Star Trek & Optimism

Much has been made of the supposed renewed optimism of American culture embodied by J. J. Abram’s new Star Trek reboot. The movie represents, so the argument goes, our readiness to hope again for the future of mankind, after the darkness and pessimism of recent years. The 800-pound gorilla in the room is, of course, Battlestar Galactica, which for the past four years has treated TV viewers to an unrelentingly bleak picture of our potential future, one marked by war, genocide, terrorism, and the possible self-inflicted extinction of the human race—before, that is, the series dissolved in a shower of warm platitudes in its forgettable final season. The Star Trek franchise, on the other hand, has always maintained a vision of the future marked by relative peace and tolerance. Its mission was not the desperate struggle for survival of the last remnants of the human race, but the quest for knowledge and community with other societies among the stars. There is something, though, that bothers me about the enthusiasm with which the revived optimism of Star Trek is being greeted. It seems to me somehow false. Hope cannot be manufactured. It cannot be bought and sold. It has to be earned. Science fiction’s vision of the future has to fit its culture’s present conditions. Otherwise, its optimism is just denial.

The most remarkable thing about the new Star Trek is how much it is Spock’s movie. Spock is given a rich backstory, a moral dilemma, and even a future self who comes back in time to wreak havoc and then bring the young protagonists together. Kirk’s backstory is nothing more than a doodle. Rebellious kid who grows up without a father learns to love the service as much as the service learns to love him. Essentially it is Top Gun. Every Maverick, though, needs an Ice Man who flies straight and logical as his wingman. The trick Star Trek pulls is to make its Ice Man the more interesting of the two. Spock has more to struggle with than Kirk in the film, the destruction of his home planet, the genocide of his race, and the death of his mother, and he handles it with more grace. He is not a foil for Kirk’s daring and charisma. He is not a wet blanket of logic. He is a man who has learned to temper his emotions with reason. In this sense, he is more of a man than the petulant Kirk. And once the plot gets humming we are treated to a genuine shock. The traditional Kirk and Spock roles are upended. The power dynamic that always kept logic in thrall to passion is reversed. When the first captain of the Enterprise, Captain Pike, leaves the ship, it is Spock he puts in charge and Kirk he makes his first officer (that is until Spock rudely maroons Kirk on a planet of enormous ice beasts and even larger and more absurd ice dinosaurs).

What is striking, however, is how right it feels to have Spock in command, the reasonable one, the mature one, the adult. The film is at pains to point out that Spock, in fact, makes the wrong decision, while Kirk makes the right one. Still, it is hard to escape the impression that it is, in fact, Spock who belongs in the captain’s chair. He alone befits the dignity of the office. The movie does what it can to keep Spock at its center. The famous introductory voiceover, “These are the voyages…,” is read at the end of the movie by Leonard Nimoy, the original Spock. In the end, however, it has to be Kirk, the irrational hothead guided by instinct, who takes command of the Enterprise. It is the charismatic loose cannon and not the rational sophisticate who is chosen to lead. Here we go again.

Every generation gets the spaceship it deserves. Battlestar Galactica was the interstellar drama of the Bush administration. It had it all: war, torture, extremism, abuse of power. If the new series of Star Trek movies, which this film almost certainly kicks off, really aims to earn its optimism, its vision of a future characterized by progress and harmony, and its place as the vessel of the future, it needs a new captain.