Quips and Quotations (All's Well That West Ends Well Edition)

 

Gielgud and Richardson

John Gielgud is the biggest gossip I know, and I know several. He's a fabulous talent, has a magnificent voice, and he's the first to admit he's selfish and egotistic. How refreshing!

--Ralph Richardson

Quips and Quotations (Zen Bastard Edition)

1932-2019

I am neither for conformity nor nonconformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect nonconformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.

--Paul Krassner

Strange New World Just Ahead, or: How to Make a Vulcan Feel at Home (Part 8 of 15)

8. Lights! Camera! Existentialism! 

Alexander Graham Bell. Invented the telephone 90 years before Star Trek first went on the air.

Thomas Edison. Invented the incandescent light bulb 87 years before Star Trek first went on the air.

Orville and Wilbur Wright. Invented the airplane 63 years before Star Trek first went on the air.

Charlie Chaplin. Produced, directed, wrote, and starred in the motion picture Modern Times 30 years before Star Trek first went on the air.

Speaking of motion pictures, here's an early ad for the first one based on Star Trek, an ad that was quickly rescinded. Note that it says "23rd century". The original series didn't necessarily take place in the 23rd century. Nor did it necessarily NOT not take place in the 23rd century. The TV show never exactly said when it took place, you were supposed to just assume "the future", that's all. The series hinted at times, but those hints were contradictory. In the time travel episode "Tomorrow is Yesterday", a 1967 Air Force Lieutenant, believing him to be a spy, threatens to lock Kirk up for 200 years, to which the starship captain replies, "That ought to be about right." Doing the math, that also ought to be the 22nd, and not the 23rd, century. In "The Squire of Gothos", the title alien, unaware the time it takes light to travel in space, believes Earth is still in the late 18th-early 19th century, or "900 hundred years past" according to Kirk, meaning the show should then take place in the 27th century. In the 1968 best-seller The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield (that a show on the verge of cancellation nonetheless could inspire a best-selling book demonstrates the cult-like following the series had during its original run) Gene Roddenberry is quoted as saying the Enterprise's five-year mission could take place as late as 1000 years in the future, or as early as 1999 (at the time three decades away, but still.) The trick, I think, is that you need it far enough in the future to account for things like interstellar space travel and molecular disassembly and reassembly ("Beam me up, Scotty") but not so far into the future that humans have evolved into floating brains (or, if you believe Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos, dolphins.) Somehow, someone settled on the 23rd century for the first film, except that date is never actually mentioned in the film itself, just the early ad campaign for it, which the producers then backed off of. Still, 300 years in the future sounded like it might be right. The date stuck.

 The Manhattan Project. 21 years before Star Trek first went on the air.

ENIAC. 20 years before Star Trek first went on the air.

Sputnik. 9 years before Star Trek first went on the air.

23rd century or whenever, Star Trek obviously takes place in a technologically advanced future. But to what extent do the characters think of that era as advanced? After all, technology is relative. Look at today. The Internet. Smart phones. GPS tracking. It's all beginning to make an era I once thought of as ultra-modern, and technologically advanced in its own right, the 1970s of my youth, seem vaguely quaint. Does Polaroid still make those cameras where the picture develops right before your eyes? Does Polaroid make anything anymore? In 1889, the 19th century seemed like such a age of marvels to Mark Twain that he was inspired to write A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, in which the title character introduces the steam engine, gas lights, and the telegraph to the Middle Ages. 90 years later, Disney made a movie of Twain's novel titled Unidentified Flying Oddball. Except by 1979, 1889 seemed a little too much like the Middle Ages for the contrast to resonate much, so the title character was updated to a NASA astronaut (who still may have been from Connecticut for all I know.)  In between, there's the 1949 Bing Crosby version, which retained Twain's original title. Yet there's a curious bit of updating there, too. Instead of 1889 or 1949, that movie takes place in 1912. Why? Crosby plays an auto mechanic, a profession largely unknown in 1889.  23 years later, however, there were 500,000 automobiles on American roads, and presumably they occasionally broke down and you needed mechanics to repair them. 22% percent of those autos were the increasingly affordable and increasingly popular Model T Fords. But not nearly as affordable and popular as they would become in 1913. That year, Henry Ford had a moving assembly line installed in his Highland Park, Michigan plant. Moving assembly lines had been around for a while, but usually for simple things like putting sardines in cans. Oldsmobile had tried it with cars first, but still charged wealthy consumers through their turned-up noses, and so most Americans stuck to horses or their own two legs. Ford, who realized you could make more money by selling something cheap to a modest-income majority than something expensive to a well-heeled minority, was by the mid-1910s spitting out Model T's, displacing both the horse and the people of the world's own two feet, and turning the entire planet into the Indianapolis 500. Writer Aldous Huxley was so impressed--as well as alarmed and repulsed--by Henry Ford's achievement, that he set his 1931 dystopian novel Brave New World in 632 A.F.--"After Ford". Huxley was still alive in 1961 when Disney came out with The Absent-Minded Professor. In that decidedly non-dystopian film, the title character played by Fred MacMurray is kidded by friends and acquaintances for "still driving that old Model T." It seems no matter how stunning the technological development, something soon comes along to render it trite (which reminds me, I need to replace my cell phone.)

Star Trek, during its original run, examined both sides of this dichotomy. There are times where the characters do see themselves as technologically advanced. In "The Conscience of the King" a Shakespearean actor tells Kirk, "Here you stand, the perfect symbol of our technical society. Mechanized, electronicised, and not very human. You've done away with humanity, the striving of man to achieve greatness through his own resources." In "Errand of Mercy" Kirk himself says "We think of ourselves as the most powerful beings in the universe..." There are even Luddites in the future. In "The Way to Eden" Spock explains the goals of Dr. Sevrin and his followers: "There are many who are uncomfortable with what we have created. It is almost a biological rebellion--a profound revulsion against the planned communities, the programming, the sterilized, artfully balanced atmospheres. They hunger for an Eden--where spring comes." Yet there's also a surprising number of episodes where Kirk and co. encounter societies that are even more technologically advanced, or else they've given themselves over to technology to such an extent they make the crew of the Enterprise look Amish, almost always to ill effect. In "Return of the Archons" and "The Apple" computers set themselves up as gods to intellectually-stunted populations. In "A Taste of Armageddon" two planets wage a 500-year war via computer simulation, but the casualties are real. The title contraption in "The Doomsday Machine" munches on planets. As for "Mudd's Planet", a bunch of stubborn androids rule there. A scientist programs his personality into "The Ultimate Computer" and people die as a result. Some personality. A spaceship posing as a planet is set to collide into the real thing in "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky". In all of these episodes, the technological evil is defeated, and the crew of the Enterprise returns to their normal lives of interstellar travel and molecule-dispersing transporters. Now with this new film version of Star Trek, ultra-modern 1970s special effects would be put to use in telling yet another story about advanced technology. Whether this advanced technology was evil or not would all depend on who, or what, was asking the question.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) A giant space cloud destroys three Klingon warships, but not before we get to see the Federation's longtime foes with a new cool backbone-leading-to-top-of-the-nose appearance (in the original series they merely had bushy eyebrows and swarthy complexions.) The cloud is now headed for Earth, and Admiral Kirk, stuck in a desk job for the last couple of years, uses the existential threat as an excuse to get back in the Captain's chair of a newly re-fitted Enterprise, putting him at odds with the new captain, but now First Officer Willard Decker (the son of a character who appeared in the original series episode "The Doomsday Machine".) Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov (now weapons officer), Rand (now a transporter chief) and Chapel (now a doctor) are still part of the crew, but McCoy and Spock have apparently left Starfleet. Kirk has the former (briefly seen with a beard) recommissioned and dragooned back to the Enterprise quite against his will. As for the latter, he's back on Vulcan undergoing a ritual to purge all his emotions when he senses the presence of the space cloud and decides to put the expurgation on hold, once again returning to his old ship as Science Officer, though he's even more aloof than before. And so the Enterprise takes off to battle, or at least reason, with the cloud. Problem is, there's still a few bugs in the refitted Enterprise, as witnessed by a couple of crew members who melt or something while being beamed aboard. A second problem is Kirk's not familiar with all the changes done to his ship, and in fact almost gets everybody killed a couple times, saved only by Decker, who's then reprimanded by the new/old captain for "competing" with him. The Kirk-Decker feud basically falls in the background once the Enterprise catches up with the space cloud. Or the space cloud catches up with the Enterprise. A shiny probe appears on the bridge and abducts the ship's new navigator (and Decker's old flame) Ilia. She's either replaced, combined with, or turned into the probe who wants to know why there are so many "carbon units infesting" the Enterprise. Spock notices the probe is partial to Decker, suggesting it has retained some of Ilia's memories. Decker is assigned the task of wooing Ilia all over again, but to no avail. All she cares about is finding her "Creator" and feels the carbon forms on the Enterprise, and eventually on Earth as well are just getting in the way. Spock has some success mind-melding with the cloud, finding out it has a name: V'Ger. Quite on his own, Spock decides to get a closer look at this cloud. He nerve-pinches a guard, suits up, and spacewalks right into the heart of the thing, where he sees hundreds of planets and stars and the like. Upon his return, and after resting up in sick bay as the experience almost killed him, Spock reveals that in the heart of the cloud is a 20th century Voyager probe that's been missing for 300 years (NASA really did send up several spacecraft with that name though this particular one is fictional.) Seems it disappeared into a black hole only to end up on some planet populated by living machines. Sent back out to learn all there is to learn, it now wants to find its creator. V'Ger shows its bias by refusing to believe that the creator might be a carbon unit (the good people at NASA) rather than a machine. Unfortunately, not only is there no longer a NASA in the 23rd-or-whenever century, all of the computer codes that could be used to contact V'Ger have disappeared, too. The Earth defenses have now been rendered useless by the up-fitted probe, every man, woman, and child (as well as plants and animals) in mortal danger. Somehow this problem is solved when Decker--through one helluva whiz-bang light show--merges with the Ilia/probe, and they jointly merge with V'Ger, hurtling all three into some other dimension. Everything now back to normal, Scotty offers to return Spock to Vulcan, but he's gotten such an epiphany from the whole experience (even shedding tears at one point) that he's decided there's nothing left for him there.

A nice try. That's my opinion of this film. Costing $44 million dollars (adjusted for inflation, today it would be...well, I have no idea but even not adjusted for inflation I could still buy a lot of pizzas with it) this film should at the very least be nice. Robert Wise, who had his biggest hit was The Sound of Music but whose science fiction cred rests with the 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, directed this in an impressionistic style that enhances the sense of wonder we've come to expect from Star Trek. The special effects are more than nice, they're FANTASTIC, but that may be part of the problem. Trek has never been solely about the wonder (it couldn't be, given the original series shoestring budget) but also the people doing the wondering. Everything is so grand (including a San Francisco of the future) that it's hard not to blame V'Ger for wanting to eliminate the carbon units. They get in the way of the sheer spectacle. Except for the antiseptic interiors of the Enterprise. The whole ship now looks like Sick Bay. The new uniforms are either light blue or light beige, darker, gaudier hues having been banned. The old series, for all its high-mindedness, had at least a flirting relationship with the pulpier forms of sci-fi. Whereas this new version has sworn off trolling for tramps in a trailer park, married a nice girl with impeccable (if a tad austere) taste in fashion and furniture, and moved to the suburbs.

Even if they're overwhelmed at times by all the pyrotechnics, the actors all do good work. As a newcomer to Star Trek, Stephen Collins sometimes seems unsure exactly how he fits it with this crowd, but then that's pretty much the whole point of his character, Williard Decker. Collins is at his best in his scenes with Bollywood actress Persis Khambatta, who's both Ilia and the probe-that-looks-like-Ilia. She does a nice job playing two characters who occasionally are one and the same. However, keeping with the TV show (as well as pulpier forms of sci-fi) she's also this movie's sex symbol, but with a twist. Beautiful, nubile, with a great pair of gams--except she's bald! For all its highfalutin philosophy, this is the film at its most provocative. The feminine form literally topped by something our culture considers anything but feminine. The movie dares you to not find her attractive, challenges you not to be turned on. The kind of erotic contrariness that Lady Gaga knows all too well. Or Sinead O'Conner, who obviously looks more the part. Who knows? Maybe O'Conner caught this film back in '79 and was inspired by it. As for the cast from the TV version, they've all settled back into their old roles as if the original series had just gone off the air the day before. In fact, Barret, Doohan, Koenig, Nichols, and Takai, as, respectively, Chapel, Scotty, Chekov, Uhura, and Sulu, have about as much to do in this movie as they did in the TV show. In the first half-season in which she appeared, Grace Lee Whitney--Janice Rand--actually did have more to do than those other players. As James T. Kirk's incipient love interest, she was the focal point of several early episodes. Now just seen briefly as the frazzled transporter chief, the interest seems never to have gotten past the incipient stage. William Shatner is good as Kirk. His acting style is often made fun of, but I thought the fits and starts and even the occasional sputtering of the Enterprise captain as a not unrealistic response to the dangers he faced on a regular basis. Being chased by a different monster every week could make anyone appear bipolar. At least in this film Shatner has an extra hour to pace himself. He's a more conflicted character here, with a bit of melancholia about him in his desire to be relevant, a desire that possibly exceeds the need for his particular brand of relevancy. All of which, of course, makes him a more sympathetic character. When Kirk tells Decker not to compete with him, we know he's wrong (as Decker has just saved the day) yet our heart goes out to him all the same. Since he neither figures out what V'Ger is all about nor makes the sacrifice/physical transformation that sends the space cloud on its computer programmed way, Kirk is a surprisingly passive figure here, though his "thataway" that ends the film signals a determination to propel the narrative (as he noisily will in several succeeding films.) Now, every transcendent science fiction epic needs an Everyman. 2001: A Space Odyssey had Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea). Close Encounters of the Third Kind had Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss). Star Trek: The Motion Picture has...Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley)! Except whereas Bowman and Neary were in awe of the wondrous things of which they bore witness, McCoy is as always annoyed and unsettled and eager to escape from anything that doesn't smack of the familiar. Consequently, Kelley has some of the best, certainly the funniest lines in the movie. When, after a near-disaster, Chekov informs him there are no casualties, McCoy replies, "Wrong, Mr. Chekov, there are casualties. My wits! As in, frightened out of!" When Spock suggests Ilia/V'Ger probe be treated as a child, McCoy's response: "Spock, this child is about to wipe out every living thing on Earth. Now, what do you suggest we do? Spank it?!" In his own cantankerous way, McCoy is even more logical than Spock.

And what of Spock?

 I think, therefore I am.

--René Descartes

One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go.

--Sigmund Freud

What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.

--Jean-Paul Sartre.

There are times when all the world's asleep,
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am.

--Supertramp

Leonard Nimoy's performance is really at the heart of this film. I said in an earlier installment that of all the Enterprise crew members that we're aware of, Spock is the most open-minded, the most tolerant toward life-forms other than his own. The one exception is the human race, which he finds constant fault with: "Curious how often you Humans manage to obtain that which you do not want." "Your whole Earth history is made up of men seeking absolute power." At the end of "Mirror, Mirror" when asked what he thought of the parallel universe versions of Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura, Spock replies: "...I had the opportunity to observe your counterparts here quite closely. They were brutal, savage, unprincipled, uncivilized, treacherous, in every way, splendid examples of homo sapiens, the very flower of humanity." You can argue Spock's every bit as bigoted as McCoy, except toward those who ears happen to be rounded. Remember, though, as a Vulcan he's outnumbered 7 to 1 among the Enterprise crew members we see most often. The extras and one-shot characters seem to be human, too, so it's really about 400 to 1. Spock's criticisms are really a survival tool, a way of maintaining his sense of self in what to him is an alien culture: "Doctor, I am well aware of human characteristics. I am frequently inundated by them, but I've trained myself to put up with practically everything."  My theory is that the inundation finally gets to Spock. So he parts company with what he sees as a starship full of Stanley Kowalskis and returns to Vulcan to undergo "kolinahr", the expurgation (suppression?) of emotions to get that sense of self back. 

Problem is, having been inundated in another environment for the past five years, he can now see Vulcan from the outside and recognize it for what it is: artifice. A cultural construct. Not necessarily a bad cultural construct. Maybe the best cultural construct around. But it's like if you go off to college or the army (or, in his case, Starfleet) and return home, that home is never quite the same, even if nothing's changed, because it is YOU that have changed. Your horizons have been expanded. Spock probably could commiserate with the three returning servicemen (actors Harold Russell, Dana Andrews, and Fredric March) in the 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives. Their horizons expanded to an often horrific degree thanks to World War II, they're met with indifference, bafflement, and impatient pleas to just "snap out of it" by the folks at home. Spock, of course, has seen his share of horrors as a Starfleet officer, but even when a particular adventure has been more "fascinating" than lethal, it could still be beyond the ken of the average non-spacefaring Vulcan, who, whenever we're allowed to glimpse one, seems more interested in paganish ritual of the meditative sort and little else.  So what's a returning serviceman, be he from Earth or Vulcan, to do? Well, you can once again take leave of the place, as Dana Andrews attempts to do toward the end of TBYOOL. Or you can take to drink, Fredric March's solution. Or you can do your best to fit in. Harold Russell's personal best is marriage to his childhood sweetheart. Spock's already tried that and it didn't work out too well ("Amok Time") so he opts for kolinahr. If anyone's going to meet Spock's newly expanded horizons with indifference, it might as well be Spock himself. Bye, bye, emotions.

Except V'ger is hardly indifferent. Spock senses it way out in space and the Vulcan elders don't. Think they'd be a bit jealous of Spock's unique ability, but jealousy is an emotion and that would be illogical. Really, though, why is Spock able to do that? Just as the half-human, half-Vulcan is now too self-conscious to be completely comfortable in his own homeland, apparently (as it will soon be revealed) the half-NASA, half-alien V'Ger is going through its own identity crises. So Spock returns to Kirk and co. Not that he's any more comfortable doing that. He's now a returning serviceman reluctantly returned to service. Spock may be newly-aware of Vulcan as a cultural construct, but he's always felt that way about the Enterprise. I'm thinking here of the scene where, shortly after arriving at his former workplace, Spock, Kirk, and McCoy adjourn to a side room designed in Danish Modern (well, it'd be retro to those three.) Standing erect as a flagpole, Spock's discomfort is palpable as Kirk urges him to sit down. When he finally does, it's the most awkward acquiescence to a request I've ever seen.  McCoy, of course, is ready with a wisecrack: "Spock, you haven't changed a bit. You're just as warm and sociable as ever." Spock, of course, has a good comeback: "Nor have you, doctor, as your continued predilection for irrelevancy demonstrates." But, unlike every other instance, he takes no satisfaction on getting a good one off the doctor. Indeed, it's a bit of a chore, the comeback slowly oozing out his mouth like the last bit of ketchup out of a bottle. Now, let's jump ahead to just after Spock's spacewalk into the heart of V'Ger, when he ends up in Sick Bay. Clasping Kirk's hand, he says:  "I saw V'Ger's planet, a planet populated by living machines. Unbelievable technology. V'Ger has knowledge that spans this universe. And, yet, with all this pure logic, V'Ger is barren, cold, no mystery, no beauty. I should have known [...] This simple feeling [clasping Kirk's hand] is beyond V'Ger's comprehension. No meaning, no hope, and, Jim, no answers. 'Is this all I am? Is there nothing more?'"  Spock is obviously dismayed by this lack of beauty and mystery and the simple act of clasping a hand. The question is, why? The obvious answer is that it's Spock's human half that's dismayed. And that his human half is probably equally dismayed at the push for pure logic on his own home planet of Vulcan. I'm sure anywhere from 3% to 10% of you folks out there--the statistics stubbornly refuse to stay put--can probably relate to a biological urge at odds with societal norms. No, I'm not saying that Spock is gay--he gets it on quite readily with both Leila Kalomi (Jill Ireland) in "This Side of Paradise" and Zarabeth (a scantily clad Mariette Hartley) in "All Our Yesterdays", two episodes where his emotions, and possibly his libido, get the best of him--only that his paradoxical genetic makeup could give rise to a similar set of challenges. In that respect, kolinahr can even be seen as a kind of conversion therapy.  Except Spock isn't just dismayed but surprised that there's no beauty or mystery or simple acts of hand clasping on V'Ger's planet. And that surprise makes me think those things indeed must exist on Spock's own home world, albeit in muted form, furthering my belief that Vulcans are really just a bunch of poseurs (as is true of any culture, be it a New Guinea tribe, the Middle East, or the United States of America.) Vulcans aren't machines, they just wish they were machines. With horrifying clarity, Spock has seen just what would happen were that wish ever to come true. That's not to say he's now ready to embrace the violence-ridden, angst-ridden, heartbreak-ridden Earth Human lifestyle, and, in fact, he never does (There's GOT to be some other alternative, he's probably thinking.)

The only real problem with Star Trek: The Motion Picture is it goes on too damn long. At 132 minutes, it's...let me check...it's a whole three minutes longer than the average blockbuster film made in the late '70s. Um, let me amend my first sentence. Star Trek: The Motion Picture SEEMS to go on too damn long. Though the themes may be complex, the actual plot is simple enough. The whole thing could have been told in under an hour, the length of a typical Star Trek episode. In fact, it WAS a Star Trek episode: "The Changeling" from the series second season. The Enterprise receives yet another distress signal (think by now they'd learn to ignore those things given all the trouble they cause) and arrives at a planet that should have a population of four billion but is now devoid of life. Here today, gone tomorrow. The culprit turns out to be a space probe named Nomad, sent from Earth a few centuries earlier. Nomad is much smaller than V'Ger, so much so that it can be beamed aboard the Enterprise. Otherwise, it very much resembles V'Ger. It's looking for its creator, and refers to people as "units". Spock mind-melds with the probe and finds, like V'Ger, it came into contact with another space object from a more technologically advanced society. The two somehow merged into one, and now feels it must exterminate anything that gets in the way of its stated goal. The similarities between "The Changeling" and Star Trek: The Motion Picture are so great, some fans have referred to the latter as Where Nomad Has Gone Before.  The episode was written by John Meredyth Lucas, but Executive Producer Gene Roddenberry was obviously taken with the idea of a machine in search of its creator. He used the idea again in the TV movie The Questor Tapes (though that machine was much more agreeable toward human beings) and now made it the subject of the first feature film. However, "The Changeling" had a much different ending. Temporarily mistaking Kirk for its creator, it decides to help him out by eliminating such inefficiencies as Uhura's memory and a couple of security guards. Needless to say this was help Kirk did not need. The Enterprise captain points out the errors of Nomad's ways to it, and the machine decides to destroy itself, but not before Kirk manages to have it beamed back out into space, where it explodes. As I said in an earlier installment, ending an episode with a bang was the commercial way of solving that week's dilemma in Star Trek's second season. So it's odd, and refreshing, to discover that, even with all the money being spent, the feature film wasn't going to take the easy way out and have V'Ger similarly blown out of the sky. According to the onscreen credits, science-fiction author Alan Dean Foster, who had written a series of books based on the animated series, came up with the story, and a producer by the name of Harold Livingston wrote the teleplay. Note I didn't say screenplay. Originally this was meant to be the pilot for a new TV show, Star Trek: Phase Two. So maybe the promotion to feature filmdom allowed for greater consideration on how to end this thing. In Livingston's words:
 
 "We had a marvelous antagonist, so omnipotent that for us to defeat it or even communicate with it, or have any kind of relationship with it, made the initial concept of the story false. Here's this gigantic machine that's a million years further advanced than we are. Now, how the hell can we possibly deal with this? On what level? As the story developed, everything worked until the very end. How do you resolve this thing? If humans can defeat this marvelous machine, it's really not so great, is it? Or if it really IS great, will we like those humans who do defeat it? SHOULD they defeat it? Who is the story's hero anyway? That was the problem. We experimented with all kinds of approaches...we didn't know what to do with the ending. We always ended up against a blank wall."

NASA to the rescue! The then-director of the agency had mused that mechanical forms of life were someday likely in an interview in Penthouse (a once-popular girlie magazine that in recent years has come close to going under thanks to that mechanical form of life known as the Internet.) And that became the ending to Star Trek: The Motion Picture as Decker, Ilia, and V'Ger become one. And a good ending it is, no matter how many extra minutes it takes to get there.

Though they went to the The Motion Picture in droves, Star Trek fans were divided on its merits, and, judging by the Users Reviews on the IMDb, they remain divided, some comparing it favorably to the TV version, others complaining it bears no resemblance whatsoever. What I think both sides overlook is that the individual episodes of the original series didn't always resemble each other. "Arena", for instance, is very different from "A Piece of the Action", and both were written by the same guy! Whatever its flaws, Star Trek: The Motion Picture deserves another look.

The execs at Paramount, however, had seen enough. Sure, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a hit, in fact, the fifth biggest hit of 1979. But it had cost so much to make, there was barely enough money left over for those execs to refurbish their hot tubs or build additions onto their mansions. If there was going to be a sequel--and, of course, there was going to be a sequel, after all, it was the fifth biggest hit of 1979--then a change was in order.

Gene Roddenberry never owned the classic series he created. The original proprietor was Lucille Ball, who sold it and the rest of Desilu studios to neighboring Paramount Pictures during Star Trek's second season. After the show went off the air, Roddenberry tried to buy it off them, but the price was too high. Still, when it came time to make a movie, they let him produce the thing. Figured he knew what he was doing. Star Trek, Star Wars, as long as the kids liked it. Now the kids were falling asleep during this expensive piece of psychobabble. That's not what they asked for! Give the public what it needs, bread and circuses (action figure tie-ins would be nice, too.) Actually, Roddenberry was perfectly capable of giving them that. Remember, the artistic first Trek pilot, "The Cage" had been followed by the relatively lowbrow "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Yeah, well, he should have done it that way in the beginning, the execs probably thought. Roddenberry was, in William Shatner's words, "kicked upstairs". For the rest of the movie franchise's decade-long run, he would be "executive consultant", except no one ever consulted him.

Next: Hail the Conquering Hero

Strange New World Just Ahead, or: How to Make a Vulcan Feel at Home (Part 6 of 15)

6. Spock Reconsidered

In this installment, I want to look at three (or so) Spock-centric episodes. These aren't necessarily the best episodes of Star Trek (indeed, one is widely considered the all-time worst) but they're worth examining for what they reveal about our Vulcan pal.

Let's start with the purportedly worst first: "Spock's Brain." A sexy woman from a nearby ship beams aboard the Enterprise, and knocks everyone unconscious. After they all come to again, Spock is discovered in sick bay with his brain removed. Because of his unique Vulcan physiognomy, he can survive for another 24 hours before succumbing. In an obvious hurry, Kirk has the other ship traced to a planet heretofore thought to be uninhabited. McCoy hooks up Spock's body to remote control, and the two of them plus Kirk and, for a change, Scotty,  beam down to a frozen wasteland where they meet some scared caveman-types. An elevator takes them down to a technologically advanced underground city, where they meet up once again with the sexy woman. She's no help as she not only can't tell them where to find Spock's brain, she doesn't even know what a brain is! They do hear Spock over an intercom  and he leads them in to a room with a black box with what looks like a crystal ball sitting on top. Now comes the explanation. Spock's brain was hijacked so it could operate a computer that in turn operates the whole planet and takes care of a people too ignorant to take care of themselves. After some jostling back-and-forth with the sexy woman and her friends, phasers getting knocked out of hands and retrieved again, Kirk and co. find out about a device that looks kind of like a hair dryer with electrodes called "The Teacher" that gives the wearer advanced knowledge. This is how the otherwise backwards women figured out how to pilot a spaceship and steal Spock's brain. McCoy puts on the device and learns how to perform a brain transplant, and goes to work on Spock. The advanced knowledge runs out halfway through, but Spock, who apparently can have such an operation performed on him while remaining completely conscious, guides McCoy the rest of the way, much to the doctor's chagrin.

"Spock's Brain" was written by Lee Cronin, actually Gene L. Coon writing under an assumed name as he was now contractually obliged to a different studio. What in the world was he thinking? Well, if you look at some of his previous writing credits, this episode shouldn't really be that much of a surprise. "A Taste of Armageddon" and "The Apple", both of which he co-wrote, warn of the dangers of letting a computer do your thinking for you, and the comely young ladies do just that in "Spock's Brain". In fact, that these women are so ignorant may not be due to low I.Q.s but because material abundance has resulted in a state of mindless passivity, a theme mirrored in "Breads and Circuses" which Coon also co-wrote (the men laboring on the planet's frozen surface aren't too bright either; too much and too little leisure time can sap the intellect, this episode seems to be saying.) However, it's the Spock part of "Spock's Brain" that really matters. Coon wasn't just interested in exploring strange new worlds, but also in the explorers doing the exploring. More than anyone else, he made sure Star Trek's science fiction was character driven. And so in this particular episode, the most fascinating character in the series becomes the actual science in the science fiction that the rest of the plot revolves around. Maybe it's just the bizarreness of Spock's brain being removed that turns so many people off to this episode (that Spock and Nurse Chapel briefly share the same skull in the much more dramatic and much more highly regarded "Return to Tomorrow" always struck me as much more bizarre, but everyone else who's seen that one apparently finds it touching.)

Still, "Spock's Brain" is pretty goofy at times, stretching credibility even by the standards of science fiction (not least when the Vulcan's gray matter comes and goes without him losing a lock of hair.) It should be remembered that while he wrote the episode, Coon didn't produce it, and so something may have been lost in translation. I frankly think he meant it as a comedy, but the new producer and new story editor just didn't get the joke. Now, that's not to say, as others have suggested, the episode is actually a parody of Star Trek (at least not any more so than "The Trouble with Tribbles") or that Coon was mocking the creative and budgetary abyss on which the series was then teetering on the edge. With its stupefied women at home, brutalized men at work, and mechanized society, this episode is not a satire of Trek but the American Dream, circa 1968. Except when we hear Spock's disembodied (supposedly synthesized) voice, at which point it becomes pure character comedy. What I like about "Spock's Brain" is that it reminds me a bit of the classic Chuck Jones-directed Warner Brothers cartoon Duck Amuck. That's the one where an unseen animator plays havoc with Daffy Duck, even replacing his body at one point, yet Daffy remains unmistakeably Daffy, just as in this Spock remains unmistakeably Spock. The difference is that whereas the funny fowl was frustrated at what was being perpetrated on his being, Spock seems delighted at his predicament. Nothing turns this Vulcan on more than weird science, even if he himself happens to be the guinea pig:

KIRK: We might be able to locate you if you gave us some idea of what they were using you for. Is it medical?
SPOCK (over some kind of intercom): I am not certain. I seem to have a body which stretches into infinity.
SCOTT: Body? Why, you have none.
SPOCK: Then what am I?
MCCOY: You are a disembodied brain.
SPOCK: Fascinating! It could explain much, Doctor. My medulla oblongota is hard at work apparently breathing, apparently pumping blood, apparently maintaining a normal physiologic temperature...   
KIRK: Spock, we don't have time for that.

The whole thing turns into the sci-fi sitcom it was heading towards when Spock starts dictating his own brain transplant:

SPOCK: Yes, I already have some sensation of feeling. Please stimulate the nerve endings and observe the physical reactions, one by one. In each case, I shall tell you when the probe is correct. you will then seal using the tri-laser connector...
MCCOY: [...] A Vulcan telling me how to operate. I'll never live this down!

 Once everything's back to normal, yet another summing up of the day's events by Kirk, Spock and McCoy:

SPOCK: On the whole Captain, I believe I am quite fit. Fascinating. A remarkable example of a retrograde civilization. At the peak, advanced beyond any of our capabilities and now operating at this primitive level which you saw.  And it all began thousands of years ago when a glacial age reoccurred. This underground complex was developed for the women. The men remained above, and a male-female schism took place. A fascinating cultural development of a kind which never--
MCCOY: I knew it was wrong. I shouldn't have done it.
KIRK: What's that?
MCCOY: I should never have reconnected his mouth.
(Spock does a double-take.)
KIRK: Well, we took the risk, Doctor.
SPOCK: (deciding to ignore the slight) As I was saying, a fascinating cultural development of the kind which hasn't been seen in ages. The last such occurrence took place on old Earth, when the Romans were warring with the...

It all comes down to Leonard Nimoy's wonderfully comic performance. Whether or not Coon meant "Spock's Brain" to be funny, whether or not the producer realized the episode was supposed to be funny, Nimoy decided on his own he would make it funny. Years later, when this episode achieved a certain level of infamy among Star Trek devotees, the actor would claim that he found the story embarrassing. Embarrassing or not, Nimoy's own performance is nothing to be ashamed about.

It should be no surprise that Nimoy's Spock could be funny. In a way he reminds me of Sean Connery's James Bond. Starting with Dr. No in 1962, Connery on his own added humor to the narrative by the way he said a particular line or even his deadpan expression upon witnessing something amazing, be it a technological display theretofore unbeknownst to science or his own hairbreadth escape from certain death. Eventually the producers and writers caught on to what Connery was doing and started adding intentional comic material, until you get to Diamonds are Forever, an out-and-out comedy. In Nimoy's case, the humor, be it scripted or not, starts as early as the very first Star Trek episode to air, "The Man Trap", which opens with a bored (and not particularly professional) Lt. Uhura attempting to flirt with Mr. Spock:

SPOCK: Miss Uhura, your last subspace log contained an error in the frequencies column.
UHURA: Mister Spock, sometimes I think if I hear the word "frequency" once more, I'll cry.
SPOCK: Cry?
UHURA: I was just trying to start a conversation.
SPOCK: Well, since it is illogical for a communications officer to resent the word "frequency", I have no answer. 
UHURA: No, you have an answer. I'm an illogical woman who's beginning to feel too much a part of that communications console--(practically cooing at this point) Why don't you tell me I'm an attractive young lady, or ask me if I've ever been in love? Tell me how your planet Vulcan looks on a lazy evening when the moon is full.
SPOCK: Vulcan has no moon, Miss Uhura.
UHURA: I'm not surprised, Mister Spock.

OK, all that was scripted, but not the truly dumbfounded look on Spock's face when Uhura asks him about the moon. Sometimes I can't tell you why I find Spock funny, such as in "A Taste of Armegeddon" when he says, "Yeoman Tamula, you stay here and prevent this young lady from immolating herself. Knock her down if necessary. This is a killing situation." That killed me, and I don't know why! Don't get me wrong. I don't believe in knocking down young women (though I suppose self-immolation prevention is as good an excuse as any.) I just laughed out loud when I heard it. As I did when Spock, upon hearing Zefrem Cochrane's outrage at discovering he's been a kept man for a female ball of electricity in "Metamorphosis", comments: "Fascinating. A totally parochial attitude". Was I suppose to laugh at that? I don't know, but I did. When on a planet modeled after the Third Reich in "Patterns of Force" Kirk disguises himself as a Gestapo agent, Spock offers this compliment: "You should make a very convincing Nazi." Kirk's not sure how to take that, but I chuckled. Then there's the times where it's obvious that it's meant to be funny, but Nimoy makes it even funnier. When Kirk tells him at the end of "The Return of the Archons" that he'd make a "splendid computer" the starship captain means it as a dig, but Spock doesn't care: "That is very kind of you, Captain." Calculating the odds of making it past a couple of Klingons in "An Errand of Mercy" Spock says: "Difficult to be precise, Captain. I should say approximately 7,824.7 to 1" Trapped in a 1930s slum in "The City on the Edge of Forever" and trying to build a computer, Spock matter-of-factly tells Kirk, "Captain, I must have some platinum. A small block would be sufficient, five or six pounds." In "Friday's Child", when he finds out an alien mother is going to name her newborn baby Leonard [McCoy] James [Kirk] Akaar, Spock indignantly replies: "I think you're both going to be insufferably pleased with yourselves for at least a month." When Kirk tries to drive a 1920s-style car in "A Piece of the Action" Spock makes this observation: "Captain, you are an excellent starship captain, but as a taxi driver you leave much to be desired." Actually every word that comes out of Spock's mouth in that episode is funny "Why would you put our captain in a bag?" he asks a mobster. In "That Which Survives" after Scotty goes through great lengths to speed up the starship's engines and keep everyone from getting killed in the process, and then wonders why Spock won't even say thank you, the Vulcan uses the occasion to pontificate "What is it in you humans that requires an overwhelming display of emotion in a situation such as this? Two men pursue the only reasonable course of action indicated, yet you feel something else is necessary" and seems unaware that the exhausted engineer has just told him "Never mind." As much as the way he said his lines, however, Nimoy could make me laugh just at the way he used his eyebrows for double-takes and deadpan expressions, such as when Kirk tries to get him to go to an Adults Only establishment at the end of "The Wolf in the Fold" or his reactions to any number of McCoy insults. Do you suppose Spock is related to the James Bond on his mother's side?

In the end, the humor serves to--for want of a better word--humanize Spock, though he himself would surely want a better word, as witnessed by the epilogue to "The Devil in the Dark":

CHIEF VANDENBERG (via radio): You know, the Horta aren't so bad once you're used to their appearance. Well, that's about it, Kirk. Thanks for everything.
KIRK: Our pleasure, Chief. Kirk out.
SPOCK: Curious. What Chief Vandenberg said about the Horta is exactly what the Mother Horta said to me. She found the humanoid appearance revolting, but thought she could get used to it.
MCCOY: Oh, she did, did she? Now tell me [of course McCoy would bring this up] did she happen to make any comments about those ears?
SPOCK: Not specifically, but I did get the distinct impression she found them the most attractive human characteristic of them all. I didn't have the heart to tell her that only I have them.
KIRK: She really liked those ears?
SPOCK: Captain, the Horta is a remarkably intelligent and sensitive creature, with impeccable taste.
KIRK: Because she approved of you?
SPOCK: Really, Captain, my modesty.
KIRK: Does not bear close examination, Mister Spock. I suspect you're becoming more and more human all the time.
SPOCK: Captain, I see no reason to stand here and be insulted. 

The next Spock-centric episode I want to look at is "Mirror, Mirror" though many might not consider it a Spock-centric episode at all. The many would be wrong. At its very heart it's about Spock as Man of All Universes. Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura (why those four exactly?) are on the planet Halkan, trying to convince the leaders to let the Federation mine dilithium crystals (which powers starships), and they're proving a bit stubborn as they don't trust outsiders. Kirk tells them to think about it, and then he and the three others beam back to the Enterprise. Unfortunately, as this is right during yet another ion storm, Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and Uhura find themselves on a bridge with a bearded Spock and themselves dressed like character right out of Conan the Barbarian. Turns out they're in a parallel, or mirror, universe, one in which where there is no Federation but instead an Empire governed by cruelty (meanwhile back home, non-bearded Spock has their savage counterparts thrown in the brig, all the while muttering "Fascinating.") Mirror Spock demonstrates this cruelty by punishing the operator of the transporter with an "agonizer". The four decide to play along until they can find out how to get back to their own universe. Unfortunately, time and the Empire's non-democratic way of achieving its goals seems to be against them. The mirror Kirk had orders to destroy Halkan cities if they don't turn over the dilithium. The regular Kirk's visible reluctance to do this stirs up savage opportunism aboard the I.S.S. (Imperial Starship) Enterprise. Mirror Chekov first tries to kill Kirk, but is double-crossed by one of his own henchmen wanting to curry favor with the intended target of the assassination, who's after all top dog. Mirror Spock shows up again, and expresses relief Kirk is still alive, as if he wasn't, he'd have to take his place and then be a target himself when all he really cares about is his scientific endeavors. Still, he reminds Kirk he's under orders to wipe out the Halkins, and if he doesn't, then Spock will have to kill him, whether he wants to or not. So Kirk goes to his quarters to mull things over, and finds out he has a beautiful harlot waiting for him. She laughingly reminds him of the "Tantalus Field" a lethal button that can allow one to monitor and kill their enemies from afar. Apparently, Mirror Kirk copped such a device from a plundered scientist's laboratory, and used it to move up the Empire's ladder. Meanwhile, Mirror Sulu decides he'd like to kill Kirk, but the harlot, Marlena, vaporizes his henchmen with the aforementioned Field. Mirror Spock shows up again, having decided the only logical way to save his own skin is by killing Kirk, after all. Taking on Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura, Spock seems to be having an easy time of it, until the Starfleet captain lands a lucky blow, knocking the Mirror Vulcan out. They all head to the transporter room, which Scotty has rigged to get them back to their own universe, except McCoy. Seems the ol' Hippocratic Oath is bugging him, and he's just gotta stay behind and save Mirror Spock's life, even if finds this Spock no more likable than the other one. McCoy performs his oath a little too efficiently as Mirror Spock comes to and mind melds with the terrified doctor. The mirror Vulcan learns everything, and comes down to the transporter room and tells Kirk he'll personally man the controls and make sure he gets back to his own universe. Kirk then has a thought. Suppose, just suppose, the Mirror Spock is Spock. The universe has changed but he's basically the same guy, only operating under a different set of conditions, where survival is the ultimate logic. Kirk asks Spock how long this Empire can last before some there's some sort of revolt.

MIRROR SPOCK: Approximately two hundred and forty years.
KIRK: The inevitable outcome?
MIRROR SPOCK: The Empire shall be overthrown, of course. 

Of course. Asked why he's serving such an illogical system if he believes it to be doomed, Mirror Spock is again the rationalist: no man can change the future. It's then Kirk tells him about the Tantalus Field, gambling that he'll do the right thing. Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and Uhura all return to their own universe, and we never do learn if Mirror Spock did indeed do the right thing. But it's not like he could make the situation any worse. At least Mirror Spock transcends his immediate environment in this one. More so than anyone else, including Mirror Kirk.

Finally, in the third Spock-centric episode "Journey to Babel" we get to meet his parents, Vulcan father Ambassador Sarek (Mark Lenard) and Earth mother Amanda (Jane Wyatt, the mom on Father Knows Best; TV daughter Elinor Donahue played Commissioner Nancy Mitford in "Metamorphosis".) This story revolves around a bunch of diplomats, some of them not too nice, being ferried to the title planet on the starship Enterprise. Sarek is one of the nicer diplomats, but he and Spock are estranged, the father never having approved of his son's choice of Starfleet for a career. The pig-faced (fictional ethnicity, remember) Tellerlite ambassador is murdered, and suspicion falls on Sarek, as the two had earlier argued. During an interrogation, Sarak has a heart attack, and is rushed to sick bay, where he needs blood fast, which Spock is there to supply. Meanwhile, a member of the Andoran delegation stabs Kirk, and he's rushed to sick bay. In accordance to duty, Spock halts his father's transfusion, and heads to the bridge to take command of the Enterprise,  so that now he's estranged from his mother! Not wanting to break up a family, Kirk fakes a speedy recovery and relieves Spock of command. The transfusion continues. An alien spaceship tries unsuccessfully to take out the Enterprise, but that hardly matters here. As an amusing bit between Spock and his parents attests to at the end of this episode, Vulcan families are as fucked-up but loving as any found here on Earth.

Sarek and Amanda reminds me that I've been referring to Spock as a Vulcan throughout this series when he in fact is only half Vulcan, the other half being human. But what does that mean exactly? I suppose metaphorically, symbolically, allegorically, it all makes sense as Spock so often acts as a go-between Earth and whatever alien planet the Enterprise is visiting. Literally, though, what does it mean, since after all Spock both looks and acts 100% Vulcan? The most common answer is that since he's 50% human, Spock must have 50% emotions, which he has to constantly suppress, a burden not shared by his 100% Vulcan countrymen. Well, that's true if 100% Vulcans are born with 0% emotions, but the show sometimes suggests otherwise. Take the episode "Amok Time", for instance. We find that Spock can only resist the charms of Nurse Chapel and any other female making googly eyes at him for seven years before he gets sick and dies. OK, horniness isn't exactly an emotion, but Spock goes back to Vulcan to engage in a duel-to-the-death mating ritual that even he admits isn't very logical. There we meet a 100% Vulcan femme fatale named T'Pring, who connives to have Spock fight Kirk so she can run off with the 100% Vulcan Stonn. Spock ends up calling it "flawlessly logical" but it seems to me that T'Pring and Stonn are acting more like a couple of lovesick kids. A season later in "The Savage Curtain" we meet Surak, the back-from-the-dead father of Vulcan civilization who a way long time ago convinced his countrymen to lay down their arms, forgo the passion that was causing so much bloodshed and adopt logic instead. Two decades later in Star Trek II: The Search for Spock, when told by T'Lar that it's illogical to try to transfer "katra" from McCoy to a newly resurrected Spock, Sarek replies: "Forgive me, T'Lar. My logic is uncertain where my son is concerned."And then there's those Vulcan offshoots, the Romulans. They're hardly the most even-tempered bunch. So if this head-over-heart lifestyle is nothing more than mere socialization, it should really be no more difficult for 50% Vulcan Spock to suppress his emotions than his 100% Vulcan father, who, after all, when it came time to choose a mate, ignored the 100% Vulcan females on his own planet and instead hooked up with a 100% Earth woman with all that entails because "at the time it seemed the logical thing to do." Now you know where Spock gets his sense of humor.

Next: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Quips and Quotations

There is a good side and a bad side to most people, and in accordance with your own character and disposition you will bring out one of them, and the other will remain a sealed book to you.
 

 

--Mark Twain

Quips and Quotations

There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

--Vincent van Gogh

Quips and Quotations

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.

--Sigmund Freud

Quips and Quotations

You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself.

--Mel Brooks