A Brief Guide to Star Trek (12 page)

In financing the show Paramount had sold
Star Trek
episodes to NBC at two-thirds of their actual cost to make (known as deficit funding), so when production wrapped on the series,
Star Trek
showed as a $4.7-million debt on the Paramount balance sheet. With no more episodes forthcoming and ancillary income streams (merchandise such as model kits) unlikely to develop any further, Paramount saw little chance that the show would recover that expenditure. The only hope was that some of that money might be recovered by selling the series into syndication, which consisted of cheap reruns on affiliated local TV stations – not seen as an important outlet or revenue stream until after
Star Trek
proved a success through this very outlet in the 1970s.

One of the main reasons that Roddenberry claimed he had developed
Star Trek
was so he could deal with then-contemporary issues (race, war, social conditions) in the guise of far-future science fiction. The 1960s was a revolutionary period for representations of ethnicity, gender and sexuality, as well as being the height of the Cold War and a period of social turmoil – all of which was reflected (often in disguise) in various
Star Trek
episodes. Learning from his struggles on
The Lieutenant
, Roddenberry dramatised his social comment within a fantasy context, much as Serling had done on
The Twilight Zone
. ‘The first pilot really began with the fact that TV in the days when I began was so severely censored’, said Roddenberry at a TV industry event in 1988. ‘I thought maybe if I did what [English satirist Jonathan] Swift did, and used far-off polka-dot people on far-off planets, I could get away with it.’

Star Trek
reflected contemporary 1960s social and cultural issues in its storytelling. As the series progressed Roddenberry smuggled social issue dramas onto television disguised as science fiction action-adventure. On the TV show
Livewire
Roddenberry admitted: ‘I saw an opportunity to use the series, to really use it, to say the things I believe, like to be different is not necessarily to be ugly. I wanted to make some comments. In
television in those days you couldn’t talk about sex, unions, politics – anything of any meaning – I thought if I have it happen “way out there” maybe I can get it past the censors. And I did: every fourteen-year-old knew what I was talking about, but it went right over the censor’s head.’

Of the seventy-nine episodes that make up
The Original Series
, twelve of them deal with computers or artificial intelligences that set out to dominate organic life. Among those in the first season are ‘The Return of the Archons’, which sees the descendants of Starfleet officers freed from the control of a supercomputer, and ‘A Taste of Armageddon’, in which two warring cultures abide by a computer’s assessment of virtual casualties and then calmly kill their own people. In both, Kirk destroys the computer at the heart of the respective cultures, and in the process tries to teach the now freed peoples to think for themselves. It was a clear reflection of thinking promoting individuality in the 1960s, while ‘A Taste of Armageddon’ also functioned as an allegory for the futile nature of war, particularly the ongoing controversial conflict in Vietnam at that time.

In ‘The Changeling’, early in the second season, the
Enterprise
encounters an artificial intelligence known as Nomad, a long-lost Earth probe, damaged during its long voyage and reconstituted by superior machine intelligences. Its altered programming now has Nomad seeking out life in order to exterminate it, a mission only put on hold as the machine believes Kirk to be its creator. Kirk demolishes the machine’s claim to infallibility by adopting the risky strategy of revealing he is not Jackson Roykirk, creator of the Earth Nomad probe, and so the machine is wrong. Naturally, this breakdown in logic causes Nomad to self-destruct.

Other episodes from
The Original Series
dealing with the theme include ‘The Doomsday Machine’, about a relentless weapon that destroys all before it (a space-based variation of
Moby Dick
, essentially), while ‘The Apple’ features yet another world run by a computer intelligence that is eventually destroyed by Kirk. ‘The Ultimate Computer’ sees an artificial intelligence
installed on the
Enterprise
to demonstrate that a computer can run the ship better than its human crew. In the course of the episode, Kirk begins to despair that he is no longer needed, until the computer (which is augmented by creator Daystrom’s disturbed mental patterns) acts illogically and begins destroying other starships. It’s another opportunity for Kirk to talk a computer to death – in Roddenberry’s
Star Trek
, the organic always overcomes the artificial and mechanical.

The appearance of malevolent computers or artificial intelligence in
Star Trek
episodes are often used to highlight the character of Spock: while his logic often causes him to agree with a computer’s processing, he’s always on the side of Kirk in prioritising organic life and intelligence over the artificial. In ‘The Ultimate Computer’, Spock goes so far as to say, ‘Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them.’ In ‘The Apple’, he can see the virtue in the computer-controlled primitive (and stagnant) society, much to Dr McCoy’s disgust.

Another favourite topic of many episodes in
The Original Series
was superpowered or God-like beings. While Gene Roddenberry professed humanist beliefs and was disdainful of organised religion, he seemed fascinated by the concept of God and this often arose in
Star Trek
stories. In a letter to a cousin in 1984, Roddenberry wrote: ‘The real villain is religion – at least, religion as generally practised by people who somehow become sure that they and only they know the “real” answer. How few humans there are that seem to realise that killing, much less hating, their fellow humans in the name of their “god” is the ultimate kind of perversion.’

From the second pilot, ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’, through a handful of first season episodes – ‘Charlie X’, ‘The Squire of Gothos’, ‘The Return of the Archons’ and ‘Space Seed’ prime among them – the theme occurs repeatedly. Often, the powers that these beings demonstrate come with a degree of immaturity. The Squire of Gothos himself is a child, and Balok in ‘The Corbomite Maneuver’ is child-like’ (a concept well
spoofed in the
Futurama
episode ‘Where No Fan Has Gone Before’). Even the Greek ‘god’ Apollo in ‘Who Mourns for Adonais?’ seems out of his depth when he attempts to make the
Enterprise
crew worship him, just as the humans of old did. He has to be persuaded by Kirk that his time has passed and he must move on to the spiritual plane, like his contemporaries did before him.

‘Space Seed’ presents the most obvious example of a superhuman in the genetically engineered Khan. His biological superiority, a legacy of the Eugenics War of the 1990s, allows him to feel it is his right to dominate those around him. Khan uses crewmember Marla McGivers to facilitate his takeover of the
Enterprise
, and she eventually joins him in his exile to Ceti Alpha V after Kirk regains his ship. The story provided the springboard for Nicholas Meyer’s
The Wrath of Khan
.

The many other episodes featuring superior or God-like beings include ‘Catspaw’, a Hallowe’en trifle that puts the
Enterprise
crew at the mercy of Korob and Sylvia, powerful aliens exploring human emotions, and ‘Obsession’ (yet another
Moby Dick
variant) in which Kirk faces off against a truly alien gas cloud responsible for the deaths of fellow crewmembers earlier in his career. Most of
Star Trek
’s superior beings, however, are humanoid, like those in ‘The Gamesters of Triskelion’. They force the
Enterprise
crew to take part in gladiatorial contests for their amusement, an idea echoed in ‘Plato’s Stepchildren’ that again sees the crew acting against their natures at the behest of superior powers. In ‘By Any Other Name’, the
Enterprise
is hijacked (again) by powerful beings from Andromeda (although, as in ‘Catspaw’, we only ever see two of them due to the limited budget). They intend to use the ship to invade another galaxy, but Kirk is able to use extreme human emotional states against them, thus recapturing his beloved vessel.

The 1960s was a peak period of the Cold War stand-off between the United States and the Soviet Union, culminating in the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The Vietnam War had
escalated throughout the decade, and by the late 1960s, when
Star Trek
was on air, public opinion was increasingly turning against it. War, conflict, political matters and diplomacy became a central part of Gene Roddenberry’s plan to use ‘far-off polka-dot people on far-off planets’ to make his political comments through drama.

A variety of episodes depict straightforward conflicts that allow Kirk to become a mouthpiece for a variety of views, mainly from Roddenberry and Coon. Sometimes, the use of force is justified whereas at other times the need to battle an enemy is a cause for lament. Early in the first season, ‘The Corbomite Maneuver’ sees the human race branded as aggressive savages by Balok, who threatens to destroy the
Enterprise
. Only the bluff of the title, that the
Enterprise
has a weapon that deflects energy back upon the aggressor, allows Kirk to stop Balok. ‘Balance of Terror’ shows the battle of wits between Kirk and a nameless Romulan Commander (Mark Lenard) where the technology of destruction available to each is almost equally balanced. ‘A Taste of Armageddon’ takes this idea one step further, pitching two equally matched war-like cultures against each other. The war between Eminiar VII and Vendikar has lasted for 500 years, but there is no destruction of property – each planet abides by casualty figures produced by computer and a docile populace meekly turns up at the disintegration booths in the required numbers. Clearly a comment on Vietnam, the satirical intent was buried beneath a great science fiction concept. The Vietnam issue was even plainer in ‘A Private Little War’, a story that sees the Klingons and the Federation arming opposite forces in a conflict on a developing world. The only way to ‘preserve both sides’, according to Kirk, is to create a balance of power by arming both forces equally, driving Kirk to match the Klingons move by move. Interviewed on
Good Morning America
in 1986, Roddenberry made the claim that
Star Trek
was ‘the only dramatic show that ever talked against Vietnam. We set it on another planet. Kirk essentially played the role of our presidents in those years, where he’d gotten into it and was having trouble
getting out of it. It’s a pity: Vietnam would have ended many years sooner if it had been on dramatic shows on television because of the impact of these dramatic shows. If Dr Marcus Welby had come out and said something against Vietnam, my maiden aunts would have carried placards!’

A later episode, ‘Day of the Dove’, reversed this plot by having an alien entity arm both the Klingons and the
Enterprise
crew with swords, setting them against each other. Kirk and his Klingon opponent Kang have to stop fighting each other and cooperate if they are to understand what’s happening. Like the majority of
Star Trek
episodes, it’s entertaining even if the moral of the story (peace is better than war) is simplistic and obvious.

Star Trek
was often less than subtle in its political analogies: such was the case with the ‘Nazi planet’ in ‘Patterns of Force’. In an effort to depict the rise of a totalitarian state, this episode comes close to using Nazi iconography carelessly in a simple entertainment, while trying to convey a history lesson to the show’s young viewers about events then a mere twenty-five years in the past. A Federation historian has employed Nazi methods to run a planet, hoping that Nazism-with-a-conscience might have a different outcome – the conclusion of the story is that it doesn’t. ‘The
Enterprise
Incident’ – apart from giving William Shatner a taste of wearing Spock-style pointed ears – was a Cold War espionage tale in which Kirk and Spock go undercover as Romulans to steal their technology.

Perhaps the most interesting of all the Cold War-themed episodes of
Star Trek
is ‘Mirror, Mirror’. This well-remembered episode sees Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Uhura attempt to beam aboard the
Enterprise
, only to find themselves transported to an alternative universe version of the ship. Here they find a ruthless Terran Empire wreaking havoc throughout the galaxy, and a ship where promotion is obtained through assassination. In this universe, Mr Spock – sporting a goatee beard – is a ruthless enforcer, although he doesn’t want command of the ship. Chekov attempts to assassinate Kirk, while Sulu runs a sinister surveillance operation. The crewmembers from ‘our’ universe
must strive to fit in while trying to find a way back home – but Kirk can’t resist going one step further in trying to persuade the mirror Spock that there is a different way of running things. The episode gave rise to a series of follow-ups, in
Deep Space Nine
and
Enterprise
, as well as in a series of spin-off novels. ‘Mirror, Mirror’ offers a vision of how the Federation might have turned out if the positive future for humanity as depicted by Gene Roddenberry had not come to pass.

Diplomacy was explored in a variety of episodes, as the
Enterprise
crew played the role of diplomatic ambassador to new and developing civilisations or functioned as an intermediary between disputing cultures. ‘Errand of Mercy’ sees the Klingons and the
Enterprise
personnel battle for influence over the strategically important planet of Organia. The seemingly unconcerned Organians refuse to resist either side, frustrating Kirk and encouraging Klingon Commander Kor in his desire to dominate the planet. As the conflict escalates, the Organians reveal themselves as dominant energy beings that use their powers to prevent the battle. Kirk finds himself arguing against the Organians for his right to wage a war that he initially came to the planet to prevent. It was a rare moment of self-awareness for the
Enterprise
captain that plainly stated the case for and against the kind of conflict then raging in Vietnam.