Editorial: Why STAR TREK Fails

Science fiction geeks are whacking their tricorders tonight with the debut of the high def trailer for J.J. Abrams' STAR TREK reboot. You can see that at Apple. As far as the trailer goes, it's well cut and engaging. The special effects look flashy. The performances and dialogue, at this point, make me cringe a little bit. Overall, it looks like a very expensive car commercial that resembles that misguided LOST IN SPACE reboot from a few years back. Paramount has obviously put a lot of faith in Abrams to resurrect this aging franchise and inject it with something resembling life. However, the problem with STAR TREK isn't age, or even a lack of audience interest in science fiction. The problem rests with the premise itself. When series creator Gene Roddenberry first imagined STAR TREK in the sixties, he envisioned a world of humanity free of racial and social injustice, poverty, crime, or disease. Roddenberry optimistically hoped that the species would better itself to the point that, as a united collective, they would, as William Shatner memorably exclaimed, "explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." It's a lovely concept. It's also painfully drama free. The original series, which debuted in 1966, ran for three seasons on television despite hideous ratings. Its demise coincided not coincidentally with the turbulence of the later part of the decade, which saw a turn in the mood of America toward darker, more realistic fare and a low-tech, hippie mentality. However, the show was a hit among a fanatical, highly vocal group of science fiction fans, who managed to make enough noise (in pre-internet times, no less) that the studio, always eager for more money, began to pay attention. The enormous success of STAR WARS in 1977 caught the eye of every single person within Hollywood. Cheap, Roger Corman-level knockoffs began springing up all over cinemas, every one eager to taste even a bit of the cash stream created by George Lucas' surprise hit. One of major Hollywood players greedily watching 20th Century Fox roll around in STAR WARS money was Paramount, who had been financially floudering in recent movie seasons. To cash in, Paramount executives scoured their archives looking for a science fiction property they could parlay into big bucks for their own pockets. Re-enter STAR TREK. The vocal fan base - despite being relatively small - had made enough of an impression that the studio felt a big-screen treatment, loaded with impressive production values and the latest special effects, could elevate Roddenberry's quaint show into a box office monster. They were wrong. Not because of a lack of interest, however. Pre-release television specials whetted the appetites of 1979 moviegoers with jaw-dropping shots of the new Enterprise in her loading dock, and massive ad campaigns whipped the film's release into an event. It was one of the most expensive films of its time, with a budget around $46 million dollars. The movie made some money, but it is roundly considered a creative and commercial flop. What it lacked in the original series' goofy charm, it gained with ponderous philosophizing and static, bridge-bound encounters. The film made $80 million domestically and $125 million worldwide - nice totals, but just a tiny fraction of the massive $400 million STAR WARS earned only two years earlier. Subsequent films attempted to ramp up the action and humor missing from the first film, but most of the films failed to achieve any kind of lasting impact beyond their initial American fanbase. All of the STAR TREK films have had decent-to-poor box office totals in America, and they have all had very poor worldwide box office totals. This is a peculiar aspect of their appeal, given the fact that the franchise is built around a supposedly international cast of characters. The franchise has also spun itself back on television, with largely yawn-inducing results. The most successful, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, had an engaging cast led by Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart. Another breakout performance was Brent Spiner's magnetic portrayal of the android Data. The show also introduced Star Treks best villain, the malignant Borg. Unfortunately, other shows in the franchise - Deep Space Nine,Voyager and Enterprise - bored audiences silly with their constant moralistic quandries and the leaden nature of their stories. Although their combined seasons are impressive, many of these years were spent as low-rated syndication fare. So why, after so many years and incarnations, can we say that STAR TREK has failed? The box office appeal - largely driven by an American audience - betrays the fact that the show, despite claims to the contrary, is largely an American perspective. Curiously, the show almost espouses a socialistic society that "spreads the wealth" to everyone, yet the main drive behind the show is a uniquely American expression of colonialism and domination. So, in terms of its own mission statement, the show fails because it largely excludes the viewpoints of any other culture besides America. All of the non-American countries that warmly embraced the pop optimism of STAR WARS have, for thirty years, given the cold shoulder to Roddenberry's bright vision of the future. As science fiction, the franchise fails because it never conveys an actual sense of truth or science amongst all of the rambling, incoherent, pseudo-scientific babbling. No, TREK fans, there is no such thing as a gravimetric field displacement manifold. The steady stream of nonsense - TNG is particularly guilty of this - grinds every single scene to a leaden crawl. Imagine truly great science fiction shows and films, like 2001, BLADE RUNNER, THE FLY, if they had to intricately explain every detail in a vain attempt to make sense out of it. Smart films don't so that ... because it's BORING. Which brings us to the final point: But it is as drama that the franchise fails most, er, dramatically. Encounters between ship captains standing on the bridges of enormous spaceships sounds much more exciting in print than it ever has onscreen. Characters fight by standing immobile while pointing awkward, boring-looking phasers at each other. Nearly every single episode of any STAR TREK series or movie involves the ship passing through/by some sort of space phenomena/alien intelligence/weird planet and how it affects the crew as they deal with it. The stories place the actors in the precarious position of standing around, endlessly discussing the situation with utmost seriousness while playing with plastic-looking devices doubling for medical and diagnostic equipment. Even transporter-aided visits to alien worlds cannot create any kind of drama or excitement; it merely means the characters will talk more in front of a different backdrop. The cumulative effect of the STAR TREK brand of "drama" is numbing when it should be transporting. Presumably, Abrams is attempting to fix these problems with STAR TREK by injecting it with more special effects, action sequences, and a younger, prettier cast. I'm not sure these changes are as important as making the new film a genuinely exciting adventure with truly fleshed out characters. From the looks of the new trailer, it appears that the new film will be slicker than anything that has come before in the franchise, the benefits of which probably make the executives at Paramount drool with anticipation. But unless the movie is something more than a series of encounters with alien races that have plastic shit glued to their nose bridges - something we have yet to see in any STAR TREK enterprise - then the film is likely to do only decent business in America and disappear into the dustbin with the rest of the failed STAR TREK relics of the past.