TWO TO BEAM UP

Last week was tough on us Trekkies. Within a few days of each other, we had to say farewell to Walter Koenig, aka Ensign Chekhov...

...and to Patrick Stewart, aka Captain Picard...

...on The Next Generation and other Star Trek iterations.

I was lucky enough to meet both of them. In the mid-'80s, Koenig came to a sci-fi convention in my beloved hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, and between autograph sessions I got to sit down with him briefly for the Erie Times-News. He was very nice, though I recall he spent a good bit of the interview on the usual supporting actor's complaint: He wasn't given enough to do.

He grumbled that he and George Takei were "somewhere between furniture and air" in Star Trek III, though he was pleased that he had just gotten to do a funny bit in Star Trek IV; asking about "nuclear wessels" in a Russian accent on the street in San Francisco in the middle of the Cold War. He also mentioned that he had just gotten to write an issue of the DC Comics Star Trek series, and had agreed to do so only if Chekhov's name was in the title and his picture was on the cover...

It was startling, last week, to realize that the perennially boyish Koenig was 90 when he died. Looking at contemporary pictures of him, his age doesn't seem real; he looks like a college kid made up to play Nonno in Night of the Iguana...

My Patrick Stewart story is a little better. I met him in L.A. in 1996, on Paramount's joint press junket for Star Trek: First Contact and Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. Stewart came in apologizing that he had a cold, and sat next to me at the critics round tables.

He was given a small plate of fruit, which he picked at as he told me that he hoped to do King Lear twice, once as a character part when he was relatively young and vital, and then again when he was actually old and doddering. I can find no evidence that he ever did play the role onstage (though he played Cornwall opposite Eric Porter in the early '70s). But he did play "John Lear" in a 2002 TV movie Western adaptation called King of Texas.

When he finished his session, Stewart thanked us graciously and got up, then placed his less than half finished plate of fruit in front of me. I wasn't about to miss the chance to share a fruit plate with the great Patrick Stewart, so I snarfed the remainder up. And caught his cold.

Unlike Koenig, Stewart didn't seem boyish at 86--he probably never seemed boyish, even when he was a boy--but he did seem vital. It was shocking to hear he had passed, and of dementia at that; it seemed like he was working until very recently.

I've never been a passionate fan of The Next Generation; I like it, and I like the movies spun off from it, but I never got in the regular habit of watching the series, and there are many episodes I have yet to see. Stewart, however, I'm a big fan of. I think the first time I saw him to notice him was as Claudius in a 1980 BBC production of Hamlet starring Derek Jacobi; it was impossible not to notice Sewart's voice and presence. He was also one of the best, most imaginative versions of Scrooge, in a 1999 TV-movie of A Christmas Carol.

To commemorate Koenig and Stewart, this weekend I watched 1994's Star Trek: Generations...

...the only adventure (I think) in which both Chekhov and Picard appear, though they have no scenes together.

I was trying to think which episodes of the original series would be most Chekhov-forward for use in a memorial retrospective. I read that Koenig's own favorite episode was "Spectre of the Gun," in which he had a romance--with Wavy Gravy's wife in real life, Bonnie Beecher--and got to bravely face death. Okay, fair enough, but there should also be episodes that show his cool hand during battle, episodes in which he went murderously crazy, and above all...episodes in which he screamed. Walter Koenig was the Fay Wray of Star Trek; he had a better, more agonized shriek than any of the women on the show.

So here is my Chekhovian Top Ten:

"Spectre of the Gun" (because he liked it.)

"I, Mudd" (because he gets to act silly.)

"The Gamesters of Triskelion" (because he has an awkward scene with an imposing, deep-voiced woman who likes him, and refers to him as "Cheek-oov.")

"The Deadly Years" (excellent scream near the beginning.)

"Mirror, Mirror" (gets to act evil; also screams.)

"The Trouble with Tribbles" (claims, of Scotch, that "a little old lady from Leningrad inwented it.")

"The Day of the Dove" (goes nuts toward the Klingons because of his non-existent brother "Pyotr"; also sexually assaults Susan Howard as a Klingon woman who looks like she could knock him on his ass.)

"The Tholian Web" (goes crazy; screams; "And the Children Shall Lead" would be another alternate.)

"Journey to Babel" (cool in battle; "Elaan of Troyius" would be another alternate.)

"The Way to Eden" (the notorious "hippie" episode; he gets a romance with an old flame.)

And of course, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan should be mentioned, for Chekhov's memorable encounter with Khan's pets. Also, he screams.

Peace and joy eternal, gentlemen; thank you both.

DOVE TALE

Again and again I find myself sheepishly admitting that Star Trek, as in the original series, is my all-time favorite TV show. It's a little embarrassing to acknowledge that, north of sixty years old, I keep going back for comfort and refreshment to the corny sci-fi show that I loved as a kid.

Worse yet, for all the show's sophomoric heavy-handedness and cultural chauvinism and ludicrous science and inconsistently applied social values, I keep finding relevance, even prescience in it.

For instance, this past weekend I watched the third-season episode, scripted by the redoubtable Jerome Bixby (also author of the story that became the Twilight Zone favorite "It's a Good Life"), called "Day of the Dove..."

You may remember it: Both the Enterprise and a crew of Klingons arrive at a planet, lured there under false pretenses by a powerful incorporeal alien Entity. Through a variety of mind tricks and matter transmutation, the Entity gets the Federation crew and the Klingons trapped together aboard the Enterprise, which is hurtling out of control on course to leave the galaxy.

Onboard, the factions are allowed their own turf, armed with swords--Scotty admires "a Claymore..."

...and psychically aroused to furious hatred toward their adversaries and even toward each other. They soon discover that the conflict between them is self-renewing; their wounds heal miraculously and the Entity allows neither side complete victory.

As a kid, I always thought it was a pretty cool episode. It had plenty of action, including swordfights, and the coolest and most badass of all the original series Klingons, Kang, played by the rumbly-voiced Michael Ansara...

...towering over Shatner...

It was also the only glimpse we ever got, in the original series, of Klingon women, notably Susan Howard as Kang's wife and science officer Mara...

In the course of the show Chekov, under the Entity's evil influence, attempts to violate Mara, although it looks like she could smack his little ass across the corridor with one hand.

Along with Chekov, Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and Uhura all get to work themselves up into highly entertaining angry lathers in this one. Shatner's in particularly hilarious, wound-up form here: "Look at me...Look. At. Me." And there's the great moment when the hysterical Scotty, responding to Spock's attempt to calm him, says "Keep your Vulcan hands off me," but it sounds like he said "Keep your f**kin' hands off me."

But watching it the other night, it occurred to me that this episode seems unusually relevant these days. I noticed this a few years ago about the second-season episode "The Omega Glory" as well. The theme, about the dangers of fetishizing and theocratizing America's foundational documents and other objects of patriotic regard like the flag, seems like a pedestrian, basic civics lesson. But it turns out that our society needs to be reminded of it regularly.

Similarly, with "Day of the Dove," the message might seem, at a glance, like the usual honorable but ineffectual Star Trek platitudes about the horrors of war and the bondage of bigotry and the liberating virtue of tolerance. But now, in light of the revelations from the Dominion lawsuit, it has a strikingly specific subtext. Because, of course, the reason the invading Entity is attempting to create this hellish eternal conflict on the Enterprise is that it feeds on violent hatreds, turning from yellowish-white to a happy shade of red...

...when it sucks up some delicious fury.

It creates false narratives in people's minds to stir up their bloodlust--Chekov claims his brother was killed by the Klingons; Sulu later explains that the brother is imaginary, as Chekov is an only child--and feeds both sides with propaganda to gin up enmity. Essentially, the Entity is a farmer, planting outrage so that it can harvest rage. 

In other words, the Entity is Fox News, and the "news" media machine of which Fox News is the most successful and egregious example. I mean, isn't it, kind of?

In this context, some of Bixby's lines take on an extra resonance, as when Kirk speculates "Has a war been staged for us, complete with weapons and ideology and patriotic drum beating? Even...Spock...even race hatred?"

Or, when Kirk says "It exists on the hate of others," and Spock replies "To put it simply. And it has acted as a catalyst, creating this situation in order to satisfy that need."

Or, again, Kirk's desperate appeal to Kang, in the climactic minutes: "...and it goes on, the good old game of war, pawn against pawn! Stopping the bad guys. While somewhere, something sits back, and laughs, and starts it all over again."

In the end, Kang is persuaded, a truce is ordered, and the weakened Entity is chased off the Enterprise to hearty laughter from both sides...

Kang slaps Kirk on the back and for a second it looks like Kirk is going to pass out. A lovely moment; I would highly recommend it for our nation right now. But as the Entity goes flittering off the ship into space, it's all too easy to imagine it scurrying down to some TV "News" Network on some unsuspecting planet.

SPOCK OUT

A few days ago, when I first heard that Leonard Nimoy had gone to the hospital with heart trouble, I was wearing his face on my t-shirt. The shirt, bright red with Nimoy as a jowlier, heavier-featured late-vintage Mr. Spock—he always reminds me of Jackie Mason in that picture—holding up his split-fingered Vulcan salute next to the inevitable well-wish “LIVE LONG AND PROSPER,” was a gift from The Wife and The Kid. There are days when I suppose I might be a little embarrassed to admit that, at the age of fifty-two, I still sometimes wear Star Trek t-shirts.

This is not one of those days.

I’ve been a Star Trek fan for the vast majority of my life. I can dimly remember the show’s original run, but it was a few years later, when it ran in syndication in the very early ‘70s, that it became one of the fanatical enthusiasms of my childhood. And it appears that the original Star Trek is something I’m not likely to ever outgrow. I still watch it, still notice new aspects of the episodes—often new absurdities and illogicalities—and take comfort and refreshment from it. I recognize the validity of every criticism that could be leveled against Gene Roddenberry’s silly space opera—the cultural chauvinism, the jocularity, the often preposterous science, the inconsistent social values—and I say there’s something about the show, some core of decency and good-will and gallantry, that transcends all of it and makes it mythic.

Spock was one of the main reasons for this. Nimoy, who passed on today at 83, had a fairly rich career as an actor before Spock, and very rich career as an actor and a director after Spock. But it is, of course, as Spock that he’ll be most remembered—a supposedly emotionless native of the planet Vulcan, though plagued by emotional flare-ups from his maternal human half, cool, curious, expansively knowledgeable, quietly ironic. Spock was my childhood role model, and though I have never succeeded in emulating him—I’m far closer, alas, to the irascible and sentimental Dr. McCoy—I’m still extremely grateful for the influence.

We were, of course, always meant to see that Spock’s lack of emotion was a pose—that he was more compassionate, and in his way possibly even more passionate, than any of the other characters. His cerebral rationality, sometimes mistaken for callousness, was really in service of a bottomless, if sometimes bemused, sympathy for the wound-up humans around him.

When I say that Star Trek in general and Spock in particular were major and lifelong influences on me, I mean it without condescension—my gratitude is serious. But one of the reasons that Spock was able to influence so many people of my generation is that Nimoy wasn’t that serious. Like many members of that cast, he was a little sheepish about his identification with the character, to the point that he titled his first memoir I Am Not Spock. He later made enough peace with the role—finally getting some serious financial reward for it probably helped—that the sequel was titled I Am Spock.

All of those actors were essential to the show’s unique alchemy, but the original Star Trek would have been an especially dreary affair without Nimoy’s droll sensibility. I was watching Star Trek just last weekend, before I heard about Nimoy’s illness, and had been thinking how truly good he was, how much wry deadpan comedy he was able to bring to the show (“Sir, there is a multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.”).

The actor’s slyness fed into the character’s—I remember hearing Nimoy, in various interviews, explain that he came up with Spock’s handy nerve pinch so that he could avoid the strenuous fight scenes that William Shatner so often had to engage in, and how Spock had borrowed the Vulcan hand gesture from rabbis at the Orthodox services of his Boston youth. In short, like many hero figures, he—and Kirk and McCoy and the rest, each in their own way—made heroism look like fun. Spock’s upraised eyebrow may ultimately prove as iconic as Groucho’s brow-wiggle.

I had hoped to meet or see all the members of the original Star Trek cast before they headed off to the Undiscovered Country, and so far I haven’t done too badly—I saw Shatner in a play in Ohio in the ‘70s, and in the decades that followed I interviewed DeForest Kelley and Walter Koenig and Grace Lee Whitney, and got an autograph from James Doohan. I haven’t yet caught up with George Takei and Nichelle Nichols, and now Nimoy (along with Majel Barrett) has slipped away from me. No doubt Mr. Spock would tell me that it’s highly illogical to feel sad about this, but I do. No matter though—Nimoy lived long, and prospered, and will live on in many of our memories.