who'd sit down and watch Star Trek reruns in the afternoon - they got the last laugh on me."

After being cast in Voyager, Picardo was sent a package of ten Next Generation episodes to watch . "I was stunned by the quality of the storytelling, the variety in the stories, and I got really jazzed to start the job, and I felt very lucky to get it.

"The longer you work on it from the inside and you meet the people that love it, that it's influenced their lives, either as great entertainment and high ethical standards, or, it's inspired them to pursue careers in science and technology and engineering, and that's very gratifying."

Braga adds that "Science fiction and science have a symbiotic relationship," mentioning Leo Szilard, who conceived the idea of nuclear chain reaction and the concept of the atomic bomb based on an idea from The World Set Free, a novel by H. G. Wells.

Braga's most famous Star Trek episodes came from his interest in quantum physics, ideas that were new in the 90s and seemed radical at the time, that he used in episodes.  Picardo observes that, "the people that love Star Trek, and are very sciency people themselves, are very complimentary that Star Trek is based in real science and extends it to an incredible degree."

He then cites a comment by Neil deGrasse Tyson, who, when asked if he preferred the science in Star Trek or the science in Star Wars, replied, "Star Wars - what science?"

Braga explains that the shows always had a science consultant, but admits that he would always try to "tell the story first and then fit the science in, could this be plausible? But we were very studious about making sure the science was good."

The session ends with a series of audience questions.  Braga answers a question about science fiction authors by saying that he's "a huge fan of H. G. Wells, who invented time travel stories, invisibility stories, alien invasion stories, the guy invented every science fiction genre.***

"And his books are amazing, and beautifully written." 

Another attendee asks how Voyager has affected their relationship with other people.  Picardo talks about the blessing and the curse of his children being associated with such a distinctive last name, and  about introducing his Star Trek character to his children, and having to explain what acting was and why Voyager couldn't come and pick him up to go to work.  (Interestingly, both of his children have ended up in post production, one in VFX after being mentored by Voyager episode director John Bruno.)

Braga ends the session with a simple statement: "In thinking about it for the question, it just hit me that my three best friends are people I met because of my work on Star Trek."

- Sid

* Not the British one with the blue time travel box, the other Doctor, the emergency hologram one. Ironically, Picardo originally planned a medical career in real life, and attended classes at Yale - acting was just a sideline.

** You could easily make a case that there's no journey for the characters in the original Star Trek, but I think that those characters were never intended to have a journey - their strength comes from their archetypal nature. 

*** I love H. G. Wells as well, but I have to disagree with one thing - to the best of my knowledge, Wells never wrote about robots or androids.

 

Cognitive Dissonance, or WTF?

 

Okay, you've got me on this one. It's definitely Patrick Stewart, and it's definitely the Enterprise. If anyone finds any sort of explanation of this, please do let me know what the hell was going on.

- Sid

"Wouldn't you rather see the whole movie?"

Imagine if you will: you and a couple of friends decide to head over to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, down there in Austin, Texas - they're going to show The Wrath of Khan, the best of the original series Star Trek movies, as part of this year's Fantastic Fest, and then there's supposed to be a ten minute preview from the new Star Trek prequel movie. There's a bit of chat from the guests from the production team of the new movie about the preview, then Wrath of Khan starts.

Ah, come on - two minutes in and the film jams? Damn analog technology.... Hold on, who's that on stage? Leonard Nimoy? Spock? What? And he's just asked if we wouldn't rather see the WHOLE new Star Trek movie?!

The surprise premiere of the new Star Trek movie at this year's Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, an annual film festival dedicated to fantasy, horror, action and science fiction, has to be the best thank-you to the fan community of all time. It's also an extraordinarily brave thing to do, especially considering that the recent Wolverine work print leak is still echoing around the Internet. But even without that, I have to give Paramount full credit for boldly combining a brilliant guerilla marketing move with an acknowledgement of the importance of the fans to the Star Trek franchise.

It's also going to make those people in the audience into legends in the fan community: "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers", as Shakespeare puts it. Of course, the hard core being what it is, you can guarantee that at least one person in the audience was angry about not seeing Wrath of Khan for the 215th time.

- Sid

A successful ten bucks on Robbie Williams would nicely take care of Christmas presents.

David Tennant, who has been playing the role of the Doctor on Doctor Who for the last three years, has announced that he will be stepping down from the helm of the Tardis at the end of 2009. Sad news, but I can certainly understand why someone would want to get out before it completely took over their life, as has happened with more than a few cast members from Star Trek and its various permutations.

Of course, the immediate question that arises is: who will replace the talented Mr. Tennant? (One has to give full points to series script editor Gerry Davis and producer Innes Lloyd, who were jointly responsible for introducing in 1966 the idea of the Doctor's regeneration as a tool for continuing the series in spite of old age, boredom, and unsuitability on the part of lead actors. Hopefully raises were involved.)

I was surprised to learn that it's possible to gamble on the identity of the new Doctor, and that there is a substantial odds list available:

ODDS ON NEW DOCTOR FROM PADDY POWER (3rd Nov 2008)

• 2/1 David Morrisey
• 6/1 Paterson Joseph
• 8/1 James Nesbitt, Chiwetel Ejiofor
• 10/1 Russell Tovey, John Simm
• 12/1 Anthony Head
• 14/1 Robert Carlyle, David Walliams
• 16/1 Richard E Grant
• 18/1 Richard Coyle, Aidan Gillen, Alan Davies, Sean Pertwee
• 20/1 Jason Statham, Harry Lloyd, Nigel Harman, Marc Warren, Jack Davenport
• 25/1 Julian Walsh, Adrian Lester, Alexander Armstrong
• 33/1 Julian Rhind-Tutt, Rupert Penry-Jones, James McAvoy
• 40/1 Bill Nighy, Stephen Fry, Ben Wishaw
• 50/1 John Barrowman, Ben Miles, David Suchet, Hugh Laurie
• 66/1 Gary Oldman, Matt Smith, Paul Bettany, Joel Beckett, Christopher Eccleston
• 80/1 Alex Kingston, Dean Lennox Kelly, Christopher Villiers
• 100/1 Ricky Gervais
• 150/1 Hugh Grant, Russell Brand, Vinnie Jones
• 200/1 Robbie Williams

Personally, I'd like to see Sean Pertwee get in: as the son of Jon Pertwee, the third Doctor, there's a certain geeky appeal to having him step into the role, and he has some background in the genre. (Apparently he also put fifty quid on himself, according to an interview in The Sun.)

A few of the candidates are black, and one can imagine that there's a tempting synergy involved in following the election of Barack Obama with a Doctor of colour - but wait, why is there only one woman on the list? I'm aware that Joanna Lumley was under consideration a few years back, and David Tennant jokingly suggested that Billie Piper could step into his place quite easily, although for me that would involve one hell of a script. British comedian Jennifer Saunders has been mentioned in connection with the part, although apparently just for a one-off appearance.

For myself, I think that Claudia Black would make a fabulous Doctor*. She has an impressive resumé in the genre, would come with an established fan base, and she's drop dead good looking, something for which Doctor Who has not always been noted. Her transition from Aeryn Sun on Farscape to Vala Mal Doran on Stargate SG-1 demonstrates an ability to move from serious to comedic roles, something that would suit the Doctor's character.

Circumstantial evidence (and smart bettors) would seem to be leaning toward David Morrissey, whose picture appears at the top of this posting beside Ms. Black's. I'm a bit sceptical about Mr. Morrissey, to be honest. Successful Doctors have always had a slight spark of craziness in their personalities - nothing personal, but the man looks as exciting as dry toast. Oh well, let's not give up yet: there's always that 100 to 1 shot that Ricky Gervais will get it.

- Sid

* November 21 - And then the Doctor would be a woman, and Black - I'm sorry, I waited a week but I finally couldn't hold out any more.

Part Two: The Dark Side

William Shatner: You know, before I answer any more questions there's something I wanted to say. Having received all your letters over the years, and I've spoken to many of you, and some of you have traveled... y'know... hundreds of miles to be here, I'd just like to say... GET A LIFE, will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it's just a TV show! I mean, look at you, look at the way you're dressed! You've turned an enjoyable little job, that I did as a lark for a few years, into a COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME! I mean, how old are you people? What have you done with yourselves? You, you must be almost 30... have you ever kissed a girl? I didn't think so! There's a whole world out there! When I was your age, I didn't watch television! I LIVED! So... move out of your parent's basements! And get your own apartments and GROW THE HELL UP! I mean, it's just a TV show dammit, IT'S JUST A TV SHOW!

Charlie: Are - are you saying then that we should pay more attention to the movies?

- Saturday Night Live, December 20, 1986

The infamous Saturday Night Live skit with William Shatner takes us to one of the curious aspects of science fiction that has almost defined the genre in the eyes of the public: the Star Trek Fan, or "Trekkie".

It is customary to blame Fandom on Star Trek, and let's be fair, if fingers have to be pointed, Gene Roddenberry's opus really does create the first really big (and slightly insane) fan community. Star Wars and Harry Potter have attracted more than their fair share of, ah, "overly-excited" followers, but I still think that Star Trek sets the standard. In fact, as a phenomenon, Star Trek fandom has probably garnered as much attention as the material that created it.

And let's be honest, some of the excesses of Star Trek fans would sound like jokes if they weren't true. In fact, they are true and they still sound like jokes. Bad enough that someone has translated Hamlet in Klingon, but who in their right mind would decide to raise their children bilingually in English and Klingon, for heaven's sake? Yes, fine, it's probably a bit marginal to admit to attending Star Trek conventions in costume, but several years ago I was sitting in a strip club in Toronto (I make no apologies) and someone walked in wearing a full Next Generation Star Fleet uniform. Hallowe'en? No, sorry, middle of summer. (I saw one of the dancers chatting with him, and later asked her if she'd gotten any explanation of his outfit. Apparently he just liked the attention that it brought - which was probably not intended to be funny, in spite of the fact that he was talking to someone who was wearing a g-string and fishnet stockings for similar reasons.) Plenty of fans write their own versions of the material: Star Trek fans build eerily accurate duplicates of the bridge of the Enterprise and hire Walter Koenig and George Takei so that they can shoot their own episodes. (Don't believe that one? http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/)

As Shatner's monologue points out, over the years Star Trek has replaced real life for innumerable geeks, losers, nerds and fanboys. And yet...and yet...time heals all wounds. Somehow the ongoing cultural penetration of Star Trek has given it an unexpected legitimacy, to the point where it's become (dare I say) almost respectable to display a comprehensive grasp of the history of the Federation charter when chatting over cocktails. And, if anyone wishes to join the select, enviable few that possess that kind of knowledge, just let me know. After all, I do own TWO copies of the original Starfleet Technical Manual...

- Sid

Part One: the best known split infinitive of all time.

Space: The final frontier
These are the voyages of the starship, Enterprise
Its 5 year mission
To explore strange new worlds
To seek out new life and new civilizations
To boldly go where no man has gone before...

Today we celebrate the birthday of one of the great science fiction icons: the original Star Trek, which began its run on September 8th, 1966.* It is impossible to think of any other piece of popular entertainment that has had the same impact on society as this short-lived NBC series, which only managed to limp along for three seasons before being cancelled.

Why is the damn thing so popular?

For the moment, let's ignore all of the sequels, movies, spin-offs, cartoons, comic books, novels, and games: let's just look at the original Star Trek, because it paves the way for all of the others. All of the succeeding material is a bit like preaching to the choir - the original series is what creates the enormous following that allows for everything that follows. So let's jump back in time (pardon me a minor science fiction moment there) to 1966 and have a look at the original Star Trek in its natural environment.

In 1966, science fiction is thin on the ground for the television viewer. The Twilight Zone had come and gone (with a younger William Shatner featured in the episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet") and since then very little has come to fill the gap. Lost In Space is starting its second season, but it's already starting down the road to increasingly juvenile and camp episodes, and The Time Tunnel, an unfortunate pastiche of historical inaccuracy and movie filler shots, begins its first season. Bewitched and Batman are only marginally in the genre, and Dark Shadows is more of a soap opera than anything else.

Having listed the competition, the question becomes more one of why Star Trek wasn't more successful than it was! Full credit has to go to Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, for the breadth of his vision of the 23rd Century. Unsuspecting people who didn't know their Asimovs from their Ellisons (so to speak) were suddenly exposed to a startling array of marvels: fast-than-light warp drive, the transporter**, phasers and photon torpedoes, replicators, tractor beams, force fields, time travel, parallel universes, alien races, planet killers, androids, galactic empires, and the entire catalogue of future wonders. It must have hit unsuspecting viewers like a bomb when compared to the alternatives.

The main characters are perhaps a little one-dimensional, but the real value of the triumvirate of Spock, Kirk and McCoy is that they represent the elements of Logic, Will and Emotion that are constantly in conflict in everyone's character, but externalized and given life. Similarly, at their best the plot lines deal with topics on an almost Shakespearian level, the constants of love, hate, laughter and fear that are the mainstays of life. Are all of the episodes brilliant? No, of course not, but even at its worst Star Trek has a feeling of elemental appeal, of addressing fundamental issues and questions.

And yet, somehow, all of that is secondary to the real significance of the program. The Cold War is a very real threat in 1966. In 1962, a mere four years earlier, the Cuban Missile Crisis had poised the world on the brink of nuclear war, and the hands of the Doomsday Clock stand at seven minutes to midnight. Meanwhile, angry crowds barrage Martin Luther King with stones and bricks in Chicago, Malcolm X has been dead for just over a year, and the Watts Riots are still an angry memory.

Star Trek presented a future in which humanity, as a species, had survived - not a perfect future, but a better one, a hopeful one, and the word "hope" is the one most often used when the importance of the show is discussed. The multi-racial bridge crew represented one aspect of that hope: again, forty years after the event, it's difficult to realize how astonishing the character of Lieutenant Uhura was in 1966, where the concept of a woman of colour occupying a position of authority would still have been extraordinary - and inspirational.

"Inspirational" may be the key to all of it. If, as is the dream of every science fiction fan, we eventually make our way to the stars, some small credit for that leap should lie with Star Trek, simply for suggesting that we might be capable of making it.

- Sid

* We also celebrate the birthday of Paul Levesque, TPH courier, but since he hasn't spawned any spinoffs or sequels, there are no Paul Levesque conventions, and his fan base, although dedicated, is much smaller, some other blogger is going to have to discuss his quirky success.

** I know full well that the transporter was invented in order to save the money that would have been spent on special effects shots of the Enterprise landing on planets, but that in no way diminishes the brilliance of the idea.

(Insert Star Trek cliché here.)

 

I was having a beer with a friend when his cell phone rang. After reassuring his wife that he was certain to forget to buy milk on the way home, he hung up, looked at his phone contemplatively and said, "Do you think that cell phones would look like this if it wasn't for Star Trek?" 

 

Well, actually, no, they wouldn't. Apparently Martin Cooper, the chief engineer at Motorola who developed the cell phone in 1973, is on record as stating that Star Trek was his inspiration.

- Sid

 

Since when?

I was just reading Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather and near the end there's a little expository section when a woman running a net-based correlation service/Delphic oracle asks the stormchasers for their opinions:

"My question is: When do you think the human race conclusively lost control over its own destiny?"

Answers range from Columbus to the French Revolution, and from 1914 to 1968. MY first thought was "Around the point where we started using sharp sticks to dig out grubs, probably." My second thought was, "Wait, when did we have control?" Looking at the great waves of change in our development as a species, the great events of history, NONE of them have been changes that we have decided upon as a species. It's always been my contention that when the aliens finally get here (my apologies to the flying saucer crowd, but I don't think that they've been here yet), they're going to look around and say, "What, could you people not agree on anything?"

It's a very science fiction concept to think in terms of humanity as a species, as a group which might actually have some kind of unified goal. Right now we show perilously little sign of anything close to that, and I have to wonder if we will manage to stumble through all of the problems that we've created for ourselves until we get to a point where we're all working together. (Apparently one of the attractions of Star Trek in its various incarnations is that it suggests a future in which we act as a species, ignoring the minor divisions of race, creed and nation.)

And even then, who knows? One envisions the dinosaurs complacently affixing their claw prints to some kind of planetary accord for lizards, right before the comet comes screaming into the atmosphere...

- Sid