Star Trek and History (5 page)

Like Custer and many of the whites who settled the American frontier in the nineteenth century, Kirk sees himself as an agent of civilization, and he often chooses to force his perspective on others who have no interest in his brand of peace. Moreover, Kirk's many uninvited forays into alien space bear similarity to Custer's violation of the Black Hills, which, by treaty, belonged to the Lakota people (the Sioux). The same sense of entitlement that drove Custer also spurs Kirk into some clashes. A perceived right to make contact and to gain new information propels Kirk from mission to mission. Custer was driven by a less admirable motive: the unending white hunger for wealth in the form of land and gold.

Matthew Wilhelm Kapell notes that the myth of James T. Kirk is no more fantastic than the legend of Wild Bill Hickok. In fact, the Hickok legend's central confrontation—a gunfight with the train-robbing McCanles Gang—may never have happened, and yet the story has been elaborated through a biography, a dime novel, multiple movies, a TV series, and magazine and newspaper articles. In fact, Kapell suggests that the myth of Hickok may have as little to do with history as the fictional existence of James T. Kirk does.
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Stepping outside the Western myth and taking a look at the use of its imagery, it seems clear that the designation of space as the Final Frontier might have come from a piece of real history—John F. Kennedy's decision to call his agenda the New Frontier during the 1960 presidential election campaign. Representing himself as an agent of change in a period of great unknowns, particularly where nuclear weapons and space travel were concerned, Kennedy found resonance in the frontier label. As he asked Americans to make sacrifices to help their nation, he recalled the inner strength required to survive on the hardscrabble frontier, a quality that was central to the American myth of the West. Technology, which included nuclear weaponry, created new challenges for Americans in the Kennedy years, but social challenges such as African Americans' drive for equal rights also required Americans to demonstrate bravery and the willingness to change. Kennedy has enjoyed a bifurcated afterlife as both a mythical hero and a historical figure, and it's clear that the mythical John F. Kennedy and the fictional James T. Kirk have more in common than similar initials. As leaders, they venerate courage and toughness in the face of adversity. As men, they have a weakness for the opposite sex, and both are endowed with wit, good looks, and eloquence.

If Kirk's connection to the Western mythos requires any further proof, one need only examine the later
Star Trek
movies and series, which tie Kirk to Western imagery. In
The Next Generation
's “Unification, Part II,” Captain Jean-Luc Picard refers to Kirk's work as “cowboy diplomacy,” and in
Voyager
's “Flashback” Captain Kathryn Janeway expresses an unfulfillable wish to “ride shotgun” with an officer like Kirk. In addition, Western episodes found their way into both
The Next Generation
and
Enterprise.
Lincoln Geraghty has written that
Enterprise
's theme can be reduced to two words: pioneer spirit.
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Deep Space Nine
also connects itself to this milieu through its remote location and through Dr. Julian Bashir's desire to practice “frontier medicine.”

By embracing the Old West, William Blake Tyrell contends that
Star Trek
“takes our roots and disguises them as branches for some of us to cling to.”
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Locating the science fiction future in the frontier of the past enabled the series' producers to achieve several goals. By making the show quintessentially American, it offered the hope of a brighter future to those people struggling through the political and civil conflicts of the late 1960s in the United States. At the same time, a science fiction setting established a psychological and sociological distance from current events, which made it possible for the series to comment on situations in the real world (like Vietnam) without generating political opposition.
Star Trek
also was able to rework an imperfect American past by using a mythic Old West to promise a brighter and greater future. The series thus offered viewers the stability found in the familiarity of a nostalgic past, even as they faced the uncertainty of the future.

As Jon Wagner and Jan Lundeen explain in
Deep Space and Sacred Time:
Star Trek
in the American Mythos
, “A Hollywood Western may or may not deserve to be called mythic in itself, but it is part of America's foundational myth of the Old West, a myth that addresses in a uniquely American way our national preoccupation with the individual vs. society, nature vs. culture, and the wild vs. the tame.”
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In many ways, these issues are
Star Trek
's as well. We learn that humans of the twenty-third century celebrate the differences between individuals and value that uniqueness as an ingredient in society. The Prime Directive is not blatantly an issue of nature versus culture, but it is aimed at protecting naturally developing alien cultures from losing their way as a result of unnatural interference. The officers of Starfleet are trained to respect the wild in its own environment, while helping civilization to tame the unruly forces that threaten to generate galactic chaos.

James T. Kirk abounds with pioneer spirit. However, like any mirror reflection, his image carries with it both the good and the unseemly characteristics of what it attempts to copy. In the Western mythos, he is both the hardworking adventurer and the clever exploiter, the virtuous explorer and the unwanted intruder.

Notes

1.
Jon Wagner and Jan Lundeen,
Deep Space and Sacred Time:
Star Trek
in the American Mythos
(Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998), 126.

2.
Daniel Bernardi, “‘Star Trek' in the 1960s: Liberal Humanism and the Production of Race,”
Science Fiction Studies
24 (2): 223.

3.
Ace G. Pilkington, “
Star Trek:
American Dream, Myth and Reality,” in Star Trek
as Myth
, ed. Matthew Wilhelm Kapell (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2010), 57.

4.
This parallel is discussed by Leslie Fiedler in
Love and Death in the American Novel
(New York: Stein and Day, 1975), 192. Fiedler describes Cooper's heroes as “two lonely men, one dark-skinned, one white, bent together over a carefully guarded fire in the virgin heart of the American wilderness; they have forsaken all others for the sake of the austere, almost inarticulate, but unquestioned love which binds them to each other and to the world of nature which they have preferred to civilization.”

5.
April Selley, “‘I Have Been, and Ever Shall Be, Your Friend':
Star Trek, The Deerslayer
and the American Romance,”
Journal of Popular Culture
20, no. 1 (Summer 1986): 89–104,
http://www.bookrags.com/criticism/television-and-literature_14/
.

6.
See Robert Murray Davis, “The Frontiers of Genre: Science Fiction Westerns,”
Science Fiction Studies
12, no. 1: 33–34.

7.
Matthew Wilhelm Kapell, “Conclusion,” in Star Trek
as Myth
, ed. Matthew Wilhelm Kapell (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 214–215.

8.
Lincoln Geraghty, “‘Carved from the Rock Experiences of Our Daily Lives': Reality and
Star Trek
's Multiple Histories,”
European Journal of American Culture
21, no. 3: 171.

9.
William Blake Tyrell, “
Star Trek
as Myth and Television as Mythmaker,” in Star Trek
as Myth
, ed. Matthew Wilhelm Kapell (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 20.

10.
Wagner and Lundeen,
Deep Space and Sacred Time
, 3–4.

Margaret A. Weitekamp

As the scene opens on an isolated roadhouse bar, the viewers' first glimpse inside the establishment reveals a tall, attractive woman striding confidently toward a set of swinging doors, her profile reflected in the photographs hanging along the hallway. As she pushes through the doors, the music booms. She greets some friends at a table and heads straight for the bar, her long hair swinging behind her, her step in time with the music. At the bar, she places a large order of drinks with alien-sounding names. Her good time with her fellow Starfleet cadets is interrupted, however, when a young man, a local, whom the viewers recognize as an inebriated James T. Kirk, starts hitting on her, trying to buy her a drink:

“Her shot's on me,” he directs the bartender.

“Her shot's on her,” she answers. “Thanks, but no thanks.” As they banter, she remains unflustered, an equal in the verbal sparring. When Kirk asks her for her name, she replies, “It's Uhura.”

The author with actress Nichelle Nichols, who gave an interview for this chapter, in the National Air and Space Museum's art gallery.

“Uhura what?”

“Just Uhura,” she replies. Her brush-off answer is an inside joke for
Star Trek
fans: in the original 1960s television show, her character never had a first name. (Kirk's quest to learn her full name became a running joke throughout the 2009 film.)

But Kirk refuses to be deterred by her rebuffs. “So, you're a cadet, you're stunning. What's your focus?”

“Xenolinguistics,” she replies, adding, “but you have no idea what that means,” lobbing another volley in their somewhat-flirtatious verbal duel.

Although this scene offered viewers of J.J. Abrams's
Star Trek
(2009) their first view of Lt. Nyota Uhura, the character entered the room carrying a lot of history. First introduced in Gene Roddenberry's original television program
Star Trek
in 1966, Uhura is arguably the most historically significant character in the franchise. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock may be the leads, but Lt. Uhura broke new ground in television and helped to change history for real women. Over the course of three seasons of the original series, the animated series, seven major motion pictures (including the 2009 film), as well as a series of novels, Lt. Uhura, a Starfleet officer from the United States of Africa, evolved from a miniskirted communications officer without a first name into a powerful central character with a talent for xenolinguistics and a vital role on the
Enterprise
's command team. More so than would be the case for a white male character (whose culturally invisible race and gender allowed for greater individuality in characterization), as a woman of color depicted in popular culture, Lt. Uhura both evoked and played against the contemporary historical context. Developed in the second half of the twentieth century, a period of tremendous change for African Americans and women in the United States, the character of Lt. Uhura cannot be understood outside of that historical context.

Lt. Uhura represented a key part of the original
Star Trek
's racial, gender, and national diversity. Gene Roddenberry envisioned an integrated crew for the starship
Enterprise
, initially tapping a woman as the first officer (to be portrayed by Majel Barrett) and depicting a heterogeneous crew. Although NBC rejected that pilot (“The Cage”), when Roddenberry rethought the show he increased the emphasis on portraying a racially diverse crew. The new cast included Nichelle Nichols, the African American actress and singer with whom Roddenberry had worked briefly on
The Lieutenant
(1963–1964) for an episode that never aired. Nichols recalled that Roddenberry created the role of Lt. Uhura for her. In addition to Nichols's portrayal of Lt. Uhura, actor George Takei appeared as Sulu, another character without a first name, but whose depiction of an Asian crew member cut against popular media stereotypes of Asian characters as villains. With those choices, Roddenberry's vision offered a stark contrast with the all-white universe presented in other contemporary science fiction television, such as
Lost in Space
(1965–1968). Unconventional racial and gender casting became one of
Star Trek
's hallmarks.
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The decision to cast Nichols gave Roddenberry the potential for complexity in his series' characters. Nichols recalled, “He didn't want just a communications officer. Anyone could to that, could say lines. He wanted to add a dimension to [these] people who go out where no man or woman has gone before. To be real people. To have other talents. And so Uhura's [talent] was as a singer.” Nichols also saw the character as a well-rounded person with strong personality traits. “She [Lt. Uhura] had a sense of humor. She had a no-nonsense mind. . . . That is, ‘When I'm on the job, that's who I am. When we go into the relaxing area, then you can have fun.'”
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