Boldly Going Where We’ve Been Before
Gawker’s new sci-fi blog, io9 has six reasons why Star Trek should stay dead. I agree with all of them and then some.
As much as I enjoyed watching TOS with my dad as a kid, (and still like some of the old episodes, even if they do creek a bit) there’s really no new business to be had in the Star Trek Universe. It always was and always will be a straight up Cold War fable. But the Cold War’s over; turns out we won and the Klingons Soviets weren’t all that scary, more deluded and sad and, wait, what was the cold War all about again? Something about Capitalist Imperialism vs. Communist Dictatorships with a gooey heart of Socialism as the supposed compromise that would settle all problems. Except that, as history proves time and again, dictatorships are notoriously short lived, Capitalism unrestrained by social obligations is even worse and pure, unadulterated Socialism is about as realistic a political philosophy as a future with no drugs or alcohol is plausible. The future is Democratic Socialism and unmanned space exploration. There’s no need for intergalactic daring do when robots work just fine. Pretending otherwise just makes everyone look stupid, what with their moon boots and matching leotards.
I say we let JJ Abrahm’s Star Trek movie (”It has been confirmed that a tribble will make an appearance in the new film”) be the whipping boy of the Writer’s Strike; let it sink under the weight of contractual obligations unfulfilled and die, finally so we can get back to new episodes of Battlestar Galactica before 2009.