Science fiction literature/entertainment is rife with all sorts of controversy or moral dilemmas; Star Trek is not immune to this type of plot generation. Only its longevity has spawned dozens of all sorts of moral choices that have made its thousands of loyal fans constantly debate about what the right choice should have been. The re-booted Star Trek franchise is bound to resurrect some of these scenarios, or if it doesnt, then it should and the question that begs to be asked is: which ones are they going to dig up? With the script for Star Trek 3 currently being written for a probable release in 2016, the writers would be wise to tackle these moral dilemmas once again...
10. Artificial Life Or, Simply Put: Creation
This is a doozy. Its a good one to start off with. My all-time favourite movie from the classic movies is Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan. Its funny, because it starts off resting on the foundations of a moral dilemma Kirk was forced to make in the original series (Space Seed). Well come back to that one, but theres a bigger dilemma in this film that just seems to have been glossed over. You see, Spocks death (Sorry was that a spoiler for anyone?), Ricardo Montalbans rippling pectorals and the discovery that Kirk has a son all seem to overshadow the fact that the United Federation of Planets knows how to build a freaking planet and create life on other worlds. Forget about seeking out strange new worlds, now they can put them in their own backyard. This is huge and while there was the occasional nod to the level of technology involved in this process, there really wasnt a recognition of the amount of morality involved in the decision making process of this new science. In fact, the writers of this story just projected the demise of the Almighty to some point in the middle of the 23rd century. Thats right God now has an expiry date. Will J.D. Payne re-visit Genesis? If so, will there be any inclusion of the back-story behind it? I mean, Carol Marcus does show up in Star Trek: Into Darkness and all we got in STWOK was the fact that Captain Kirk used to have a fling with the lead scientist on the project that resulted in his status as an absent father, but this is pure gold that simply cant be ignored. Hey maybe they can re-build Vulcan with it? Just a thought...
John Kirk is a Teacher-Librarian and currently a History/English Teacher with the Toronto District School Board.
But mostly, John teaches Geek.
Comics, Sci-Fi (Notably Star Trek), Fantasy and Role-Playing and table-top games all make up part of John’s repertoire, There is a whole generation of nerds-in-embryo who rely on him to make sense of it all, to teach that with great power comes great responsibility, that the force will be with us always and that a towel IS the most useful thing to have in one’s possession.
When John isn’t in the classroom, he can be found in his basement writing comic reviews for www.popmythology.com and features for Roddenberry Entertainment's www.1701news.com.
