Star Trek and History (29 page)

Apparently a few short centuries are not quite long enough to give a text classic status, as books from our own time get little respect. The literature of the twentieth century is usually played for laughs, hence Admiral Kirk's assertion in
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
that “all the literature of the period” is rife with frequent, even illogical, swearing and Spock's acknowledgment of potboiler authors Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann as the “giants” of the late twentieth century, the period during which the original
Star Trek
adventures were actually being produced. By contrast, several scenes later, Kirk quotes a fairly obscure passage from a D. H. Lawrence book. Lawrence died in the early twentieth century, but he was suspicious of the dehumanizing effects of industrialism; thus, the only twentieth-century author who gets positive treatment in the film is a very early twentieth-century author who did not think very highly of the twentieth century.

The most frequently quoted author of the twenty-third and twenty-fourth centuries is undoubtedly William Shakespeare; a friend and colleague of Shakespeare's, Ben Jonson, observed that Shakespeare “was not of an age, but for all time,” although Jonson may not have been thinking that “all time” included seven centuries after the Bard's death.
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Shakespeare's work is particularly popular with the Klingons, putting the warlike alien race in a long line of readers who have made a dead white English man a voice for their own cultures and concerns. Although their own contemporary literature is sometimes acknowledged, and a number of Klingon characters write for pleasure and publication, the texts that resonate for them, whether in the twenty-third or twenty-fourth century, are primarily those that a twentieth- or twenty-first-century audience would already regard as historic texts with a past, and a life, all their own.

Remarkably, the texts read and enjoyed by the characters are frequently actual printed texts. While Captain Picard plays gumshoe in the virtual world of Dixon Hill or the
Voyager
's Lt. Tom Paris creates holonovels for his personal entertainment and for general distribution, these experiences are primarily entertainment based in function and design, more similar to video games than they are to reading. This is not to imply that these experiences lack any other redeeming value; the gangsters in Dixon Hill's world certainly prove useful in fighting off the Borg in
Star Trek: First Contact
, and, as Captain Kirk and his crew learn in “Shore Leave,” “the more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.” However, the physical books that are enjoyed and treasured by the characters as artifacts as well as reading material are usually the classics.

The texts read by the characters are not paperbacks from their own centuries, and they are seldom from our own century, either. They are usually hefty, hardback editions, such as the editions of Shakespeare owned by Data and Captain Picard.
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Such texts are also not mere props to furnish the captain's ready room and quarters with the trappings of civility. While it is not surprising that a man who drinks Earl Grey and listens to opera should also have Shakespeare lying around, Picard's volumes of Shakespeare, and other hardbound texts, actually serve as important plot devices and valuable items to the characters within their lives, even if they may not be strictly necessary. Although Data undoubtedly has little need of the actual text of Shakespeare, having committed all of the Bard's words to his impressive memory, his copy of Shakespeare is a cherished possession, as much for the fact that it was a gift from Captain Picard as for the value of the author's words. The Shakespeare editions Picard keeps in his quarters and ready room (and which actually change throughout the series and films) are frequently read by Picard and his visitors. Although it appears from his ready ability to quote Shakespeare that Picard also has little need of the text as a memory aid, the book is not a decorative antique but a ready reference. Picard also obviously knows his mythology, having paraphrased (and lived out) segments of the Epic of Gilgamesh to communicate with the Tamarian captain in “Darmok,” but he still expresses concern that humans may not have enough familiarity with their own myths as he reads a hardbound edition of Homer's works.

Admiral Kirk collects antiques, but he also does more with his vintage copy of Charles Dickens' classic
A Tale of Two Cities
than simply add it to the assortment of ancient items in his San Francisco apartment, where the walls are adorned with weapons and helmets from the military past. Rather, he carries the book, his birthday gift from Spock, while he observes the wreckage of the simulation room that was destroyed in Lt. Saavik's unsuccessful attempt to defeat the Kobayashi Maru scenario in
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Kirk holds the book under his arm, touching it frequently, both during his lecture to the trainees and when he sets out on the “training cruise” of the
Enterprise
that actually becomes the last (officially sanctioned) mission of the famed starship. When he boards the
Enterprise
, Kirk carries the book with him before handing it off to Lt. Commander Uhura, who reads a few passages. Despite the harrowing experiences of fighting Khan and losing Spock, Kirk apparently manages to read most of the book, as his bookmark is in the last section when he is reading it after Spock's funeral, or he has simply skipped to the appropriate ending. Although Kirk is clearly familiar with the story, the physical text is important to him, both for its sentimental value as a gift from his lost friend and for its intrinsic worth. This tactile appeal of the written word is a fascinating aspect of the
Star Trek
universe. Rather than confining the print texts to museums and using digital versions of books for pleasure or academic reading, the characters still enjoy the feel of the cover and the turn of the pages.

“You wrote that?”

“Yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

“It was written by an Earth man named Shakespeare a long time ago!”

“Which does not alter the fact that I wrote it again yesterday!”

—
Garth and Marta, referring to “Sonnet XVIII,”
TOS,
“Whom Gods Destroy”

The characters in the
Star Trek
universe do not just experience these texts as reading material, however. For them, the Great Books are worlds to be discovered in a variety of ways. One of the most logical types of literary immersion is theatrical performance. Shakespeare is a natural choice for literary performances, as his plays were meant to be performed on the stage rather than read in print form. We only have the texts thanks to the original actors who kept their scripts; the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays was not published until 1623, seven years after his death. When actors are aboard the
Enterprise
, as when Anton Karidian's acting troupe arrives in “The Conscience of the King” (
TOS
), theatrical performances are logical and expected. It is also unsurprising to see Shakespeare performed when the crewmembers are passing themselves off as a theatrical group, as they do in the two-part “Time's Arrow” (
TNG
).

Plays are sometimes performed, though, in circumstances in which such presentations are not necessarily expected. The crew of the
Enterprise
engages in theatrical performances as personally enriching recreation, from Data playing Henry V (
TNG
, “The Defector”) or Prospero (
TNG
, “Emergence”), to the mentally upgraded Lt. Barclay playing Cyrano de Bergerac (
TNG
, “The Nth Degree”). The characters participate in these performances because they are fun, which attests to the continuing appeal of the great dramas.

Even historic texts not originally designed for performance become opportunities for role-play in the
Star Trek
universe. Frequently, the characters immerse themselves in the Great Books, even those that are not intrinsically dramatic. Rather, the stories are so valuable that they are integrated into the crew's recreation and even their hallucinations. On the amusement-park planet of “Shore Leave,” Lewis Carroll's Alice and her punctuality-challenged White Rabbit appear out of Dr. McCoy's impression that the place resembles Wonderland. While under the influence of a mind-altering virus in “The Naked Time,” Mr. Sulu acts out his Alexandre Dumas sword-fighting fantasy. Authors from the past also get in on the act, as when Mark Twain and Jack London meet the
Enterprise
crew during their trip back in time to 1893 San Francisco (
TNG
, “Time's Arrow” parts I and II).

Perhaps no tool is more useful to individuals hoping to meet beloved authors or to wander through their favorite books than the holodeck. Although
Enterprise
crewmembers can use the remarkable device and its fully realistic, computer-generated images to create any experience, from visiting their home worlds to engaging in exotic athletic competitions, they frequently use the holodeck as a tool for entering historic Earth books. The crewmembers apparently enjoy taking part in actual theatrical presentations, but the holodeck provides a more complete experience.

These literary excursions are often fairly true to the original texts, but they just as frequently allow the participants to alter the original texts, such as in Data's efforts to create a truly challenging mystery for his Sherlock Holmes and Geordi La Forge's Dr. Watson in “Elementary, Dear Data.” Ironically, such reader interaction and intervention in the story is not an experience only permitted by advanced technology; the actual course of the Holmes stories was affected by fan response among readers to whom Holmes was at least as real as a holodeck character, and maybe more so. When the story “The Final Problem” was published in 1893, in which Holmes presumably meets his death in the climactic struggle with his nemesis Moriarty, “Holmes's death horrified the nation, and young City men that month put mourning crepe on their silk hats or wore black armbands.”
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The Strand
magazine, which serialized the Holmes adventures, reportedly lost over twenty thousand subscriptions.

Clearly, those London readers were not
Star Trek
fans, or they would have been well aware that any death is hardly permanent for a beloved fictional character, from Mr. Spock to Data himself. Just as Data can control the Holmes adventure in the holodeck (at least until the holo-Moriarty comes on the scene), the fans clamored long enough and loud enough (and the promise of significant financial rewards was tempting enough) that Doyle resurrected Holmes in 1903, revealing that the intrepid detective had not actually died in the fateful encounter at Reichenbach Falls. Just as Data alters the Holmes adventures to suit him, readers have produced a variety of theories about what Holmes was doing while his fans believed him dead. Even without the aid of twenty-third-century holographic technology, readers in the past have entered, and perhaps even controlled, the stories that their favorite characters inhabit, including the stories entered by the crew of the
Enterprise.

Even without actually reading the classic texts,
Star Trek
characters seem to be so fully immersed in the stories and characters that their conversations are saturated with references to the Great Books. Many of these references are mere colloquialisms, such as the numerous biblical allusions scattered throughout original series episodes such as “The Apple” and films such as
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
and
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
, or the use of literary names, like that of Ensign (later Commander) Pavel Chekov, whose name is a salute to the famous Russian playwright Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Undoubtedly, a tremendous number of the phrases incorporated into colloquial speech are from literature. Shakespeare coined thousands of words and phrases, many of which people use without any intent of quoting the Bard of Avon. Shakespeare “filled a universe with words,” so it is only appropriate that his language continues into the universe with futuristic space explorers.
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Other uses of the Great Books as references are far more intentional, demonstrating that even when literary phrases have been absorbed into language, there are some who will recall their origins, as when Spock, trying out his newly restored memory in
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
, correctly identifies Dr. McCoy's glib use of the lines “angels and ministers of grace defend us” as originally coming from
Hamlet
, Act I, Scene IV. When the Shakespeare-obsessed General Chang in
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
belts out quotations from plays including
The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar
, and
Hamlet
(which also provides the title of the film, taken slightly out of context, as
Hamlet
refers to death rather than to the future as “the undiscovered country”), he is clearly aware of their origins.

The literary scholar Harold Bloom, who claims that Shakespeare actually invented our notions of personality, proclaims that “Shakespeare will abide, even if he were to be expelled by the academics.”
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Regardless of what is on the reading list for future institutions of higher learning, Shakespeare remains the most popular poet among a crew whose members' specialties range from engineering to medicine to navigation; no
Enterprise
has a literary officer, and the Klingons are certainly the last species one might expect to see establishing a humanities department, yet every character seems to have enough grounding in the canon of ancient English literature to at least pass a multiple-choice final in an undergraduate survey class. Even when they may not specify or correctly identify the exact textual reference, the characters in
Star Trek
demonstrate an uncanny familiarity with the elements of the Great Books. Thus, although Captain Picard is concerned that he might not remember the Epic of Gilgamesh well enough to tell it to the Tamarian captain in “Darmok,” he gives a fantastic rendition of it, reflecting the ways in which the ancient story has been embedded into the very structure of the culture, as well as into Picard's own personal experiences.