Subspace Radio

Hi Everyone!

My friend and colleague Jack Graham of Shabogan Graffiti and Xenomorph's Paradox recently started his own podcast series The Shabcast (graciously hosted by Kevin and James from Pex Lives, another superb podcast y'all should check out. Jack and I were on this past December), and he was kind enough to invite me on as a guest this month!

Ostensibly, Jack wanted to interview me about this blog, but me being me the conversation inevitably spun off in a number of different directions. Fair warning, this is over two hours, most of which consists of me never, ever shutting up. And this is just part 1. In all seriousness though, we had a delightful conversation I was honoured and privileged to be a part of.

Some of the things we talked about were, naturally, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Dirty Pair and how I fell into all three and came to be writing about them for the Internet. We also talked about my interest in Polynesian wayfinding, my training in cultural anthropology, philosophy and science and technology studies and my conception of reading derived from me reading someone else reading Jacques Lacan. There were also brief mentions of non-Dirty Pair anime and manga and how Japanese media was introduced to Western audiences, such as Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Urusei Yatsura, my other loves Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Project A-ko and my uneasy ambivalence about Sailor Moon.

A few housekeeping notes: This being a completely unscripted and largely directionless conversation, I caught myself after the fact in a few factual slip-ups. I’m not sure how much of this made it into the show, but I figured I should cover my bases either way:

• I believe at one point I called “Masks” from the seventh season of The Next Generation “Brannon Braga at his finest”. That’s a bit misleading-The episode was, of course, written by Joe Menosky, though Braga was, I believe, a producer and staff writer at the time.
• When I’m talking about Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, I’m refering to the Takarazuka Revue.
• Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers was written by David Turnbull. You should all still read it, though.

You can listen to the show here. Thanks again to Jack for the opportunity and to Kevin and James for hosting us! I hope all the listeners get as much a kick out of hearing this as I did recording it!

“Ambassador Sarek”: Sarek

Ambassador Sarek.

This episode should not exist.

I don't mean there are thematic decisions I disagree with, or there are narrative framing problems, or even that the story is morally, ethically or politically indefensible: Indeed, at its heart this is a wonderfully moving story about aging and a loss of self and identity, as every critic on the face of the planet to cover this franchise who isn't me has already duly noted. I mean the entire ethos of this story, from conception to execution, is predicated on the demands of Hollywood business networking rather than good creative or storytelling sense. It is the most depressingly obvious of cynical pandering, and the fact the actual episode turned out to be this good is actually an incidental nonissue, albeit one that that shows how heroic the writing staff was and how connected to their series they had become by this point, whether willingly or not.

The sad thing is this still keeps my from enjoying it.

Mark Lenard recalls how Gene Roddenberry came to him with the idea do this episode after he visited the offices one day, telling him “you know, it's about time Sarek comes back! After all, Vulcans age very slowly”. This is the same Gene Roddenberry, it should be noted, who had made it expressly clear that there was to be absolutely *no* crossover between Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, even going so far as to place an outright moratorium on even *referencing* the Original Series because of his firm, and absolutely fucking correct, belief that the new show needed to stand on its own without constantly leaning on its illustrious predecessor. If nothing else this was, after all “the next generation”, and should be focused on attracting people who were not already established Star Trek fans; “the next generation” of people to grow up on the series' utopian values ideals, as it were. But values and ideals, it would seem, last only until a respected veteran actor shows up on your doorstop and you decide you need to do a little schmoozing.

But I mean Mark Lenard is a great actor, obviously, and even if the decision to cast him was business motivated, that doesn't mean the episode had to be a write-off or that the character you're going to have him play absolutely *needs* to be the one who it just so happens the most obsessively fannish contingent of your audience is going to recognise and expect. I don't see any reason the show couldn't have had Lenard fill just about any role they could have thrown his way-It didn't *have* to be literally Sarek again. Hell, even if you *explicitly wanted* to invoke the Original Series you didn't need to do that: Diana Muldaur had a stellar tenure on Star Trek: The Next Generation playing someone who quite plainly *wasn't* Ann Mulhall, Thalassa, Miranda Jones or Bones McCoy yet who successfully stood in for all of them to serve a more nuanced narrative role. Doctor Katherine Pulaski belongs to Star Trek: The Next Generation; Ambassador Sarek does not.

(On top of that, I'm still deeply annoyed personally that Lenard is best remembered for Sarek when for me the Romulan Commander from “Balance of Terror” is and always will be his definitive role. As it so happens Lenard himself agreed with me, and he will thankfully get one more chance to return to the magic of that one powerful rendez-vous, but it will take until Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for him to do it and he'll have to write the damn thing himself.)

I want everyone to ask yourselves this question: If this story had been made completely as-is, but with Sarek's role being played by some one-off ambassador character, would it still be considered the timeless masterpiece that it is? It's not too far our of the realm of possibility: Writer Marc Cushman apparently pitched, at Roddenberry's request, two versions of this story-One with Sarek and one with a Vulcan character we didn't have any previous knowledge of or attachment to. I'm not talking about the *effectiveness* of the story per se, though that was certainly a concern: Michael Piller does note how the usage of a beloved established character emphasized the notion that “even the greatest of men is subject to mental illness”, and I'd extrapolate that to also say that it made the story's point more palpable to a certain kind of Star Trek fan. It does touch on that talk between Riker and Data way back in “The Bonding” about how we feel loss more deeply if it's of someone close to us. But that's not what I'm interested in here, I'm talking purely about reception and legacy.

Because while the story itself may be a good and important one about mental illness and aging, the fact that it's Sarek dwarfs everything else. The episode's themes really ought to be the draw here, but I think the reason it has the reputation it does is not because it's a touching mature take on a subject matter a great many of us may face, but because Sarek is in it and that it's happening to Sarek. He, and by association all the retroactive baggage from the Original Series he brings with him, becomes the attraction, rather than the plot, and that's a true shame when the plot is as sophisticated as it is. Sarek's presence does precisely what Gene Roddenberry in his more cogent moments feared it would and overshadows the work the rest of the show is trying to do. Just look at the episode's title, possibly the most banal and uncreative in the entire history of the franchise: Just his name, nothing more, nothing less, because that's all they figure they need to grab their audiences hook, line and sinker. And, depressingly, they're right.

Speaking of Gene Roddenberry, it is worth mentioning the other reading “Sarek” tends to be afforded in mainline Trek discourse, which is that it's really about, at least at an unconscious level, Roddenberry's own deteriorating health. It is somewhat telling, as Michael Piller also points out, that Roddenberry gave this story the go-ahead just as his own faculties were beginning to fade. Piller says of that time that “it was clear that he was no longer the same man that he had been”. And there is a certain poignant truth to this, knowing that Roddenberry only has a year or so left to live and that in a few months he'll be openly imploring Piller to stay on essentially as his heir apparent. It is *also* worth keeping in mind, however, that the interview in which he says this, alongside a rather uncharacteristically glowing tribute, came shortly *after* Roddenberry's death and not long before the title of Roddenberry's heir apparent decisively falls to Rick Berman, though he and Piller share it for a few years in the interim.

But that bit of necessary reflection aside, the thing about “Sarek” as an episode is that it is, by its very definition, inescapably fanwanky. And this is a very, very bad thing. Ron Moore and Ira Behr did a page one rewrite, and Behr talks about the long and bloody battle he had to go through to sneak in a name-drop of Spock. Of which, Behr has to say:

“I broke open the barrier and made it possible for The Next Generation to use names like Spock on-screen. That was a major taboo when I got there. No way could you mention the original Star Trek characters. It took days and days of arguing to slip in a single reference to Spock. So I like to think in my own sort of incoherent way I helped start to push open the door to what was a very, very closed and narrow franchise.”

Which to me is just appallingly, distressingly, hurtfully wrong on just about every single level. Star Trek: The Next Generation wasn't “narrow” because it didn't allow itself to reference the Original Series all the time, actually, the exact *opposite* of that: A franchise that does nothing except constantly reference itself (or rather, the most iconic iteration of itself) and where the same twenty or so people show up everywhere in every major historical event in the universe is unsustainably and destructively incestuous. That is the perfect recipe for something Nerds and *only* Nerds will watch, and that's fatal to a show like this. Those boundaries were a good idea and the only reason Behr doesn't think they are is because he doesn't like Star Trek: The Next Generation but *does* like the Original Series and wants to be allowed to fannishly name-check it and invoke its structure all the time. But Behr gets his wish, and, as he said, “Sarek” is the episode that broke the doors down between the generations such that the universe of Star Trek can get far more self-referential and fanwanky.

And fanwank is precisely the reason Star Trek isn't around today, so good job and thanks a lot.

“The Collector”: The Most Toys

"Well, shoot or be damned!"

I've been pretty negative on this show lately, so lest you think I go into these looking for things to complain about, here's another episode I never saw when it originally aired and never managed to catch on reruns. I had no preconceptions about how good or bad it was going to be, but I had read a lot about it and knew it got a lot of praise. So no prior baggage to jettison here, just a solid example of how Star Trek: The Next Generation worked when it was at is supposed creative and aesthetic peak.

And guess what? I still didn't like it!

My big problem with “The Most Toys”, as has been the case with most things this season, comes down to a philosophical disagreement on my part as to how Star Trek: The Next Generation should be approached (Yes, I rib Bailey, Bischoff and White, but only because I see where they're coming from and empathize. It's always healthy to be able to laugh at things you care about, doubly so if it's traits you see in yourself). I'll touch on that a bit later (I suppose I have to), but for the moment let's take a look at something I think will be of more interest to the readers of this blog: I have heard from more than one reader or critic in Doctor Who fandom about a prevailing theory that in this episode Kivas Fajo is meant as a stand-in for The Doctor. Considering Kivas Fajo is an evil psychopath with no regard for sentient life who literally kidnaps and imprisons living beings for his own amusement I find this highly interesting, as I generally thought Doctor Who was understood to be about sort of the opposite of those things.

The obvious explanation would be that, Doctor Who fans being Doctor Who fans and thus having some unfortunate complex in regards to Star Trek: The Next Generation that compels them to view it as the staunch enemy of everything they hold dear because they seem to have a pathological need to define themselves in opposition to something, are reading “The Most Toys” as some kind of malicious satire of Doctor Who's philosophical and ethical groundwork. Which...doesn't actually make sense if you watch the story itself. I mean, Fajo himself doesn't seem to me to bear even a passing resemblance to the good Doctor, apart from I guess the fact he has a quirky and offbeat manner of speech and has a female travelling companion. Over the course of the episode's runtime, I racked my brain trying to come up with some way this could be read as a parody of Doctor Who or some attempt to put Star Trek: The Next Generation's values (well, such as they are at this point in time and yes, I said it) in conflict with it and I honestly could not come up with any way to make even a shoddy simulacrum of an argument out of it.

The best I could come up with, and this is really stretching things here, is that the Doctor Who evocation comes when Kivas Fajo is calling Data out on his loyalty to Starfleet, saying his own way of life is preferable because he's bound to nobody, does not have an obligation to serve a militaristic power and can travel anywhere he wants doing anything he wants. And I suppose you could extrapolate from that the notion that Fajo's undoing at the end is Data showing him how irresponsible, childish and destructive his actions are, and that this is the show saying the forces of justice and order will always win out over evil criminals, because everyone who does not conform to Starfleet's ideals must be a dangerous criminal. That certainly fits the prevailing attitude in Doctor Who fandom about Star Trek, which is that it's a very reactionary, pro-hegemony intellectual framework that trends very strongly to the fascism side of the fascism versus anarchy spectrum. It's certainly an argument I myself have witnessed being articulated in debates I've personally been involved in.

But there are a ton of problems with this reading. I mean obviously I disagree with that assessment of Star Trek, which I think is pretty fucking insultingly crude and generalizes a whole sweeping myth structure that's been contributed to, and thus shaped, by people from every political and social background conceivable down to a few smug “gotcha” talking points that people who are already inclined to sneer and look down their noses at Star Trek are going to accept without a second thought anyway. I've always been of the belief, and still am, that while it's incredibly easy to point out the worrying undertones to the political structures of Strafleet and the Federation, this was never something Star Trek's various primary creative figures were ever unaware of or were unwilling to put under intense scrutiny. In fact, as I've written here a number of times before, I think the true heart of Star Trek lies in internalizing its own utopianism by showing how the Enterprise crew (or the crew of any other hero ship or station you care to name) are actually better than the universe they inhabit, showing how they embody the ideals their bosses can only deceive themselves into thinking they do as well.

But additionally I don't think this particular reading is even in “The Most Toys” to begin with. If it had been, I probably would have been more invested in this episode. Kivas Fajo is clearly evil and clearly not meant to be in any way sympathetic, but equally he's also quite clearly meant to be an instigator for Data: What this episode is actually about is testing the boundaries of what Data is capable of. Can he be pushed so far that his programming would allow him to kill somebody, even though he was specifically designed to not be capable of doing so? At it's heart it's a boring Asimov-style Three Laws of Robotics story, but updated to fit the interiority focus of Michael Piller-era Star Trek: The Next Generation. But it's also a story that fits very neatly into Ron Moore's spheres of interest as a creator, so much so that I was surprised to learn he didn't write it: Freelancer and then-intern Shari Goodhartz did. But, as with everything on this show, we can assume it was considerably worked over by the staff so bringing in Moore's positionality isn't off-base, especially as they both seem to be on the same wavelength.

Back when we looked at the Original Series episode “The Conscience of the King”, I mentioned that Moore cites it as his favourite Star Trek episode because it cast doubt onto the character of Kirk. He likes it because he sees it as an exploration into the lengths and depths a person will go to when pushed beyond their limits. Knowing this puts, say “The Pegasus” and pretty much everything to do with Battlestar Galactica into perspective, but it's also a useful way to look at “The Most Toys”, because it's pretty much that story for Data. And, I suppose if you were inclined to do this kind of a story, Data would be a sensible character to do it with precisely because of the aforementioned Three Laws of Robotics stuff. There's even a little bit of Ira Behr here too, in the same scene where Data and Fajo are debating the former's Starfleet service, Fajo mocks Data by calling him “a military pacifist”, calling it a contradiction in terms. Yes, Fajo's obviously the villain of the piece, but the episode plays it very much akin to how The Dark Knight will one day depict The Joker: A dangerous, unhinged psychopath, yes, but one who is scary because he makes so many good points.

And now we come to my big issue with “The Most Toys” (I mean, apart from the fridging, everyone being out of character again and the superfluous plot that doesn't cover any ground not already handled way better in “The Bonding” and “Descent”) because the episode is actually making the exact same intellectual errors the Doctor Who fans are, just in a slightly different focus and context. Once again, we have the creative team damning the entirety of Star Trek: The Next Generation with their flak shrapnel. It's attacking Star Trek itself for being imperialistic propaganda and apologia, and it's not realising that's sort of the entire point of the Federation and is what the Enterprise crew is supposed to be standing *against*. It's trying to sully Data by “bringing him down to our level” and showing how even the transhuman Übermensch is no better than us after all and is still capable of the same wicked, depraved actions as the rest of us proles (and yes, obviously the intent is that Data fired the shot and is lying. Everyone involved in the story confirms it), which is about as Long 1990s a concept as exists: There are no utopias, there are no ideals, just cynical, petty, dangerous people going about their lives.

I guess by giving us a world where two warring factions fight each other without realising they're using the exact same rhetoric as their supposed enemy, Goodhartz, Moore, Behr and their colleagues have unwittingly proved their own point.

“The world of fictional things”: Hollow Pursuits

I never liked “Hollow Pursuits”. I still don't. Make of that what you will.

I would seem to be in the minority, as I am with literally everything else in my life, up to and including Star Trek. Apparently, a whole lot of people relate to Reginald Barclay on a very profound level, some even going so far as to claim he is the *only* relatable character in the entire Star Trek: The Next Generation cast. Now, I like Barclay too, even though I manifestly do *not* share the same connection with him that so many others have: He's an interesting character and obviously Dwight Schultz is massively talented, no argument there, but, knowing as I do what a sizable subset of Star Trek fandom looks like, I have to wonder about precisely what so many people see in Barclay, what that says about Trekker culture and whether or not that's even a reading “Hollow Pursuits” can support. And furthermore, there are some structural and creative quibbles I have with this episode that give me pause as to whether it's actually sending the proper message it ought to be sending in the context of the situation it's trying to examine.

The thing about Barclay is that, thanks to his awkwardness and sense of isolation (emotions that are not by themselves shameful or problematic, it should be noted) it's altogether too easy to read him as a more sympathetic and nuanced portrayal of Nerd Culture than what Wesley Crusher affords: He's an engineer, he suffers from crippling social anxiety such that his only recourse is to escape into a world of make-believe and is constantly and unfairly bullied and alienated by his peers, peers who are even described by Paula Block and Terry J. Erdmann in their writeup of this episode as “the cool crowd”. Indeed, they even go so far as to say

“Rather than mixing with the cheerleaders and the football stars at hot weekend dance clubs, those kids are more likely to spend their time at home reading a little sci-fi, or playing games online, or attending a Star Trek convention. 

Barclay's a nerd who's good at solving engineering puzzles, but not at making conversation. he works in a world where sci-fi is reality, online games are life and death and conventions-like baseball-are a thing of the past. So he finds something even better. He finds the holodeck.”

And I'm sorry, but no. No, no, no. This is wrong. So very wrong, and on so many different levels. First of all, it should be stressed, that this was absolutely not the intent of anyone in the creative team. Director Cliff Bole makes it perfectly clear that this episode was not meant to be about Star Trek fans, he would have heard about it if it had and he certainly didn't see the episode that way himself. Michael Piller has his own take on the episode I'll talk about a little further on, but the real reason Block and Erdmann are so spectacularly off the mark here has nothing to do with issues of authorial intent. After all, I've maintained on this blog for a long time that intent is merely one aspect of a work that informs meaning, and if a text can support a particular reading, well, authorial intent be damned. No, “Hollow Pursuits” absolutely can be read the way Block and Erdmann read it, and I suspect a significant majority of Star Trek fans do as well, and that's the whole problem with it.

“Hollow Pursuits” offers a bad 1980s teen movie championing version of Nerd Culture. This is Nerd Culture as depicted in War Games, Revenge of the Nerds and every John Hughes movie ever made ever. The Nerd as the shy, unassuming social outcast who is never recognized for being ahead of his time due to his love of electronics and is constantly tormented by programatically irrational bullies and snobby “popular girls” who never go for “nice guys”. Yes, there's a very slight Star Trek: The Next Generation twist on this structure when it's revealed Barclay's holodeck addiction is becoming detrimental to his health and (natch) productivity and the rest of the crew springs in to help someone who's obviously troubled (I'm not even going to touch how this episode lays the groundwork for retroactively ruining “Booby Trap”, by the way), which would otherwise have been a nice way to redeem this kind of structure, but I don't think this manages to take at all. Because the fact of the matter is, even though they sort of turn around at the end, this episode still casts the *Enterprise crew* of all people as Barclay's bullies for the majority of the episode. A ship that Q could once describe as “home for the indigent, the unwanted, the unworthy” has now become textually coded as “the cool crowd”.

This isn't just character assassination, this is character mass murder.

And I'm sorry, I have to point the finger at Ira Steven Behr's influence. Only he would think to treat a ship that's meant to represent an antiauthoritarian, anti-hegemonic progressive utopia as a bunch of snotty prep schoolers reduced to name-calling and gossip. Even Captain Picard can't believe what's going on here, except then he starts doing the same things himself. It's in *this* season with episodes like *this* and thanks to people like Behr that Star Trek: The Next Generation has the reputation it does for being whitewashed, snobby and clinical. It never had that before now (I mean except I guess in “Samaritan Snare”, but can't we just pretend most of that episode didn't happen?), and it never *would* have had more people who actually fucking understood what this show was trying to say been working on it and didn't have their hands tied all the bloody time. This hurts the show, this hurts Star Trek at large and it's nothing less than an abject rejection of utopianism.

But *it gets worse*.

Because there's another half to the John Hughes Glorification of the Nerds Master Narrative: It's ahistorical and incredibly dangerous. Life does not work the way it does in high school movies. Hell, high school does not work the way it does in high school movies. Nerds do not behave they way they do in John Hughes movies. They're not an oppressed minority, in spite of how much they like to think they are. They are, in fact, incredibly privileged and tend to be incredibly hostile and bigoted. And if you give people predisposed to an ego complex reason to think they're special and persecuted, as these movies do, then you give them even more weaponry with which to go out and behave even more horrifically. Reginald Barclay is *not* a realistic depiction of a Nerd character; he's not even a depiction of what that character would look like in a utopian setting (at least maybe not yet: He's got some good stories coming up, including a personal favourite of mine). Nerds are not entitled to Reginald Barclay. No, the real Nerd character on Star Trek: The Next Generation is and always will be Wesley Crusher, in particular the Wesley of, say, “The Vengeance Factor”. Not just in spite of being hated, but because of it: The only reason Nerds loath Wesley Crusher with the fervor they do is because he hits just a little too close to home for them.

If “Hollow Pursuits” is about the danger of disappearing into a fantasy world. let's all remember what happens when entire cultures spring up around “cinematic” works of representationalist media that pretend to be “realistic”, but are in truth the exact opposite.

There's one more thing here. I mentioned earlier that Michael Piller had is own reading of this episode and that it was worth parsing out, and it is. This is what he said about “Hollow Pursuits” as part of an interview in 1991:

“It really was not intended directly at Star Trek fans. It was certainly about fantasy life versus reality. More than any other character in the three years I have been at Star Trek, the character of Barclay was more like me than anybody else. My wife watched that show and saw what was going on, and said that's [me] because I'm constantly in my fantasy world. Fortunately, I make a living at it. I have an extraordinary fantasy life and use my imagination all the time. It's real life that I have the problems with. I was delightfully happy with the episode.”

Now this, this begins to get at the stuff that really interests me and, as is usually the case with Michael Piller, it ever-so-fleetingly touches on esoteric notions of imagination and artistic expression. Because I think I know what Piller means here: He's talking about walking around absorbed in your own thoughts and your own memories, your imagination constantly giving you half-formed glimpses of different realities and different possibilities. We're both creators, and this is something creative people of all stripes will recognise: You're always coming up with new ideas for projects or finding different ways of looking at things. That's why some of the best advice I ever got and that I always pass on to others is to always have a notebook of some kind with you to write down the musings and observations that blink in and out of time.

But Michael Piller was also, I think, someone who was very in tune with a greater, more holistic conception of things, whether or not this is something he would ever admit in person. Artists and storytellers are modern shamans and this is something I think Michael Piller knew implicitly. When he talks about having problems with the “real world” as opposed to the fantasy one, he's actually talking about the duality of the physical world and the spirit realm. What he's articulating is the age-old dilemma of the mystic: When you're a liminal figure who exists as a master of two worlds, you in a sense belong to neither. You can travel to the ends of the universe and back to learn from the gods and spirits, but how do you impart what you've seen to the people back home without sounding like a complete raving lunatic? Is that even possible? It's a struggle I think we as artists face every day, or at least I do. Can I ever really convey my thoughts, my experiences and my emotions through my work? Or is it all an ungainly pantomime that's not even worth the effort of bothering to begin with?

Indeed, if I were inclined to get a bit more creative with “Hollow Pursuits” I might try to read the holographic Enterprise along these lines. It takes the themes of “Booby Trap” to the next level by having Barclay ask the Enterprise to craft a simulacrum of itself *within* itself. It's Barclay's vision of how he sees Star Trek: The Next Generation dictated to and translated by the ship, a collaboration between two creators that naturally will produce something infinitely less then their individual imaginative confluences by virtue of being a collaboration A fitting metaphor for television, an art form shaped by an impossibly large and conflicting number of creative figures (and creative egos) that is by necessity never going to be what any one of them sees it as. The only problem is that there's an episode coming up down the road that I think handles these concepts even better, so I don't want to get too deeply into them here.

But this is certainly not a paean to Nerd Culture and its endorsement of forsaking society and your peers to obsess over bits of pop culture ephemera from your childhood and adolescence. Were I a different sort of person maybe I'd be more inclined to read this story that way and project onto Barclay, but...I'm not. In fact, Guinan's line here, “The idea of fitting in just...Repels me”, well, it repels me. Look...I've lived my life belonging nowhere and to no-one. I love music and video games as passionately as I do hiking, camping, surfing and parkour. I've never thought, say, "reading a little sci-fi" and "mixing with the cheerleaders" were mutually exclusive activities. Cheerleaders are awesome: They're such incredibly talented athletes, I have such respect for them. I love "hot weekend dance clubs"-A lot of my favourite memories have been made there. And who decided convention-goers weren't allowed to dance? In direct contrast to the philosophy of John Hughes, my interests overlap with those of both "Nerds" and "Jocks", which I guess means I can't be either. That's far from the only way liminality defines my life, by the way.

And that's not all: I was homeschooled for most of my life and had practically no social contact with any peers who weren't at least 5-10 years older than me until I was in high school. And, while that did a lot of good for me in some ways, it definitely stunted me in others. So I get not getting social norms. I get not fitting in. But that doesn't mean I haven't occasionally *wanted* to fit in somewhere, and I'll freely admit those years when I was still playing catch-up I made a lot of really bad mistakes that hurt my social life and, rightly, I might add, drove people away from me. But I got better. I figured things out. I don't take pride in the actions of my past lives, and I still regret some of those things to this day in spite of my constant attempts to remind myself that I was another, different person then. But I'll own them, because those mistakes were mine (well, those of other-me at any rate), not anyone else's.

Can you do the same?

“Heart and Soul”: Tin Man

Every so often, the fans get it right.

If you think “Samaritan Snare” is completely indefensible and irredeemable in every other respect, you must at least acknowledge that it was responsible for bringing one good thing into the world: That would be “Tin Man”. Writers Lisa Putnam White, David Bischoff and Dennis Russell Bailey were so famously fumed up over the former episode, ambitiously calling it the single worst piece of Star Trek ever filmed that they decided, as all Trekkers are wont to, that they could write Star Trek better than the professionals and set about sending in a submission to Star Trek: The Next Generation with the express intent of showing them how to write their own show. Bailey, Bischoff and White were no rank amateurs, though: They were a team of published literary science fiction writers who had together penned a Nebula Award nominated short story called “Tin Woodman” in the December, 1976 issue of Amazing Stories that was later adapted into a novel and, as it so happens, this episode.

Ironically enough, as much as the trio were convinced they were better than Star Trek: The Next Generation's creative team, they would never have gotten their story onscreen without them. Without Michael Piller's open submission policy, this script never would have seen the light of day, doomed to live out the rest of eternity with all the other unsolicited spec scripts. One is forced to imagine that particular meeting going down a bit awkwardly, since not only was Piller giving them the opportunity to get their script filmed, he was also shouldering the threesome's ire for the alleged sins of his predecessor Maurice Hurley. But, if René Echevarria could swallow his pride enough to become a beloved and respected member of the team, so could Bailey, Bischoff and White. And, annoyingly, it turns out they were right: They really could turn out a better story than the creative team, because “Tin Man” is nothing short of an absolute triumph. This is the first production since “The Bonding” where it's demonstrably clear that Star Trek: The Next Generation is unquestionably firing on all cylinders.

It even got Michael Piller himself to sit up and take notice. We know as a general rule Piller shied away from scripts that place too much focus on guest stars and guest characters, believing, largely correctly I feel, that stories needed to be about the regulars in some capacity. And while “Tin Man” certainly doesn't shove the regulars to the sidelines as everyone is actively involved in the plot and has some not-insignificant stake in what's going on, the actual “story” as it were can only be read to be about Tam Elbrun and his journey. Although Piller obviously had a hand in rewriting and editing “Tin Man” just as he did with pretty much every story he was on staff for, it's quite telling, and a testament to the quality of the original submission, that he let that go through and didn't demand a comprehensive reconceptualization of the story's whole thematic focus the way he did for “The Offspring”.

And yet Piller's touch is still visible, most noticeably in the characterization of the Enterprise crew. While the core plot remains unchanged from the original story (albeit with the original protagonist, a young boy with psychic powers, replaced with the older and more dynamic Tam Elbrun) most all of the character bits and the micro-plots starring the various regulars can only be thanks to him. There are some truly outstanding character bits here that show the heights this show can hit when the writing and the acting is finally working in tandem with each other: Harry Groener is instantly memorable as Tam Elbrum, obviously, but the regulars are truly terrific. Captain Picard's mixed emotions are palpable, Jonathan Frakes has Will in full-on seething ball of rage mode which I usually don't like anywhere near as much as affable friend to everyone mode, but it works here, and Geordi even gets to run around the ship fixing problems and solving tech mysteries, which is something I always really like seeing: So much of my prevailing memory of what Star Trek: The Next Generation was like on original transmission and what I liked about it on average is made up of moments like these.

(And to be honest, this was kind of needed, as “Tin Man” *does* evoke its heritage every so often in a not-altogether-flattering way: Exposition feels noticeably clunky and unnatural, especially in the first act or so. It doesn't quite descend to Golden Age Hard SF levels of bad, but it's clear this story has a different pedigree than the norm.)

I was even struck by Wesley during the scene when Gomtuu destroys the first Romulan Warbird: Wil Wheaton plays him visibly shaken, actually aghast, at what he's witnessed: It reminded me of how distraught he was at the destruction of the USS Yamato in “Contagion” last season and is one of the very rare moments when Wesley Crusher becomes not completely unsympathetic. And of course, there are some heartrendingly beautiful moments between Tam, Data and Deanna. The way the story goes up and down the spectrum examining themes like empathy, loneliness, alienation, pain, healing and even “the meaning of existence” is simply masterful, and it's all set against the singular backdrop of cosmic wonder that this show can do better than anything else when it's actually trying.

(In that regard, one of the easiest overlooked highlights of this episode, at least for me, is the choice of stock footage to reuse, in particular, the assorted shots of the sorely missed six-foot Enterprise model from "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Angel One", stories that, irrespective of their material textual quality, date to a time when Star Trek: The Next Generation was filled with more wonder and sense of potential. And the VFX shots reflect that beautifully and fit the motifs of "Tin Man" absolutely perfectly, as much as they make me yearn for those feelings to return.)

I was surprised then to learn that director Robert Scheerer was disappointed in his work here: Gomtuu is one of the iconic standout moments of this season to me from an aesthetic perspective, and I think it's is sublimely realised across the board from the writing to the design to the episode's soundtrack (composer Jay Chattaway in his first outing), which brilliantly blends traditional Celtic and Aboriginal Australian melodies with 1980s synthesizer technology to create something beautiful, unique and hauntingly memorable. It calls to mind the ancient and beguiling faery magick of Celtic lore, but reinterpreted for the Long 1980s. This is something pretty much only Star Trek: The Next Generation can do, at least this overtly, and it's something it's been forgetting is one of its unique strengths of late.

And that's all before you get to how wonderfully thematically resonant and cohesive the episode as a whole is. Travelling is the key theme here, as this episode is about the personal journeys of many different people. Gomtuu's and Tam Elbrun's are the most obvious, as Data so eloquently explains for us in the episode's closing moments that gives us both our title and Gomtuu's nickname. But this is a story we see being played out in other characters as well, most notably Data himself, who gets some of the best moments of self-reflection and introspection I think he's ever gotten to date: He may not be the “main character”, but I'd stack “Tin Man” up against any “Data Story” we've seen on this show to date. And not to be undone, there's Deanna Troi, who, while supplanted as Tam's primary interlocutor by Data midway through the episode, still gets some truly lovely moments where her experiences with empathy are compared and contrasted with his. There's also the theme of belonging, which is echoed in refrain multiple times throughout the story and is always, always going to speak to me at a very deep level: Tam and Gomtuu belong together because care about and can heal each other, just as Deanna and Data belong on the Enterprise (a living starship in and of itself, let's not forget) where they have people to care for and who care for them. Perfect.

“Tin Man” is concrete proof that Star Trek: The Next Generation can journey to the farthest star just as easily as it can the depths of the human heart, and it can do so while also showing that not only are the two not mutually exclusive, they're in truth the same thing. It reminds us of our oft-neglected utopianism and how we need not forsake the realm of mortals to recognise our divinity. Tam is helped by Gomtuu, yes, but he's also helped by the Enterprise crew, who act as intermediaries and help him reach the point he needs to attain before he can join with it. And yet even so this is not a story about people “growing” or “changing” in the hackish cult of characterization sense: Tam knew where he was going and what he was doing from the start, he just needed to contact the right spirits to help him. Likewise, the Enterprise crew do not “change”, not even Data, who really just gets to know himself a bit better. And you know what? That's perfectly OK.

Travel is about deepening our understanding of ourselves, each other and the world around us, not forcing everyone to “change” all the time at all costs. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it over and over again: Nausicaä does not “change” Kei and Yuri do not “change”. That's not what utopian characters are supposed to do. And yet we know Captain Picard is an incarnation of Lord Yupa, and Lord Yupa is not Nausicaä: He does grow and learn from travelling with her. But Captain Picard, like Star Trek: The Next Generation itself, is a shaman, as we can tell from the constant invocations of, well, Nausicaä and Kei and Yuri. And shamans are liminal, possessing elements of both human and spirit. Maybe what we're looking at here is a kind of spiritually recursive utopianism: A utopian storytelling about utopain storytelling, with different groups of shamans each attaining enlightenment in their own way and re-enacting stories about each other. It's a difficult concept to truly get a handle on, but when it all comes together and really works I'll bet it's something really special.

And I'll bet it looks a lot like “Tin Man”.

“The Duke”: Allegiance, Captain's Holiday

Pictured: Not Captain Picard.

With the show's newfound brief to focus on character interiority, we've seen the creative team work hard to come up with a specific conception of who exactly these characters are. Now, it's more than possible to argue that our main cast already had characterization, it was just characterization that was different then what this team eventually decided on and made canon (indeed, I think that's precisely what happened), but regardless, the fact is the third season has had a series of episodes dedicated to nailing down a new set of personality traits for the Enterprise crew: We had “Evolution” for Wesley, “Booby Trap” for Geordi, “The Enemy” and “Sins of the Father” for Worf, “The High Ground” for Doctor Crusher, “The Ensigns of Command”, “The Defector” and “The Offspring” for Data, “The Vengeance Factor” and, uh, “A Matter of Perspective” for Commander Riker and, um, “The Price” for Deanna Troi.

Yeah, that doesn't look so hot all laid out on paper now, does it?

The thing about this is that while this season in general and these episodes in particular get credit for “fleshing out” previously vague characters, I happen to think all that happened is that people like Ron Moore and Ira Behr got to completely reconceptualize the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation and they just happened to get lucky that theirs were the interpretations that wound up taking. Either way, perhaps surprisingly, the one character this team has had a particularly hard time nailing down has been Captain Picard. He's been written particularly changeably this season, and upsettingly so as there seems to have been a trend to depict him as very tight-laced, stringent, stodgy and reactionary (I'm thinking particularly of “The High Ground” and “The Offspring” here, though he has had good moments in stories like “The Defector” and “The Hunted”).

To me, this is writing him horribly out of character. The Captain Picard I know, the one derived from the best moments of the first two seasons, is a boldly progressive and highly principled explorer infatuated with travel and the universe. He's a romantic at heart, yet someone who is also in possession of a fierce moral code and still a bit socially awkward in places. Even so, Captain Picard should be the first person to stand up against the banal evil of the Federation and to remind humanity that its place is amongst the stars. He embodies all of the ideals the Federation lies to itself by claiming as its own. The Picard of “The High Ground” and “The Offspring” cannot possibly be the same person who stood firm against Federation neo-imperialism in “Too Short a Season” and “Conspiracy”, who made regular trips to the Holodeck to play games with his friends and who went to the hilt for Data in “The Measure of a Man”. He's not even the same person who chatted with the crew about ships in bottles in “Booby Trap”, directed Henry V or took up painting. There's a troubling assumption about Captain Picard that he was always stuffy and self-important until the Borg took him down a few pegs, and I think that can be traced directly to the work of this creative team this season, because that accusation sure doesn't fit the Captain Picard who came before, or even after.

So naturally, when we finally got around to telling stories that “flesh out” Captain Picard's character in the same manner afforded his crewmates this season, what we got was a spectacular train wreck.

“Allegiance” and “Captain's Holiday” are two of the most embarrassing episodes in all of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They're cringe-inducingly pulpish (“Allegiance” even hinges on a dumb evil twin plot that was ridiculous and passe when the Original Series did it in 1966) and filled to the brim with the exact same unwatchable forced zaniness and “humour” that made “Deja Q” so memorable. Michael Piller sticks up for this episode and I can't for the life of me figure out why as it's got nothing whatsoever to do with the real Captain Picard: You know it's a bad sign when the only way the writers can come up with to explore a character is to shove him in a box for forty minutes while his doppleganger goes around doing things he would only ever dream of doing. For a team so focused on character development, “Allegiance” sure seems to go out of its way to avoid, you know, actually doing any developing. Then there's “Captain's Holiday”, the production history of which is such a hot mess it practically requires an essay all to itself.

Although he's been on staff as a writer and producer practically all year, “Captain's Holiday” is the first official submission by Ira Steven Behr, not that he wants to be associated with it. Behr's original submission featured Risa the pleasure planet only as a framing device to tell his real story, which was about Picard's supposed fears of growing old. The script would have had Picard go into a holodeck ride that makes you face your greatest fear, which turned out to be that he would be promoted to admiral and the Enterprise would go on without him. Behr adored the idea but Gene Roddenberry hated it, and after a lunch with Patrick Stewart, Behr retooled the script into a fluffy Indiana Jones romp with time travel and girls-of-the-week. Roddenberry's major objection was, I kid you not, that Captain Picard was John Wayne and Behr's story wouldn't work because John Wayne doesn't fear anything and we wouldn't have those kinds of self-doubts in the 24th century. Also something something John Wayne. I am seriously not embellishing too much for rhetorical purposes here.

Here's the thing about Behr, though. Yes, Gene Roddenberry was clearly out of his fucking gourd that week for any number of reasons, but that doesn't mean Behr's original story would have actually worked anyway. His original “Captain's Holiday” wouldn't have worked not because it would have been out of character for Captain Picard, but because his structure would have clashed with Star Trek: The Next Generation's utopianism, and there Roddenberry is right, albeit not for the reasons he thought he was. After all, the show had pretty much done this story already in “Coming of Age” (that Behr seems not to have noticed this frankly does not surprise me in the slightest) and is going to do it again a few more times, but in each of those cases the reason Picard turns down promotion is not out of fear of losing control (that's a Kirk trait, not a Picard one, c.f. “The Naked Time”) but because he's mature enough to know what his place and role in the universe is and that the admiralty is not where he belongs.

But Behr, uniquely among his season three co-workers, even Ron Moore, has a serious problem when it comes to Star Trek that's primarily responsible for why he only lasts one season on Star Trek: The Next Generation and is furthermore going to hamper just about every single thing he ever does for the franchise. And that is, he actually, actively hates the show he's working for. Lest you think I'm being too harsh, consider that Behr once said in an interview that he considered Star Trek: The Next Generation akin to what he thought Connecticut was like growing up in the city: A gated community full of pampered aristocratic white people willfully disconnected from the real world. While Ron Moore may simply not care about utopianism, Ira Behr seems to act openly disdainful and contemptuous towards it, and knowing that it clarifies a whole lot about the Dominion War era while at the same time casting it in a deeply, deeply unpleasant light. It's really hard not to read that show as Behr's open, targeted attack on Star Trek: The Next Generation and an attempt to spitefully deconstruct everything it stood for out of lingering bitterness over what he experienced during the 1989-1990 season. Bitterness that stems, ultimately, from “Captains Holiday”.

No matter how talented a writer Behr may be, and I certainly grant that he has talent in spades, his open hostility to the idea of any kind of utopian idealism in favour of gritty materialism at the expense of everything else is always, *always* going to be an impasse between the two of us and means he's never truly going to be a real friend of this project.

Another thing that links “Allegiance” and “Captain's Holiday” is that both come out of Patrick Stewart's desire to take a more active role on the show. In particular, the genesis of both stories is frequently linked back to his oft-quoted statement that “the captain doesn't get to do enough screwing and shooting on this show”, which he apparently told both Ron Moore during the filming of “The Bonding” and Ira Behr during the pitch process for “Captain's Holiday” (I'm imagining Behr engaging Stewart through clenched teeth as he asks him to write a story like that for him). The thing is, even though I'm sure he did want more energetic material to play with, I'm reasonably confidant Stewart was joking here, possibly to break the ice with young writer Moore and to help smooth over the tension between Behr and Gene Roddenberry. Stewart has a documented history of both sticking up for the meeker members of his crew and being very good at resolving conflict quietly, diplomatically and with good humour (seriously, Patrick Stewart is a better diplomat that Captain Picard), which is why so many of his character's best traits come from him and why it's such a tragedy when the writers don't pick up on that.

I could totally imagine people like Moore and Behr, who were comparatively new to Star Trek: The Next Generation (Moore even to writing and TV in general) and perhaps unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the show's vibe taking Patrick Stewart's good-natured small talk the wrong way and becoming intimidated. So with all that said I've got to wonder...Could all of the angst of this season, all of the hangar fires these episodes lit and one of the longest, most protracted self-destructions in television history that begins here...Could all that have stemmed from just one innocent misunderstanding over lunch one day? Funny thing, history.

Funnier than watching this again at any rate.

“...the most offending soul alive”: Sins of the Father

What “The Enemy” was for the Romulans, “Sins of the Father” is for the Klingons.

This episode is frequently held up as an important turning point for the series and rightly so, as it defines a lot about what Star Trek: The Next Generation (and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine too, for that matter) is going to look like going forward. But “Sins of the Father” is also the kind of episode that's exceedingly difficult for me to write about as it's been extensively analysed and historicized by just about every major publication to cover the franchise. This is the kind of episode I hate because it leaves me with perishingly little new erudition to add to the glut of discourse that already exists. Yes, yes, this episode sets in stone pretty much everything we think of when we think of Worf and the Klingons, yes it's a strong character piece and yes it's a major step in the development of more explicit serialization in episodic Star Trek. Yes, the award-winning set design and matte paintings are all gobsmackingly good. And yes, it sets up “Redemption”, about which I have a lot to say, but I'll save for the fifth season. That's all true to be sure, but it's also blindingly and bluntly obvious to the point I don't even think it's really worth taking the time to talk about.

But then what is there left to say about an episode like “Sins of the Father”? I could be my usual grouchy self and dispel some myths about the backstage stuff: This episode is frequently touted as being the moment where real characterization, serialization and world building was introduced to Star Trek: The Next Generation. Which would be true except for the minor fact it does none of those things. Maybe it's just me and my judgment is clouded by over 25 years of familiarity with this show, but I haven't had a hard time piecing down who people like Captain Picard, Commander Riker, Geordi or Data (or, much as I hate him, Wesley) are so far. The only characters who did seem to lack a bit of detail were Doctor Crusher (who got better) and Tasha Yar (who isn't around anymore to complain and thus doesn't matter anyway). So then the argument goes this is the first time a so-called “second tier” character like Worf got a large-scale story arc all to themselves, which would be a fine argument if you chose to conveniently ignore “Heart of Glory” and “The Emissary”. Yes, those particular story threads weren't ever fully developed on after those episodes, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have been had the creative teams that worked on them stuck around for longer than one season apiece.

Then there's the argument that “Sins of the Father” was the first episode to introduce serialized, arc-based storytelling to Star Trek and that this was manifestly a Good Idea. I'm going to leave aside the second half of that argument for now: I have some pretty strong feelings on it, but this isn't the time for me to rant about them (for now, all I'll say is once again take a gander at Dirty Pair). Regardless, the fact is this statement is plainly ridiculous-The Star Trek film series was nothing if not an attempt to revive the film serial narrative structure and the whole deal with the Borg has been pretty damn obviously a long-term story arc (albeit something of a clumsy one due to production issues). This gets at a confusion that seems to exist over what people think Michael Piller did as opposed to what he actually did: Piller didn't shift the focus of Star Trek away from voyaging, planets-of-the-week and utopian idealism to character interiority, he showed people how character interiority could be used to further and emphasize utopian idealism. If you think I'm talking nonsense, go rewatch the story he wrote to kick off the supposedly conflict-ridden, character focused station show that everyone thinks deconstructs the concept of the voyaging starship. It'll be an education, I assure you.

No, “Sins of the Father” isn't a Michael Piller story. What it is instead, plainly, is a very, very Ronald D. Moore story. Which makes sense, as it came about due to Moore becoming the go-to Klingon and Romulan guy. Piller knew Moore was a rabid Original Series fan and asked him to draft up a memo about what he thought Klingon and Romulan society was like and what the defining aspects of their culture were. And so, when a bunch of stories started coming in about Worf and the Klingon homeworld, Moore was given the task of stringing them together. What happens as a result is that Ron Moore's idea of what the Klingons are like becomes codified as the official one, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself inasmuch as *somebody's* idea of what the Klingons are like had to become the official one at some point, but Moore's conception of them does belie his positionality as a Star Trek fan in ways that are not always entirely flattering.

The Klingons of “Sins of the Father” are all proud, pseudo-Vikings obsessed with honour only as it pertains to death and Glorious Combat. They're ruled by a High Council of grizzled old warriors, and yet there's a lot of corruption in the ranks and cloak-and-dagger politics going on to keep the Empire's old skeletons firmly closeted. And that's all well and good, except for the fact it's, all things considered, kinda boring, especially when compared with what John Meredyth Lucas would have come up with had “Kitumba” been made (seriously, Maurice Hurley-I will never understand why of all the Star Trek Phase II stories you could have gone with you picked “The Child” and “Devil's Due” instead of the clearly superior “Kitumba” and “Practice in Waking”). This is all standard issue dark, complicated realpolitiking and dark, complicated realpolitiking that our characters have a personal investment in is visibly a hallmark of Moore's even at this early stage in his career.

And the thing about this, as well as that aforementioned fascination with serialization, is that they're both *also* hallmarks of Nerd Culture. Obviously mainstream audience can enjoy story arcs (Miami Vice had a number of ones that were well-regarded, don't forget) but only Nerds give a shit enough about their fictional worlds to want to get deeply invested in ridiculously dense and complicated unfolding narratives about empire building and galactic politics. And the problem with *that* is Star Trek: The Next Generation starting to court Nerd Culture is an *incredibly dangerous* move for it to be making, especially given what's going to happen in just a few months. The blunt reality of the matter is, Wesley Crusher aside, Star Trek: The Next Generation is a *mainstream hit*, not a cult one and the people in charge of the Star Trek brand (albeit with the major exception of Michael Piller himself) aren't used to that and don't know how to deal with it. This is, if you recall, the exact same out-of-touch lack of understanding of where the audience is that made Star Trek V: The Final Frontier such a hot mess. This is gravely concerning, as Star Trek: The Next Generation is never going to stop getting consecutively more and more popular.

Thankfully we know that Star Trek will continue to enjoy its admittedly unprecedented mainstream success for the time being in spite of missteps like this, at least as long as Michael Piller sticks around. Perhaps a more interesting topic of discussion then is what, if anything, the portrayal of the Klingons here and how they're compared to the Federation and the Enterprise crew can teach us about what the show's conception of its utopianism at this point in time. After all, this is the version of the Klingons (and Worf) that sticks with us for time immemorial, defining almost every single story to feature them from now on. Unfortunately, apart from a rather minor and frankly kind of facile reading that this story reinforces how Worf's true home is the Enterprise and that our people once again have the moral high ground and are the role models to emulate, I can't find anything more to parse out of this. Which of course makes sense, as Ron Moore famously does not give a toss about utopianism.

In regards to “Sins of the Father”, Even Michael Dorn acknowledges it as marking a turning point for Worf. And yet he remains guarded, saying

“There was a lot more involved in it than the writers realized. Things that have to do with Klingon loyalty and honor. They didn't give it its due. You look at Worf in a different light, and I've played him in a different light since that episode. This is not something they have come up with. I'm doing this on my own. Hey, it's their fault. They wrote it. So now, I'm going to carry on with it.”

I think I'll let that speak for itself.