Myriad Universes: The Star Fleet Universe

The idea of doing licensed products for Star Trek in the gap between the Animated Series and the film series was, let's admit it, a strange one. It's not like today, where any genre fiction work is seen as a potential massively lucrative (and desperately needed) franchise and is milked for everything it's worth from the moment it hits the scene no matter how paper-thin the source material is or how niche the fanbase. Back then, there were definitely properties that made money and were popular and those that weren't, and you didn't tend to get merchandise out of properties that weren't.

Star Trek itself fell into an interesting space on this spectrum: It was certainly well-known, but, as far as an entire generation of people were concerned (and momentarily discounting the few die-hard fans who had remained obsessed with the show all this time), it was likely a show they hazily remembered that hadn't been relevant in almost a decade. But there was also that contingent of new viewers who were just now getting exposed to the show through the syndicated reruns: This was the first exposure to Star Trek they had, and they didn't have things like Mr. Spock's Songs from Space anymore. This alone probably explains the longevity of things like the Gold Key comic series and the Pocket Books tie-in novel line, but it also led to some things that were, in retrospect, a little weird. Considering the audience Star Trek had was now firmly established as a niche one, and given the backdrop of the late-1970s this is happening against, what we wound up with was a situation where there was clearly a fanbase that could be served, but one that was comparatively small enough to justify not actually making serving it a serious priority.

Because this was happening in the days before a Disney-style obsession with brand uniformity took over the mindset of ever single producer and executive in the entertainment industry such that every sci-fi property has to be closely monitored and kept “official” (partially out of necessity it must be stressed: Hollywood, and really the entire industry, is in a deeply perilous position as of this writing), we get really odd and fun little artefacts like Star Trek: The New Voyages, which was a rather unprecedented direct contact between a very small production team and the fanfiction community, which is something that plainly couldn't happen today. Should Marvel or Lucasfilm (both really Disney) or Doctor Who (really the BBC) attempt something like that for any of their properties today, it would first have to be fed through about a million different marketing committees and sub-committees before being hastily abandoned for fear the fics wouldn't be “on message” (which, in the case of The New Voyages, they *absolutely* weren't, and that was *wonderful*).

But Star Trek's weird liminal position allows for things like this: In those days, if you wanted to license a Star Trek work, you wrote up one dude at Paramount studios, told him or her what your idea was, and they'd say “Sure. Go for it. Why the hell not?” Which brings us to the topic at hand: What's become known as “The Star Fleet Universe” (note the spelling-Not to be confused with “Starfleet”) has just about the most laughably casual history of any work of merchandising ever. The acknowledged first work in this particular 'verse is Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual, published as an official tie-in from Ballantine Books in 1975. This was, in retrospect, an unusual book in the history of Star Trek tie-in works, and set a precedent for some other interesting transgressive works to come: It purports to be an official compilation of the United Federation of Planets' Articles of Confederation, series of detailed intel reports of the “Star Fleet Armed Forces”, breakdown of command structure and description of every single significant piece of technology used in Star Trek. It's written in an in-universe style, supposedly a classified file of material left behind on Earth by the Enterprise crew during the events of “Tomorrow is Yesterday”.

What makes this curious is that basically nothing in the Star Fleet Technical Manual actually came from Star Trek. Franz Joseph was a German technical writer who was inspired by the franchise and had an idea to do a book of blueprints and technical information after attending Star Trek conventions and seeing how many fans wanted replicas of the props and costumes used on the show. Joseph personally contacted Gene Roddenberry, who thought it was a great idea and put him in contact with Bob Justman and other members of the Star Trek production team. The result was this book and its companion, the Star Trek Blueprints which became, retroactively, the “official” sources for technical information on the Star Trek universe.

Or, at least they did temporarily, as Joseph's work is no longer considered canon to the franchise today. This just goes to show you how useless and unhelpful the concept of canon is as both books were used for reference in the production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock such that a few of the diagrams actually appeared *on screen* in the finished products (not to mention concepts originating in the books being explicitly referenced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Datalore” and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country).

Fast-forward to 1979, and an Amarillo, Texas-based publisher of tactical and strategic board war games called Task Force Games, headed by a US Army veteran by the name of Stephen V. Cole, is interested in making a war game set in the Star Trek universe. He gets the license and the result is Star Fleet Battles, which draws on, and extensively builds upon, the material from Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual. However, not long after, Star Trek sort of becomes big business again with a rather eye-catching film series, and suddenly Paramount decides to tighten its belt in regards to merchandising. The first casualty is Cole, who is prohibited from using any material from the film series or, after it premiers a decade later, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Cole continues to flesh out his version of the Star Trek universe, and his series of games continues to this day published by Task Force Games' successor, Amarillo Design Bureau.

So what we ultimately have with Star Fleet Battles and its numerous expansion packs is, in a sense, an alternate universe, and thus an alternate direction the Star Trek franchise could have gone. This is important to take note of, because it's indicative that even at the level of license rights Paramount was always somewhat lenient in regards to how people read Star Trek, and was at least open to the possibilities of alternate interpretations, explained away via “divergent timelines”. But this is a conversation to be picked up at a (much) later date, because no matter how marginal the Star Fleet Universe is, the fact is it remains a significant part of Star Trek at this phase of its life and belongs just as much to what was “canon” Star Trek at this point in time as the Animated Series or the film series. It had its genesis in meetings with real, actual people involved in the production of the Original Series and the Technical Manual was used to prep both the movies and the board game, so it's impossible to ignore what it's telling us about the world of Star Trek.

And what it's telling us is both interesting and disturbing, because the Star Fleet Universe is overtly about empire building. It literally, by definition cannot be about anything else. The original Technical Manual mentions the “Star Fleet Armed Forces” and Star Fleet Battles goes even further, breaking the entire galaxy down into sectors and octants controlled by individual sprawling galactic political powers and military alliances. There are different governments, each with their own history of aggression and conflict with each other and each with their own unique political organisation, tactical predispositions and fleets full of different classes of battleships, destroyers, scouts and heavy cruisers.

Aside from all the expected powers (the Federation, the Gorn, the Klingons, the Romulans and the Tholians), the Star Fleet Universe also adds a unique culture called the Hydrans, a society of petite nonhumanoid methane-breathers with three genders and expands greatly upon the Orion Cartel, who, under it, becomes a loose multi-ethnic association of pirates and smugglers instead of a solitary race built around deception and thievery as they were in the Original Series and Animated Series: They're far and away the most interesting faction, and it's little wonder the video game series set in this universe gives them prominent starring roles (and interestingly, in fact, the Star Fleet Universe seems to be the basis for at least a part of the reconceptualization of Orion society on Enterprise down to, somewhat hearteningly, it being a matriarchal one).

Then there are the Kzinti.

Returning to the Kzinti of course means returning to “The Slaver Weapon” and all the dark implications it held for the Star Trek franchise. All of the concerns I raised in my analysis of that episode remain valid here, and are in fact even more pronounced given the expressly militaristic nature of the Star Fleet Universe. Back then I argued that the massive wrench the Kzinti throw into the workings of Star Trek comes from trying to reconcile the history of the supposedly-peaceful and benevolent Federation with the Earth-Kzin Wars from Larry Niven's Known Space universe, from which the Kzinti originally hail. What this does is rewrite the history of the Federation such that it has its origins in Earth basically repeatedly curb-stomping a hopelessly outmatched adversary over and over again to flex the muscle of its blossoming military might.

In the context of “The Slaver Weapon”, we can read this rather ugly series of events as another of D.C. Fontana's numerous attempts to deconstruct and problematize the basic structures and assumptions of the Star Trek narrative, and in particular the Federation as a form of government and unambiguous good, much as she did, albeit considerably more cynically, with Star Trek: Year Four-The Enterprise Experiment and that we know she was interested in as early as “Mirror, Mirror” and “The Enterprise Incident”. However, Star Fleet Battles is not the work of D.C. Fontana: It's the work of Stephen V. Cole, an ex-military guy and is expressly a war game. By the sheer fact the Federation is a playable faction in this game, and just based on what this game is and how it works, by definition, what used to be implications and subtext in “The Slaver Weapon” becomes unchallenged overt *text* in Star Fleet Battles-If there was ever any doubt before, it's now evaporated: The Federation is now explicitly an empire and military power on par with, and just as warlike as, any of its interstellar neighbours.

Now, I have a confession to make. While I'm just about as much of an anti-war person ideologically as you're likely to find, I deeply enjoy war games and always have. I have many fond memories of the video games based on this universe and, as a kid I would concoct laughably elabourate scenarios for my friends and I whenever we had water gun fights or played kick-the-can involving multiple sparring armies and territory control. One of my favourite video game series is Nintendo Wars, which is all about back-and-forth, turn-based strategics on a sprawling, modular battlefield with an infinite number of variables and convenient colour-coded armies. Now, I know this will cause Paul Schneider to spin in his grave, but allow me to offer some meager defense: What I like about war games is purely the psychological aspect of it-I love formulating tactics and strategy and trying to out-think and out-maneouvre another player. It's purely a mental exercise for me, and also purely a casual and recreational one as I also suck profoundly at war games.

What I *don't* like is the disregard for human life and dignity of real war, and pretty much everything else about it. I can justify my occasional indulgence in war games because they are expressly, consciously and deliberately unreal. Nobody *dies* in Nintendo Wars, a bunch of cartoon army men toys fall backwards looking like they just got yanked offstage by a Vaudeville cane. And, helpfully, they all respawn next time you move an infantry unit. Everything's an exaggerated, colourful caricature and happy, upbeat music plays in the background. You're not supposed to think about the ramifications of the way this world works, it's a pure artifice that exists solely as the backdrop for the mental exercise of strategy, just like Chess or Go or any other such game throughout history. Same is true in first person shooters, or at least the good ones anyway. Nobody died in kick-the-can either: You just went back to base to start another round.

I suppose you could make the same argument for Star Fleet Battles: It's all a game, so it shouldn't be taken too seriously. Except...I can't do that in this case. Yes, it's a game and yes, the ultimate focus should be the strategy, but this is still set in the Star Trek universe, supposedly a pacifist utopia, and it *was* an officially licensed product and considered canon for however short a time. And I can't just disregard the implications that holds for the larger franchise. This paints the Federation in an *extremely* negative light, which, OK that's fine (I'm going to get about a million Trekkers writing to me and screaming about this, but I'm onboard with it), but what's concerning is that now the franchise no longer seems to want us to have a problem with this, which is seriously worrying as far as I'm concerned. The Federation is a brutal empire focused on conquest and colonization...and that's no longer cause to be appalled, that's just the way things are.

I can deal with perpetual war and conflict in my war games if it's lighthearted and cartoony enough, but I have a hard time accepting it in my Star Trek. To me this goes against basically everything the franchise tries to show us and what it's become over the past ten years, let alone where it's going to continue to go over the next thirty. Problematize the Federation, sure, that thing's long overdue for a serious critique. But, when you go so far as to turn the entirety of the Star Trek universe into a battlefield map and leap headfirst into unchecked militarism, I think you've crossed a line somewhere. This is what you get when you take Star Trek's troublesome roots as “Gulliver's Travells with the Space Navy” and general techno-fetishism and run with it to the logical limit and, from at least my perspective, it's worth asking ourselves if this is really the place we want to end up.

Sensor Scan: Roots

Chalk this one up as another “we're covering it because there's no way to *not* cover it” kind of entry.

Roots needs no introduction, least of all from me. Based on the novel of the same name, Roots is a fictionalized and dramatized version of writer Alex Haley's attempt to trace his genealogy back across multiple generations to one man in Africa taken from his home and made into a slave. It was one of the most groundbreaking and influential television series of all time, capturing the imagination of an entire country through television in one of the last moments it was possible to do that, solidifying the miniseries as viable format for dramatic storytelling and making African history and heritage a central mainstream concern for one of the first times in modern history.

For my purposes, of course, the most obvious and superficial reason to tackle this show in the context of Vaka Rangi is because it introduces an up-and-coming young actor by the name of LeVar Burton in the pivotal role of Young Kunta Kinte, who will go on to play a rather significant role in the evolving history of Star Trek and the entertainment industry at large, not to mention my own life. Knowing what LeVar Burton will eventually go on to do, it's hard not to let that completely overshadow the rest of the series, but, perhaps surprisingly for someone coming to this show from a contemporary perspective on the basis of its reputation alone, he's only actually in it for two of the show's eight episodes. That said, they are two of the most important, as they depict the defining moments of Kunta Kinte's life: Namely, being abducted from his home in a Mandinka village by a slave trader, brought to the United States, sold into slavery and being tortured until he accepts his new assigned name of Toby. However, while these may be the most iconic moments of the show and while Burton's performance is predictably heartfelt, powerful, tragic and instantly memorable (which is all the more impressive given this was his first professional acting gig), this is not actually what the majority of Roots is about.

Because of this, and hastily acknowledging that Roots is the beginning and a major part of LeVar's legacy, I sort of want to leave him for the most part out of my analysis here. His presence will definitely be felt, welcomed and embraced-LeVar Burton is a person and a theme who will inspire and guide this project from this point onwards, but in the context of what Roots in particular can tell us about the television climate of 1977 and the Star Trek franchise more generally (aside from the screaming obvious, that is), his career trajectory is actually a secondary motif. Anyway, I tend to be of the belief the most revealing erudition we can discern about what LeVar Burton brings to Star Trek can be found in that other little show he was involved in for a time, but we've got a few more years on either end to get through before we can look at that one just yet. What I will mention about LeVar at this point in time, aside from his latent talent, which should be self-evident, is that he never had aspirations to work in Hollywood. Rather, he was trained as a theatre actor for pretty much his entire life and, right up until he was approached with the role of Young Kunta Kinte, assumed that's what he'd be doing for his career. So, in spite of his later Hollywood acclaim, LeVar's eventual casting as Geordi La Forge is actually a continuation of Star Trek's proud and deep-seated theatrical heritage.

The actual story of Roots is about heritage, what that means to people (especially black people and other people of colour) and how it manifests in different individuals: Alex Haley was profoundly moved by the stories his family would tell about his ancestors passed down from generation to generation through oral history, and Roots can very easily be read as his search for meaning in this through constructing an epic narrative about his family tree. Following the initial abduction of Kunta Kinte, the book and the show both follow successive generations of his descendents, all of whom must try to reconstruct their Mandinka heritage and the legacy of Kunta Kinte and decide for themselves each of these things means to them personally. The way they do this is through storytelling, where each branch of Kunta's line adds their own story to the ever-growing narrative of the family's history. The show's famous arc words that bookend each chapter make this eminently clear: “Kunta Kinte, behold! The only thing greater than yourself!” (where the name changes with each successive protagonist).

Roots then is extremely heavily indebted to oral history on every level of its production: The overall epic is fundamentally about it as this is how the story of Kunta Kinte gets to live on, and, of course, the genesis of the project came from Haley's own experiences with oral traditions. This is also I think what a lot of the misunderstanding and criticism of the show stems from: It's no great secret that Roots is not the most historically accurate work of fiction ever produced, and it's come under considerable fire for this over the years. Most of the criticism is leveled at two specific aspects of Haley's work: Firstly, that he claimed to have pieced together a grand sweeping narrative of his own family stretching back seven generations (in spite of his complementary and contradictory claim that a lot of his book was fiction and many of the historical details were embellished considerably) and secondly that he managed to do this by reconciling documented slave records with his family's oral traditions.

Many historians have claimed that the documentary evidence Haley cites is flatly in complete opposition to the narrative Roots espouses (and there are a number of obvious anachronisms and inaccuracies: The concept of the white colonial “slave catchers” is pretty solidly seen to be a fabrication, as is the idea that newly bought slaves would be tortured and forced to change their names, which are admittedly pretty big things to get wrong) and furthermore that the oral history upon which so much of it is based is notoriously unreliable and untrustworthy. But this is the thing: Doesn't this sound just a little like hegemonic imperialist sanctioned history coming in and swiftly and harshly trying to stamp out any generative and oppositional viewpoint that might call its authority into question to you? And additionally, see, what many people fail to realise and understand about oral history is that strict historical accuracy (whatever that may mean, as it's functionally impossible to recreate the past with 100% accuracy) is not actually a primary concern of the genre, and it doesn't need to be.

While certainly many oral traditions exist to preserve important events and techniques, oral history is fundamentally not about feverishly trying to document every single second of every single day for posterity. In fact, it's about pretty much the opposite of that: Many oral practitioners view writing a story as tantamount to killing it, because as long as a story can be told (and retold) it can morph and evolve and be reinterpreted by each individual storyteller within the specific, unique context that's relevant to them, and furthermore see this as a very good thing (this doesn't even get at the fact many nonmodern societies, including many African ones, don't even have the same conception of time as Westerners, such as they perceive a cyclical and ever-evolving present instead of a discreet past, present and future). As an aside, I myself find this reminiscent of many concepts Avital Ronell has worked with, namely about how texts are husks and deceased, hollow signifiers of a long-departed ethereal confluence, of which I'm particularly attracted to and have talked about before.

And this, whatever its other faults may be, is what Roots absolutely gets and conveys so well. Roots is about storytelling, in particular oral storytelling, and how this helps people come to grips with who they are, where they come from, and how to deal with the adversity of life on a day-to-day basis. Take the much-maligned scene where Kunta Kinte is forced to change his name to Toby. No, it obviously didn't really happen like that, but that's not the point: The point is that slavery was the ultimate form of dehumanization such that the slave masters and the system they were a part of took human beings and reduced them down as low as they could push them, such that it stripped away their identity (and not in the good ego death way, but in the horrifying oppressive depersonalization that defines, you know, slavery), which being tortured and broken until you're forced to accept a name your oppressors give you is a pretty damn good metaphor for. And this is why the story of Kunta Kinte's name and his Mandinka heritage are so important to the descendents, because it reminds them of their personhood and gives them a sense of self-worth when the rest of the world wasn't.

And Roots did this for not just its characters, but its viewers as well. No matter what you think about the show itself, it was without question a watershed moment in television history, and really, the history of the United States. For one thing, Roots was in many ways the archetypical “television event”: A massive, sprawling, era-defining blockbuster of a thing that basically everyone saw unfold before them together and at the same time, and as such a perfect encapsulation of a model of television that used to be the default right before it essentially ceased to be. It's probably on par with the coverage of the Moon landings, and arguably did better things for society, as Roots was also the first time something that came from an expressly non-white, non-Western perspective was given undivided mainstream attention on a massive global platform. This gets at the idea of material social progress: No, this is not the most accurate and authentic account of the history of African slavery in the United States ever written, but it didn't have to be. It was the first proper depiction of the horrors of the slave trade and the irreparable effect it had on US culture in mass media and, like it or not, Roots got people talking about things they wouldn't have been talking about if it didn't exist.

If nothing else, this was a powerful and affirmational show that legitimized a lot of people and a lot of people's perspectives and positionalities and gave them a podium they wouldn't have otherwise had. Roots took a story and a perspective considered marginal in Western high capitalism and made it acceptable by translating it into a Western structure: A sweeping Hollywood epic done as a television event. No matter what we can say about its material quality as a media artefact, Roots had an indisputably net positive effect on the world and is without question one of the defining moments of its era. And that, really, is about as good as it gets for Soda Pop Art.

Myriad Universes: Doug Drexler's comic work

This post exists mostly to introduce someone who will go on to play an important role in the future of Star Trek. Doug Drexler is a versatile visual artist and passionate Trekker who has been, at multiple points in his career, a makeup artist, a set designer, an illustrator, a graphic designer, a dedicated archivist for Star Trek's production history and, briefly in 1977, a comic book creator.

A first generation fan, Drexler briefly ran a Star Trek boutique in New York City in the mid-70s before authoring and editing some early magazines and technical reference works and, after sneaking onto the set of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, made a promise to himself that he would be involved in the franchise professionally some day. It took Drexler awhile to fulfill his dream, though: He spent the early 1980s doing makeup work for movies like Amityville 3-D and C.H.U.D. and while he struck up a correspondence and friendship with Michael Westmore during the pre-production of Star Trek: The Next Generation, he was unable to secure a job on staff.

Drexler eventually won an Academy Award for his work on Dick Tracy in 1990, after which he stunned Westmore by going back to the TNG office and asking for a position, as Oscar winners don't typically go out of their way to take a dramatic pay cut jobbing for TV. Drexler worked in the Next Generation makeup department for the rest of its run, before seizing the opportunity to pursue his true calling, graphic design, by jumping into the art department for the newly announced Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. When the time came, Drexler moved over to Star Trek Voyager, and finally Enterprise. After Star Trek wrapped for good, Drexler for many years maintained a blog called Drex Files, an invaluable source for behind-the-scenes anecdotes and information. He's also known for his work on the yearly Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendar.

It was during his time in New York that Drexler came in contact with the production team on Gold Key's by this point staggeringly long-running Star Trek comic book. Drexler wasn't terribly pleased with the quality of the book, and the exchange led him to supervise and consult on two issues of the series: The September and October 1977 issues, to be exact: “This Tree Bears Bitter Fruit” and “Sweet Smell of Evil”. Well, if nothing else we can say Drexler certainly has a firm grasp of what makes a good Star Trek title. Actually, we can say the same about the rest of these stories: As one might expect of a passionately dedicated fan with professional aspirations, Drexler's stories are, by and large, solid executions of familiar, standard Original Series story structures.

“This Tree Bears Bitter Fruit” concerns the Enterprise stumbling upon a trio of giant capsules of pure energy in deep space that resemble seed pods. After whacking the ship with a pulse of energy the temporarily drains the power systems, the crew pursues the pods to Beta Niobe III, where they reveal themselves to be energy beings seemingly motivated by pure destruction. After departing the planet, the Enterprise chases the creatures to their home planet, while Spock hypothesizes they're from a hyper-advanced alien species, roughly on the same evolutionary level as the Organians. Upon arrival, the crew discover a gigantic tree growing thousands of miles into the sky, curated by an immortal man named Zyopha, the “lone inhabitant of this, the first world in the first galaxy of the first universe”, who claims that this is the Tree of Life and his energy beings are simply fulfilling the natural order of things by proving the maxim of “survival of the fittest”. Kirk and Spock counter that evolution is the province of nature, not humans, despite Zyopha's immortality. Kirk than proposes a contest, pitting himself against one of the beings to prove gluttony and dominance is toxic and counter-productive.

In “Sweet Smell of Evil”, the Enterprise is assigned to transport Federation botanist Patrick Moore from M317, where he's been leading a survey of the planet's ecosystem, to scientific conference on Beat Aurigae. Beaming down, Kirk and Spock meet Moore's assistant William Terrens, who curates an arboretum where he tends to a crop of Tojufu trees, a newly-discovered species that produces an incomparably sweet fragrance that inspires commercial ambitions within Terrens (an aside: here's another sign the Original Series universe was not post-money, along with numerous references to pay and betting wages in The New Voyages). Returning to the Enterprise after picking up two other scientists, an Andorian named Stoy Aaraka and a human named Emilie Bowers, it soon becomes clear that the crew has unwittingly created an environment of extreme tension as both Bowers and Aaraka were former colleagues of Moore's whom he apparently used and mistreated to advance his career. Not long afterward, Moore is found dead outside his quarters holding a scrap of paper mentioning “Tojufu”, and Kirk puts the Enterprise on lockdown until the killer is found and brought to justice.

I don't want to seem like I'm nitpicking or dismissing Drexler's stories because they are largely quite good. He would never admit it, but what Drexler's done here is helped Gold Key to finally go and better the batting average of the Original Series: We have, in “This Tree Bears Bitter Fruit”, a needed twist on the “Kirk out-punches a God” theme by having the villains represent general selfishness, privilege and entitlement. The ending fight scene is a bit gratuitous, but it does drive home the point that these traits are inherently negative and self-destructive as the energy beings devour an entire planet and then turn on each other. Likewise, “Sweet Smell of Evil”, though reminding me in parts of “Journey to Babel”'s basic structure, is a straightforward whodunnit that still manages to come out and say that murdering people out of an interest in monetary gain, and really any kind of fixation on capitalistic greed, is a Bad Thing. I mean neither of these stories are anything particularly special or creative-They're almost reductively functional. But then again, many of the best Original Series stories were the same way (“Patterns of Force” comes to mind) and I certainly can't complain about Drexler's “morals”, simplistic though they may be, which is already a massive improvement over the source material.

I was also quite pleased to see the Gold Key series hasn't lost its ability to come up with completely bonkers and off-the-wall science fiction concepts like cosmic trees of life with sentient killer seeds, though this does touch on one particular drawback to at least “This Tree Bears Bitter Fruit”: This would have been a great opportunity for Drexler and the team to explore and play with the motif of the actual World Tree, which links the Heavens with the Earth and connects all forms of life as part of a sacred whole, but the actual story doesn't engage with any of this. It's possible to read the actions of Zyopha as a corruption of the scientific “tree of life”, which organises all the various kingdoms and phyla, given his inflated views of evolution, but again, there's not a whole lot of time or space to fully examine this idea and it too often feels a bit too much like window dressing for the God-punching of the week (or month, as it were). On the other hand, “This Tree Bears Bitter Fruit” could also be read as another much-needed shot at power and authority structures, and the arrogance of anyone positioning themselves as superior to and more-advanced than others, which is a lesson Star Trek really needs to always keep reminding itself of, especially going into the phase of it we're going into.

I really don't want to rake Drexler across the coals as by all accounts he seems like a terrific guy, he contributed a ton of great things to Star Trek and these two stories are literally the only published works of fiction and he's associated with and he worked on them when he was practically still a kid. Furthermore, I really want to avoid reductivisim or essentialism...But it's also unfortunately way too easy to see these stories as yet another example of the split in Star Trek fandom, a split that is very clearly along gendered lines. Flatly, this is very traditional Star Trek. It's very *good* traditional Star Trek and this means it's better than about 95% of the actual show, but, as D.C. Fontana showed us in Star Trek: Year Four-The Enterprise Experiment, traditional Star Trek is *extremely* problematic. But the larger point here is the fact that neither of these stories is remotely as interesting to me as the stuff from Star Trek: The New Voyages, and I sadly have to say the same about the majority of Star Trek fiction by male fans, or at least the writers who come out of the male-dominated parts of fandom. “The Sweet Smell of Evil” is a tight, well-done murder mystery aboard the Enterprise with a solid message and a sweet title, but it's nowhere near as creative, imaginative or, well, enjoyable as “The Reflecting Pool”, “The Winged Dreamers”, “Mind Sifter” or “Surprise!”.

Things will eventually change for the better. The Star Trek comics division is destined to go on to do great things, and so, as a matter of fact, is Doug Drexler. But I think what the past few stories have demonstrated the most clearly is that its time for Star Trek to change, and it's perhaps very long overdue. That's not to say the Original Series has to come to an end per se: As long as people still love these characters and their unique world, that will be enough to keep the negative aspects of this version of the franchise in check and keep their story going on forever. The New Voyages was just about perfect, and it came along more than a decade after the franchise began, and two years after there had been any Star Trek on at all. The Original Series, like everything it inspired, belongs to those who love it, something Doug Drexler of all people should know intimately. But the march of history is beginning to move on.

Sensor Scan: Burnham's Celestial Handbook

This one is going to take some explaining.

For me, Star Trek and astronomy are connected in a particular and important way. Not because of the material connection between Paramount's PR wing and NASA; it's debatable whether that can even be called astronomy in the first place. No, the reason why I think of astronomy when I think of Star Trek is quite simple: My love for one inspired my love for the other, and I feel the true strength of both can be found in wayfinding.

Though I've mentioned it several times before, my personal connection to and relationship with the realm of the sky is going to become a major, central theme in my reading of not this next phase of Star Trek's history, but definitely the one directly after it. One of the benefits of living where I live is that my relative distance from urban civilization and comparatively high altitude mountain residence means that I have access to something that's sadly not afforded to many people these days anymore: A truly vast and open night sky free of light pollution. On a clear night, it seems like you can look into infinity, with layers upon layers of countless stars and the dazzling ribbon of the Milky Way winding its way across the celestial sphere. The cliche is that looking up at the night sky is a humbling experience that makes people aware of their cosmic insignificance, but that's not how I've ever seen it: To me, spending a really good night under the stars here is a truly profound experience that makes me aware of the Cosmic Whole, and our interconnectedness with it. When I was younger it would also fire my imagination, causing me to dream of travelling amongst those stars.

The very first thing that struck me about Star Trek: The Next Generation was a captivating, hypnotic sense that permeated throughout the whole show: Everything about it seemed to exude an awareness and embrace of the mystical vastness of the universe, and to say that humanity is not in fact dwarfed by it but belongs to it, as much a part of it as the inspired planets, comets, nebulae and other cosmic wonders that sailed by in the show's intro sequence, which remains possibly the single piece of visual media that inspires and means the most to me to this day. I guess I may have been immediately drawn to this and had the kind of reaction I did because it reminded me so much of the way I felt when looking at the real sky at night in my backyard. Considering we only got Star Trek: The Next Generation in syndication late at night, that just compounded the effect and to me created the perfect mood to get lost in the imaginary dreamscapes the show would evoke at me. Sometimes I'd go out at night, look up at the Milky Way and imagine the Enterprise and all those who lived on her sailing to all those different stars.

Astronomy is said to be the oldest science and the oldest scientific pastime, and to me this sense of rapturous awareness is central to what it is. Among my many dead-end career paths prior to becoming an anthropologist who writes about pop culture, I briefly attempted to be an astronomer because of my own love for the Celestial Sphere, but also partly inspired by Star Trek. Funnily enough, real astronomers tend to hate Star Trek because real astronomers are actually physicists, and physicists get very upset when fiction is not 100% scientifically accurate. This gets at an interesting point about the technoscientific side of Star Trek fandom: It's almost exclusively made up of engineers and computer people, and nobody else. A number of books and documentaries have been written about why this is, but in brief, a lot of it comes back to the tech-inclined youth growing up with Star Trek and being inspired more by the cool imaginary technology than anything else, and then dedicating their lives to making it a reality. Apple in particular seems almost entirely staffed by these sorts of people, because Quicktime, the iPod, the multitouch interface and the iPad can all be directly traced back to someone watching Star Trek and saying “I want that”.

Suffice to say, my breathless, heartfelt stories about the borderline spiritual way I've been inspired by the heavens and parts of Star Trek did not go over terribly well with my astronomer colleagues. It's one of the many reasons I'm not a professional astronomer and the exact type of thing that makes me extremely difficult to get along with. But there is a visible trend, if rather small, in amateur astronomy that does seem at least somewhat aware of the more primal and fundamental aspects of it, and that brings us to Robert Burnham, Jr. and his Celestial Handbook. Burnham was a passionate amateur astronomer in the purest sense: He received no formal training and was a chronic loner, but by his twenties had already discovered a comet. This led to him being picked up by the Lowell Observatory, who wanted his help in compiling a survey of stellar proper motion, where he discovered five more comets with his co-worker (a fellow astronomer by the name of Norman G. Thomas). While at Lowell, Burnham began work on his masterpiece, a three-volume set meticulously cataloging every single star and deep sky object (galaxies, nebulae and globular clusters) it was possible to observe with backyard telescopes, alphabetized by constellation. Burnham's Celestial Handbook is truly an amazing accomplishment, made even more so by the fact that it was entirely self-published without any backing or support from Lowell and, despite the last revision coming out in 1978, it still remaining an indispensable staple of amateur astronomers all over the world.

What makes Burnham's Celestial Handbook so unique, apart from the staggering scope of the thing, is that it somehow manages to be and do everything: All the information a beginning astronomer could possibly want about history, terminology and methodology is all here, written in engaging and easy to digest prose, but Burnham also combines this with exhaustive data tables, charts and diagrams alongside achingly gorgeous exposure photographs of every single object that would have looked absolutely unbelievable in 1978 and still look a million times better than anything you can actually see through a telescope with your naked eye. On top of that, Burnham fills out the handbook with lore and mythology about the stars from around the world (which is precisely the sort of thing professional astronomy severely frowns upon because it's unscientific and superstitious), actual poetry (some of it his own: One of my favourites is the prefatory poem “Midnight” that opens Volume 1) and Native American proverbs.

Every ounce of Burnham's love of the night sky and the universe is on display on every page of the handbook. I was of course particularly moved by how much Burnham stresses the primacy of humanity's connection to the Celestial Sphere, and how indigenous people throughout history and around the world have found enlightenment and truth in the stars. Like Star Trek: The New Voyages, I once again find myself wanting to quote everything because it's all so genius, but that would be ludicrously impractical, especially as the majority of the handbook has been archived on Google Books, so you can go read it over there (seriously, if you take nothing else away from what I say here, please do yourself a favour and at least read the first two chapters of Volume 1). What I will do is cite two of my favourite passages from the introduction. Firstly, in regard to the all-too-familiar argument that humans have no business engaging with outer space in any fashion and should concentrate on the problems we've made for ourselves on Earth, Burnham has this to say (emphasis his):

“Yet it sometimes happens, perhaps because of the very real aesthetic appeal of astronomy and the almost incomprehensible vastness of the Universe, that the more solidly practical and duller mentalities tend to see the study as an 'escape from reality' - surely one of the most thoroughly lop-sided views ever propounded. The knowledge obtained from astronomy has always been, and will continue to be, of the greatest practical value. But, this apart, only the most myopic minds could identify 'reality' solely with the doings of man on this planet. Contemporary civilization, whatever its advantages and achievements, is characterized by many features that are, to put it very mildly, disquieting; to turn from this increasingly artificial and strangely alien world is to escape from unreality; to return to the timeless world of the mountains, the sea, the forest and the stars is to return to sanity and truth.”

In my mind, this is just about the definitive response to the perceived split between the Space Age and the Environmentalist Age, and speaks real, hard truth about Westernism that's even more valid today than it was in 1978. No matter what your views are on politics or social justice, it's tough to argue human civilization as it currently exists is built around recognising the interconnectedness of being and living in harmony with ourselves and the rest of the world. Again, the takeaway here isn't that humans are insignificant specks of dust against the unknowable cosmic vastness, its a reminder that our identity and being are part of, and irreducible from, the cosmos, and that understanding this is the first step towards healing, peace and enlightenment.

Along those lines, the opening to chapter 2 means a great deal to me, for reasons that are hopefully obvious to most by this point in this project:

“We are beginning a journey.

It will be a journey both strange and wonderful. In our tour of the Universe we shall travel the vast empty pathways of limitless space and explore the uncharted wilderness of creation. Here, in the dark unknown immensity of the heavens, we shall meet with glories beyond description and witness scenes of inexpressible splendor. In the great black gulfs of space and in the realm of innumerable stars, we shall find mysteries and wonders undreamed of. And when we return to Earth, we shall try to remember something of what we have learned about the incredible Universe which is our home.”

In my experience, the best astronomers are also mystics. It's one of the very few widely known and accessible hobbies and professions that, if not actively encourages this sort of thing, at least offers an easy pipeline to a more spiritual way of viewing the world. This is something that I find extremely evident in Burnham's work, and perhaps this is why I find myself drawn to him above and beyond many others who've written on astronomy, either the professional or amateur kind. And this is also a philosophy and worldview I have always found in the Star Trek from the Long 1980s, but really seen the most clearly in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Not the Original Series or the Original Series movies-I've always found, and even still find after revisiting them in this manner, them to be far too much Golden Age technologistic and militaristic Hard SF for my tastes. In my personal interpretation and headcanon, Burnham's words above are precisely the sort of thing Jean-Luc Picard would say. Perhaps I'm wrong to project that onto the show, but by this point in my life it's been so firmly linked to Star Trek: The Next Generation in my mind there's simply no way for me to separate them anymore. This is what it means to gaze upon the Celestial Sphere, and this *is* Star Trek: The Next Generation to me.

But what this also is, I think, is a sentiment that would be very much understood by the ancient navigators. The Polynesian Wayfinders were, and are, of course, extremely well versed in their own form of astronomy. Navigators use the positions of the Polynesian constellations to determine with peerless accuracy the locations of the islands they voyage to. But the sky in general has always played a very important role in Polynesian mythology, with many variants referring to the Sky Father and Earth Mother. In Hawaiian spirituality in particular, practitioners are taught that we are all part of the stars in some form. Ancient Hawaiian custom dictates the centrality of night to the division of time, because only at night is it possible to distinguish between days as each night the sky is ever-so-slightly different. Hawai'i is also, of course, home to Mauna Kea: Geologically speaking (and counting from the sea floor) the tallest mountain on Earth and in traditional Hawaiian belief the realm of the gods, most notably the Sky itself, Wākea. Today Mauna Kea is the home to a collection of observatories and considered to be the best place for astronomical observation on the *planet*.

One has to be somewhat careful when speaking in generalities about modern astronomy and the astronomy practiced by the navigators. There's a risk of falling into the trap of projecting onto the ancient traditions, or worse, appropriating their concepts and imagery and distorting them into a defense of the increasingly indefensible state-sponsored space programmes (NASA in particular is not above dabbling in this). That said though, there is a strong enough connection to astronomy and the sky in Hawai'i that the existence of the Mauna Kea observatories tend to feel a little more like an extension of pre-existing cultural systems then imperialist Western cultural appropriation. As part of their somewhat excellent interactive exhibit on Polynesian Wayfinding, the Exploratorium (linked to the side on this blog) has a video interview with a native Hawaiian astrophysicist who works at the observatories, claims to be descended from one of the oldest clans of Hawaiians and who sees his work in astronomy as a logical extension of his deeply held cultural beliefs and personal feeling of connection to the Sky. Though, full disclosure, the Exploratorium gets some of its funding from NASA, there does seem to be an underlying truth this exhibit is at least trying to touch on.

And this is the same truth Robert Burnham, Jr. knew. We are all stardust. We are of the Earth and the Sky. And we voyage to reaffirm this to ourselves and to each other. Burnham's books themselves know this as well: These are books with genuine soul and character. Even the layout seems to have a personality: The entire handbook is done on a typewriter in the same distinctive Arial, the charts and diagrams feel either literally cut-and-pasted or otherwise carefully arranged by hand in a notebook and the whole thing has a charming and endearingly analog feel that evokes images of a tirelessly dedicated person from the early Long 1980s working patiently throughout the night in a tiny, dimly lit wood-paneled workshop striving to produce something that captures some part of the profound love and meaning that inspired it. It's a bit rough-around-the-edges and much of it is very outdated today (not just in data, but in language, tone and attitude), but absolutely none of that matters. Burnham's Celestial Handbook feels like nothing if not an artefact of this era that, through reading it, allows us to cross the gulf of time and connect with the person whose unique love it's so very much the product of: The love of someone who's been able to touch the transcendent immortal and been, if you will, transformed. But though an artefact it may be, it's an artefact that still speaks a profound truth that ought to be heard and taken to heart.

In some ways then, perhaps much like Star Trek itself.

Myriad Universes: Star Trek: The New Voyages

At first glance, something like Star Trek: The New Voyages might raise a few red flags. It's a two-volume (though more were planned) fanfiction compilation professionally published under the Bantam Star Trek line edited by Gene Roddenberry and convention regulars Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. Immediately, one wants to angrily declare that fanfiction does not require professional validation and is a perfectly legitimate art form in its own right and something like this is only going to lead to a slippery slope where fanfic writers will be competing with each other for places in an artificially constructed hierarchy of credentials.

But in practice, that's not how Star Trek: The New Voyages reads at all (...at least at first, but we'll get to that). Instead, this is, rather heartwarmingly, nothing short of an unabashedly warm embrace by the Star Trek production team of the fanfiction community and a firm declaration that this is who Star Trek is really for and with whom the future of the franchise ultimately lies. Gene Roddenberry's introduction to the first volume is quite simply one of my favourite things he's ever written: Naturally, he positions himself as the creator from whom all of Star Trek springs from and claims the Original Series was “...not a one-man job, although it was something very personal to me-my own statement of who and what this species of ours really is, where we are now and something of where we may be going”. This is somewhat difficult to swallow knowing about the contributions of Gene Coon and D.C. Fontana and Roddenberry's own off-the-record statements about how Star Trek is really “just mini Biblical tales”, but hey, it's Roddenberry and we expect him to say something like this. What we, or at least I, did *not* expect Roddenberry to say is what comes after.

“We were particularly amazed when thousands, then tens of thousands of people began creating their own personal Star Trek adventures. Stories, and paintings, and sculptures, and cookbooks. And songs, and poems, and fashions. And more. The list is still growing. It took some time for us to fully understand and appreciate what these people were saying. Eventually we realized that there is no more profound way in which people could express what Star Trek has meant to them than by creating their own very personal Star Trek things.

Because I am a writer, it was their Star Trek stories that especially gratified me. I have seen these writings in dog-eared notebooks of fans who didn’t look old enough to spell 'cat.' I have seen them in meticulously produced fanzines, complete with excellent artwork. Some of it has even been done by professional writers, and much of it has come from those clearly on their way to becoming professional writers. Best of all, all of it was plainly done with love.

Good writing is always a very personal thing and comes from the writer’s deepest self. Star Trek was that kind of writing for me, and it moves me profoundly that it has also become so much a part of the inner self of so many other people.

Viewers like this have proved that there is a warm, loving, and intelligent life form out there.-and that it may even be the dominant species on this planet.

That is the highest compliment and the greatest repayment that they could give us.”

(Roddenberry also says if he could go back he'd make Star Trek “hotter”, but that's beside the point.)

This speak volumes, as does Sondra Marshak's later declaration that “It can be called 'fan fiction.' It is that, but it is more than that; it is simply Star Trek fiction.” and “...they are real Star Trek, written with care and love, faithful to the sunlit universe in which the Enterprise still flies on these voyages to strange new worlds”. And this tone permeates absolutely everything in the book, and the introductions the cast members offer to each individual story are equally as beautiful as Marshak's and Roddenberry's. My favourites are the ones by Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, DeForest Kelley and William Shatner, each of whom talk about, in their own way, how touched they are by the effect their work has had on people and how humbled they are to be part of something that's inspired, uplifted and brought joy to so many people.

(Shatner's essay in particular is a punching-the-air moment for me: He had such a reputation during this period of being a fan hater weirded out by Trekker culture, to the point he even poked fun at it with his tongue-in-cheek book Get a Life!. Clearly though, he was just as aware as anyone else of the effect Star Trek had on people and its capacity for material social progress.)

At the risk of slipping into the exact same platitudes I criticized Captain Kirk for in Star Trek: Year Four-The Enterprise Experiment, the reason I quote The New Voyages so much, and in particular the first volume, is that it is so eminently quotable and is so perfectly, essentially Star Trek. This is pretty much everything I adore about the franchise wrapped up in one concise little package and it's gotten to the point where I'm not sure I could talk this book up any better than the authors and editors themselves did. It's a triumphant reassurance that Star Trek belongs to everybody, but especially fanfic writers, and that it's fanfic writers who keep the story and the myth of Star Trek alive even when there's no Star Trek television show on the air.

Of course, all the highlighted fanfic authors in this volume are women, and, of course, all of their stories are utterly fantastic. They're so good, in fact, they easily outclass anything that was on either the Original Series or the Animated Series. “Ni Var”, for example, is basically “The Enemy Within” done right, splitting Spock into a pure Vulcan and a pure Human half and examining how it's in fact his duality that defines him and what makes him a good friend to Kirk and McCoy. “The Enchanted Pool”, though a bit rocky in its depiction of Spock, is on the whole a terrific fusion of a character piece about Spock's reluctance to engage in a romantic relationship with a rumination on Star Trek's connection to magick and faery myth (I won't spoil the huge twist ending, but suffice to say the one-off character introduced in this story is incredibly memorable and worth paying close attention to). Indeed, even Marshak and Culbreath themselves liken Star Trek to the Arthurian mythos.

“Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited” and “The Face in the Barroom Floor” are both light comedy pieces, the former being the obligatory “The actors get transported to a universe where their show is real” story and the latter being a straight comedy of errors where Kirk accidentally ends up implicated in a barroom brawl and arrested on shore leave. The second volume even has a simultaneously ridiculous and charming story called “Surprise!” written by Nichelle Nichols no less, about Spock and Uhura's tribulations trying to plan Kirk's birthday party (and that, somewhat wonderfully, posits Uhura and Nichols herself as an exasperated mother figure looking after “a ship full of little boys”). Once again, these are stories that couldn't have been done on the Original Series because they're too low-stakes: If nothing gets blown up or nobody gets punched, it's not going to make good sci-fi TV. But the characters and setting lend themselves very well to this kind of story, and it's often the little humorous moments that prove to be the most revealing and most essentially human.

This touches on larger truth Star Trek: The New Voyages grasps about its parent franchise and genre fiction as a whole. One of the things that makes these stories so very good is that the authors intimately grasp the humanness of these characters and these situations and aren't afraid to put that front and centre. We can have entire stories built solely around the relationship between Kirk and Spock, or Spock and McCoy, or Kirk and Uhura, or Kirk and Chapel and not have it feel voyeuristic or forced because these are human (or near-human) people doing human things with each other (in more ways then one: Practically every story is either predicated on or ends on a scene of *extremely* blatant slashing, even, delightfully, Nichols' own, and the editors are clearly *totally* on board with this). By and large, the New Voyages stories are incredibly low-key affairs about how people get along in Star Trek's universe and how its idealism manifests in day-to-day life, and that is so incredibly refreshing to read.

*But*, and there always manages to be a but, things start to go off the rails a bit in the second volume. Whereas Volume 1 came out into a world where there hadn't been a Star Trek show in two years, Volume 2 came out into one where Star Trek: The Motion Picture had just been announced and the Space Shuttle Enterprise had been launched. Star Trek was no longer the same franchise, and predictably, though painfully, where Volume 1 read like a love letter to the fanfic writers and the production team passing the torch to them, Volume 2 reads like a PR spot for NASA. Marshak and Culbreath go on and on about how NASA is Star Trek's vision given life in the real world (which it absolutely isn't) and how wonderful it is that Star Trek is coming back in a filmic form. While they do try to stress that the new movie is only going to be one more piece of the evolving tapestry of Star Trek and that the franchise really belongs to its fans, it doesn't feel quite as sincere or as convincing this time. Something's definitely changed, and not entirely for the better.

Furthermore, the stories themselves are a mixed bag this time, and this is very clearly due to there being only two or three fanfic writers spotlighted. Nichols' story is of course brilliant, but it's the only real standout this time. I had been really excited to read “The Patient Parasites” by Russel Bates, co-author of “How Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth” once I found out it had been included in this compilation, but, upon reading it, it seems clear why D.C. Fontana passed it over. It's not that it's a poor story-Far from it; it's a perfectly deft execution of the Original Series formula where Kirk talks down a single-minded robot who has been programmed to search the galaxy for knowledge, absorb it and bring it back to its “patient” masters so they don't actually have to create anything of their own. But that's sort of the problem: It's almost *too* generic a Star Trek story.

It also certainly doesn't help that Bates intended to use this story to introduce the character of Dawson Walking Bear and then changed his mind. Bates says he swapped Walking Bear out for Sulu in this story, and that's *literally* what he did: Had this been written today I would have accused Bates of doing a find-and-replace with the words “Walking Bear” and “Sulu”, because absolutely nothing Sulu does in this story is in keeping with his established character. There's even a scene where Scotty says “the young lieutenant would like to earn his keep”, as if Sulu hadn't served on the Enterprise for at least five years already by this point and one where he has Sulu mention how his ancestors wouldn't be pleased with using an artificial eclipse to shut off the robot's power supply because they saw them as bad omens, which is first of all not even accurate in the context of either the Japanese *or* the Native Americans, and secondly never something Sulu would actually say.

And this is all too bad, because, while it may be a generic Star Trek story “The Patient Parasites” is also a perfectly functional one. There was no need for Bates to remove Walking Bear from this story: In fact, a case could be made he would have fit right in because in some respects this is very much a story that does indeed come from a Native American perspective, and it's a bit sad that D.C. Fontana didn't seem to notice this. Kirk's argument about why the robot's designers are in the wrong is because, as technological and ideological parasites, they only take from others and never give anything back, and it's not too hard to interpret this as something we might expect from a Native American positionality.

As William Cronon argues in his social history Changes in the Land, while it's a fallacy to claim that Native Americans lived in perfect harmony with an unspoiled land prior to the arrival of European colonizers, what they were able to manage was a way of making subtle changes to the land that didn't disrupt the environment. In essence, they didn't take more than they needed and recognised that living in a healthy give-and-take relationship with the environment was better for everyone. Essentially, what Bates is saying here, albeit translated into a Roddenberry-esque Original Series moral atom bomb. Unfortunately, this also means “The Patient Parasites” is considerably less creative and groundbreaking a story than the fanfiction highlighted elsewhere in The New Voyages.

However the real problem child of New Voyages Volume 2 is Marshak and Culbreath's own “The Procrustean Petard”. It sounds like it's going to be a really interesting and provocative setup: Lured to a former recreation planet by a false distress signal, the crew of both the Enterprise and Commander Kang's battlecruiser get gender swapped by having their chromosomes altered, with the exception of Spock and Kang, who get double-Y chromosomes and become, essentially, hyper-masculine. The rest of the story involves both crews trying to deal with the ramifications of the new status quo and find a way to change themselves back.

As intriguing as that premise is though, very quickly it starts to become painfully obvious that this story is everything people accuse “Turnabout Intruder”of being, which is rather shocking coming from two female writers: The crew, especially Kirk, spends the majority of the story bemoaning the dysphoria of their situation, which would be alright (and accurate) if it wasn't limited exclusively to the crewmembers turned female saddened at becoming physically and emotionally weaker and more vulnerable (not to mention the fact that this reads Kirk herself completely wrong, but that's another story): The women who get turned into men get scenes where they revel in their newfound strength and power, and there's even a female security officer who decides to stay male because “it's a better form for her chosen profession”, which is...just...yuck. And furthermore, there's not a single male crewmember who decides to stay a woman, which really hurts. I mean I don't expect 1978 Star Trek to grasp things about transgender issues fiction *today* can't even get right, but this would have been the absolute perfect platform to talk about them and the story just completely misses the boat on every single interesting direction it could possibly have gone.

Likewise, this would have been a wonderful opportunity to explore how gender roles manifest in Star Trek and how this compares with the way they work in the real world, but Marshak and Culbreath do *absolutely nothing* with this, instead focusing on how nobody will take Kirk seriously as a commander anymore in the body of a beautiful woman, which makes zero sense even given the way the Star Trek universe works already. At *least* in “Turnabout Intruder” the dilemma was over the fact that Kirk wasn't legally allowed to take command of a starship as a woman and how unjust that law was: This story seems to *actually be saying* that women are the “weaker sex”, inherently inferior in high-performance jobs like working on a Starship and how tragic that is. And no matter which way you cut it, that's simply not the Star Trek way.

(That's not to say Marshak and Culbreath don't know how to have a little fun: The best part of this story, and frankly its only redeeming feature, is its extremely strong implication that everyone in the crew is off having incredibly hot sex with each other off-camera because they're so taken aback by what knockouts they've all become and they finally have the ability to appreciate, and act on, the love and beauty they see in one another. Even turning the Enterprise into a lesbian orgy isn't enough to save this one.)

What we see in Star Trek: The New Voyages then is a perfect microcosm of the split in Star Trek fandom: The first volume wears how indebted it is to the fanfic writers on its sleeve: Indeed, it can be seen as an official acknowledgment and adoption of the overwhelmingly female fanzine structure and culture that defined Star Trek fandom in the 1970s. The second volume, however, shows the less savoury side of the franchise: The top-down, technologistic side that would much prefer to cozy up to (and sell out to) NASA and the aerospace engineering sector for a cross-promotional deal with the shiny new bit of branded Star Trek Soda Pop Art rather than engage with the people who are actually trying to internalize Star Trek's idealism and act on it on an everyday basis. And this is pretty much how the fandom is going to remain divided, at least until Nerd Culture comes along (but even now it's rather clear where Nerd Culture is going to spring from).

But, the original message of The New Voyages remains as clear now as it ever was. This is Star Trek, through its original creative team, finally recognising and embracing the things that people (particularly female people) loved about it, and loved about it enough to keep it alive almost a decade later. As Nichelle Nichols says (and here I go quoting people again):

“We have come a long way since the last of the old voyages...We still have a long way to go. But I see people working to get there. (It is significant that many of them are women; for example, the writers and editors of these stories.) So long as we are still working, writing, talking, thinking, loving, we are under way on warp drive to the world and the future we want.

These are the new voyages….

And they may be just a little different.”

“Interregnum”: The Final Voyage

Star Trek fandom circa the mid 1980s was a curious thing. With four blockbuster movies to its name, the franchise was most certainly not the expressly marginal phenomenon it had at least the appearances of throughout the 1970s. However, given the necessarily sporadic nature of cinema, it's tough to see how Star Trek would have been seen as a truly ever-present thing (that is, a work that is unarguably current, which is somewhat different then the general ubiquity Star Trek has always had). That kind of presence requires, especially in the days before the never-ending sensory overload of publicity that today's media artefacts enjoy, something akin to a regular television show, which Star Trek still didn't have, though this would change now, in 1986, with the announcement of a new syndicated Star Trek series to premier next year.

This makes the appearance of “The Final Voyage” particularly well-timed, for, in addition to giving the Original Series a proper finale of sorts (it was a constant bugbear amongst a certain sort of fan that Captain Kirk talks about a Five Year Mission while Star Trek only lasted three seasons) that segues neatly into the film series, it also serves as a way of passing the torch to whatever the new Star Trek show would be, as it was largely assumed that the new series would follow a new crew and a new ship. That said, what's the most interesting about all of this is the decision to do this story as a comic book instead of, say, a tie-in novel or errata to one of the movies. Comics had been part of Star Trek's history forever, but, until recently, they had largely been resigned to doing “bonus stories”: At best, extra stories for when the TV show wasn't on the air and, especially once the Original Series went off the air, bits of promotional merchandising to cater to the show's fans and keep the brand in people's minds.

This doesn't mean the comics of the 1980s were written by and for what we know now as Nerd Culture: The larger melange of cultural signifiers we associate with this phenomenon today didn't really exist yet (and certainly not for a franchise like Star Trek, which doesn't really get co-opted by Nerd Culture until the mid-to-late 1990s), though if you wanted to be particularly reductivist you could maybe spot the trends that would eventually culminate in it a decade or so later. At this point, the comics division of Star Trek is in an interesting place, consisting as it does of a relatively big-name book series from DC that was pegged, however briefly, as a pseudo-official continuation of the story established in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This was of course a task made significantly more annoying by the release of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and, predictably, anyone trying to reconcile all four works together would likely find themselves with a formidable headache.

However, by 1986 the movies were out and, more importantly,with the exception of The Motion Picture and Wrath of Khan, DC had the novelizations of all of them, a fascinating trend that would continue all the way to 1994. While Pocket Books had the rights to put out trade paperback novelizations of the movies along with their regular line of tie-ins (beginning a long-running partnership with Star Trek that continues to this day), DC had their own adaptations too, and these versions were treated as equally important as the rest, if not more so. I find these sequential art translations to be overall the better adaptations of works such as these: There's something about Star Trek that fits comics better than prose I feel, likely due to its serialized and highly visual heritage. And so, it fell to Mike W. Barr, a regular writer on DC's monthly Star Trek book and the writer responsible for novelizing Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, to pen the story that bridged the gap between the Original Series and the feature films.

Really, DC couldn't have picked a better person. With the perspective of history, Barr's portfolio and legacy precedes him: Aside from his work on the early 80s series, Barr would go on to pen several stories for the second volume of DC's Star Trek book when it rebooted in the second half of the decade, along with a number of classics for the later DC Star Trek: The Next Generation and Malibu Star Trek: Deep Space Nine books during what I consider to be the unabashed Golden Age of Trek, not just on television, but in comics too (and sometimes *more* in comics, but now I'm getting ahead of myself). But even in 1986 Barr would have obviously been the person for the job given his work with the film adaptations, and this shows throughout “The Final Voyage”: Barr nails the voice and personality of each and every one of his characters, from the Original Series cast to Will Decker, who makes his “first” appearance in this story.

This shows in other, more subtle ways too: Scotty has the moustache and streaks of grey hair he'll sport in The Motion Picture, while Decker sports the redesigned uniform and communicator from that movie. This also leads to one of my favourite little moments in the book: After Scotty expresses his doubts about the look of the newly unisex Starfleet uniforms, Uhura flatly points out

“Is that so? Well, you might feel a little differently if you'd spent the last five years wearing a mini-skirt.”

Which is such a bloody perfect line Barr knows he doesn't need to add anything else, so he just has Scotty stammer and walk away. Meanwhile, the Enterprise too looks as if it's in an intermediary stage, with visual cues in the design of its interior that are reminiscent of both The Motion Picture and the Original Series: It's as if the ship itself is in the processes of metamorphosing into a new form.

The actual story is, perhaps surprisingly, a somewhat low-key affair: Kirk and Spock receive word that the Enterprise's five-year mission has come to an end, and that they are to return to spacedock so the ship can undergo retrofitting and the crew can pick up their next assignments. On their way, the Enterprise stops to pick up Will Decker, and up-and-coming officer who's going to take over from Kirk in the captain’s chair. It soon becomes obvious though that Decker may not be quite ready for prime time, as he harbours resentment and guilt for the actions of his father, Commodore Matt Decker, whose brazenly suicidal actions cost the life of the USS Constellation. Before the crew can process the prospect of life apart from the Enterprise, they're plagued by traumatic and haunting visions and, stunned, realise they've somehow been transported to Talos IV. This turns out to be the work of Commander Koloth, who has led a Klingon invasion of Talos IV to annex the planet to the Empire and find a way to weaponize the Talosians' power of illusion.

Beaming down to investigate, Kirk, Spock and Decker are captured by the Klingons, imprisoned in the Talosians' repurposed zoo cages and subjected to protracted mind torture along with the rest of the crew. I'm not a fan of this kind of scene as a general rule, but I have to admit it makes sense and is appropriate here, as the way the Klingons torture the crew is by forcing them to endure their greatest fears or relive their most painful memories: Decker is haunted by the *literal* ghosts of the Constellation, who blame him for his father's failures and Scotty is finally unable to pull off the impossible at the last second and save his ship from destruction. But the most intriguing nightmares belong to Uhura, Spock, McCoy and Kirk: Uhura imagines she's being held captive by robotic life-forms who weld a featureless mask to her face: In other words, what Uhura fears is a loss of her own unique identity and being forcibly absorbed into a monolithic, homogenous force. It's the Borg four years before the Borg and even more meaningful in the context of Uhura, a woman of colour, as it's a biting criticism of the teleological Gene Roddenberry version of utopia that so often defined the Original Series.

Spock imagines being back on Vulcan tormented by his childhood bullies and being unable to turn to his mother for help, as she has become a pure Vulcan as well and disowns him, calling him a failure. For Spock then, his worst nightmare is at once completely losing touch with his human side, but also being forever ostracized for it (ironically enough, this vision is the primary factor in Spock deciding to take leave from Starfleet and undergo the kholinar ritual, as he felt he allowed his emotions to get the best of him, which, brilliantly, fits as well). McCoy, meanwhile, imagines Joanna being critically injured an unable to save her, as he was so far away when it happened he wasn't able to get to her in time, thus driving even more of a wedge between him and the remainder of his family.

What's wonderful about these two scenes is they come explicitly out of character moments established by D.C. Fontana in places very much not the Original Series: We heard a little bit about Spock's family life in “Journey to Babel”, but the character development that allows us to get this insight into Spock's core really comes from “Yesteryear”. And of course, Joanna McCoy, and her relationship with her father, has always been something we've only ever been able to speculate about and is a bit of backstory that exists only as assumed fanon from a particular branch of fandom. Having Spock and McCoy's defining character moments in “The Final Voyage” come out of these specific bits of Star Trek lore is a wonderful, affirmational declaration that the story of the Original Series crew is larger than the 79 episodes of live-action television and a touching acknowledgment of D.C. Fontana's contributions to what's become an evolving and ever-growing tapestry. This makes “The Final Voyage” feel a lot more like the capstone to an era instead of a bit of fanwanky fill-in-the-blanks writing.

Then there's Kirk. Kirk doesn't envision an imaginary scenario based out of any underlying self-doubt or anxiety, he actually has to relive his most painful memory: The death of Edith Keeler. The only difference between the version of the scene in “The Final Voyage” and the one in “The City on the Edge of Forever” is that the illusory Edith Keeler taunts Kirk throughout about his dedication and subservience to “the future”: The idea that he'll sacrifice himself and others for some intangible and ill-defined long-term “greater good” instead of trying to make decisions that come out of a sense of kindness and justice in the present. And it's a stinging critique, and more than makes up for the debatably hackneyed invocation of Edith Keeler and “The City on the Edge of Forever” when, speaking strictly in terms of the narrative of the original show and films, it might have made more sense to use Reyna, or even Carol Marcus here.

This was an instance where Kirk's decision was very much made out of an eye towards a larger duty and obligation, but paradoxically also a sense, either conscious or subconscious, that he's the protagonist Star Trek's entire narrative revolves around. Taking it even further, there's the ever-worrisome imperialist subtext to the original story, where apparently it's trying to teach us pacifism is inherently wrongheaded and will make us go soft and will lead to a future run by Space Nazis. Edith rightfully points out that this is bullshit, and calls Kirk out on betraying the values he himself holds to in the name of a higher authority, which he constantly tries to excuse away as “honour” or “duty”. And Kirk snaps, breaking free of his illusions and just wails away at his Klingon torturer, giving us the one thing the Original Series, in all its indulgent voyeuristic “two-fisted diplomacy”, always shied away from: Pure, unbridled rage and bloodshed. The ultimate cause and consequence of all violence.

Furthermore, this scene plays into the black hole gravity “The City on the Edge of Forever” exerts on all manifestations of the Original Series story, and how much it's trapped by all the unpleasant implications and connotations that episode embodies. As much as Star Trek in this form may try to stretch its wings and evolve beyond its roots, its roots are far too often too problematic to fully cast aside without some serious rehabilitation. And that's what “The Final Voyage” is encouraging us to do: Take a good look at everything Star Trek is and wants to be at this point in its history and use that knowledge to better ourselves as we go forward. Which is just about the purest Star Trek message you can find. And, having finally acknowledged its past and present, no matter how ugly it can get at times, Star Trek is free now to grow up and move to the next stage of its life. So, when the lights go off on the bridge and Kirk walks off to take up his new assignment, it doesn't feel like the end of a story, but rather the beginning of the next chapter of one.

“But it wasn't any use. Nobody came.”: The Enterprise Incident # 5

Connected to the Preserver interface device, Spock relives an encounter with his father on Vulcan where they both exhibit a manner of tension over Spock's decision to stay in Starfleet instead of returning to work at the Vulcan Science Academy. In the present, Kirk, McCoy and Scotty monitor the experiment from one of the Enterprise's science labs. After Arex detects a massive random energy spike centered around the device and McCoy warns him that Spock's central nervous system is about to collapse as a result, Kirk has the interface destroyed and beamed out into space, but not before Spock was able to determine that it was the Preservers who constructed the galactic barrier (a ribbon of energy at the boundary of the Milky Way galaxy that was the focus of a number of Original Series episodes). While he wasn't able to determine the exact purpose, Spock believes the Preservers intended it to protect the younger peoples of the galaxy, and that they hoped one day it would no longer be necessary.

</The Galactic Barrier evokes a number of episodes, but perhaps the most telling are “Where No Man Has Gone Before” and “Beyond the Farthest Star”, the first episodes of both the Original Series and the Animated Series. In the former episode, crossing the barrier caused Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner to suddenly transform into Godlike beings who, drunk on their newfound power, immediately set about trying to crush the entire universe beneath them. While it wasn't mentioned in the latter episode, recall that a key aspect of the reading we afforded “Beyond the Farthest Star” was that the Enterprise crew, and thus Star Trek, had grown to a point where it could leave the galaxy behind and begin the next stage of its journey. In other words, leaving the galaxy can be seen as a sign of a particular wisdom and maturity, but also a source of great power that is inconceivably dangerous and destructive if misused, a reading reinforced by the presence of Ayelbourne at the last Preserver outpost./>

Determining the location of the last Preserver outpost, Kirk has the Enterprise race to try and beat Kor to it. However, as soon as they arrive, Kirk, Spock and Arex are whisked away to a chamber bathed in soft white light by Ayelbourne, the elder Organian who played a pivotal role in forcing the Klingons and the Federation to sign the Treaty of Organia in “Errand of Mercy”. Kirk and Spock are furious that Ayelbourne refused to show himself earlier, but Ayelbourne counters that his people have decided their intervention in the affairs of the galactic empires has done more harm then good. The Organians, he reveals, are one of a handful of peoples who are tasked with preserving the knowledge and memory of the Elder Races, infinitely old cultures from the dawn of time, of whom the Preservers are one, who left behind relics that, it was hoped, could be of use to the younger civilizations were they to reach specific points in their development. However, the discovery of the Preserver outposts by the Klingons and the Federation in the midst of a prelude to a galaxy-spanning war has forced the Organians' hand, as this is proof to them that the universe as it exists now is simply not ready for such things, and furthermore, that it's hopeless and counterproductive for the Organians to try and guide it any longer.

</This scene is a complete inversion of one of the most bog-standard Star Trek story structures and, at first glance, a rejection of one of the founding core tenets of the franchise's philosophy: Instead of the Enterprise crew charismatically out-debating some hyper-advanced Godlike alien to show how humanity and all its imperfect foils is preferable to immortality and Godhood, Kirk's “debate” with Ayelbourne is a complete slaughterfest, and its abundantly clear we're meant to side with Ayelbourne. Indeed, this is almost a complete 180 from “How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth”, where the point was that while humanity was still growing, it had outgrown its primordial phase. And while this has happened once before (and under Fontana, natch), there's a darker side to having the Godlike being win this time: Like Q, Ayelbourne sees humanity as beyond redemption, but this time there's no chance for humanity to defend itself. Totally frustrated and fed up, Ayelebourne  washes his hands of the entire galaxy and essentially says “It's up to you from now on. I'm outta here”./>

This is, at first glance, something of a problematic scene. One could almost read a Foundation-esque attitude towards cultural development in the way Ayelbourne describes the Organians and the Preservers: That there's a Modernistic, teleological path of evolution all societies go on and it's the responsibility of older, more advanced cultures to help younger, less advanced cultures reach the predetermined designated checkpoints. D.C. Fontana was certainly around during the Golden Age of science fiction and thus these themes would not be entirely unfamiliar to her. However, there are two ways in which I find this scene interesting: Firstly, it's an inversion of the most stock and irredeemable Roddenberry Original Series plot: The Federation waltzes into a so-called “primitive”, “backwards” culture, wrecks shit, and then puts them on the “proper” path of cultural development whether they like it or not. Here, Fontana has Ayelbourne use the Federation's own language of entitlement and privilege against it, and it's wonderful to see Kirk bluster and sputter ineffectually against it with not one ounce of his signature charisma coming to his aid. It also gives us two utterly fantastic exchanges:

“You consider potentially saving the lives of millions of Federation citizens a burden?”

“Yes I do. And we consider it your burden, as we have grown weary of watching you toil with your fruitless conflicts and plots against one another.”

Which to me reads as just about the loveliest up-yours to my least favourite mode of Star Trek storytelling ever, (and is much appreciated, given how much the rest of this series has invoked the Dominion War) and the concise-yet-biting

“We did not seek war with the Klingons!”

“Nor did you pursue peace, Captain.”

</Secondly though, there's something that can be made of the fact that the Organians are keepers of ancient knowledge. Throughout the Animated Series, we talked about how one thing that Star Trek has the ability to do is reconceptualise the archetype of the shaman for a science fiction setting. The point of shamanism is, as we've discussed before, to seek advice and guidance from the world of spirits, gods and ancestors to improve the quality of life in our world while also sharing the experience of living in the mortal plane with beings who aren't able to. If so much of the Animated Series was about teasing the potential for Star Trek to embrace shamanism as a worldview, “The Enterprise Experiment” shows Fontana perhaps changing her views, and has the Organians smack Kirk down for his hubris in presuming he was wise and disciplined enough to be a shaman. On the other hand, Ayelbourne does say that Arex's people, the Edosians, may have a role to play in guiding humanity in the future, so maybe the Animated Series wasn't a total wash-out after all./>

In a sense it's cathartic, at least for someone like me who never did quite *get* the big deal about the Original Series to see Kirk and Spock so roundly curb-stomped by Ayelbourne. Fontana lovingly and leisurely extends this scene for about two thirds of the book, lingering on every single moment where Ayelbourne calls out the crew on their hubris, pretentiousness, petulance, warmongering and self-absorption. Fontana is finally giving the soapbox to people echoing my fundamental problems with this era of Star Trek, and I'm not going to pretend it isn't a little validating and affirmational. On the other hand, this is a bloody cynical story and the ramifications it holds are a bit up in the air. For the first time in the entire history of the franchise, the ultimate relevance and worth of Star Trek seem in doubt. Even during the darkest, most miserable days of the Dominion War, there was at least a sliver of hope that Star Trek maybe meant more than this (even though the particular notion Ron Moore and Ira Behr had of what Star Trek meant was arguably the wrong one). With “The Enterprise Experiment” Fontana, like Ayelbourne, seems ready to give up on Star Trek for good, and that's a rather heartbreaking position for debatably the franchise's leading luminary to adopt in 2008.

</The killing blow comes near the end of this scene, where Fontana goes out of her way to show even William Shatner isn't enough anymore. Kirk's trademark wit and rhetoric, traits of his so beloved by generations of Original Series fans, won't help him anymore: As he's done throughout this series, Kirk spends a lot of this issue spouting off hackneyed and cliched quotes from Old Dead White Guys, making him sound embarrassingly trite and middlebrow: A devastating critique to level against Star Trek. This is the dark side of Kirk's much-celebrated improvisational skills: Kirk's gone from being a skilled Poker player who can bluff his way out of anything to a bullshitter who gets promptly called on his bullshit by absolutely everyone, from the Romulan Commander to Spock, to McCoy and finally, to Ayelbourne. While Kirk and William Shatner both used to revel in their artifice, now artifice is revealed as the hollow and vapid simulacrum of meaning an impotent has-been is desperately hoping will allow him to duck out of responsibility. It's a truly gutting moment, and I don't even consider myself a fan./>

We end, I suppose, where we began, with the Romulan Commander. After Ayelbourne appears to all the major galactic powers condemning them for their inherent violence before departing this plane for good (and a skirmish breaks out between the Klothos and the Enterprise), we see a clandestine meeting between the Romulan Commander, her Subcommander and a Klingon delegation led by Kor and Koloth on a neutral planet where, OK, let's just cut the pretense and flat-out call her our heroine, warily accepts a proposal to ally her people with the Klingons in the interest of pooling their resources to defend themselves against the rising threat of the the Federation, which puts everyone in grave danger. It is soon revealed, however, that this meeting was set up by Admiral Nogura, who we saw bantering with the Subcommander last issue. Before we depart, we see the Commander wonder whom she should fear the most of her two new allies. She never comes up with an answer, and neither do we. The future of the Federation, and of Star Trek, is now in serious doubt.

I of course feel there's something worth salvaging about Star Trek, otherwise I wouldn't still be doing this project. But I very much empathize with D.C. Fontana in that I see it as a constant uphill battle to keep the franchise's more problematic tendencies in check. And, after over forty years with Star Trek, and forty years of never getting her vision ever really taken seriously, I can understand how Star Trek: Year Four and “The Enterprise Experiment” may well have been the last straw for her. But, just as the Organians departed this plane because they felt it was time for the galaxy to look after itself, maybe we can say the same about the departure of D.C. Fontana. With the leading architect of Star Trek potentially signing off for good, perhaps its time to follow Ayelbourne's advice and take our destiny into our own hands.