Complex System Of Pipes

Actually, there’s a lot about the new Star Trek film that’s fantastic. The new cast brings Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhuru, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov to life without the wooden sixties acting, and make the Starship Enterprise seem both more believable and more fun than ever before. Oh, the way that time-travel is used to “reboot” the continuity at first seems contrived and unnecessarily brutal, but it had to be done for Star Trek to break free of its own legacy.  I can forgive the insultingly-credibility-stretching backstory (a supernova that was going to destroy the Galaxy) if it avoided getting bogged down in needless trivia and technobabble (the phrase “red matter” here substituting for an explanation that would probably have taken about 10 minutes in a Voyager episode) and overall it was a really enjoyable film – something that, after Nemesis, I didn’t think the Star Trek franchise was still capable of.

But.  I am going to say it.  I do feel that J. J. Abrams has betrayed my childhood.  Because there is one thing I object to, and that’s the thinly-veiled mythology of the War On Terror that pervades the film.  Romulan terrorists harbouring irrational resentment at a Naqba that they really should have got over get their hands on some preposterously powerful WMDs and go on a genocide spree.  Just as the new Batman was drafted in to make excuses for the “tough choices” that Warmongers on Terror, the new Star Trek does the “join the army” thing - with the new Enterprise more visibly decked-out with guns than ever before.

The villians, what’s more, come from the future.  If Star Trek ever counted for anything, it was for optimism in the future.  If there was ever a typical Star Trek episode, it would be one in which humanity – as represented by Kirk, Spock and the gang – overcome whatever strange energy being likes to think of itself as their god.  The Age of Cant has ended – or rather, it has been defeated – leaving us to get onto with boldly going to strange and exciting new places.

This naive optimism was never entirely consistent, and as the various spinoffs developed the geopolitics of the galaxy more and more it bogged our heroes down in the petty conflicts they should have left behind long ago (only with Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians instead of Russians, Chinese and Arabs).  With Voyager, they tried to start afresh by marooning the crew out on the galactic periphery where, lost among uncomprehending primitives, they had nothing to turn to but overwhelmingly more advanced weaponary – surprisingly, this didn’t make much better.

In the prequel/reboot, Romulans from the future take away six series’ worth of trivia and continuity that had long ago become more trouble than it was worth – but they go just a bit too far, taking away also the hope that the series is all about.  The future, for the Enterprise crew, is no longer a treasure trove of strange and exciting new worlds, it’s a horde of genocidal terrorists that will wipe you all out, and correspondingly their five-year mission becomes less about bringing that future forward than holding it back.  This makes a much more conservative Starfleet – no wonder Dr McCoy only signed up because he was too poor to go anywhere else.

It’s hard to believe now, but Star Trek used to be subversive.  When Lt. Uhuru first appeared on the bridge of the Enterprise, black people in the Southern states still lived under effective racial apartheid and women knew their place; she caused a stir by her mere presence, and a scandal when she kissed Captain Kirk.  In the segregated 60s, her role was nothing less than the assertion that the civil rights movement would eventually triumph.  Short, perhaps, of wearing a hijab, she was never going to make such an impact in 2009, but Abrams’ takes her a whole step backwards.  Uhuru isn’t on the bridge for herself any more, but as a feminine cipher to Kirk’s flirting and Spock’s heartbreak.

The new Star Trek brought back my childhood heroes, and made them fun and relevant in a way I never thought they would be.  For that I’m grateful.  But it also made for a film that wouldn’t go down too badly in an army recruitment rally – and at a time like now that’s hard to forgive.  I’m still looking forward to the sequel, but I hope it will be a bit more about boldly going where no-one has gone before.