“Where is Jeanine? The meeting is about to start.”
The menu of the Rockhouse Cafe had changed again–an extra page at the front with seasonal specials. Minerva’s face twisted uneasily as she flipped quickly past it to Entrees. Her finger found the chicken with potatoes, rested there in reassurance for a moment–and then a spasm of energy drove it away, back to her cellphone.
“She said she would be coming–where is she? Don’t worry, we still have ten minutes before the meeting: more people will be coming.”
This last remark to the thin young man with bleached-blond, spiked hair sitting at her right hand, who was trying to occupy himself by looking carefully over the seasonal specials.
“If we don’t get five more people, the vote won’t be valid–we won’t have a quorum.” This remark to the plump, comfortable-looking woman on her other side, who was looking rather sleepy and had not opened her menu.
“Well,” the woman said. “I’m sure they’ll turn up soon.” She yawned.
Minerva’s thin face crinkled. “I don’t know why they keep those asparagus on the menu–it’s an embarrassment. Where is Jeanine?”
She grabbed the phone lying next to the red plastic glass of water and dialed the number again. Before it could go to voicemail, she thumbed it off and dropped it onto the table again. “Anne, do you have the Mitchells’ number?”
The plump woman smiled. “No, I think Bob does, though. He should be here soon.”
“Tell Bob he’s going to be late!” Minerva barked to the thin, frightened-looking older man sitting across from her. He flinched.
“Um, honey…”
The door opened, and Minerva spun her head around; it was the Marvins, both thin and blond and frowning. They sat down at the other end of the table, as far from Minerva as possible.
“See? More people will be here.” She nodded to the young man again, who was in the process of drinking from his water cup. He coughed, spilling some water on the table, and she frowned.
“We still need three more people to make a quorum!” she hissed at Anne.
“Can I get y’all anything else to drink?” Minerva started: the waitress was back, a thin young woman wearing a black vest with a broad smile on her face.
She turned over the menu card: where were the drinks?
The young man at her right had already piped up, smiling as he did so. “I’ll have a Dr. Pepper.” The woman smiled back, and Minerva frowned as she glanced between the two of them.
“Anne, what are you having?”
“White wine, please.” Anne yawned again. “Cabernet.”
“I’ll just have a Coke.” Bob had arrived, a large man with a round face and a well-groomed beard. He sat down heavily next to Anne and looked with interest at the young man. “So you’re the artist!”
The young man smiled. “John,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Bob,” said Bob, looking down at his menu. “Do they still have the oysters special?”
“No,” the waitress said. “I’m sorry. We do have oysters at our regular price, though. And the new special is Seafood Scampi.”
“Bob,” Minerva said, glancing over at him in annoyance. “Don’t you think we should wait to order food until everyone gets here?”
[Given the strong interest in the media right now about the possibility of a trial of former President Donald J. Trump, I thought people would be interested in the contents of a holographic tape recently uncovered by archeologists digging in the future ruins of Philadelphia. As you can see, it purports to be a record of Trump's upcoming trial. Given the oddities of the events portrayed, however, it is likely that it in fact contains a later reproduction or dramatization of the original event, dating from as late as a century afterward--perhaps in the form of a school play, or some sort of fertility ritual. While the accuracy of this record and its meaning cannot be deduced with accuracy, it undoubtedly was considered an important document by the future culture that produced it, and is thus relevant to scholars for that reason alone.
Please note that the below written transcript of the original holographic record was created by AI, and may contain errors and other artifacts. Viewer discretion is advised.]
A room, completely dark. Suddenly, a single shaft of red light rises, piercing the darkness, revealing a dais on which three draped figures sit.
Judges (in unison): When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
A red light goes up under the face of the first judge. It is LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA, in full costume as Alexander Hamilton.
Judge Miranda: How do a bastard, an orphan, and the son of a whore grow up to be judges?
The light goes up under the face of the second judge. It is Hollywood Actor ROBERT DOWNEY, JR, dressed in his Iron Man suit.
Judge Downey, Jr: We're sort of like a team.
The third judge is revealed as OPRAH WINFREY; she is the only one of the three wearing judicial robes, and a powdered wig.
Judge Winfrey: Surround yourself only with people who are going to take you higher.
Small yellow lights like stars come up overhead, revealing that the trial is being held in a massive theater with an arched gothic ceiling and red velvet seats. Most of the stage is still dark, but a red curtain can just be made out at the back. The audience goes wild, cheering and applauding and screaming, encouraged by the judges, who wave their hands wildly in answer.
Judge Miranda (enthusiastically): Look around, look around!
Judge Downey, Jr (firmly): It’s not about how much we lost, it’s about how much we have left. We’re the Avengers. We gotta finish this.
Judge Winfrey silences the two men with a wave of her hand. She stands.
Judge Winfrey (severely): Youth, with its enthusiasms, which rebels against any accepted norm because it must: we sympathise. It may wear flowers in its hair, bells on its toes. But when the common good is threatened, when the function of society is endangered, such revolts must cease. They are non-productive...and must be abolished!
Advocate for the prosecution, please make your opening argument.
[Please note that none of the below events have ever actually occurred.]
I met Elon Musk at Waffle House recently. Given the stature of Waffle House's contributions to American society, I think we can all agree the story is worth recounting.
Following from the incredible hypothetical success achieved by my "Morn is Star Trek" post, I have found myself frequently and hypothetically pestered by fans, compressed air machines, and other air-moving appliances, all buffeting me with the same question: "What about Star Wars?"
I admit that when I first hypothetically heard this question, I did not take it very seriously, and answered it with the famous, proverbially hypothetical reply: "Well, what about it?"
However, after thinking long and hard on the issue, I have come to the hypothetical conclusion that this answer is somewhat flippant, and that it behooves me to take the feelings of my hypothetical air-moving appliances more seriously than this.
So! Here, my beloved compressed air machines, is my answer: I am a Star Wars fan because Trioculus, Jaxxon, and Waru are Star Wars.
Star Wars!
Allow me to clarify. Now Star Wars is, as we all should know, The Space Opera of all Space Operas, the Space Serial of Space Serials, boldly charting the way out of the God-forsaken Seventies with the heart of a Flash Gordon serial, the head of Joseph Campbell, and the hind-quarters of Star Trek. Many people have many reasons to love Star Wars, from love of sci-fi technology, naval tactics, and politics to love of operatic characterization to love of mythology to love of pop-culture philosophizing to love of Harrison Ford to love of Jar-Jar Binks. All of these are perfectly legitimate reasons to be Star Wars fans--except for the last one-- and I wouldn't want to challenge any of you who hold to them. But for myself, the main reason why I continue to enjoy and appreciate Star Wars is because nowhere else in fiction does the evil Emperor of the Galaxy have a secret three-eyed pacifist son who ends up getting impersonated by another three-eyed mutant who turned to evil after being teased as a child about his third eye.
Star Wars!
Also, nowhere else in fiction does a giant, carnivorous green bunny rabbit team up with a desperate group of smugglers and criminals to fight off a vicious swoop gang while constantly remonstrating about his dislike of Space Carrots.
Star Wars!
And, of course, nowhere else in fiction is a noble, heroic Knight with telekinetic powers rendered helpless by the mere presence of a giant pile of orange goo with healing abilities.
Star Wars!
And yet...all of these things are Star Wars! That is to say, all of them are "canon," all of them "really happened" in the exact same fictional universe in which Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star, Han Solo was frozen in carbonite, and Jacen Solo was captured and tortured by extragalactic invaders. All of these things, dark and happy, good and bad, serious and silly, philosophical and nonsensical, coexist in the same universe, the same setting, and sometimes even the same time. At the same time as Emperor Palpatine is committing genocide against Alderaan, a giant green bunny is travelling around the underworld doing odd jobs and calling himself a "rocket rabbit." At the same time as the Empire is struggling for its life in massive battles and campaigns throughout the Core, a three-eyed mutant is being proclaimed Emperor of the Galaxy and hunting desperately for the lost Glove of Darth Vader at the command of a dwarf dressed in a sparkly robe. At the same time as the New Republic is dealing with political strife and resource problems, a gooey, extra-dimensional entity with anti-Force properties is creating an apocalyptic cult on a space station orbiting a crystal star.
This, ultimately, is the real genius of Star Wars. Don't get me wrong--the Star Wars films, especially the originals, were and are brilliant, and would be remembered and enjoyed by generations no matter what. However, if that's all Star Wars was, and all Star Wars remained, we would not still be talking about it today, and I would not still be writing and thinking about it on a regular basis. However, what makes Star Wars ultimately great is that the films are not all Star Wars is. Star Wars, according to the official policy of Lucasfilm, is also innumerable books, comic books, and video games, all of which (with a few exceptions) are officially canon, and all of which really happened within the overarching universe of Star Wars. That's what makes Star Wars great--what makes it not just a series of films, or a series of books, but in a sense a real universe, filled with many things silly and serious, grim and ridiculous, deep and shallow.
Star Wars thus becomes far, far more than the mere "vision" of one man, and far more, indeed, than any one man's vision could ever hope to encompass.
Of course, the various sources don't always play well together, often seem to contradict each other...but of course, these contradictions and various representations are always smoothed over and explained in the end. Indeed, in this, Star Wars becomes even more like the real world--for what historical sources do we have which do not have seeming contradictions, strange points of view, and just plain oddities, which must be made sense of in the same manner? Likewise, this vastness of the universe provides so much room for cross-pollination, expansion, and continuing creative growth; a character, a species, a planet, a ship, can start off in one source by one author as a random mention with no explanation, then get a backstory in another work from another author's pen, and become the key to saving the Galaxy in a third. Military campaigns and political events originally portrayed in a hundred unconnected sources can be brought together into a comprehensive, tantalizing picture of Galactic history and civilization, with room for debate and speculation to last a lifetime--a picture that is always being updated with information from new sources and stories. Far from being "stifling," the vast continuity of Star Wars provides so much potential for stories and creativity that it's frankly insane--and the requirement of doing some research to keep from blatantly contradicting another source is no harder than searching Wookieepedia, and certainly far, far easier than writing any kind of historical novel.
Thus, ultimately, the Star Wars universe and setting becomes a place of almost infinite creativity and creative potential, with room for the both most serious hobbyist and the most unserious humorist.
And that, my dear compressed air machine, is Star Wars.
Star Wars!
But, really, guys, now that all of that tom-foolery is out of the way, allow me to be serious for a moment.
If you haven't understood the point of my post up until now, let me make it crystal clear for you: Waru is Star Wars. You like Star Wars. Therefore, you must worship Waru!
C-3PO Loves Waru
Waru, you see, is an extra-dimensional entity with anti-Force properties and the ability to heal people by encasing them in his orange goo. He created the Cult of Waru because he loves us and wants to devour our life-essences. Though the evil Jedi and the evil Republic drove him from our dimension and dispersed his cult, nevertheless the loyal followers of Waru know that he shall one day return and fill the entire universe with his gooey orange majesty, punishing all those who opposed him and rewarding his loyal followers! Join the Cult of Waru today!
Also, Trioculus is the rightful ruler of the Empire, and I highly recommend that you enlist in his forces immediately, lest he find you and punish you with his Lightning Power of the Dark Side. The Eye of Trioculus is upon you, peon! Dark Greetings!
In the world of hypotheticals, all the time people come and ask me: Captain Peabody, why are you a Star Trek fan?
This is an important question, and I always take it with the utmost seriousness. Whenever I am asked this question, I immediately turn around slowly, stroke my hypothetical mustache, raise my hypothetical glass high, remove my hat from my head with my hypothetical third arm and place it over my heart, and give the solemn answer: Because Morn is Star Trek.
"But wait! But wait!" The hypothetical reader* cries out. "What IS Morn?! And why is he Star Trek?"
To this, I always reply by saying this picture:
As you can see, the first and most important reason why Morn is Star Trek is because Morn is by far the handsomest and best-looking character to ever grace the Star Trek universe, period. On Star Trek, Morn was always depicted as quite the ladies' man, and it's not hard to see why. That nose! Those whispy hairs! Kirk? Riker? Step aside, gentlemen!
The second reason Morn is Star Trek is because of his second stomach. Morn has a second stomach, and using Origen's principles of Biblical interpretation, we can say that this is obviously an allegory for the dual nature of Star Trek as both television and film, and also for the dual existence of Star Trek in both the minds and experiences of those who create it, and also in the hearts of the fans: it is this latter stomach, of course, that contains a massive supply of latinum currency, thus signifying the fact that it is the fans who provide the funds necessary to keep Star Trek alive, and also that feature films tend to be more profitable than television shows. Likewise, the fact that this latinum has caused his hair to fall out signifies the way in which the influence of money and success has caused Star Trek as a whole to lose its original virility and freshness. Morn's relationship with his hyper-capitalist bartender Quark, of course, and his consequent drinking habit, signify Star Trek's constant need for affirmation and (more importantly) material support from the studios, and Quark and Morn's generally-positive relationship signifies the studio's general esteem for the Star Trek franchise...so long as Morn pays his bar tab on time. Morn's many squabbling siblings, of course, signify the many other sci-fi franchises and TV shows that have been inspired by Star Trek, and his difficult mother signifies the demanding sci-fi fanbase, for whose affection Morn and his siblings are forced to compete. Like Morn, Star Trek is frequently said to be saying an awful lot of meaningful things, and yet somehow never actually manages to say much of anything onscreen. In addition, Morn's quarters, which contain nothing but a mud-bath and a black velvet painting of a Matador, of course signify the two things that single-handedly keep the franchise going: the murky depths of popular culture, and William Shatner's toupee.
I could go on, but I think I've proved my point. No other character in Star Trek other than Morn so completely encompasses Star Trek as a franchise. The great thing, too, for all you English majors out there, is that there are multiple possible readings of Morn as an allegory! There's the out-of-universe one that I've given, but also an in-universe reading, a cosmological reading (where Morn's appearance, properly interpreted, gives a rough map of the Star Trek universe), a mystical reading, a socio-political reading, an anarcho-feminist reading, a fascist-Rastifarian reading, and of course the ever-popular Swedenborgian Reading of Morn, best exemplified by Professor Bosh's magnum opus The Illusiveness of Eschatology in Lurian Psycho-Physical Sociology: The Swedenborgian Reading of Morn.
Alright, I think that is enough foolery for the moment. The real reason that Morn is Star Trek is far more mundane, and far more interesting. See, the thing is, Morn was not supposed to be a Star Trek character. He started his existence, in fact, as one of dozens of masks created by the makeup crew to serve as background extras for the very first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Morn was never supposed to be a character at all; he was just one mask among many, designed to be shoved onto an extra and shoved into the far background of one shot, and then at some later point, probably half a season later, be again shoved onto a completely different extra and shoved into the back of another shot. Instead, of course, Morn ultimately became the stud of a character you see today. What happened?
In short, Star Trek happened. First, enter Mark Allen Shepherd, an actor happening to attend a massive casting call, and then happening, by chance and head size, to be picked to inhabit the then-nameless suit and appliance. Then, by an even greater coincidence, Shepherd ended up accidentally getting left off the call sheet, and, by an even more astronomical and uncanny chance, decided to wander onto the set to see what was going on at the exact day and time when Morn was supposed to appear. Then, when the shot was ready, by another coincidence, he got picked out of the crowd of hundreds of extras by the director and put in the foreground of an establishing shot. Then, Shepherd successfully performed in the suit in such a way that the executive producers noticed him among all the other extras, and hired him for other episodes. Then, as the series continued, Shepherd was hired again and again, appearing at Quark's bar practically every single time the set was used, and becoming a constant presence on the show. Then, the unknown alien began to be mentioned in dialogue and in scripts, had main characters talk about him, interact with him, and even give him a name and a species. Thus, in practically the blink of an eye, that random mask and suit became Morn, a full-fledged character and a living, breathing part of Deep Space Nine and Star Trek. Over the course of the full seven years of Deep Space Nine (the kind of series run that only very successful shows and Star Trek series get), Morn was talked about, developed, and ended up becoming, in places, a key part of the plot of episodes and the show as a whole, even getting an entire episode about him...all without uttering a single word onscreen. We learn about Morn's demanding mother, his squabbling siblings, his second stomach, his lost hair, his criminal past, his shipping business, his weekly sparring matches with Worf in the holodeck, his popularity with the ladies, and a hundred, thousand other things.
Through all of this, Morn is, in reality, nothing more than a few pounds of latex and rubber on an actor, sitting silently at the bar, listening to Quark talk, or walking around the station...essentially, doing pretty much nothing...and yet, in the world of the show and in the minds of its viewers, he is a living, breathing, talkative, charming, amusing person, with friends, family, and a life of his own...who also happens to be a hideous alien with two stomachs.
This is, frankly, the kind of thing that could only happen on a television show, on that week-in, week-out grind of episodes, year after year, where characters can be built up out of nothing, elaborated on, talked about, and developed in a way that is simply impossible to do in feature films...and it is also, frankly, the kind of thing that could only happen on Star Trek, in that strange world where the hideous aliens that populate the background of shots not only aren't just vicious cannon fodder to be gunned down by the hundreds, but are expected as a matter of course to be thinking, vital people with lives and problems of their own, where (to quote Nick Meyer) even the aliens are human, where the audience is invited to buy into a setting and suspend their disbelief to an extent undreamed of in most fiction, where characters and situations can be taken to absurd and whimsical lengths that would never, in a thousand years, fly in any Earth-bound show, where writers and producers have (or at least had) the opportunity to have fun and let their imaginations run wild without constantly worrying about being cancelled or not appealing to the right demographics, and where (in short) the background of the world has the potential to be as rich and varied as the foreground. There are many other characters and situations that exemplify these things as well, but for me at least, none of them do so in so obvious and so handsome a fashion as Morn.
Morn, with his trademark onscreen silence and off-screen talkativeness, is certainly a comic character, with a number of running jokes associated with him; but, as I've shown, in the world of the show and in the mind of its viewers he is ultimately much, much more: a living, breathing character exemplifying all that Star Trek can be.
Having said all that, I will now invite you to watch Morn in action, in a scene that he doesn't even appear in no less!
And that, my dear hypothetical, is why I am a Star Trek fan.
