Occam's Razor

Review: Star Trek (2009)

Nearly six years ago I said that Star Trek was dead and we should just move on. I have moved on to shows like Firefly and the re-imaging of Battlestar Galactica. I still have yet to see Star Trek: Nemesis, released in 2002 and probably never will watch it.

The funny thing about Star Trek though is when you think it is dead it is resurrected. It is understandable why the attempt is made: it has proven to be a huge moneymaker for Paramount, which bought Desilu Studios that produced the original series, and is now just a division of Viacom. Millions of Trekkers have not exactly disappeared, just sort of were burned out. What was needed was something to make us care about Star Trek again. What was needed, frankly, was a clean divorce from Rick Berman, who reinvented Star Trek in the 1980s and who shaped its many reincarnations. In this latest Star Trek movie released this weekend, labeled simply Star Trek, we have director J.J. Abrams to inject the brand of testosterone that was sorely needed in the franchise. His idea was to take us back to the beginning. Just how exactly did James T. Kirk become a starship captain anyhow? How did he meet Bones, Spock, Scotty, Uhura and the rest of the gang?

To make it work Abrams had to do a bit of reimagining himself. It is not cool to mess with the Star Trek canon. Granted there have been gaping holes in the canon before but messing with some things will not do. To make Star Trek exciting though a reimagining was necessary, so Abrams essentially created a hole in the space-time continuum so that two versions can now peacefully coexist. Yes, this is all for the good. I won’t give away too many plot points, but let’s just say that in this newest version Kirk’s predecessor, Captain Christopher Pike doesn’t end up a vegetable in care of The Talosians.

Instead, this version of Star Trek is what the 1960s version probably should have been if the budgets had been much larger and much better special effects had been available. Everyone and everything about the original series is improved by many orders of magnitude. If you go back and see the original series, many of the ancillary characters were more stereotypes than people. Scotty, Uhura, Chekov and Sulu showed up in most episodes but we learned little about them. In this movie, Abrams flushes many of them out rather substantially, particularly Uhura (Zoe Saldana). I never gave a damn about them in the original show, but based on this movie I want to know a whole lot more, especially about Lieutenant Uhura.

For a Trekker, this movie is a great gift: tremendously fun and entertaining, gloriously well acted, and full of tension, adventure and romance. Frankly, all the principle characters are far more interesting and engaging than they were in the TV series. Leonard Nimoy has a small (and necessary) role in this movie but thankfully, none of the other stars from the original series appear. I am so grateful that William Shatner was in no way associated with this movie. Chris Pine, who plays James Tiberius Kirk as a young adult, portrays all of Kirk’s cockiness without Shatner’s dreadful overacting. Pine is terrific and brilliantly cast, but so are all the other principle characters. I never was a Dr. McCoy fan, but casting Karl Urban (he played Eomer in The Lord of the Rings movies) as Bones was brilliant. Zachary Quinto would be an unlikely choice for Mr. Spock but frankly, he outdoes Leonard Nimoy, who was by far the best actor from the original series.

We saw the movie in IMAX. For those of you wondering if you should spend the extra money: save it. The camera is always in motion, which means that in IMAX the film is mostly blurry, but on a much bigger screen. The bigger screen also makes it harder to follow. Moreover, our IMAX theater figures that to get the total IMAX experience you have to hear it at ear piercing volumes. My ears will take a few more days to recover and hopefully I sustained no permanent damage. There is no lack of action in this incarnation so hold on to your armrests for it is going to be a wild ride.

I remember feeling the odd man out when I went with my family to see the Harry Potter movies. They were okay, but nothing special, but then I did not know all the characters. So I wonder how much of this movie will be appreciated by those who are not Trekkers. It feels more like a work for its fan base than for the Star Trek neophyte. Even for a Trekker who understands the long back story, it can be challenging to follow the plot points.

The movie also strains credulity because it brings together many of the characters (including Kirk, Bones, Uhura and Captain Christopher Pike) before Kirk even decides to join Starfleet. I am not sure what they are all doing out there in rural Iowa, but someone picked Iowa as a place to build starships, but not in a hanger, mind you. Bringing them together in Iowa though does tickle Star Trek’s enormous fan base. It is fun watching Kirk try to proposition Uhura, or to be caught while he is trying to bed her roommate. Other plot points make little sense. For reasons I won’t get into Kirk ends up on a very cold planet where he encounters, of all people, the elder Mr. Spock, who lives in exile but is not too far from a Starfleet outpost where we find a young engineer named Montgomery Scott. I also decided that I want to be a Romulan because they age very well. Eric Bana plays a Romulan named Nero who looks exactly the same age although twenty-five years have elapsed. Perhaps it is because of all that time inside his starship meant he did not have to worry about ultraviolet radiation.

Even if you are not vested in the Star Trek universe, you will still have a great time, but you may feel like someone watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show and wondering why the audience is acting out certain scenes. Just why is it so important that Spock and Kirk to have such a deep friendship anyhow? Is there anyone in the first world who has really managed to tune out Star Trek? It seems hard to imagine. Regardless, even if you have little affection for the original series or are just a casual Trekker, you will kick yourself if you miss this latest incarnation. It looks like preproduction is already underway for a sequel.

Of all the myriad Star Trek movies over the years, including some of the best ones like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, this one sails well above all of them. Prepare to be engaged and to have a stellar good time. Memo to the producers: please rush the sequel.

3.5 on my 4.0 scale.

May 9th, 2009 at 02:37pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | 3 comments

Second Viewing: City on the Edge of Forever

Watching movies and shows online can be both fun and convenient. On Christmas Eve, I watched the British film Cashback streamed live to my desktop computer. Last night I watched classic Star Trek, specifically the episode City on the Edge of Forever from the show’s first season. Many Trekkers insist this was the best episode in the three-year run of the original series and I am inclined to agree. It was ostensibly written by science fiction author Harlan Ellison, but had to be substantially rewritten by staff scriptwriter D. C. Fontana to keep it within the show’s budget and fifty-minute length.

In case you have not seen the episode, at the start of the show NCC-1701 (a.k.a. the U.S.S. Enterprise) finds itself in the midst of a space-time disturbance. It jolts the ship; the usual sparks fly out of the navigator’s console and knocks out poor Lieutenant Sulu. Dr. McCoy (“Bones”) rushes to the bridge to give Sulu a small dose of “cordrazine”. When the ship is rocked again by another space-time disturbance McCoy accidentally injects the rest into himself, which turns him into a paranoid schizophrenic. He manages to elude security and beam himself down to the planet they are orbiting, which is at the center of the space-time disturbance. There on the planet a mysterious structure called The Guardian acts as a portal to human history. Dr. McCoy, still in a cordrazine paranoia high, jumps through the portal and back in time to New York City during the Great Depression.

It is not a good idea to disturb time because McCoy apparently does something to cause their present reality to disappear. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock end up going back to the same time to try to prevent McCoy from doing whatever he did to change history. This is a tall order because there is no guarantee they can find him.

I will not give out too much more of the plot on the off chance you have not seen the episode. While I watched it online on Netflix, there are other places online you can watch it, some for free. One place is cbs.com, which is more than a bit ironic since it first ran forty years ago on NBC.

I was ten when the show first ran in 1967. For some bizarre reason my parents considered Star Trek too adult for us godly devout Catholics (perhaps it was the miniskirts the women wore), so it was off our list of approved shows. I did not actually see it until the early 1970s when it was broadcast in abbreviated form on an independent TV channel in Orlando. As I was living in Daytona Beach, this meant poor image quality and many Ronco ads. Watching it online though was a pleasure, because I could see it in full color and in higher definition than the 435 lines available to TV viewers back in the 1960s. It was like watching it projected in a movie theater. It made quite a difference.

Star Trek is of course a fantasy about the future, but to me it was a blast into my distantly remote past when I was only ten years old, we were up to our hips in Vietnam and prominent people like Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were being gunned down. As much as Gene Roddenberry tried to hide it in its 23rd century frame, the show espoused the values of those times. Back then, the network censors were pretty ruthless. Kirk’s line at the end of the episode, “Let’s get the hell out of here,” considered shocking at the time, was lucky to make it past the network censors.

Women may have worn miniskirts in the U.S.S. Enterprise but there are oddities in the shows that today’s National Organization for Women would find sexist. When time stops, for example, Lt. Uhura says (rather unconvincingly), “Captain, I’m afraid.” It was perfectly reasonable back in the 1960s for a woman, even a Star Fleet officer like Uhura to revert to wallflower when the situation got too heavy. The same was not true for Kirk or Spock. It was time to raise the shields of masculinity and exude some testosterone.

For the 1960s, Star Trek was high primetime cinema. However, the pressures of putting out twenty-six episodes a year as well as keeping to a strict budget frequently strained the quality of the show. City on the Edge of Forever is an excellent episode for classic Star Trek, yet if compared to most shows of its successor, Star Trek: The Next Generation, it would rank maybe in the middle. In the 1960s, TV was not considered to be art, but entertainment. Occasional series like The Twilight Zone showed what the medium was capable of. With the constraints on time and budget the show was under, putting out good episodes every week was impossible. Unlike the original series, Star Trek: The Next Generation was syndicated. This allowed for bigger budgets, higher production values and better actors. Watching the original Star Trek series forty years later, the lack of quality, even for the better shows, is glaring.

Still, if you can rewind your mental clock back four decades you can appreciate that City on the Edge of Forever as a really good episode. New York City in the Great Depression was portrayed on a back lot of Desilu Studios, but the scenes were quite convincingly rendered. William Shatner’s ego is kept in check by director Joseph Pevney, who probably not coincidentally directed many of the show’s better episodes. Joan Collins plays the kind-hearted social worker Edith Keeler and renders a surprisingly fine performance. Some of the dialog comes across as rather strange and the music is at times too suggestive of how you are supposed to feel, but the episode is a great blend of fun, drama and science fiction. Actually, the best performance in the episode is given by the late DeForest Kelley (McCoy). It is consistently well acted, well directed and well written. The essence of Ellison’s fascinating and tragic plot is retained and convincingly rendered.

What a pity that network executives were so niggardly with prime time shows back in the 1960s. Star Trek was obviously an innovative idea for a TV series, given its long and successful franchise. Given the relative paucity of its production values (which were considered high for the time) the original series, when it was good in episodes like this one, demonstrated what the original series could have been had it been given the time and the money necessary. Star Trek’s true glory was destined to show up in future incarnations of the show.

December 27th, 2008 at 10:02pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2008, The Arts | one comment

The audacity of being Bill Shatner

So recently, I learned that actor George Takei (Sulu, on the original Star Trek) had invited William Shatner to his wedding after all. (Takei, 71, was recently wedded to his longtime gay partner Brad Altman, 54.) Takei does not say how he sent the invitation. Presumably, he did it on engraved stationery and sent it via the U.S. Mail.  In any event, Shatner claims he never received an invitation and that is why he wasn’t there, but it was certainly not because he is a homophobe. This has become the latest in a long running tiff between the two former Star Trek cast members. Apparently, George and Bill cannot just pick up the phone and chat.

However, I am not surprised to find out that Bill did not show up. After all, Takei thinks Shatner has an Olympian size ego and has said as much, most recently on Entertainment Tonight but also in his tell-all 1994 book, To the Stars: The Autobiography of George Takei.

I did not learn all these tawdry details until sometime over the last few months I stumbled on The Shatner Project, Bill’s personal YouTube site. Since then, I have gone back on occasion, not because I am a big fan of Bill Shatner but for the sheer audacity of watching Bill be Bill. Unless you are a big fan of Shatner, it is hard to disagree with Takei’s assessment of Shatner’s oversized ego. Indeed, the site (not to mention Shatner’s own personal website) indicates that Bill Shatner likes to make sure the world knows what’s going on in Bill Shatner’s life.

I think my recent fascination for Bill’s site is like rubbernecking past a really awful car crash. One thing I can say about Bill: he is not afraid to be what he wants us to think he is. If you want to know what Bill Shatner wants us to think of him, watch some of his YouTube videos. Shatner continues to boldly go where few actors rightly have gone before, which in this case is the quirky but pedestrian YouTube site. On his YouTube site, you can see him talking with his daughter Lisabeth or his wife Elizabeth (who looks about his daughter’s age) as well as hear him emote on all sorts of things. One of these recently, and what caught my attention, has been his feelings about George Takei, who he has characterized as a psychotic. He feels that Takei is out to discredit him. It turns out though that Takei’s sin, and the reason he has been frequently mentioned on his site lately, is that Takei simply tells people who ask just what Shatner clearly is in his videos: an egomaniac.

Bill, if you were not an egomaniac, why would you have your own domain, billshatner.com, with forums, a fan club, blogs for both you and your daughter and (naturally) your own online store. There, fans can preorder his newest book Up Till Now. Also available is a collection of personally signed pictures and the opportunity to preorder a Captain Kirk nutcracker (sale price: only $28.99). Is the Actors’ Guild not sending you enough royalties? Moreover, isn’t paying $94.95 for a personally signed copy of your latest book a wee bit excessive?

What sort of exciting things do we learn about Bill Shatner from his YouTube site? Aside from his thoughts about his dysfunctional relationship with George Takei, you can learn all about Thanksgiving in the Shatner household, his thoughts on Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin, watch Bill drive a car and watch Bill’s close encounter with Koko the Gorilla.

Granted, considering most of the dreck on YouTube, The Shatner Project might be considered something like high art. I actually did find one video of particular interest, this one, where William Shatner talks about his infamous Rocketman video. (His excuse: he didn’t think it was being videotaped.) No worries, Elton John; you do not have to give up your day job.

I imagine Shatner does have a significant fan club that thinks he is something of a god. Fans are not known for being unbiased in their fandom. As for the rest of us, Shatner and his web site and videos in particular, give us plenty of reason to develop slack jaw. I suspect that the fact that others of us treat him and his site with derision does not bother him in the least. As I noted with Sarah Palin, to some people any form of attention, even if it is negative, is better than no attention. Shatner may be 77, but if he is destined to be a B actor, he might as well go through life with the ego of an A actor. How will his obituary read? It’s hard to say as he is still among the living, but we can be sure when he passes from this life his obituary will be large and oversized, much like himself and his inflated career.

Now if I can just break my The Shatner Project addiction. To quote Mr. Spock, it’s “fascinating” in a bizarre and surreal sort of way. Perhaps in his final years, he can go on tour with the circus. He could get a tent of his own right outside the three-ring circus. He would make quite a freak show. Heck, I would gladly pay to see a live performance of Bill doing Rocketman. It is not to be missed! Perhaps it could be followed by his rendition of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Something must have rubbed off because at a stage in their careers, even Leonard Nimoy was affected, as documented in this not to be believed 60s video.

Takei at least still has his dignity intact. For sheer spunk and audacity though, few will be able to match William Shatner.

December 2nd, 2008 at 09:29pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | 2 comments

Where no man has gone before

These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. (Italics mine)

Speaking of Star Trek, actor George Takei (age 71), a member of the original Star Trek cast who is perhaps better known as Lieutenant Sulu was married yesterday at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California. Most Americans would probably wish Takei best wishes in his marriage, but perhaps fewer would if they knew that he married another man.

His husband is Brad Altman, age 54. This might suggest that Takei has a tendency for younger men, except they have already been happily together for twenty-one years. Regardless of what you think about gays and the sanctity of marriage, it is likely that this marriage will survive, since it seems like it has been a marriage in all but the legal sense for a long time.

Well, maybe not. On November 4th, California voters get to weigh in on Proposition 8 that would declare marriage between gays and lesbians illegal. So perhaps this marriage will only survive in the legal sense for a few more months. Takei and Altman though need not worry too much. Current polls suggest Californians will defeat the proposition handily.

Takei may be a famous actor but that doesn’t mean Uncle Sam will cut he and Altman a tax break for their commitment of love. Gay marriage may be technically legal in California and Massachusetts, but that doesn’t mean they can expect any federal recognition for their union. When it is time to file their 1040s with the IRS next year, they darn well better check “Single” or the IRS may have to send its auditors to check their returns for the last thirty years.

Star Trek was of course a product of the 1960s when liberalism was surging. Star Trek let us envision a different world after we had transcended polarizing issues such as racism and sexism. The Enterprise was the model of diversity. Takei played the token Asian. Still, creator Gene Roddenberry was not quite bold enough to add an openly gay character. Back in the 1960s, if you were a homosexual you were deep, deep in the closet. Homosexuals were almost universally perceived to be perverts and deviants. Except for a handful of people, heterosexuals could not conceive of homosexuals being otherwise ordinary people.

So while Takei performed in the original series I doubt he informed Gene Roddenberry about his sexual preference. Back then I suspect Roddenberry probably would have recoiled had he known of his proclivities. Most likely Takei would also have been out of a job. Even if he were okay with it, NBC would not have allowed it. What if it got into the press? I mean, the show ran during prime time! Roddenberry was an extraordinary liberal of his age. I learned when I heard him speak at my university in 1975 that he embraced the radical notion of child liberation, i.e. children should have the right to make their own decisions rather than their parents. In the 1960s, accepting a known homosexual on his cast probably would have been a bridge too far.

Still, there were relationships among the Star Trek characters that raised some eyebrows. Fans noticed right away that the relationship between Kirk and Spock (and to a lesser extent, between Kirk and McCoy) seemed, well, unusually close. Spock was loyal to Kirk, but his feelings transcended mere loyalty and even friendship into something that sure looked like (for all his Vulcan logic) emotional dependency. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Spock’s last words before dying to save the crew were, “I am and always shall be your friend.” There wasn’t a Trekker in the theater, man or woman, who was not welling up. Female fans picked up the homosexual subtext early. Their interest spawned all sorts of erotic fanzines that detailed (and continue to detail to this day) the enormous emotional and sexual energy they figure must have been going on between the two characters. In fact, it started a whole movement known as slash. In his last interview, Gene Roddenberry spontaneously admitted that while he felt he was capable of sex with men, he never acted on the impulse. He said that he was intrigued by what he saw as the “many joys and pleasures and degrees of closeness in those relationships”. Whether these feelings manifested themselves overtly or unconsciously in the closeness portrayed between Kirk and Spock is unknown.

Over the years, the Star Trek cast has remained a fairly close bunch. This was due in part to its enormous fan popularity, but also because most of its actors became typecast and had few other choices for earning a living. Some, like the late James Doohan (Scotty), decided to revel in the fan experience. It was hard to attend any Star Trek convention without finding Jimmy. So perhaps it is not surprising that when Takei and Altman were married yesterday, two prominent roles in the wedding went to two members of the Star Trek cast. Walter Koenig (who played Ensign Chekov) was Takei’s Best Man. Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura) also attended as his “Best Woman”. It does not appear that any other of the original Star Trek actors were in attendance.

Star Trek has indeed taken us, in the imagination, to brave new worlds but in 1966 when the show started this was a world no one dared show on television. It may be 2008 but I imagine it still took some bravery for Koenig and Nichols to stand up for their long time friend on his long delayed wedding day. It makes me wonder why Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner did not attend. Perhaps they were not invited. On the other hand, perhaps Takei’s sexual orientation made them uncomfortable. Takei is hardly the first man to get married in America, but he is perhaps the most prominent gay American to do so. In a sense, he is taking many Star Trek fans boldly into a new world. His sexual orientation was hardly a secret but not necessarily known among casual fans of the show. Takei also has a history of boldly standing up for injustice. He is a prominent figure in promoting attention to the injustice inflicted on Japanese Americans because of their involuntary internment during World War 2. This also explains his choice of a wedding location.

As an atheist, Roddenberry did not believe in an afterlife. Nonetheless, if he did find himself inadvertently in the afterlife after his death at age 70 in 1991, I bet yesterday his immortal spirit was observing Takei and Altman take their vows. If he could be seen, I bet he would be seen gently crying in joy. For so many years later, Star Trek is still taking us to brave new and enlightened worlds.

It’s trite, but live long and prosper, guys.

September 22nd, 2008 at 06:27pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | one comment

The universal translator arrives

One of the fun things about watching classic Star Trek TV shows back in the 1960s was marveling over the fantastic devices that were waiting for us in the 23rd century. The only problem is that just forty years later many, if not most of these devices have already arrived.

The communicator was a neat idea. It was wireless and able to be used over thousands of miles. However, we mastered the cell phone many years ago. In addition, where cell towers are not present you can use a satellite phone. The transporter may never dematerialize us and move us instantly to another place, but scientists have teleported photons and atoms without traveling through space. The phaser? We are not quite there, but we do have commercial laser pointers. Moreover, our Department of Homeland Security is worrying about whether these cheap devices, by shining them into pilots’ eyes from many miles away, could be used by terrorists to bring down airplanes. There is also the Taser, whose name I am sure was not coincidental. One version can deliver a shock remotely (using a wireless signal). Shuttlecraft? We got them already. While they cost hundreds of millions of dollars per flight, and require a rocket booster to get them into orbit, they are (mostly) reusable. Medical injections without puncturing the skin? Nicotine patches prove they can be done. Of course, there are all sorts of medicines you can take via inhalation or ingestion. Those fancy body-imaging machines Dr. McCoy used to use to diagnose patients? Got ‘em. They are called MRIs. Scalpel-less surgery? We are already doing some of that. Had any colon polyps snipped recently? The Warp Drive engine still eludes us, as well as the whole Star Trek thing about faster than light travel that somehow eludes Einstein’s Theories of Relativity. Maybe someday we will get there.

The latest gee whiz “right out of Star Trek” gizmo is called MASTOR. MASTOR stands for Multilingual Automatic Speech-to-Speech Translator, and it is a product of IBM Research. When I heard about it yesterday on the BBC’s World Update broadcast, my interest was immediately piqued. You can think of it as a Star Trek universal translator.

Translation software is nothing new. Even if we seem to doggedly prefer our keyboards, Microsoft believes we will evolve. It built speech to text translation into its Windows Vista operating system. (It may need a bit more work.) We also have programs that translate text from one language to another automatically. While such software usually does a faithful job translating words, it can also kick out intensely strange and occasionally hilarious mistranslations when it attempts to translate expressions and colloquialisms. I used freetranslation.com a few years ago when I sold a car to a Spanish couple. It seemed to be good enough and allowed us to sign an agreement of understanding even though my Spanish was rudimentary at best and their English was nonexistent. MASTOR is the next logical step. Make no mistake: MASTOR is a quantum leap in functionality because it can allow two people who speak two different languages to talk in real time with neither directly interacting with a computer. It is being field tested in Iraq right now as a means to allow our English-speaking soldiers to communicate with Iraqis, and visa versa. Reputedly, it is doing a decent job.

The software is installed on ruggedized laptop computers that soldiers can carry around with them. It is sensitive enough not just to translate spoken English into spoken Arabic, but into the Iraqi dialect of Arabic. IBM has been working to make the software work on small portable computers. In Star Trek, the universal translator was able to accurately translate any kind of speech, or in some cases thoughts in the form of energy. It was a neat gizmo to have and helped move the plot along at a brisk pace. While MASTOR is not as sophisticated as what was envisioned in Star Trek, it is easy to see MASTOR as version 0.1 of the universal translator. Presumably in time IBM will work out the kinks, and add translations for many more languages and dialects.

What is more exciting to me is where this should eventually lead. Computer storage continues to get cheaper. Memory continues to get denser and less expensive. Processors become more powerful and more energy efficient. The MP3 players that many of us carry around demonstrate just how much functionality can be squeezed into such a small space and yet have such modest power requirements. My MP3 player has 1GB of flash memory, plays, records, has an FM-radio and works on one AAA battery.

I can see the day, likely in my lifetime, when every international traveler will journey with a universal translator. Maybe it would just be a feature on our MP3 player. Instead of FM radio, we would engage its translation feature. On the other hand, perhaps it would be smart enough to detect foreign words and phrases and automatically speak them to us. Such a device would need a microphone that most players already have as well as a small speaker. Even if the translation were not perfect, it would be sufficient for your average tourist. When we travel this would make it unnecessary for many of us to have to learn the local language or purchase foreign phrase books.

I know that last year when my family visited France even though I had my daughter with me (a fourth year French student) I was a bit intimidated by the language, Fortunately, we stayed in tourist areas, so language barriers were rarely a problem. Admittedly, reading signs in foreign languages would be a problem. However, GPSes can get us from point to point in our favorite language, as well as always tell us where we are. Spoken word translation though is better. It predated the written word for good reason: it was universal. As long as there are people, a universal translator would be a convenient and natural way to navigate in foreign countries.

As a Washingtonian, I often feel that I need a universal translator right here where I live. The cultural diversity is such that you are about as likely to hear someone speaking a language other than English as English itself. Newt Gingrich wants to require that all Americans read and speak English. There may come a time when our universal translators become so fast and proficient that knowing more than one language will be unnecessary.

I hope the MASTOR succeeds in Iraq. Improved communications with Iraqi locals certainly could not hurt, and might reduce casualties. We sure could have used it when we invaded back in 2003, for we invaded with grossly insufficient translators for our needs. When MASTOR is finally available commercially at an affordable price, you will be seeing me using my passport a whole lot more often.

April 7th, 2007 at 08:56pm Posted by Mark | Technology | no comments

Second Viewing: Galaxy Quest

Over the Thanksgiving 4-day weekend, because I was bored, I started sifting through our various DVDs and videotapes. I was looking for something new or, failing that, something I had not seen in a while. The few things I had not seen did not look worth my time (such as all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of my wife’s passions). There was however, our aging video tape collection. Among its contents was the very last videotape we purchased: Galaxy Quest (1999).

I had seen the movie in the theater of course, and found it funny and often hilarious. At the time it did not make too much of a lasting impression on me. So I was very surprised, upon second viewing, that I found it far funnier than I remembered. Maybe it was because of the mood I was in that night. I finished the film convinced that in many ways it was the funniest movie of the 1990s.

Granted there were many comedies during the 1990s and I had seen only a small fraction of them. Granted also that I grew up something of a Trekker. (I have written about Star Trek before in my blog.) During the early years of our marriage, while my wife and I attended mostly run of the mill science fiction conventions, we also made it to a few genuine Star Trek conventions. (We wisely avoided the Star Trek media conventions. They are designed to pull in Trekkies and separate them from their great gobs of cash, all in order to increase Paramount’s bottom line. We stayed with the Star Trek conventions organized solely by fans.)

Having been steeped in the fandom community for a few years, I knew what being a fan was all about. Devoted fans of any movie or television series have certain characteristics. They are, how shall we say, nice, but a bit peculiar. After a while, you can spot them a mile away. They have a certain odd mannerisms, a certain deep-rooted introversion and a certain obsessive/compulsive streak about their hobby, to the point where they can wrap their entire life around their hobby. Fen is a private term used inside the fan community to identify one of us from the unenlightened. Raising our daughter pulled us away from the fen universe, but some part of me remains there in spirit.

Galaxy Quest is a movie that was made as homage to the fen community. If you are not a fan of some of the many science fiction and fantasy series out there, it is still wholly enjoyable and often hilarious. However, if you are or have been immersed in the fen community, it should occupy a special place on your movie shelf.

The movie is, of course, a not too subtle parody of the whole Star Trek universe. It covers the lives of washed up actors of a mediocre and fictional TV space opera series more than a decade after the show was canceled. The NSEA Protector is this show’s version of the USS Enterprise. Just as the real life actors of the original Star Trek series were typecast when the show ended, so too is the cast of Galaxy Quest. In fact, they are relegated to attending Galaxy Quest conventions and opening discount stores in order to pay their bills. Only Jason Nesmith, who plays the ship’s captain, Commander/Captain Taggert (Tim Allen), seems to relish his aftermarket career. For the rest of these washed up actors, each performance before fans are like chewing marbles. In particular, Sir Alex Dane, who plays the part of the alien Dr. Lazarus (Alan Rickman), is practically homicidal. He is reduced to signing autographs and spouting inane things like “By Grabthar’s hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!” to earn some bucks. He is an angry and bitter man. Spiritually he is near death.

Tim Allen channels William Shatner perfectly. He adroitly emulates Shatner’s pomposity, hammy behavior and recklessness. Signourney Weaver plays Lieutenant Tawny Madison, the ship’s communications officer. She is a white version of Lieutenant Uhura (with a mixture of Yeoman Rand from the first show and arguably, Deanna Troi from the second series), but with bigger breasts exposed for their maximum cleavage. Like Lieutenant Uhura, she does little more than repeat whatever the computer tells her. Tech Sergeant Chen (Tony Shalhoub) is a variant of Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, but without the thick Scottish accent. Lieutenant Laredo (Tommy Webber) is a mixture of Wesley Crusher and Gary Coleman. Perhaps Sam Rockwell plays the funniest part. He plays “Crewman Number Six”, parodying one of the anonymous “red shirts” who were invariably the first to die in the original Star Trek series.

You probably know the plot. The actors find themselves aboard a real life version of the NSEA Protector created by an oppressed alien race that somehow caught their broadcasts. While they are smart enough to create a working version of their ship, they are also incredibly naïve. They cannot distinguish fact from fiction. So they think the actors are not acting at all. In fact, they cannot conceive of the idea of the whole series being fictional. They recruit the actors to help them save their dying species from the dreaded predator, Sarris and his loathsome alien race. It is a silly premise, of course, but one that provides an ideal tableau for high humor parodying the entire Star Trek and its fan universe.

The show’s writer (David Howard) clearly is a Star Trek fan. He writes with eerie authenticity on the whole fan culture and documents its obsessive nebbish denizens. For while fen wish they could be these valiant explorers, they must inhabit a comfortable 21st century instead. So they spend their free hours on bizarre quests like creating detailed schematics of their mythical spacecraft. What we witness is true to the post Star Trek experience. There is a mutual dependency: the fans need the actors to be their caricature, while the actors need the fans to give meaning to professional lives that otherwise ended when the series was canceled. The movie is homage to the whole fen culture, as well as an imaginative idea perfectly played out.

Consequently, the film can delight on many different levels. That is what makes it for me something of a landmark comedy. If you have not inhabited the fen universe, it is just another funny and often hilarious movie. However, if you have attended a Star Trek convention or two, if you have found yourself obsessively combing the Barnes and Noble for the latest Star Trek novel, or if you have found yourself obsessively posting on Star Trek message boards arguing about continuity errors or the recipe for Plomeek Soup, then this movie is for you.

Galaxy Quest is in many ways a classic comedy like the movie Airplane! (1980). Unfortunately, fewer of us can relate to Galaxy Quest than we can to broad parodies like Airplane! That it transcends into a higher level of comedy is only apparent to us fen. Fortunately, there are millions of Trekkers out there, so the movie paid for itself and then some. It is also a precious gift to the fen community.

I will not rate the movie. I will say it would be difficult not to enjoy it. However, if you have ever been a serious fan of any science fiction series or fantasy show, it will be hilarious, feel intimate, and leave you deeply satisfied.

December 1st, 2006 at 08:04pm Posted by Mark | The Arts | no comments

Is Bush Channeling Captain Kirk?

The first episode of Star Trek aired on NBC Television on September 8th, 1966. The man who would become the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush, was 20 years old. I don’t know where he was on that particular day. But I have to wonder if the 20-year-old George W. Bush tuned in to watch Star Trek. I also wonder what he thought of the show. I wonder in particular what he thought of Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the USS Enterprise.

I mention this because I have been wondering if George W. Bush has been channeling James T. Kirk. The more I think about it the more sense it makes. The future Captain/Admiral James T. Kirk was born, according to his creator Gene Roddenberry, in Rivertown, Iowa. In one of life’s little irony’s William Shatner recently visited the town. But spiritually Kirk is no farm boy from Iowa. James T. Kirk is a Texan through and through.

James T. Kirk is also obviously a Republican. After all he did not command the USS Progressive, or even the USS Constitution. Kirk commands the USS Enterprise. A deeply pragmatic and lusty man, Kirk believes in drinking deeply from life and taking big chances. If he were to wear a hat you can bet it would not be a ten-gallon hat, but the twenty-gallon variety.

I imagine the 20-year-old George W. Bush in the family den watching Star Trek. I imagine him feeling hamstrung by his demanding parents. I imagine him fantasizing about how wonderful life would be like if he were in charge and were free to do things his way. I wonder if James T. Kirk mesmerized him. After all nothing fazed Kirk, not even phaser fire. “I can do it!” was his motto. Time after time he did indeed do it. With the help of Hollywood hacks you could bet there would be a Corbomite Maneuver in almost every episode. Good ol’ American guts and determination won the day pretty much every week.

Of course at the time the United States was embroiled in Vietnam, a debacle that in time proved its pointlessness and futility. But in 1966 we still believed we would win the war. After all at that time the United States had never lost any war it had engaged in. It was just a matter of time before the Commies would be put in their place. Watching Star Trek the parallels were obvious. The Klingons were the Russians and the Romulans were the Chinese. In a way the anxiety of the 1960s permeated the scripts for Star Trek. James T. Kirk showed us that the United Federation of Planets/America could triumph every time. With sufficient determination, spittle and daring Kirk (occasionally helped by Spock, Bones or Scotty) would win the day. It was five years of course after Star Trek went off the air that the Vietnam War finally devolved into our sad little exit from the roof of our embassy in Saigon.

The United Federation of Planets had this lofty idea called the Prime Directive. As you probably know it prohibited UFP members from interfering with the culture of a planet. It also prohibited giving emerging civilizations any inkling that there was this large, friendly, Republican cosmic government out there keeping the universe safe from Klingons, Romulans and assorted galactic nasties. Clearly the Prime Directive irritated Kirk. Time and time again he ignored it or gave it lip service. Prime Directives were good in theory but made for boring TV. Shows had to be wrapped up in sixty minutes, minus commercials. If my memory serves me right the only time Kirk was truly put in his place was in the episode “Errand of Mercy”. In that episode the cosmic overlords told the Klingons and the Humans they had to play nicely with each other or they would get permanent time outs.

Most likely watching Star Trek with his fraternity boys was a whole lot more interesting than getting Gentlemen’s C’s in history at Yale. Granted being president of Delta Kappa Epsilon and hanging out in the secretive “Skull and Bones” society must have fatigued the man. But I bet the fraternity found time every Thursday night to watch the chronicles of James T. Kirk and crew.

What would James T. Kirk have done as president? My bet is that he would do pretty much what George W. Bush has done. Kirk was never one to study the details of an issue. He left those things to Mr. Spock (Condoleeza Rice?) who was his prefrontal cortex. When he needed someone to confide in he looked to Dr. Leonard McCoy (“Bones”, Dick Cheney?), an older father figure type. But mainly Kirk acted out of instinct, cleverness and bravado. He sliced and diced his way through galactic politics and struggles. It all came out well in the end thanks do his gambling spirit, his sense of daring do and the scriptwriters.

One thing Kirk didn’t like was anyone questioning his judgment. He had a crew full of yes men. (Let’s also not forget the yes women in short skirts. In “Mirror, Mirror” he even had a whore, er a “Captain’s Woman”.) Everyone on the good starship adored and respected him. No one questioned his judgment. They knew Captain Kirk could pull them out of any predicament, no matter how wild or how poor the odds. Similarly the Bush White House is staffed with loyalists who ruthlessly hold to the message of the day and give unflinching and unquestioned support. This works well because the Bush White House does not tolerate dissent anyhow. You were either with or against Jim Kirk and you are either with or against George W. Bush. The red shirts died regularly but his closest advisers of course remain unscathed.

Alas, if the real world were only more like Star Trek. If only every nasty problem could be fixed in sixty minutes. If only cleverness, ingenuity and good ol’ Texan spunk could solve every problem. Captain Kirk has evolved into a mythical American legend. But he must embody traits we consider to be endemic to the American people. It seems like we have put the spirit of James T. Kirk in the White House. I suspect the good liberal Gene Roddenberry is spinning in his grave at the irony of his accomplishment.

November 11th, 2004 at 07:40pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2004 | no comments

Star Trek: It’s Dead Jim. Let it Lie

I didn’t think it would happen to me. But I’m finally Trekked out.

Star Trek was so 20th Century anyhow. It’s a new millennium. Let’s evolve. Let’s acknowledge that Star Trek was one fairly cool TV show and surely a powerful meme for a lot of us. But its time is over. It’s time for Trekkies to get a different life and move on.

Admittedly I’ve been on the downward slope for a long time. I usually wasn’t allowed to watch the original TV show it, and caught most episodes on reruns. Much of it was, and still is, excruciatingly bad, but for its time it seemed brilliant. (Compared to “Land of the Giants”, “Time Tunnel”, “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” and “Lost in Space”, the competition, it was positively brilliant.) Now the sets look cheap. William Shatner is a horrible actor and painful to watch play James T. Kirk. Occasionally a really good director could make him convincing. Nicholas Meyer, who directed Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan managed to do it. But usually Shatner reverted to form. After a while it was increasingly painful to watch the wreckage.

Star Trek: The Next Generation was a vast improvement, but even it stumbled in its first year and suffered from some continuity problems. (It got better when Riker got a beard.) STTNG revived my interest in the show. As a liberal Democrat I was very much a Jean Luc Picard fan, and to this day I am astonished by the quality of Patrick Stewart’s acting. I know there are a lot of Captain Kirk bigots out there, but Jean Luc was the captain that Kirk was not. Kirk was hot tempered and emotional and survived on tricks. Jean Luc was compassionate and thoughtful and you felt the presence of his command.

The movies were off and on. The even ones tended to be good, the odd ones sucked. STTNG movies have suffered from a similar fate.

I knew I was in trouble when the Star Trek: Nemesis came out and I couldn’t be bothered to see it. My loss I guess. I’ve heard it was pretty good. But as happened to the original cast, STTNG cast is old now too. Even my heartthrob Marina Sirtis is suffering from a sagging face and breasts.

The one thing that might bring me back is a movie with the Borg in it. Star Trek: The Borg Encounter is in production right now and should be out this year. The Borg were absolutely the creepiest villains ever created. I loved all the shows and the movies with the Borg in it. Even Sauron (from “Lord of the Rings”) cannot seriously compete with the Borg for the dubious title of most awful enemy of all time. Klingons and Romulans don’t even raise my eyebrow anymore.

I didn’t like it when STTNG ended but it had seven years and it was about time. I was seeing the same plots over and over again. It went out well.

I tried to watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine but couldn’t get into anything other than the Ferrengi. It was too shoot ‘em up for me, but the Ferrengi were hoots:Republicans and Libertarians of the 23rd century run amok! They were the perfect way to laugh at the Reaganism and neo-conservatism of the time.

I was disgusted with Star Trek: Voyager. I thought it was cool to have a female Captain but that was about it. Blasting them across the galaxy was just a gimmick. But it didn’t take long before it became more plot repetition. We’d seen these plots before. Actually we had seen them many times. The words were spoken by new characters, but nothing had really changed.

I watched a couple episodes of Enterprise but other than the Vulcan’s curves and one cute dog there was not much there to spur me to watch more. I got out of the habit. Going back in time didn’t seem to make it any more interesting.

Its time is up. Thank you to Gene Roddenberry and the rest of the crew for a nice ride. I enjoyed the couple of conventions I attended. It was nice to meet Majel Roddenberry one time, and lots of cool Trekkies. I’ve enjoyed some of the better fan fiction. When you were good you were really, really good. Sometimes you were really bad. You also had a lot of mediocrity. But it’s dead Jim. It’s time to put Star Trek into its historical package and evolve.

August 15th, 2003 at 11:53am Posted by Mark | The Arts | 9 comments