I have noticed that Star Trek appears to be largely a phenomenon of the 60s generation. I have asked countless people born after that and few have ever watched as much as a single episode. This is a pity for it is timeless. My previous article struck a familiar chord with many and it has caused me to conjure up some more commentary on the subject.
While it provides a very hopeful future-view it also is very realistic in its projections. For one, it doesn’t tell us the future will be trouble free and all will be right with the universe. Indeed, it tells us that the same problems that have plagued humanity are universally found to exist throughout the galaxy and in the future even though our Earthbound problems have been solved. It tells us that a universal fact and truth is that there will always be evil doers and those who thirst for greater power. It also tells us that these malignant forces must continue to be resisted by beneficent ones just as our own history has shown.
One of the most amazing feats of script writing is the continuity of the series as it continues out well into the future as evidence by the very neat and clean resurrection of old characters and themes such as Khan, Spock, Scotty, recurrent animosities with alien cultures such as the Klingons which ultimately become reconciled into fast friendships and alliances, and so many more. To be able to cast such scripts which can much later be returned to without missing a beat is truly a great art.
This fact brings me to another distinction which I have long made. For some decades now I have observed that sometime after the era of “classic” Star Trek and its contemporaries (such as 2001: A Space Odyssey) the sci-fi genre changed for the worse in that in its classical sense science fiction consisted of a solid story line that was enhanced by special effects. This mutated (and I use the word advisedly) into a class wherein sci-fi was almost totally a matter of grandiose special effects with a very weak and unimportant story line almost as if the audience were seeing a light show like Laserium was. Some of these would be Dune, “V”, and the Star Wars series. Each of these carried very predictable and weak stories but were special effects extravaganzas in which no thinking on the audience’s part was necessary. Indeed, all you had to do was sit there and watch the flashing lights as if you were at a fireworks show.
Having said that, I digress to the master of the genre of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, whom explained that what makes suspense work best is to use the audience’s mind against itself. Such as in a scene where two people are talking a suddenly a huge blast rings out and you are show the blood and gore of the blast’s destruction. Sure it is a great emotional rush for a moment then it subsides until you move onto the next scene. Hitchcock observed that instead of this momentary adrenaline rush, he would have two men at a table talking calmly then pan the camera back until it was revealed that there was a time bomb slowly ticking away and the frame would be focused on the men being totally unaware of their impending peril while the clock ticked away. The audience would grow increasingly fever pitched as the clock wound down to the big explosion. So instead of a momentary rush the experience would be dragged out form several minutes. This is what makes for suspense.
In a very similar way, science fiction at its best is done the same way. I will cite several examples: The Day the Earth Stood Still, the original War of the Worlds, the original Invaders From Mars, even some of what are considered B grade films such as Them, It, The Terror From Beyond Space (from which the very popular Aliens series was based) and perhaps the greatest of them all, Forbidden Planet. Each of these (and the list is much longer) skillfully employed the technique that Hitchcock perfected in the suspense genre. They were outstanding stories enhanced by the best special effects available at the time. In fact, Forbidden Planet’s special effects were done by Disney Studios and remained unsurpassed until Star Trek arrived a full decade later.
This class of sci-fi is what I have coined as “Thinking Man’s Science Fiction” in which the audience participates by carefully following the story. It requires active participation in order to be fully appreciated whereas the later “visual experience” brand of sci-fi is solely a spectator experience.
I have watched most of these films in a local revival theater in which parents brought along their children. Afterwards I have often asked the kids what they thought and their reaction is basically a shrug of their shoulders and a tepid, “It was ok”. I can confidently assert that this is evidence of how today’s generations are incapable of following anything that requires independent thought but are trained only to be a bystander and not a participant. This is symptomatic of a general malaise and one dimensional scope of view that we see today, but this is fodder for yet another curmudgeonly article at a later date. But I think I have well made my point that the classic days of science fiction are in the past but many of us have enjoyed them and will do so on into the future and will let them serve as a barometer against which all other science fiction will be compared.