My intention for this blog has always been to provide a
positive thought for the day. To use
Fiction to inspire you, to help you look on the world around you, and imagine
the limitless possibilities each day represents. Yet today I find my thoughts in confusion, and my spirits depressed.
Why? Four words: “Star Trek Into
Darkness.”
I know what you’re thinking: David, how can you let two
hours of light entertainment get you down?
That’s the problem. Star
Trek is supposed to be more than light entertainment. Generally speaking, each episode of the TV series was designed to make viewers think, particularly in regard to social issues of
the day. Gene Roddenberry’s first story, "The Cage," proved so thought-provoking that I dedicated over thirty posts to it,
and I still didn’t cover one underlying concept of the pilot: the enduring
popularity of the Adam and Eve story in Science Fiction. Sadly, "Star Trek Into Darkness" likewise
provided much food for thought, but probably not in the way J. J. Abrams and
company intended.
 |
| Vena in "The Cage" |
One thought was how attitudes toward sex have changed since
the 1960s, and how those affect our characters.
In “The Cage,” Captain Pike works hard to resist Vena in all her
guises. Chief among those was when she
transforms into a “Green Animal Slave Woman,” as his chief medical officer, Dr.
Phil, calls them. These women represent
sex in its most basic and powerful form, when one’s basic urges become an
obsession, driving out all thought and reason.
The fact that Pike resists Vena in her Woman-Plus mode helps us respect
his dedication to his own moral code, as well as his commitment to the U.S.S.
Enterprise and her crew.
In the TV series, Kirk seems a little looser. Perhaps he might not have a woman in every
port, but he certainly has a lot of previous girlfriends who still think rather
highly of him. Yet in the episodes, we
rarely see him in lovemaking mode, and usually when this occurs, he is shown
resisting a woman who seeks to control him through sex and his feelings for
her. For him, sex may not be
inextricably linked with marriage, as his first and primary commitment is to
the Enterprise, but he generally leaves women with a positive impression of his
character, and the unspoken suggestion that if he was “on the market,” and he
asked for their hand in marriage, they would gladly become Mrs. Kirk.
In “Star Trek,” J. J. Abrams first movie, we meet Kirk when
he’s trying to pick up Uhura for a one-night stand. We next see him a couple years later, when he
is sleeping with (Who else?) a green-skinned woman. When she tells him that she loves him, he
responds: “That’s weird.”
In the sequel,
“Into Darkness,” we again see him in a bedroom, where this time he is having a
threesome with two ladies who have long, cat-like tails. Later, Carol Marcus asks him if he remembers
Christine Chapel, who apparently became a nurse after Kirk had a fling with
her. The name fails to ring a bell.
Strangely, a storm of controversy has erupted over a scene
in which Kirk sees Carol Marcus in her black bra and panties, significant
enough to prompt apologies from the filmmakers. According to Wikipedia, critics have called it
“wholly unnecessary,” “gratuitous,” and “misogynistic.” But no one seems bothered by seeing Kirk
having sex with women in the new movies, even women belonging to a different
species. J. J. Abrams and company have
changed Kirk from someone who respects women to someone who doesn’t, and leaves
them thinking less of him than the moment they met. As our society seems to have uncoupled one’s
sex life from one’s morality, Kirk’s spurious flings just serve to make him
more enduring. But then, Star Fleet
Headquarters is located in San Francisco, the town synonymous with the 1960s
Sexual Revolution.
Dragon Dave
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