Star Trek as Myth This page intentionally left blank Star Trek as Myth Essays on Symbol and Archetype at the Final Frontier Edited by MATTHEW WILHELM KAPELL McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Star Trek as myth : essays on symbol and archetype at the final frontier / edited by Matthew Wilhelm Kapell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-4724-4 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Star Trek television programs—History and criticism. 2. Myth on television. I. Kapell, Matthew. PN1992.8.S74S7275 2010 791.45'75—dc22 2010004827 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2010 Matthew Wilhelm Kapell. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover images ©20¡0 Shutterstock Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com As is always the case, this is for Zoe Blythe, Starfleet Admiral and Jedi Knight, and for my sister Barbara, who encouraged her little brother to read This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments No edited volume is possible without the support of a host of individu- als. The contributors to this volume all worked under deadlines that would make Captain Kirk run scared. Nancy Greer acted as the editor’s post office in North America. Amy Greer aided much, especially with the graphics (and thanks for the phaser!). This book would not exist without her aid. Thanks must also go to Amy Greer’s firm, Closed Loop Marketing, for letting me have her services on those graphics pro bono. John Shelton Lawrence and Stephen McVeigh read the introduction and conclusion and made both immeasurably better. Stephen McVeigh also added his own chapter after the release of the newest Star Trek film, showing once again that he’s both smart and fast. At the Journal of Popular Culture, Jen DeFore was a professional delight in helping with connections for reprint rights. Felicia Campbell, of the always wonderful jour- nal Popular Culture Review, was exceedingly helpful in permission matters. The contributors who added an afterward to their previously published work did so with verve, style, great insight, and wit while also doing so on a strict time schedule, and each must be thanked. Gratitude also goes to the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University, Wales, and especially their programs in American Studies and War and Society for continued support. Thanks are also due to those who have granted permission to have previ- ously published work reprinted: Tyrrell, Wm. Blake. “Star Trek as Myth and Television as Mythmaker.” Jour- nal of Popular Culture 10:4 (1977) 711–19. Copyright Wiley-Blackwell. Claus, Peter J. “A Structuralist Appreciation of Star Trek.” Copyright Peter J. Claus. Originally published in American Deminsions: Cultural Myths and Social Reality, William Arens and Susan Montague, eds. New York: Alfred, 1976, pp. 15–32. Littleton, C. Scott. “Some Implications of the Mythology in Star Trek.” Key- stone Folklore 4 (1989): 33–42. Copyright The Center for Pennsylvania Cul- ture Studies. Pilkington, Ace G. “American Dream, Myth and Reality.” Encyclia: The Jour- vii viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS nal of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 69 (1992): 65–76. Copy- right Ace G. Pilkington. Kapell, Matthew. “Speakers for the Dead: Star Trek, The Holocaust, and the Representation of Atrocity.” Extrapolation 41.2 (2000): 104–114. Copyright, 2000 by The Kent State University Press. Baker, Djoymi. “‘Every Old Trick Is New Again’: Myth in Quotations and the Star Trek Franchise.” Popular Culture Review 12:1 (2001), 67–77. Copyright The Far West Popular Culture Association and American Culture Associa- tion. Table of Contents Acknowledgments . vii Introduction: The Significance of the Star Trek Mythos (Matthew Wilhelm Kapell) . 1 PART ONE: A PARTIAL CANON OF STAR TREK MYTH CRITICISM 1. Star Trek as Myth and Television as Mythmaker (Wm. Blake Tyrell) . 19 2. A Structuralist Appreciation of Star Trek (Peter J. Claus) . 29 3. Some Implications of the Mythology in Star Trek (C. Scott Littleton) . 44 4. Star Trek: American Dream, Myth and Reality (Ace G. Pilkington) . 54 5. Speakers for the Dead: Star Trek, the Holocaust, and the Representation of Atrocity (Matthew Wilhelm Kapell) . 67 6. “Every Old Trick Is New Again”: Myth in Quotations and the Star Trek Franchise (Djoymi Baker) . 80 PART TWO: BOLDLY GOING FORWARD: NEW FRONTIERS OF MYTHIC STAR TREK ANALYSIS 7. Star Trek as American Monomyth (John Shelton Lawrence) . 93 8. The Sisko, the Christ: A Comparison of Messiah Figures in the Star Trek Universe and the New Testament (Jeffery S. Lamp) . 112 ix xTABLE OF CONTENTS 9. Course in Federation Linguistics (Richard R. Jones) . 129 10. Evocations and Evasions of Archetypal Lesbian Love in Star Trek: Voyager (Roger Kaufman) . 144 11. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Surak: Star Trek: Enterprise, Anti-Catholicism and the Vulcan Reformation (Jennifer E. Porter) . 163 12. A Vision of a Time and Place: Spiritual Humanism and the Utopian Impulse (Bruce Isaacs) . 182 13. The Kirk Doctrine: The Care and Repair of Archetypal Heroic Leadership in J.J Abrams’ Star Trek (Stephen McVeigh) . 197 14. Conclusion: The Hero with a Thousand Red Shirts (Matthew Wilhelm Kapell) . 213 About the Contributors . 221 Index . 225 Introduction The Significance of the Star Trek Mythos MATTHEW WILHELM KAPELL If USS Enterprise Captain James T. Kirk has any ancestors from our time it is likely that one of them would have been the British scholar of myth Geof- frey S. Kirk. Aside from having been a Cambridge professor of Greek myth and history, Geoffrey S. Kirk—much like his spiritual descendent James T.—was a naval officer (during World War Two) and, according to his 2003 obitu- ary, once said of himself that he “liked, in one way or another, practically all girls” (Lloyd-Jones). Geoffrey S. Kirk also spent much of his career explaining how stories from individual imaginations could, over time, become the myths of entire cultures. As a result, he would understand both the creation of Star Trek and the reasons it continues to resonate with so many. Writing between the cancellation of the original Star Trek and its emergence as a cultural force (and sounding just a bit like Jean-Luc Picard) Kirk noted that “myths can pos- sess significance through their structure, which may unconsciously represent structural elements in the society from which they originate or the typical behaviouristic attitudes of the myth-makers themselves” (252). It is the con- tention of this volume that Kirk’s statement could apply to Star Trek as easily as to the Greek myths he was discussing. Why? Because within the narrative of Star Trek are found significant mythological traits of both the self-image of the American people and the specific attitudes of its creator, Gene Rodden- berry. In other words, Star Trek is a kind of contemporary mythological system that the various contributors to this volume examine through the “structural elements” of the “society from which they originate” and the “attitudes of the myth-maker” himself. 1 2INTRODUCTION In addition to this, Star Trek has expanded greatly since its inception, increasing the size of its mythological system almost exponentially. There are now eleven feature films, five television series, countless novels, fan fiction, fan-based conventions, corporate conventions ... the list could (and does) go on. As of July 2009, Simon and Schuster, the U.S. publisher of Star Trek–based novels, lists over 750 in print. Of course, other popular culture artifacts have been developed through a similarly multiple set of mediums. Religious stud- ies scholar William G. Doty, in a discussion of the films, comics, anime shorts and various books in The Matrix franchise, compared this multi-media pro- duction to a kind of total control of the narrative presentation similar to Richard Wagner’s “all-embracing” Gesamtkunstwerk in his late nineteenth century oper- atic productions (9–10). Wagner, in an attempt to control all aspects of his operas, from the very design of the theater, to the kinds of lighting, presentation of music and even the design of some of the instruments themselves, had created the first kind of artwork in which the artist tries to assert complete control. John Shelton Lawrence, who is a contributor to this volume, has applied the notion of Gesamtkunstwerk to George Lucas’ Star Wars saga, too (3). There is no doubt that the idea fits such franchises, where the creators and producers of the art— such as in The Matrix and Star Wars—develop a kind of contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk. Star Trek, however, is an altogether different sort of artistic construct. Because it was the product, initially, of the mind of Gene Rodden- berry there is a temptation to consider the full text of the entire franchise as Roddenberry’s. However, besides the incredible number of different incarna- tions of Star Trek, there is also a tradition of a significantly decentralized process of creation and interpretation of the Star Trek narratives. This is not just the writers’ and producers’ creation, but fans have also been actively involved in the process of making Star Trek—through their own fiction, film productions, and conventions—almost since its beginning. Such competing narratives as Star Wars and The Matrix might be both a kind of modern myth as well as a kind of modern Gesamtkunstwerk, but they remain a far different type of mythical narrative because of their centralized— and thus controlled—production.