Re: [Marxism] Star Trek

[nada <dwaltersMIA@xxxxxxxxx>]

I appreaciated Waistline's review and thoughts on Star Trek.

A few disjointed thoughts on this in response.

First, I enjoyed the movie immensely. Especially because I saw all the 
others and, more importantly, all the TV franchises, every episode (600 
altogether). It was, from a 'cinemagraphic point of view', probably the 
best, given the amount of money they poured into CGI and other special 
effects. They were simply spectacular.

I agree about time travel themes and in movies. Generally, most sci-fi 
is really sci-fantasy. Very little hard science fiction ever makes it to 
the screen, or for that matter, into novels. The hard science writers 
among sci-fi writers are few and far between (Clark, Asimov, Pournelle, 
Kim Stanley Robinson, a few others). Star Trek is sic-fantasy recast as 
hard sci-fi. It gets away with this largely because it is *consistent* 
in terms of the technology/science it seeks to have us accept. This is 
very important that there be at least a logic, as far out it may be, 
over many TV shows and movies, to makes us think it's science fiction. 
Of course it always succeeds in this. The fantasy-technology is often 
*explained*, sometime rather elaborately, through the various 
manifestations of ST.

The fantasy part is the acceptance of things like faster than light 
travel, transporters and being able to pilot through a black hole. I 
know, it's been "theorized", but really...it's a stretch. Still, great 
movie making!

But this is not the first Star Trek dealing with time travel. Star Trek 
First Contact was based on this as well, where the Enterprise crew 
pursued the Borg back in time to stop them from preventing Earth from 
initiating first contact with alien life. Also the cast of that movie, 
including the often exciting and yet intensely demure Alfre Woodard was 
quite well thought out.

What Waistline *may* not be aware of is that this is different canon. 
Star Trek in this version is a different time line than the canon of the 
Star Trek time line. It "is understood" by J. J. Abrams (director) that 
while this is a "prequel" to the original series ("TOS" in Trekke 
speak") it is not the same development of TOS, either, even though that 
development is in fact touched on by Spock. It is different from even 
*before* the chronological shenanigans presented in the movie as a the 
major theme.

Thus, and obvious to even casual followers of the TV shows, that the 
first Enterprise itself, in TOS and every subsequent version of Star 
Trek was built in the "Planetia Utopia" shipyards, in this movie, it's 
clearly being built on Earth, over a quite terrestrial power plant. So 
from the get-go it's all different. The characters are NOT the same as 
in TOS, they are "off". In fact, to a certain extent, this is explained 
a bit, but not completely, as to how the characters ended up *behaving* 
the way they do, IN the way they do,  especially if one is familiar with 
the canon of the ST franchise.

Politics. Waistline is correct that this is product of our times. The 
last TV franchise of ST failed miserably after a season and a half. Part 
of this was the clearly analogous plot line (also one heavily dealing 
with time travel and chronological mischief by malevolent forces) 
conceived of during the beginning of the Iraq war that "we" need to 
fight the forces of darkness intent on "destroying our way of life". OK, 
our planet, but the analogy holds.

This movie deals with a really upset character who seeks revenge (as 
opposed out right malevolent behavior intrinsic to their make up) to 
what happened to his people in the future. Does this make it a 'war' 
movie? I'm not so sure. Like Waistline, (and unlike our list moderator 
:), I like a good war movie also. "Space Opera", another sub-genre of 
sci-fi, is based completely on war far, usually of the "galactic empire" 
kind. Star Trek falls neatly into his genre as well and has always done 
it well. I'm not even sure this has an anti-terrorist theme. One can 
always fit a Star Trek villain into a terrorist theme if one wants. Even 
our Cormade Kahn whose genetically manipulated progeny sought planetary 
dominance over Earth later in this century but failed. Terrorist. So if 
one *wants* to, we can read into Star Trek that opened up this week as 
typical bourgeois propaganda. But then, maybe not.

David

 

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