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“Risk is our business,” said James T. Kirk once. “That’s what this spaceship is about. That’s why we’re on board. “
More than half a century later, the actor who breathed life into the legendary captain of the Enterprise, at the age of 90, made this risk his own business and travels to the stars in dramatically different circumstances than his fictional counterpart. And so William Shatner lets worlds collide or at least enables the coexistence of parallel universes – the utopian space vision of “Star Trek” and the developing, increasingly commercial place that “space” occupies in the American psyche.
When Shatner steps into Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin NS-18 around Wednesday morning in Texas, his small step into the craft creates one of the ultimate crossover stories of our time.
It’s about space and exploration, sure, and certainly capitalism and billionaires and economic justice issues. But it’s also about pop culture and marketing and entertainment and nostalgia and hope and Manifest Destiny and, and, and … well, you get the idea.
“What will I see when I’m out there?” Shatner wondered last week when speaking with Anderson Cooper on CNN. An equally valid question is this: what will WE see when he’s out there?
It will be a complex mix of human dreams, overlaid with technology and hope, bragging rights and money, and the notion that space is lifting us up – all orchestrated by a company that for its decidedly unutopian tech-office avenues that some call , the criticism says it works.
Does all of this and “Star Trek” go together?
THE WORLD OF ‘STAR TREK’
Since its premiere in 1966 with one of the most diverse casts television has ever seen, “Trek” has evolved from Gene Roddenberry’s feverish dream from a “wagon train” to the stars into a complex transmedia universe full of subtleties and traditions and rules.
Including: People avoid killing each other. Money is generally out of date, as is hunger and poverty. Greed is absurd. Non-interference with other cultures is the most sacred principle of all. And within the United Federation of Planets, the United Nations’ Star Trek space carrier, exploration, not rule, is the coin of empire. In short, unlike many people at the moment.
This 1966-69 original series used allegories to bypass network censorship and tell stories of racism and xenophobia and even the Vietnam War. How did they get away with all of this? Because the adventures of Kirk’s Enterprise took place against the backdrop of space travel in the 23rd
Over the next half century, supported by a vocal fan base, “Star Trek” roared for more, leading the way in cementing space travel as the ideal canvas for relevant storytelling.
Even as NASA’s Apollo era slipped into the space shuttle program (where an early spaceship was named the Enterprise) and eventually sunk into uncertainty, Trek remained one of the central vehicles of culture for a space future.
Nichelle Nichols, the Lt. Uhura, who played on the show, has been a particularly tireless advocate working with NASA to recruit Americans and women of color and ensure they are at the center of those ambitions as the missions move forward.
In the 1980s, films about the original crew dealt with aging and regret. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” offered a more cerebral, but still utopian vision. Another spin-off, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, set at an outpost that maintains a delicate relaxation, presented a darker take – but still one in which avarice was abnormal and despicable. And “Enterprise”, a prequel from 2001-2005, offered a season-long arc about the consequences of an alien attack in the style of September 11, 2001 on Earth.
Two of the latest versions of the myth, “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Star Trek: Picard,” are deeper into the darkness than their predecessors and have toyed with the idea that not all of humanity would like to be quite so utopian.
However, with all the different storytelling, one constant remained: the notion that human space travel would become a vector of ethics and goodness that arose rather than plundered the galaxy.
THE PROFITABLE LIMIT
That brings us to companies like Blue Origin, SpaceX by Elon Musk, and Virgin Galactic by Richard Branson – companies that build their brands on companies rather than countries.
They offer culture a late capitalist take on the subject – a narrative that space travel is not just for scientists and diplomats, but you and me as well. So if you and I happen to have a few hundred thousand dollars or more of money floating around.
“In the United States, private individuals have always worked for public purposes,” said Ravi S. Rajan, president of the California Institute for the Arts and a Trek fan since childhood. “But how much is made private and how much is made public, that changes.”
Many have challenged the actions of the multi-billion dollar space moguls, including the United Nations Secretary-General, and Blue Origin’s corporate culture issues have been well documented lately.
But the motives of the Amazon founder himself remain unclear. However, it is evident that the popular culture of space travel influenced him deeply.
Bezos, who tells a story of exploring space to ensure the earth’s continued prosperity, has been a longtime “Trek” fan. He made a cameo as an alien star fleet officer in the 2016 film “Star Trek Beyond”. And according to biographer Brad Stone, Bezos even briefly considered naming Amazon “Makeitso.com” after Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s favorite command in ” Star Trek: The Next Generation “.
“The whole Star Trek ethos has shown that people of different looks and different skills work together. We are at the beginning of something like this, ”said Richard B. Cooper, vice president of the Space Foundation, a non-profit advocating the global space industry. “People can look at this environment and say, ‘Hey – that’s where I belong.'”
Aside from the prohibitive cost (and that’s a big side), Cooper is right. While Shatner are not “normal people,” the move away from the dominance of the test pilot and the scientist follows the populism of our time, where – it must be said – the accuracy of science is being challenged, as never before. And as Cooper points out, “It gives people hope. And if there is one thing that the world is running out of, it is this important payload. “
This type of act – hope, heroism, competitive domination, and a focused sense of competence that can sometimes overlap with testosterone – could be a primary reason the commercial space outfits thrive. At a moment when NASA and land-based space travel are not lacking a compelling Hollywood narrative, entrepreneurs and their marketers jump in right away.
“American dominance in space, nobody cares. It is Bezos who says: “We cannot go on living like this. We have to save the planet, ‘says Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Professor of Religion and Science in Society at Wesleyan University. The result, she says, is “a friendlier, gentler colonialism,” in which people circle around under premises that appear justified but require closer scrutiny.
“It’s the billionaires who have the utopian visions,” says Rubenstein, author of the upcoming book “Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race”.
“The states cannot raise it,” she says. “You have no history.”
STARTING SHATNER
We live in a time when the fictional and the real have a complicated relationship, and sometimes it’s hard to separate them. Something like that, a collision of dreams and real ambition and success, couldn’t have a more powerful ambassador than the oversized personality of William Shatner.
“I went there last week to rehearse whatever they call it,” Shatner told Anderson Cooper.
“Training, I think, is what they call,” Cooper said, to which Shatner replied, “I consider it a rehearsal.”
And there it is again – the plot, which is addicting as always, stealing oxygen from other important issues. Should we even colonize space? Don’t we have enough to do to worry here at home? Aren’t there people with more pressing problems who could use the money?
And what if we encounter a life that is not life as we know it and harm it out of forgetfulness or greed? It’s not like this hasn’t happened countless times here on earth, in the land that put a man on the moon but is still grappling with a horror story, from slave markets to smallpox blankets. These are just a few of the questions that will be ascending and descending with Shatner on Wednesday.
Is it a stunt Secure. Is it a brilliant marketing ploy? Absolutely. Is it cynical and high-handed and just designed to make more money and get more exposure to the richest man in the world? You have to decide for yourself.
In the meantime, consider the autobiographical song “Real,” which Shatner recorded in 2004 with country singer Brad Paisley.
“I would like to help the world and all of its problems. But I’m an entertainer and that’s all, ”he says in it. “So the next time there’s an asteroid or a natural disaster, I’ll be flattered that you thought of me – but I’m not the one.”
It turned out to be him – this time. But next time? In the future of the final frontier and the culture that has grown around it – in this unusual area where risk is business – this ultimately needs to be addressed.
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Ted Anthony, Director of New Storytelling and Newsroom Innovation at The Associated Press, has been writing about American culture since 1990 and has been watching Star Trek since 1969. The middle name of his younger son is Kirk. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted
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