Over the weekend I learned that I’m a fan of Star Trek. This was news to me. The last time I remember even thinking about Star Trek I was on a train passing through Arkansas (which I’d recently been warned was “the most boring state in the 48″), and I remember thinking: I thought Jean-Luc Picard (or is it Patrick Stewart… which is which?!) was dead.
He is not. I have a friend who even thinks that he (Jean-Luc Picapatrick Stewart) is sexy. It was this same friend who demanded that I come and see the new Star Trek, despite Jean-Luc’s cruel exclusion from the film.
So I was not born a fan, nor made a fan, but now it appears I am one. This is impressive because when it comes to the Star Treks and the Star Wars and the Transformers of the world, I always figured you were either raised with them—and did not laugh at the creation story of the Autobots—or else you played sports and knew about that party on Friday night.
Or anyway, that’s what I used to think.
Before continuing though, let me provide a fuller accounting of my own inter-galactic past: (1) I watched a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on UPN 44 when there was nothing else on TV; (2) I somehow remember watching an episode of the original Star Trek in the home where I was raised—but this might have been simply wishful dreaming after some of my pre-school classmates told me I couldn’t be Captain Kirk because Captain Kirk didn’t wear orange pants; (3) In (earth date) 1990 (at the University of California at San Francisco, where movies were $1.50 at the time) I saw the Star Trek movie which featured whales (dolphins?) and the Golden Gate Bridge; and I saw Star Trek: Insurrection on a train in Arkansas—which film mightily confused me. In-between-times, I did not think about Star Trek—TOS, DS9, the feature film, or otherwise—or muse about it, or dress in imitation of any of the characters at any point at all.
So again, not a fan. And yet last Sunday I found myself not only laughing knowingly at re-hashed lines from the original series (which I may or may not have ever seen), but also clapping for the continuity between the old series and the new movie, and receiving one or two chills on account of the vitality of the new characters and plot. In other words, I found that I actually somehow cared about the integrity of the Star Trek franchise (not in an ironic way), and realized that I was and am in fact a fan, and, by extension, a begrudging member of fandom at large.
Normally I’d simply chalk this up to the impressive hype machine that is the media at large, and that’s fair, but the surprising depth of my Star Trek knowledge (surprising to me) also demonstrates that this wasn’t simply the result of a month-long advertising campaign, but of the (big message!) power of pop culture to inform our lives!
Almost everything that I know about Star Trek I learned via references on programs that had absolutely nothing to do with the series. I read an article recently that went so far as to suppose that “Saturday Night Live” might have actually aired more skits about Star Trek than there were original episodes (since “TOS”—which to me sounds more Star Warsian than Trekkian—only survived from 1966-1969).
The ability to successfully recreate truly iconic characters—and how else can you describe characters which have a cultural life so independent of their original context—is something that is difficult, to say the least. The number of even mediocre television shows which have been compromised by simply replacing one actor with another gives some indication of the cost of failure in this regard. But there’s certainly more than one way to fail here: explicit imitation, for instance, can leave you looking pathetic (cf. Kenneth Branagh’s imitation of Woody Allen in Celebrity), while departing too far from the source material will often leave your core fan base either betrayed (”Fools! Captain Kirk would never wear orange pants!”) or bored (”set phazers to phaze”).
Recent superhero films (discussed in the excellent Praeger book “May Contain Graphic Material” have been fairly successful at reviving the old heroes by sticking to the new scripts that comic books so regularly provide. Batman Begins borrowed heavily from the Frank Miller’s own Dark Knight series, which was very concerned with providing a fuller personal psychology that could map onto the character and story of the original Batman; and the new Iron Man film was similarly adopted from Warren Elis and Adi Granov’s Iron Man: Extremis series. The fact that superheroes generally wear masks certainly helps ease these transitions, but comic updates are also aided by the fact that the original icons have already been subjected to a multitude of shifting representations by various artists and story-tellers, and thus have had their essence split apart (for the fan) or generalized (for the movie-going layman) to the point that a real betrayal is only possible according to the character’s actions, rather than his face.
Star Trek, on the other hand, was originally populated with the very human and very consistent faces of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, and thus demands that any new faces bear enough of a resemblance to these originals that they can justifiably be called Kirk and Spock, while also departing far enough so they don’t provide comic imitations. To put it another way: they require a spiritual rather than a literal translation—as does the Star Trek series as a whole.
(Incidentally, I’d like to address this issue of adaptation at some point, as I think a lot of the best movies made in recent years have managed to provide exactly this kind of spiritual adaptation. Donnie Darko, for instance, managed to update Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ for contemporary and secular audiences by combining its story of redemption through destruction with science fiction elements, the ’80s, and the plot of Graham Greene’s The Destructors; while Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story negotiated its own brand of consistency with an 18th-century text (referred to in the film as being “post-modern before post-modernism even existed”) by plunging the film into a black hole of cinematic references, which themselves derived from Laurence Sterne’s comedy. The movie is also funny, but doesn’t rely on the bawdy old jokes—at least not literally. Anyway…)
In case you haven’t heard, the new Star Trek works. It’s very entertaining and operates as an incredibly functional update of the original series and films. I’ve got nothing negative to say about it at all, but I think the most noteworthy piece of praise I can offer is that the old tropes are, of course, included, but that they’re just as important as in the original (at least, that’s what I’d imagine) and still very, very funny. Audiences will often get a passing wink at the old lines (for instance “I am… Batman!”) at which they’re expected to laugh, but how often do they get a scene-long, ironic but still hilarious discussion of such a simple declaration as “Live long and prosper”?
That combination of homage and humor—which is present throughout the movie—was especially impressive to me, and provides strong support for J.J. Abrams’ self-proclaimed status as a fan of the series.
As further evidence of my (previous) alienation from fandom at large, it should also be noted that I haven’t spent much time with any of Abrams’ other projects: I’ve never seen “Felicity” (but I know who Keri Russell is); I’ve only read about “Alias” (but I know that Jennifer Garner is married to Ben Affleck), I saw the premiere of “Lost” (but I’m terrified of former Hobbitses), and I wanted to see Cloverfield, but the only Abrams product that I’d actually seen in its entirety (prior to last week) was Armageddon —which Abrams wrote and which it is still my unfulfilled hope to establish as a major player in the midnight movie circuit.
Now I wouldn’t hesitate to prematurely and enthusiastically proclaim myself a fan of J.J. Abrams. Where this fanaticism will end, no one can say; but I promise to boldly go where many costumed thousands have gone before. (See! It’s hard to use those lines and prosper… [I envy you your lines very much, Dr. Nimoy].)
For more on Star Trek and Star phenomena in general in Pop Culture Universe, check out Alternate Americas (2006) and Science Fiction Television (2004), and look out for our Cult Pop Culture multi-volume set, due to release in 2010 (aka, the future!!).