Plasma Pool

cowritten with Kevin Hilke

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Star Trek: Voyager, the fourth of five series in the Star Trek franchise to date, is, according to Matthew Yglesias, the worst:

Voyager just gives me nothing. I appreciate the desire to set a show far, far away from the rest of the action in order to avoid being weighed down by too much existing canon, but an inability to rely on basic familiar pillars (Klingons, Romulans, the occasional emergency sub-space transmission from admiral so-and-so) winds up doing a lot of reinventing the wheel.

Star Trek's Kirk, Spock, and McCoy

The wheel, that is, as built by Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek and its pre-Voyager descendants, The Next Generation (TNG) and Deep Space Nine (DS9). Yet we have ample grounds to consider whether the first Star Trek, rather than any of its derivatives, is actually the worst.

Yes, there are incredible episodes; yes, the series and its popcultural ephemera are iconic; yes, it was and still is influential in contemporary technology, medicine, design, even in civil rights; yes, the series is pervaded by Roddenberry’s lofty, radical progressivism. He wanted, explicitly, to “change the face of America.” The program was, according to StarTrek.com (the franchise’s official internet home), “really a vehicle for Roddenberry to comment on contemporary issues under the guise of science fiction. He could never speak directly about politics, sex, race relations, and the futility of war on television during the 1960s.” The vision of the world Roddenberry wanted to depict and effect, one in which “human beings have set aside their differences, eliminated disease and poverty, and have dedicated themselves to self-improvement rather than the accumulation of material wealth,” wasn’t shared by network executives, so, in the words of his recently deceased widow, Majel Barrett Roddenberry,

Gene was able to take these subjects and change them up; he gave them monsters, put people in funny clothes, and painted them funny colors, and he got away with everything. Frankly, the censors didn’t understand it, so they let it go.

The original series is a reliable if eccentric workhorse of cultural critique. But it’s also filled with incredible awkwardness: the redshirt phenomenon; the repetitive “The shields are failing!” battle scenes; Shatner’s incessant prettyboy preening; the indiscriminate one-dimensionality of everyone who isn’t Kirk, Spock, or McCoy. One could argue that such unrealistic silliness is just a result of the primitive nature of science-fiction in general and television in particular in the sixties. But most of these awkward characteristics, though looked back on with nostalgia, are forgivable to the extent that they showed future science-fiction TV, including future Star Trek series, what not to do.¹

TNG took lessons the of the first series seriously, and so was in many ways the exact opposite of the original series. Where the original series settles for ludicrous fight scenes, TNG is cerebral. Indeed, the central conflict of its premiere episode is an intellectual one, in which a race of omnipotent beings called the Q, and represented by an individual called Q, challenges humanity, represented by Captain Jean Luc Picard, to rationally and morally justify its puny existence in a court of Q law. True, both series often present us with complex moral probems, but in TNG these problems are concertedly intellectualized, usually by Picard, the Enterprise-D’s Shakespeare-quoting, Bizet-appreciating, advanced-anthropologist poet-captain.

Michelle Forbes as Ensign Ro Laren

The shift from the physicality of original series to the relative intellectuality of TNG was accompanied by a multiplying of fuller, textured characters. Where the original series limited its character development to the three male leads, TNG’s bench was deep with gifted actors like LeVar Burton and characters, like Worf, whose complexities and conflicts made them substantial enough to sustain their own series. There were also characters who weren’t necessarily interesting or well-acted, but were paid considerable loving attention by the writers. Wesley Crusher and Deanna Troi come to mind, as does Tasha Yar, who got better after she died, when Denise Crosby returned to play her former character’s half-Romulan daughter, Commander Sela. Even guest-star characters, such as the original Star Trek’s Scotty (in an episode aptly entitled “Relics“), and, hugely, Ro Laren—whose Bajoran backstory served as fodder for a significant arc in TNG, as the urtext of DS9 (Ro’s DS9 doppelganger: Kira Nerys), and even, through the Maquis, supplied the context for Voyager’s premise—were endowed with substantive, meaningful character arcs.

The best of DS9 and the occasional good parts in Voyager were entirely descendant from the spirit of TNG. With Voyager, though—that is, with its worst parts—as well as with Enterprise, the fifth series and a prequel to all the rest, the franchise’s focus shifted from dynamic characters in a relatively limited area of space to something much more like the original series: a cast composed largely of static characters who have a sense of themselves as always on the move, whether exploring the solar system or striving for the Alpha Quadrant. Voyager and Enterprise are all about getting back to the supposed excitement (and actual lameness) of the original series.

We can’t deny that the original series was hugely important, even if the best moments with its cast come not on TV, but later, in the films. Something about the bigger budget, longer running-time, and overall sweep of the cinematic form seems to have unlocked the inherent strengths of its cast. Unlocking along these same lines continues in today’s more sophisticated sci-fi: we can best see the positive influence of the original series through the contemporary shows which have forcefully defeated its many problems. Or we can watch a random episode of Stargate: SG1, see that it’s basically exactly like an original series episode, and nostalgically ruminate on the Roddenberry’s clodding but socially and artistically useful “Wagon Train to the stars.”

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1. One of the best episodes of Futurama managed to simultaneously satirize and correct the original series, and do so in half the length of a single original series episode.