A Computer, a Space Hippy, and the Ubermensch Walk Into A Bar

Following on my previous analysis of Star Trek TOS as a whole, here, taken pretty much at random (based, that is, on my own personal likes, dislikes, and fascinations) are discussions of three individual episodes of Star Trek TOS.

Where No Man Has Gone Before

This episode has a very special place in Star Trek history; it was the episode that convinced CBS that Star Trek could work as a network television show.  The network had been naturally impressed by Star Trek's concept, which promised a relatively simple and potentially lucrative way to do science fiction on television; however, it was ultimately disappointed by the first pilot produced, the "Cage."  Led by Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike, and featuring large-headed alien zoo-keepers with the power of illusion, the network felt that the show was, in a quote that has since become legend, "too cerebral."  Really, they were basically right; the Cage, for all the bluster of its lead character, is a rather stiff hour of television, appreciably strange, but patently lacking in human interest.  By the time Pike has angrily and defiantly, for the fourth time or so, declared to his captors that human beings will never stop resisting cages, even pleasant ones, and will always prefer difficult reality to pleasant illusion, we appreciate the point, but do not really feel much affection for the man making it.  An entire twenty-six episode season of such breathless didacticism would be difficult to take; and CBS was right in saying so.

However, as it goes, the network was, in fact, so interested in the basic concept of Star Trek--Gene Roddenberry's "Wagon Train to the Stars," science-fiction-as-Western-and-military-drama brainwave-- that they took the unprecedented step of commissioning a second pilot for the proposed series.  Left to his own devices again, Gene Roddenberry booted the entire cast--with the exception of a certain pointed-eared alien--but kept the sets and format basically the same.  What he needed was not so much a better concept as better storytelling, by a better writer, with more human and sympathetic characters.  He found his writer in Samuel A Peeples, an old hand at television (and Western) writing; he found his leading man in William Shatner, as I discussed in my last post.  CBS was much more impressed by what they saw this time, and ordered a full season of Star Trek; and they were, frankly, right to be impressed.  Even with all the rough edges typical of a pilot episode, Where No Man Has Gone Before is a truly excellent piece of television, with both an intelligent and worthy moral AND effective human drama.

The Original Series and the Myth of Originality

When I spoke in my last post about Star Trek as a myth, I used that term in a very specific sense: that of a body of stories produced by a society and reflective of it.  I did not use in its more common, colloquial sense, of a story that is simplistic, fantastical, and false.

However, in discussing Star Trek The Original Series (as it is now commonly known) and its origins, I must use the term in the second way.  I must now talk, not about Star Trek itself, but about the stories told about Star Trek--stories that are commonly believed, but false.

I first heard these stories when I was a child, reading various officially licensed "behind the scenes" books about the franchise and its development.  These books were the product of the great 1990s zenith of Star Trek, when Star Trek shows and movies multiplied in abundance, along with their officially licensed offspring.  I still hear these stories repeated from time to time, and their influence is still easily discernible among fans and even in the culture at large.

This cycle of myths begins with the Myth of Gene Roddenberry: a kind of modern-day creation myth about a benevolent deity, his "grand vision," and his many heroic struggles to create, preserve, and protect that vision from the evil forces of Bigotry, Pessimism, and Studio Politics.

Gene Roddenberry, of course, is generally acknowledged as the Creator of Star Trek, and is commonly worshiped by fans under the title of "Great Bird of the Galaxy."  Roddenberry, the story goes, had a grand and original vision in the 1960s...a vision of a bright, optimistic future, where mankind had at last outgrown its troublesome childhood, abandoning war, hatred, and religion, and creating a global utopia of peace and plenty for all races and nations.  Unfortunately, when Roddenberry tried to share these ideas with the world, he was cruelly defeated by the awful, reactionary Television Censors of the Studios, who refused to allow him to share his Gospel.  Undaunted, Roddenberry came up with the idea of sharing these ideas through a science fiction show, where the foolish Censors would be unable to detect their presence.  With the Great Bird working heroically and almost single-handedly to bring his vision to life, in the face of setbacks and omnipresent Studio opposition, Star Trek was born, an utterly unique and original vision of a progressive, rational, and enlightened future for all.

This was, more or less, the story that was repeated, ad nauseam, by licensed Star Trek products in the '90s.  It has much to commend itself: a noble hero, dastardly villains, and a magnificent triumph against odds.  What it lacks is the truth. 

A Brief Introduction to Star Trek

What is Star Trek?

On some level, that's an easy question to answer.  We all know Star Trek: a television show (five television shows!); a Motion Picture (13 movies and counting!); some vast, indeterminate number of (licensed, non-canon) novels and comics and video games; action figures and mouse pads and perfume; a "franchise" (whatever that is).

What is Star Trek about?

That's where it gets a lot harder; because the answer to that question gets very different, depending on who's doing the asking and answering.  For JJ Abrams, it's about Kirk and Spock, a bromance of opposing types.  For Michael Piller, Star Trek is about character, the stable warmth of family and community, a gentle humanism of difference.  For Nicholas Meyer, it's about eternal, universal human nature, with its friendships and bigotries, its governments and diplomacies, its great literature and its petty quarrels, and above all with its mysterious destiny of old age and death.  For most Americans today, it is some hodgepodge of Kirk and Spock, "Beam me up, Scotty," William Shatner's overacting, Patrick Stewart's gravitas, laser guns, and some vague sense of progressive intellectualism.  For Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek is...well, that's not at all an easy question to answer, though it is one we will quickly be confronted with.

The purpose of this post is to announce (to whom?) that I will be, for reasons of my own, writing a series of posts (essays) about Star Trek over the next weeks (months?).  The thesis of this series will be that Star Trek is, in a real way, a myth; or rather, a whole series of myths, a corpus of mythology for the utterly bizarre monstrosity that is the modern world.  Like all myths, it is the product of collective labor: it has no auteur, no Michelangelo painstakingly crafting every fold and wrinkle, no Kubrick perfecting every frame.  And like all myths, its meaning is not as easy to tease out as your typical work of art.  This is not because it is meaningless, as a shallow critic might think; rather, the trouble with myth is that it is too meaningful, too packed with significance.  Mythology is like a scarecrow stuffed with straw by a whole village, every man putting in his piece, until the whole thing threatens to fly apart.  For while ordinary works of art (perhaps) are the product of individual men and women, mythology is the work of a whole society--if not several.

It is in this way that I will approach Star Trek: treating it as a body of mythology, created collectively by many men and women living in many different times, and even different societies.  Star Trek is, of course, indelibly American--the product of that heroic, self-creating America for which Europe, not to mention the rest of the world, is at best a romantic background.  Star Trek is also, at this point, a very old thing; this year, 2016, is officially its 50th anniversary.  In that 50 years, Star Trek has seen a lot.  It was born in the '60s, in that bright, catastrophic explosion that created our modern society, and died just before the decade ended; it was revived in the '70s, in the midst of cultural malaise and despair; it found its footing in the more stable '80s; expanded and retrenched itself in the eternal '90s; died in the turbulent early 2000s; and was brought back in newer, shinier form again just in time for the beginning of this decade.  As I write, a new television series is scheduled for 2017.

My own qualifications for writing about all this are almost nil.  I grew up watching and reading Star Trek--reading especially that strange form of official mythmaking that is modern tie-ins and "behind-the-scenes" books--and have at this point so absorbed much of it into myself that it has become a part of me, influencing the way I live and see and think.  I am (for better for worse) currently on track to become an academic, and am profoundly interested in philosophy, theology, and history in many periods-- though my academic specialization, such as it is, is over a thousand years prior to Star Trek's creation.  Perhaps one day there will be great works of academic scholarship produced about Star Trek; perhaps, for all I know, there already are.  These blog posts will not be any such work; far from it.  This series will be, at best, open and avowed pseudo-scholarship.  I will discuss many things with which I have little competency, work almost entirely from memory, and not cite my sources.  Nevertheless, this I can offer; that I have spent a truly shocking amount of my life thinking about Star Trek, reflecting on it, and reading other people reflecting on it.  I love Star Trek--I hate it--I am, like many, fascinated by it.  Many people--many talented artists and writers--have grappled with the great myth of Star Trek, without managing to pin it down.  I am content to be simply one more such person.

Over the coming weeks (months?) I will be writing various posts on the various Star Trek series.  At this stage, I anticipate writing one (lengthy) post at least on each of the first three Star Trek series, TOS, TNG, and DS9 (I apologize if these acronyms mean nothing to you).  These may mushroom into more than one each.  I will most likely not write a lot about either Voyager or Enterprise, parts of which I have never seen, and neither of which were ever of great interest to me; that is not to say, though, that they are not fascinating in their own right, only that they will have to wait for other, more willing, pens to do them justice.  I will at some point also attempt to tackle the films as well, probably in batches--but TWOK (more acronyms!) will almost certainly take an entire post of its own.  Will I ever complete this monumental task?  Will it make any sense?  Will anyone read it?

As Spock once said-- in a line that helped resolve a dispute between studio and filmmaker and bring about both a sequel and a resurrection-- "There are always possibilities."

We Are All Ukrainians

The more I read and hear, the more I believe that the crisis in Ukraine is of incalculable importance not only for Ukrainians, but for the entire world. This is so whether you are Christian or non-Christian, American or European, Liberal or Conservative.

First of all, the Ukrainian Revolution was an entirely remarkable event. Despite the lies of the Russian propagandists, I am not aware of any revolution that has been more peacefully conducted or more justifiably waged than this one. The people of Ukraine did not take to the streets out of spontaneous love for the EU or America; they did not get beaten by riot police and shot by snipers for any mere legal or social issue, however important. No, millions of ordinary Ukrainians from every walk of life and every political persuasion traveled across the country to the tents and fires of the Maidan, and stayed there through the coldest winter on record, simply to affirm the most basic rights and dignities of the human person.

They did not suffer for European social policy or American capitalism: they suffered to create a society where they would be free from the arbitrary abuse of those in power, where their basic right not to be stolen from, beaten, tortured, and wrongfully imprisoned would be respected. It is not for nothing that Patriarch Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Catholic Church has repeatedly called it a "Revolution of Dignity." These people suffered--and died--for the inviolable dignity of the human person, and the for basic human rights we all take for granted.

And that they succeeded--against a corrupt oligarchic regime awash in Russian money, against the propaganda of the Russian state media, against riot police, sniper fire, and sub-zero temperatures--is almost miraculous.

On the other side of the current conflict is that entity that for the last hundred years has most exemplified arbitrary, self-justifying abuse of power: the Russian state. The abuses of human rights and dignity that take place daily in Russia are too many to recount. There are judges in Russia who have never found anyone innocent; bribes are required even for the most everyday aspects of life; and the complicity of the state with organized crime, including sex trafficking, is immense. Russia today stands for a system of enforced, universal complicity and corrupt, autocratic abuse of power.

And Russia is trying, with all its might, to crush the Ukrainian revolution. It is trying to do this because it is afraid of this revolution--or, more precisely, because it fears what this revolution stands for. Vladmir Putin fears the Ukrainian revolution because what it stands for is diametrically opposed to what he and his country stand for. He thinks it is a threat to him, his allies, and his way of life; and he is right.

This conflict, then, is quite simply about the most basic ideas on which Western Civilization, and indeed all civilization, is founded.

We, as a people and as a civilization, claim to stand for liberty, for human dignity, for justice. This is what the Ukrainians today stand for; this is what they suffered and died for; and this is what they will soon be fighting for.

If we simply stand back and allow Russia to devour Ukraine, to crush its people into the dust and forcibly incorporate them into its system of abuse and corruption, then how can we ever claim to stand for these things again?

I am normally someone who finds slogans about liberty rather distasteful; but if this is not a conflict between liberty and tyranny, then what is?

I am normally someone who urges caution and complexity rather than judgment; but if this is not a conflict between good and evil, then what is?

I firmly believe, then, that it is our responsibility as human beings, whatever our political or religious affiliations, to do everything we can to support the Ukrainian people at this time. We must pray for them, we must stand with them, and we must be willing to suffer for them.

For now, in a very real sense, we are all Ukrainians.

Criticizing Your Mom is not Self-Criticism: A Brief Primer in False Humility

Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Gul Dukat

Fairly high on my list of things that make me angry, somewhere in between the persecution of Christians and Gul Dukat, the Cardassian Prefect of Bajor during the Occupation*, is that wondrous and extraordinarily common phenomenon I like to call "Fake Self-Criticism."  It is amazing how common this phenomenon has become; but it is no less pernicious for its commonality.

Gul Dukat, Master of fake self-criticism

To illustrate this phenomenon, let us imagine that we are children, and that we visit the house of a family we have recently become acquainted with, but don't yet know very well.  While the parents are still clustered around the dining table, the children remove to another room to do those wonderful things that are of the essence of childhood, like shooting rubber bands at each other and punching each other repeatedly. However, eventually, we end up in a conversation of sorts, and we start talking about our two families.

At this point, one of the children from the other family sighs loudly, looks down at the ground, and says piously:  "Well...of course, we in this family aren't perfect.  We make a lot of mistakes."  Curiously, we ask what he means, and, with another deep sigh, the child begins a litany: "Well, to start with, we make the children go to bed way too early.  And we never buy any Coca-Colas.  And we just don't work hard enough at our jobs, so our incomes are too low.  We also don't go to the movies hardly at all, which makes it very hard to keep up with popular culture.  And our cooking isn't as good as it should be.  You know," the child continues gravely, looking up at us, "it's not easy to say these things, but self-criticism and honesty are moral duties."  And he continues on in a similar vein:  "We've been much too lazy to buy a large-screen TV.  And sometimes we're much too strict about reading at the table.  And we haven't trimmed the bushes with the chain-saw in ages..."

"But wait!" we say finally, after thinking the matter through thoroughly.  "This isn't self-criticism!  You, the child, don't actually do any of these things; and you couldn't if you wanted to!  All of these things are just things your parents do wrong, in your opinion!  This isn't self-criticism at all!"

But the other child is angered by your comments:  "How dare you?!  Do you know how long I've been a part of this family?  I grew up in this family!  How would you know anything about it?  This is my family, and I won't let anyone tell me I don't have the right to be part of it!"  He then storms out of the room angrily.

You've made Gul Dukat angry!  You won't like him when he's angry!

Now, the point of this little fable is very simple: to criticize a group to which we belong is not the same as to criticize ourselves.  In fact, it is usually the exact opposite.  For in the vast, vast majority of cases, what we are really doing in criticizing the group is criticizing the leaders of the group--who are most definitely not us--or else criticizing the other people in the group--who are also not us.  This is true whether the group in question is our family, our country, our religious denomination, or whatever.  Thus, many who make harsh critiques of "America" or "we Americans," really mean by that "those government leaders I don't agree with" or else "those other Americans who are bad"; and many who make harsh critiques of their religion really mean by that "those religious leaders I don't agree with," or else "those bad members of my religion I don't like."

These are the best-case scenarios: another, worse scenario is also very common, and it consists of criticizing a group to which we once belonged, or which we identify with in some intangible way, but which we have either repudiated, left, or at least have substantially rejected.  This is quite common in religion especially.  I think I've lost count of the number of ex-Catholics--those who do not practice their faith and reject the doctrines of their Church--who begin their tirades against the Catholic Church with some variant on, "Well, I was an altar server growing up..." or even, quod absurdum est, "As someone deeply committed to my Catholic identity...".  However, you can find examples of this in almost every area of life, and for almost every group.

In all these cases, in fact, what is happening is quite simple: we are criticizing other people under the cover of criticizing ourselves.  This is quite a tempting offer.  It lets us enjoy both the thrill of criticizing others uncharitably, and the pleasure of doing our moral duty, at the same time!  It lets us get that ego boost of acting humble, and that ego boost of condemning others!  It lets us be hard on others, which is fun, while also getting that penitential satisfaction of being hard on ourselves.  It's really a win-win all around.

"I'm handsome, and I criticize myself fakely?  Hellooooo ladies."

Now, all that being said, there is nothing wrong, in and of itself, with criticizing others, provided it is done charitably, carefully, and for the good either of the person we are criticizing or some other person or persons--this is especially true of criticism of public figures.  Likewise, to criticize someone's actions is not the same, necessarily, as criticizing them.  One can say, for instance, that Politican X has put in place a policy that is ill-advised, or that Friend Y has has committed an action that is wrong, without thereby implying any strong negative judgment on these people.  It is very possible--and indeed essential--to love the sinner and to hate the sin.

Nevertheless, if we are going to criticize others, let us be aware of what we are doing.  Criticizing your Mom is not self-criticism, and it should not be undertaken in the same way, in the same spirit, and for the same ends.  If we criticize others, especially as Christians, we are called to do so in a spirit of love, charitably and justly, always conscious that they are not us, and that we do not know what is in their hearts and minds.  When we criticize ourselves, we are called to act somewhat differently, because we do know what is in our hearts and minds, and, put simply, because we are ourselves.  These two modes of criticism should not be confused or conflated.

However, if you do want to practice fake self-criticism, hopefully I've given you everything you need to do so.  Yippee!

Gul Dukat says, "Works for me!"

*Gul Dukat is a character from Star Trek Deep Space Nine, which is the best TV show ever.  He is also a fabulously handsome Cardassian who deeply regrets the things the Bajorans forced him to do during his military occupation of their planet.  He's also very sorry that the Bajorans can't admit how much they love him.  It's hard to say it, but his superiors in the Cardassian government really weren't as compassionate as he was; and he apologizes for that too.

Tales From the Papal Crypt: Pope Martin, Enemy of the State

Pope Martin I

"The police would not allow the holy man to land, though he was suffering severe pain.  Instead they went ashore themselves and rested in comfort.  However, the priests of the locality and all the faithful sent gifts in no small quantity of things that might be useful to him.  But the police brutally tore these gifts from the people's hands in the presence of the Pope himself, cursing and swearing the while.  Anyone who brought the Pope small gifts was chased away after being insulted and beaten, with the warning:

'Whoever wishes well to this man is an enemy of the state.'"

-eyewitness account by a companion of Pope Martin I

To begin our tale, let us first proceed to its ending.  In AD 655, somewhere in a little, isolated town on the edge of the Crimean Sea, Pope Martin died.  The exact cause of his death is not known; based on the available evidence, he was suffering at the least from chronic malnutrition, physical and psychological abuse, conditions of extreme cold and privation, and many untreated medical ailments.  Most likely, his death did not cause much of a stir for either the Imperial officials set to watch him or the local townspeople; after all, his death had been the general idea of sending him into exile there in the first place.  The town of Cherson was well used to hosting political prisoners, and the Imperial police well used to hastening their deaths.

Yet there is a good reason to begin at the end with Pope Martin; for his death is, at least statistically, the most notable thing about him.  Pope Martin is the last Pope to this day to be venerated as a martyr by the Catholic Church.  Popes since then have died in office, and some have even been murdered; but Martin is the last who is considered to have been killed in odium fidei--that is, in hatred of the Catholic Faith, the Church, and Christ himself.  This is no small accolade.

The first Pope to be martyred, was, of course, St. Peter himself--and the last is St. Martin.  No small accomplishment, that.

Tales From the Papal Crypt: Introduction

The Papacy is pretty cool.  It also happens to be one of the oldest continuous institutions in Western Civilization.  There has been a Bishop at Rome for about 2000 years, give or take a century or so.  To compare, there has been a President in Washington, DC for a little over 200 years, a King in England for about a thousand, and when the office was dissolved in 1924, there had been a Caliph ruling over Islamic civilization for less than 1300 years.

Like any other old institution, however, the Papacy has not always been as it is now.  It has had its ups and downs, its triumphs and its disasters, its disgraces and its vindications.  It has gone through many metamorphoses in response to the needs and conditions of the times, and its practical role in the world has varied a great deal over the centuries.  Yet the continuity at the heart of the Papacy has been singular, indeed.

And what a history it has been!  The Papacy has been at the heart of so many major historical events that it is almost impossible to recount them at all.  The amount of adventures, intrigues, battles, arguments, tragedies, and victories in which the Papacy has played its part in is enormous, and enough for many a good story.  Thus, for your edification and entertainment, dear hypothetical reader, I thought I would take the time to tell a few of these tales.  They will be told in no particular order, neither chronological nor thematic, and most of them will not be told at all.  But still!  If you're interested in learning more about the Papacy in history, read on!