To boldly go back

This is the most light-hearted of all the Star Trek movies; the one with the most jokes, and with the actors clearly having a good time.

At the same time, it's also a movie about the threatened end of planet Earth as we know it.

You know the plot: the Star Trek-era future Earth is visited by an Enormously Powerful Alien Spaceship that wants to talk to the humpback whales. Chew some fat. See how they're doing.

Well, the species is extinct. The EPAS gets torqued off, starts to tear up Earth's oceans, and our heroes need to go back in time to pick up a humpback and then deliver it to future Earth before the planet goes phft.

A question arises here. One humpback? Oh, wait, I forgot. The whale they picked up was pregnant. And did they take two? At any rate, the possibility of re-populating future Earth with humpbacks exists.

The joke is that when the crew goes back in time (not in the Enterprise - in a Klingon bird-of-prey - see Star Trek 3) they arrive at a very recognizable twentieth-century San Francisco, where everybody is so weird anyway that our back-from-the-future space heroes fit right in. Spock needs to cover up his ears, but that's about it.

A few pieces of dialogue will give you a feel for the tone of the movie:

Kirk to crew: (as they leave the bird-of-prey, which is sitting--cloaked--in a SF city park): "Everybody remember where we parked."

Spock, being ejected from a city bus: "What does it mean, exact change?"

Lady whale doctor (disbelieving): "You're from outer space."
Kirk: "No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space."

There are some wonderful set pieces in the movie, of which the rescue of Chekov from a 20th century hospital is my favorite, followed by a nice piece of comic/straight man dialogue between Kirk and Spock in lady whale doctor's pick up truck.

Lady whale doctor: "Do you guys like Italian?"
Kirk: "Yes."
Spock: "No."
Kirk: "Yes."
Spock: "No."
Kirk: "I love Italian." [looks at Spock] "And so do you."
Spock: "Yes."

Nimoy (who directed) has described his vision for the film as " . . .no dying, no fighting, no shooting, no photon torpedoes, no phaser blasts, no stereotypical bad guy."

It was a joy to watch The Voyage Home. If you're feeling depressed about (pick one): nuclear proliferation, economic meltdown, global warming, or all of the above - give it a try.

To boldly go

Ah, yes. Star Trek. So easy to make fun of, especially for fans of the trendy comic book movies, those lovers of angst.

Star Trek is probably the most successful entertainment franchise ever, and not just for science fiction. In addition to the original TV series, we have 5 spin-off series (1 animated), 10 movies (an 11th to be released next month), books, conventions, and at least one completely invented language (Klingon).

Wikipedia has a page on which the cumulative running times for all science fiction franchises are compared. Star Trek comes in first, at 22 days, 16 hours, and 56 minutes. (Second place belongs to Doctor Who, at something around 15 days. Nothing else comes close.)

Although I intended to write about the movies, I must issue a disclaimer: I haven't seen the last one (Nemesis.) I lost interest somewhere along the way, even though I loved the Next Generation series on TV. My memory of individual movies starts to get fuzzy at about number 7 (Generations).

My personal favorites among the first six movies - which starred the original cast - reflect popular opinion, with the second (Wrath of Khan) and the fourth (Voyage Home) being the top picks.

Wrath of Khan is standard melodrama, with Ricardo Montalban as the worthy adversary. What a lovely man, and may he rest in peace. I can still hear him as Khan, dying, the last words of Captain Ahab in his mouth:

To the last, I will grapple with thee… from Hell’s
heart, I stab at thee! For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at
thee!

The movie ends, of course, with the death of Spock. I have only one quibble with this movie. (OK, two quibbles. The first: the close-up shot of the icky beasties entering into an ear looks unusually fake for a major movie.) But my major quibble is with the ending. When Kirk stands on the bridge with his old girlfriend (whoever she was) in the last minutes, watching the birth of the new Genesis planet and happily saying something like - "I feel young." - all I could think was - What's wrong with you? YOUR BEST FRIEND JUST DIED.

I understand that they needed to do a set up for the third movie; and nobody was happier than me to see Spock back again. Still, the upbeat ending clashed with what had happened just minutes earlier; the moving and powerful scene where Kirk, separated from Spock by a glass (transparent aluminum?) wall, watches his friend die.

I'm aware that this death scene now plays as corny for all the angst-lovers out there. Gene Roddenberry first pitched Star Trek as a TV series in 1960. So this franchise is, in some ways, a child of the 1950s. Like me. Maybe we're just in tune.

I'll talk about the whales next time . . .

The Uplift War, by David Brin

I re-read this book a few weeks ago and realized that it is one of my favorite books ever. The Uplift War is part of a series of sorts - or at least that's how it is currently marketed, with Sundiver and Startide Rising being the first two books of a 'trilogy'. I think somebody decided that a trilogy sells, but at any rate this book can easily be read as a stand-alone; you will miss very little besides a few references to the starship Streaker.

The Uplift War is planet-based fiction; it is also (like, say, Downbelow Station) a book with a large cast of characters, and we switch back and forth between them, following the larger story from various points of view.

The human race has been given a lease on an ecologically-devastated planet, Garth. Along with chimpanzees--newly uplifted to sentience--they are working to bring Garth back to full health. Another galactic race--the bird-like Gubru--attacks the planet in a bid to gain it for themselves, and most of the book takes place as the humans, chimps, a couple members of an allied alien race, the Tymbrimi--and gorillas--attempt to fight back against the attackers.

Guerilla warfare, you might say; because the humans have little besides their wits and their better knowledge of Garth, and the Gubru came equipped for the fight with an armada of technologically-superior weapons.

Our heroes include Fiben, a chimpanzee with a wonderful sense of humor, Robert Oneagle, human -- and his partner in arms Athaclena, a Tymbrimi female. One of the strengths of the book is how much we end up liking and caring for these characters.

Anytime you have an alien race as part of your story you have issues of how they differ, both physically and psychologically, from human beings. Brin succeeds with both the Gubru and the Tymbrimi, making them both very alien/different and still understandable/believable.

The Tymbrimi have a 'corona' of tendrils which partly frame their face; with this corona they are able to craft 'glyphs' - half-seen expressions of their feelings and the situation. It's impossible to explain, fascinating to read about.

The Gubru are the bad guys, of course; we don't identify with them, although by the end we have some sympathy for individuals. I have to admit--I ended up imagining the Gubru as looking like Big Bird. It was impossible to shake, they'll be Big Bird in my mind forever.

Incidentally, the current paperback version of The Uplift War sports a really hideous drawing of Athaclena. That's not what she looks like. Seriously. My edition (scanned above) is what she really looks like. My edition is falling apart; I've been planning on buying the new edition and replacing the cover with mine.

Captives of the Flame

I remember C.S. Lewis commenting once--I think this was the gist--on how wonderful it was to be young and to read books for the pure enjoyment of reading; not to worry about the literary value of a work, or its sophistication, or the reputation of the author in academic circles, or whether the subject matter was in vogue.

That's how I read science fiction as a child. I read everything, and I pretty much enjoyed it all. And so I stumbled onto books that these days, as a much pickier adult, I would never choose to pick up.

To my loss, I should say. Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany (first published in 1963, or thereabouts) is one of those books that the grown-up me might not take a chance on. It is unusual for 1960s sci-fi; very moody, with poetic imagery; a little sad at the end. A young man is jailed for a crime that he did commit; he escapes and (with the help of telepathic beings from another world) tries to save his country/society from a disastrous war.

A war that the government has decided to enter into for dubious reasons; a war against something that they don't even understand.

Sound at all familiar? But we're talking the early 60s, here.

I wondered about the politics of this novel. If any. Was Delany commenting on American Cold War policies? I'm not certain, although he certainly skewers (his fictional) military bureaucracy in several scenes.

The characters made the book, for me. They are described with empathy and touches of humor. In addition to the escaped prisoner - Jon Koshar - we have his sister, Clea (a mathematician), a red-haired duchess, three teens (one a girl acrobat with white hair and blue eyes), and the seven-foot tall Arkor.

Not to forget King Uske, a young idiot manipulated by his handlers into declaring war for no particular reason.

(Yeah, OK, so what are the chances of that happening?)

And just to mix things up - Clea's fiance, Tomar - who is in the military, and who is intelligent and caring.

There is a set piece near the end of the book; Jon Koshar, the duchess, and Arkor inhabit the bodies of beings on several different worlds; they exist, in turn, on an asteroid; as creatures with 'slitherers' and eye-stalks, who drink liquid methane; as sentient crystals; as "an advanced species of moss"; as numbers inside a star. I can remember being blown away by the scene, which was far removed from the sci-fi story-telling that I'd known up till then.

Captives of the Flame was revised later, and re-named Out of the Dead City; it was combined with two later works to make the Fall of the Towers trilogy. I haven't read the rest of the trilogy; for me it was the kind of book that I wanted to keep as I first knew it, a single jewel in place.

The government in question

I would like to see -- just once - a science fiction movie in which the designated agents of the US government don't act like a pack of gun-happy, testosterone-crazed morons.

After I wrote that last week, I started thinking. Was I being fair? Was it true? Do science fiction movies actually portray the US government in such a negative light?

Well, two movies I’d recently seen certainly did: Starman and The Day the Earth Stood Still. And then we have Alien/Aliens; the government in question may not be specifically identified with the United States, but it’s close—and whoever they are, they’re the bad guys.

On the other hand, the US military in Independence Day is definitely testosterone-crazed and gun happy, but in that movie it’s a good thing.

(A digression: I turned to the internet to refresh my memory with the titles of other science fiction movies. Wikipedia proved a great resource; one article has all the science movies since forever, by year. It’s an endless, fascinating list, what with Santa Clause Conquers the Martians (1964) and Beware! The Blob (1972). Then there were all those great movies that I hadn’t thought about in a while: Silent Running, Twelve Monkeys, The Fifth Element (an all-time favorite). Our Netflix queue is about to get a serious makeover.)

At any rate, returning to our topic—

Perhaps I was too harsh. After all, when you are watching a movie, you know it’s a movie. An alien spaceship has landed in Central Park, 18-wheelers are dissolving in front of your eyes, and none of it is going to affect you at all.

But what if it was real? What if you were in charge of the defense of your country and a spaceship lands? What do you know about it? Nothing, probably, except that the owners of the spaceship have vastly superior technology than you do. Are they friendly? You don’t know. Maybe striking at them immediately is your one chance to save your country, your species, your planet, etc., etc.

We know that neither Keanu Reeves nor Jeff Bridges is really going to hurt us. But reality doesn’t come equipped with alien movie stars.

I think what bothered me more than the violent response – in Starman and The Day the Earth Stood Still – is the lack of reasoned discussion. It was as if government officials were, as a group, incapable of hearing an opposing point of view, incapable of questioning their own judgment. That’s the worst place to be, as even we moviegoers have, in the recent past, every reason to know.

I'll continue thinking about this topic, and I'm certainly going to be more aware, as I watch any sci-fi film from now on, of its point of view re the government and the military. We shall see . . .

Starbuck and Cylons

As usual - what with having the cheapest cable TV package possible, the one they don't tell you about and you have to ask for specifically - we didn't see this series when it started its run on the Sci-fi channel, in 2003. So we've been renting one season after another from Netflix.

(I'm talking about the 're-imagined' Battlestar Galactica, by the way - not the original 1978 TV series, which I can vaguely remember watching on an old black and white set.)

Reviewers on amazon seem to be split about the re-imagined 'Battlestar'. A minority are outraged that the original series - apparently bright and positive and full of manly men and good morals - was tampered with to make the much darker and difficult 2003 version. The majority love the new stuff, and consider the older version to be, you know, so last century.

Apparently one of the causes of outrage was changing our rules-breaking, kickass hero Starbuck - into a woman. I have to question if the people complaining about this have actually seen the new series, since Katee Sackhoff - who plays Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace - is the compleat rules-breaking, kickass heroine. She is of course an attractive woman, but I love that they don't try to make her gussied-up and pretty like a fashion model.

So I'm going with the majority on this one. I wonder if seeing the series in compressed time - sometimes two or three episodes a night, with no commercial breaks - might have a different impact on viewers than the original idea of once a week. At any rate, I've been hooked from the first 5 minutes.

We have Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell - two actors of a certain age, both of them wonderful - playing Commander Adama of the Galactica and the President of the Colonies, respectively (the 40 or so people ahead of McDonnell's character in the line of succession all having been killed in the main Cylon attack). We have Michael Hogan as Saul Tigh (the eXO with a drinking problem and a wife with a very interesting history). And we have a group of younger characters, including the rather remarkable Cylon 'Six.'

One of the great additions to the re-imagined series is the idea that some Cylons are 'skin-jobs' - that is, they look and can act exactly like humans. This leads to consequences, which are just now - in the last weeks of the last season of the series - being played out.

Now if I can only figure out how to get a hold of the final episodes . . .

Star Rangers

I've been watching Battlestar Galactica -- via Netflix -- and we've just gotten to the point where our heroes have found Earth. Or at least what they think is Earth - I have my doubts about its actual identity. Anyway, the planet they were so desperately searching for is a blasted, post-nuclear wasteland.

They are all very sad about this. But the series isn't over yet.

Star Rangers (aka 'The Last Planet') by Andre Norton is another story about finding a long-forgotten Earth. In this case, however, the weary crew of a spaceship -- the spaceship being a poorly-maintained relic of a dying galactic civilization -- crash lands on the planet by accident, and for most of the book neither they nor the reader knows that this accidental discovery is the original home of the species.

(There are some nice hints along the way. The green of the vegetation here seems somehow the best and the purest green, unlike the blue-greens or the yellow-greens of other planets they've known.)

The moment in which they find out where they really are ("Terra of Sol - man's beginning!") is a moment of sheer wonder and science fiction glory. Earth had been abandoned by (most of) its people, who left to find the stars. The crew members have a vague memory of this abandonment - it has been a story handed down over the long generations - and now they see the ancient 'Hall of Leave-Taking' for themselves. Kartr - our protagonist - thinks to himself:

"There --why, right there had sat the commanders, and behind them crews and colonists! And so they must have gathered, shipful after shipful for years - maybe centuries. Gathered, spoke together for the last time, received their last orders and instructions - then went out to the field and the waiting ships and blasted off into the unknown - never to return."

Wow. Of course, my personal fantasy at the time (early 1960s!) was to leave Earth myself, permanently. ASAP. So, together with a strong theme element of telepathy (very cool) the book was this adolescent's dream.

I will mention one slightly iffy plot point; shortly after our hero crew crashes on the planet they discover another spaceship has crashed there a few months before. Then, about the time they realize what planet this is, another spaceship lands (and is soon destroyed.) Although the various passengers on these ships are necessary to the story, it does seem a little funny that - after Earth has been (nearly) deserted for millenia - it is suddenly beseiged with crashing spaceships.

Did you notice the 'nearly' deserted bit? Yes, there are still people on the planet. They have retreated to a pre-technological society, and the author describes them somewhat like pre-colonial tribes of native Americans. She does not condescend to them however, and one of our heroes remarks that the people who did not leave Earth - and who have lived there ever since - simply made the choice that seemed best to them at the time.

And indeed, it is the choice that our heroes make as well. Rather than attempt to live in one of the old cities, with some technological comforts, Kartr and his crew decide to strike out and live off the land as newcomers. The end of the old galactic civilization is the beginning, for them, of something new.