The Final Frontier
I did some pointless research and have come up with this meaningless statistic: for 53 out of the 168 upcoming hours of this week, there will be an episode of the Star Trek franchise running somewhere on my basic cable tier.
Before I start in earnest: I know about the kind of people who have that whole pathological attraction to the whole Trek universe. People who speak Klingon, or have argued about what happens during a warp core breach. Well, they are what they are. They make you feel a little bit better about yourself by not being like them. And like most normal people, I've never read a technical manual for the USS Enterprise, nor did I meet my spouse at a Trek convention.
This post isn't about bashing Trekkies, though. I've just watched too much TV.
All Trek episodes make valid thematic points: technology in service to mankind, respect for all sentient beings, firing only in self-defense. That's nice and everything, but as I'm sure the people who worked on them would tell you, they're just TV shows. Sets, scripts, actors...frequently of less-than-award-winning quality.
I mean, really: there's always some junk-science-driven plot device--a "temporal anomaly", or weird energy surge that screws up the Holodeck--that turns into another great excuse to put the cast into period costumes and solve some sort of geekgasm-inducing technical problem. Along the way there are zillions of species with ugly foreheads that speak perfect English, an uncanny amount of references to late 20th-century Earth, and lot of wild guesses that turn out to be correct, just in time to save the ship from being eaten by interphasic space leeches.
And so, so much overacting. These are performances that stand the test of time. Watch and see: forty years from now they'll be teaching classes in overacting at UCLA solely with Trek clips. The serial offenders were the comic relief characters like Quark (ugh) and Neelix (ugggggghhhhh); even worse was when they played Data for laughs. I always prayed for an anvil to fall out of the sky onto Brent Spiner's head right after watching TNG episodes like that. Or--heaven forgive me--the movie that came out about 3 years ago.
But the absolute biggest problem is that Star Trek takes the very real concepts that physical scientists and cosmologists have been working to discover for several thousand years and completely urinates all over them. There are multiple generations of human beings who now absolutely know to the core of their souls that faster-than-light space travel is just a matter of time from being a reality. That there's a whole bunch of space-mobile, technologically-advanced aliens that look like bit-part actors with latex ridges on their foreheads. That we are just a few years away from transporters, replicators, force fields, phasers, artificial gravity, and being able to remodulate the shields to the spectrum frequency of the warp engines and re-route power to the tractor beam.
Sorry, Charlie. It's fiction. Space is big, cold, and pretty much empty. Chances are good that not only will we never be able to get out of our own solar system in a generation's worth of travel time, but also that nobody from out of the cosmos is going to show up with technology that completely violates everything we've known to be true about physics.
This is true of all of science fiction, but for some reason the way Trek has ingrained itself into human consciousness and its absolute ubiquity make it more singularly responsible for its ability to suck humanity squarely out of the realm of reality.
We'll just have to be happy where we are for a while.
There's some breaking news I get as I finish up this post: EGL on Eagle Street is gone. For good. And Gideon's is closed indefinitely, but may reopen. It doesn't seem to be from a lack of business so much as owner Bill Gideon's overall financial picture. But I, and so many of our friends who loved the place, are just crushed at this news. It couldn't even make it until the movie theater opened. Anybody want to form a real estate investment trust and buy the building from whoever owns it and let Vaal run a restaurant? Anybody have any suggestions about where we should have the February Drinking Liberally meeting?
posted by Ross @ 7:54 PM
16 comments
16 Comments:
Except we're not. Happy where we are, that is. We're a curious, discontented pack of monkeys. We can't see a closed door without wanting to open it, or look at a hill without needing to know what's on the other side.
The future's not going to look like Star Trek, any more than the Old West looked like Bonanza. Because it is a TV show, or, rather, a series of TV shows. It's a commercial endeavor, not the work of serious futurists.
At the risk of waxing Shatnerian, the technology of tomorrow is just as likely to @#$% mankind's %$#@ up as it is to serve us; we're as likely to beat hell out of our fellow sentient beings as we are to live in harmony with them.
Is FTL travel going to look like warp speed? Certainly not. Will we someday - assuming we don't destroy ourselves first - break the laws that seem inviolate today? Almost certainly, because breaking things is what we do.
The closing of EGL is damned unfortunate. I enjoyed it. I regret not being able to stop off for a drink after seeing a movie; it could have made for a nice evening out.
Hi Tom. Thanks for the comments. Is your blog new in town?
Hi Ross,
I have heard more news/rumor whose origins are reasonably solid for such things, and have a 2nd Update on my blog. Basically, although I expect Vaal will have another project in town, EGL looks less than viable.
David Pittelli
http://woodedpaths.blogspot.com/
It's very sad to see Gideon's go, but well placed sources say that he is done, at least for now. That's all I can really say.
Ross:
New enough that calling it a blog may be premature at this juncture. It's more an excuse to have an account so that when I feel compelled to comment people know who is blithering at them
I wish I had time to write a blog...gotsta make time I rekon
Spock sure is cool, though.
Our family has been slowly winding through the original Star Trek series and I think it's important to highlight the reason for the appeal here - my kids love it. My kids love other things that I love - DC comics for instance - and part of the beauty of parenthood is the opportunity to see things that you loved and have since moved on from through the eyes of your kids, so as not only to rediscover them, but rediscover new ways of looking at old things.
The funny thing about Star Trek is that while I was never a big Trek geek, I always liked and enjoyed it. But now I love it, after watching it with my sons and seeing them respond to the whole thing. And I have never seen any series other than the original - and the first three movies - so I realize that there is a crap load of Star Trek out there that the kids and I are going to have fun discovering together.
It's all a trade-off, you see. They also love science, especially areas of astronomy, cosmology and physics, and they have been teaching me things that I never knew as they learn about it. And Star Trek is just one more fun way to share something and they do apply what they learn from science to the show - and to other shows and movies as well.
As for Gideon's, things come and go in this town. Those spaces were other things a few years back and that shows no sign of ending. It's a city in a long, long, long flux where this sort of thing keeps happening. I'm used to it at this point.
Ross, Ross Ross Ross Ross....why don't you just print a column saying that there is no Santa Claus! Taking on Star Trek........that's not right! Ok, so the acting isn't the best. I mean no one ever said that Shatner ever held the thespian chops of someone like, well, that great actor, Larry Storch from F Troop. (Now there's a guy the academy has overlooked.)
First, Gene Roddenberry (I'd rather be lucky than good) said from the beginning that it is fun and escapist entertainment. He called it Wagon Train from the stars. So it is what it is. It grew into a cult because it was science fiction for the masses. I grew up reading Heinlien, Asimov, and Bradbury. But I could count on one hand the number of people I could discuss sci-fi with because it was either an acquired taste or was something too lowbrow for those who were reading "Of Mice and Men". Some of us read both. Actually, Bradberry was easy to read because he put humans into the same situations as other writers, only he did this from outer space. Asimov was more of a technie. Heinlien was somewhere in between.
Star Trek was picked up by a generation that had read Tolkein, was watching a young President launch a space effort to get us to the moon, and was ready for some escapist fictional entertainment. They turned to a show that gave them what they wanted. The future spin-offs after the original series (or TOS, as it is known by Trekkies. How scary is it that I know this) were just part of the boomer generation demanding more of what they liked growing up. Why did the last few series fail to recapture the audience of the past? We now have kids and they rule the remote controls!
And one other thing. While Star Trek wasn’t the best acted show on TV, (that was reserved for Kolchak: The Night Stalker, a few years alter!) it did interest people in science. NASA had press releases that attested to the interest in their programs based on people who watched Trek. Nichelle Nichols, or Uhura, as fans knew her, was hired by NASA after the show ended because it enhanced their popularity. We could use that interest now as our kids don’t opt into science anymore and we are falling behind the rest of the world in this area.
BTW, don’t ridicule the science. Matter-antimatter is real. Medical sensors are now called MRI’s, however they are much bigger than the hand held diagnostics of TOS. Raytheon is testing a phaser type weapon that has tremendous potential. But wait, there’s more. Casimir vacuums can alter the relationship between relativity outside and inside vacuums. That means that things may be able to move faster as the relativity of that space may vary. Also, since tachyon particles have no mass, theoretically, they can move faster than objects with mass that would increase in mass as they accelerate. Another possibility is that the string theory held by Eric Gimon involves timelike curves in space. Eric Gimon involves timelike curves in space. Perhaps one doesn’t need to accelerate beyond the speed of light in order to travel great distances. As for teleportation, a group of Australian scientists placed a radio signal on a beam of light and transported it from one place to another one meter away. This will help to keep codes unbroken and speed up computers when it becomes practicable.
There was an experiment that I read about several years ago, where a ray of light appeared at the far end of a vacuum tube at a time that appeared to precede the introduction of light at the start end of the tube. Is this possible? I don’t know and don’t think this has been duplicated since then, but when I first started in Boston 20 years ago, we didn’t have cell phones, computers were the size of houses and they didn’t talk to us. We hadn’t been to Mars. We had no holodecks, but today we get 3 d pictures and projections. We didn’t know about embryonic Stem Cells, or nanotechnology. We think nothing of 30 gig I-Pods today or the fact that we piggyback signals back and forth over lines meant for one-way transmission. Who knows what is possible? But I know that a lot of the curiosity of my generation was brought about because some people were exposed to new ideas or taught to dream of things that were beyond our worlds.
Dan Bosley epitomizes what can be done with a liberal arts degree in history----learn new stuff----he knows technology-- thank you Kolchak and James Tiberius Kirk---he knows Africa-- thank you Zulu---he knows China-- thank you fortune cookies---he knows beer- thank you Professor Billings--- if he took his pound for pound frame and extended it vertically-- with his "jump" shot- he'd be playing in the NBA-- still--- I always wished that I had Spock's "mind meld" -so I could figure out what the hell my wife was actually thinking---let me know when that technique is perfected---windmills suck--chbpod
Clark, I have found that with Scotch, I can perfect the mind melt.
Dan-valid points all. I'm not denying any of the good, wholesome family entertainment value there is to be had from Trek. Hell, I've watched pretty near all of 'em--except for the ones with the guy from Quantum Leap. Bleah.
My point about Trek is a lot less expansive than I think you're responding to. I'm just commenting on the junk science part of it.
Much of this is to get Tara's reaction, as well: she's been calling bullshit on me about my reaction to the idea of manned interstellar travel for years. I rest comfortably knowing that space travel as pictured in Trek is just plain fundamentally impossible and will always be.
Tara thinks, and possibly rightly so, that I am a tool and a douchebag.
I recommend a couple of books from Brian Greene: The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos discuss the hurdles involved in manned interstellar travel, as does Wikipedia's entry "faster than light". Greene is a string theorist, so if you haven't read at least the 1st one already, you should.
And you've convinced me to read the Caro book when I get around to it. Sounds like it has it all--intrigue, power, bridge abutments. Throw in a car chase and a hot redhead and you could option it to Paramount for $2 million.
Excuse me Boz---- I know my hearing is deteriorating -- and it may have been years ago-- but I thought it was the Vulcan MIND MELD"--- as in joining two minds together--- now I find out that it is the "mind melt" Crikey-- my mind has been melting for years--- scotch- vodka-- beer-- students who think Henry Clay was from Kentucky-----my mind????? never mind- chbpod
Ross- Caro's book is a slow read at first----maybe the first 150 pages-- but stay with it---and if you have any knowledge of NYC--- it will blow your mind--- you will just be amazed at how much power a non-elected offical can have--chbpod
This fits the theme nicely. Enjoy!
xoxo -tara
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoHw7OjAu64
Hey
If you don't stop bashing Star Trek I will have to take my pfaser off stun!!!
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