The Books of My Life: Star Trek

I have a vague recollection of watching Star Trek sometime in either 1967 or 1968 on WBAP TV, NBC, Dallas, Texas. It must not have done much for me because, for whatever reason, as I didn't continue to watch it. I really began to watch Star Trek, or as it is not called, Star Trek: The Original Series, in reruns sometime in the 1970s and 1980s. I found it interesting though it never became an obsession of mine. In the 1980s, while I was living in Athens, Ohio, I began watching Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) thanks to a Parkersburg, West Virginia TV station and came, particularly after the third series, to like TNG a lot. I watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine pretty religiously after it debuted in 1993. It remains today by far my favourite Star Trek series. By the time Star Trek: Voyager debuted in 1995 and Enterprise hit the airwaves in 2001 I was Star Treked out so I only watched Voyager on rare occasions and never watched Enterprise beyond the first episode. In the intervening years I have watched episodes of both and have come to like both though not as much as I like TNG and DS9. I still, by the way, hate the theme song of Enterprise.

Recently, I read Ina Rae Hark's book on the Star Trek television franchise (Star Trek, BFI Film Classics, London: BFI, 2008) and quite enjoyed it. Hark, a fan scholar of Trek does an excellent job of putting the Treks in their context: The Cold War for the first series, the end of the Cold War for the second, postmodernism for the third, fourth, and fifth, and liberal humanism for them all. Given these different histories, as Hark points out, each of the Star Trek series have somewhat different themes. TOS, for instance, focused on the Kirk, Spock, McCoy dynamic, emphasised the need for embodied consciousness of both the rational and emotional kind, and focused on a fear of human stagnation. TNG focused on its professional Starfleet officers of both the empirical and intuitive kind who, at least in part, went around the galaxy engaging in diplomacy, conflict resolution, mediation, statecraft, and, here is where some condescension comes in, determined who was ready for Federation membership and who was not. DS9 emphasised relationships, power and its asymmetries, religious tensions, military tensions, and the darkness at the heart of the Federation. It is, as Hark notes, not a surprise that DS9 mirrors a world of increasing ethnic and religious tensions. Voyager emphasised that life, this life, was too short not to stop and smell the roses. Enterprise went back to before the beginning and explored the tensions that were present between those peoples who would form the Federation, the big government that works, of the Star Trek universe.

Thematics are not the only thing Hark explores in the Trekverse. Hark does an excellent job of pointing out the different things different writers brought to Trek. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the show, saw intervention and war as sometimes necessary. Gene Coon, who ran TOS for much of the second and third seasons, put a greater emphasis on diplomacy and peaceful coexistence. Brannon Braga, particularly in his years as showrunner of Enterprise, was more a plot than a character kind of guy. Hark does an excellent job of noting the differences between the shows. TOS, TNG, Voyager, and Enterprise went where no earthling had gone before on state of the art military, scientific investigation, and exploration oriented spaceships while DS9, which was more gritter, darker, and less utopian than the other series, took place largely on a immobile space station. DS9 had more arcs and character development than the other series.

As I said, I quite enjoyed Hark's book. I remain, however, more of a Whovian than a Trekkie or Trekker. Recommended.