The Burr in the Burbs

Excited about the soon to premiere new Star Trek flic?  Check out this perceptive article by Steve Daly in Newsweek.  When the short-lived series first hit the airwaves in 1966, the Cold War war was angrily blazing away.  But produce Gene Roddenberry broke the mold with his (mostly) optimistic view of the future.  The general thrust of the science fiction to come out of the 50s and 60s was generated by fear.  Fear of the bomb.  Fear of communists.  Fear of spies.  Fear of desegregation.  And so forth.  Giant ants, spawned by nuclear mishaps, were attacking people.  Well camouflaged pod people were walking among us and destroying our way of life.  Space aliens were invading American cities.  Most books and films of the genre at that time were cautionary or envisioned a dystopic future for mankind.  Roddenberry challenged us to see a different possibility, a future earth where the races got along, working side-by-side, a future earth without war or poverty or swine flu pandemics.  I said earlier that he was “mostly” optimistic because the dread of the other was still evident in the episodes which encounter extraterrestrial hostiles.  The Romulans and the Klingons were probably supposed to reflect the Soviets.  Their swarthy appearance and overt bellicosity, however, makes me think of Islam.  As a Christian, I know that Roddenberry’s idealistic humanism was naive, but that doesn’t mean I cannot appreciate the important and meaningful way he impacted the culture with his ideas.

The newest incarnation of the franchise is expected by some to renew it and by others to betray it.  I know there are lots of regular Americans who have never liked sci-fi, fantasy, superheroes, horror, the more speculative type of literature.  If this upcoming film is just an interstellar car chase, just Die Hard set in space, it will be a blockbuster but will miss out on the opportunity to ponder bigger topics of human identity the genre, at its best, excels at.  Or I could be wrong and it might help to popularize and mainstream what we dweebs have long loved.