Category: Culture

Art and…

In a comment I made on one of Jimmy’s recent posts I made reference to the phenomenon of government funded artwork. This comes about when artists who can’t find support for their work go to the National Endowment for the Arts (or some similar body) and request funding. Oddly enough, though, even the government doesn’t want this art most of the time. The governemnt likes to spend money on socially relevant art, which has helped to give rise to the phenomenon I call "Art and…". You know…

Art and the Inner City

Art and Women’s Issues

Art and The Environment

Art and Bloody American Imperialism

… stuff like that. But here is the really interesting part; Normally the government still doesn’t want this art, they just want to write a check. They will pay the artists to produce it, but good grief, they don’t want to keep the stuff!

I don’t want to issue a blanket condemnation of all government funded art. There is probably some that does not cause optic nerve damage. My point is that the goverment funding of art, as it now works, only reinforces the notion that art has no intrinsic value, that to be important it must be political (liberal). This type of indirect funding has also led to the misconception that if you want to support the arts, you should donate to some kind of "arts organization". That’s fine, but if you really want to support the arts, just buy art!

This direct approach means that: A) you will be supporting art that you actually like, B) you get to keep the art instead of just view it for a bit, and C) your children will get to keep it when you die!

The goverment should stay out of the art business unless they want a portrait of some politician or a sculpture for the courthouse steps. It just makes good economic sense.

The Economics of Art

3_pearsSince this is economics week I thought I would introduce part of  the mission statement from my upcoming web page that discusses the inherent worth of (good) art. Unlike apologetics, art is something I know a little about, so I feel like I can discuss it with some small degree of confidence. Economics is a subject area of which I have no knowledge at all, so I am able to discuss it with even greater confidence.

In my mission statement, I make these assertions about the economics of art:

"So, art of any kind is objectively useless, and fine art in particular (as opposed to, say, cinema) is an anachronism. And yet, people still seem to need it. I think many people with the least interest in it probably need it most. Art is a mystery, like music or story telling (whatever form it takes). It is part of what makes us human. When I hear people talk about increasing art instruction in schools because it will boost test scores, I cringe. When parents want to play Mozart for their infants solely because it will make them better at math, I shudder.

(… )

Art (good art) benefits people in a way that we can’t fully understand. We need art, but we don’t know why. Part of the dehumanizing aspect of the industrial revolution (IMHO) was that ordinary household objects were no longer made by hand, but were increasingly mass-produced in ways that favored ease of manufacture over aesthetics, ease of use over beauty, and cheapness over everything.  I believe we have suffered because of this in a number of ways. A blank, artless existence simply is not good for the human psyche. We need beauty. When God created us, he put us not in a wilderness, but in a “garden”, a place where beauty is planned, ordered and tended."

The fact that fine art is objectively useless means that making a living by doing fine art can be a bit of a trick. Especially in times of economic downturn, fine art is rightly perceived as a luxury and takes a back seat to necessities. I do believe, though, that people need art, which is why historically wherever you find people, you find art.

And beer!

But that is for another post…

Made In America

As a sometimes-viewer of the Food Network, I occasionally watched the Japanese cooking show, Iron Chef, a kind-of reality game show that pits the contestant master chef against one of the three master "iron chefs" in pan-to-pan competition. Because the show had to be dubbed for American audiences, I rarely watched. But it has now been Americanized in Iron Chef America and I find that I watch more often.

What is it about foreign shows that they are (usually) better when they are Americanized? With the Iron Chef show the answer was easy: un-dubbed English speakers. But I’ve found that this is the case in other imported shows as well.

For example, I love the American version of the Antiques Roadshow — even appeared on it once, but that’s another story — but the British version left me cold. In that case, I think the difference was two-fold: one, the British show usually only appraised paintings and furniture while the American show features more diverse antiques; and, two, the Americans are more excited about their stuff. A Brit can be told that his great-great-great grandmother’s whatchamacallit is a national treasure and barely blink; an American will jump up and down and hug the appraiser.

It’s interesting how the cultural differences between two different countries — and ones that are relatively similar in many respects — can completely change the texture of a show.

Orson Scott Card Is Wrong!

In a recent editorial in the L.A. Times, Card is found dancing on the grave of Star Trek. He writes (EXCERPTS):

So they’ve gone and killed "Star Trek." And it’s about time.

The original "Star Trek," created by Gene Roddenberry, was, with a few exceptions, bad in every way that a science fiction television show could be bad.

This was in the days before series characters were allowed to grow and change, before episodic television was allowed to have a through line. So it didn’t matter which episode you might be watching, from which year — the characters were exactly the same.

As science fiction, the series was trapped in the 1930s — a throwback to spaceship adventure stories with little regard for science or deeper ideas. It was sci-fi as seen by Hollywood: all spectacle, no substance.

Which was a shame, because science fiction writing was incredibly fertile at the time, with writers like Harlan Ellison and Ursula LeGuin, Robert Silverberg and Larry Niven, Brian W. Aldiss and Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke creating so many different kinds of excellent science fiction that no one reader could keep track of it all.

Little of this seeped into the original "Star Trek." The later spinoffs were much better performed, but the content continued to be stuck in Roddenberry’s rut. So why did the Trekkies throw themselves into this poorly imagined, weakly written, badly acted television series with such commitment and dedication? Why did it last so long?

Here’s what I think: Most people weren’t reading all that brilliant science fiction. Most people weren’t reading at all. So when they saw "Star Trek," primitive as it was, it was their first glimpse of science fiction. It was grade school for those who had let the whole science fiction revolution pass them by.

Now we finally have first-rate science fiction film and television that are every bit as good as anything going on in print.

Charlie Kaufman created the two finest science fiction films of all time so far: "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof have created "Lost," the finest television science fiction series of all time … so far.

Through-line series like Joss Whedon’s "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Alfred Gough’s and Miles Millar’s "Smallville" have raised our expectations of what episodic sci-fi and fantasy ought to be. Whedon’s "Firefly" showed us that even 1930s sci-fi can be well acted and tell a compelling long-term story.

Screen sci-fi has finally caught up with written science fiction. We’re in college now. High school is over. There’s just no need for "Star Trek" anymore.

In dismissing Star Trek in this fashion, Card is wrong.

First, it is out of place to fault a series for not having changing characters if "[t]his was in the days before series characters were allowed to grow and change."

One can fault more recent Star Trek series if they follow this rule too closely since it no longer applies on television–and so I do fault it–but much of TV is still significantly encumbered by this rule. There is still, even today, not enough room for character development on most shows, though mercifully there is more room than when TOS was on the air.

His remark

As science fiction, the series was trapped in the 1930s — a throwback to spaceship adventure stories with little regard for science or deeper ideas.

is simple chronological snobbery.

It doens’t matter that Star Trek resembled the print sci-fi of 30 years earlier. You couldn’t get away with cutting-edge contemporary sci-fi on television in 1967. No network was going to plunk down the change to do a serious episodic sci-fi series. They insisted on imposing contemporary television standards on the series they produced. Just say the word "Starlost" around Harlan Ellison and see the reaction you get. You therefore can’t hold a 1960s TV series up to standards that it was impossible for such a series to meet at time.

Further, what’s with being so utterly dismissive of 1930s sci-fi? It’s true that there was a mountainous load of junk published in the ’30s, but there was also good stuff being done. H. P. Lovecraft did his best work in the ’30s.

The factors that Card mentions about ’30s sci-fi–that the stories were set on space-ships, that they had little regard for science or "deeper ideas" (presumably moral/social ones)–may be true, but how much of an intrinsic aesthetic problem is this?

Space-ships take people to new places, but that increases story potential rather than decreasing it. I don’t see anything intrinsically inaesthetic about basing a story cycle on a ship that takes the characters new places. Homer seems to have gotten rather a lot of mileage out of that concept (pun intended). He used it for, oh, one of the most prestigious works of literature of all time.

As to having little regard for science, this can have to meanings: (1) The show doesn’t deliberately develop a focus on matters of known science, or (2) it violates what seem to be rules established by known science.

If Card means (1) then he is simply expressing a preference for "hard" science fiction that focuses on issues of whether the specific gravity or average wind velocity of a particular planet creates the potential for a specific plot situation. Nothing about general human aesthetics requires a focus of science-oriented stories (rather than plot- or character- or atmosphere-oriented stories). Therefore, it would be parochial at best to mandate a preference for stories of this type.

If Card means (2) then a different problem is created. It’s true that Star Trek violates a bunch of scientific laws, but so what? A very large amount of sci-fi (and other forms of speculative fiction) does this, and as long as it’s in the service of the story, it’s not a problem. It only becomes a problem when it starts to infringe on the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

The Lord of the Rings is the greatest piece of literature the 20th century produced, but it is not a work of hard SF.

One may have a personal preference for hard sci-fi where no or few laws get broken, but that’s a personal aesthetic and not an objective judgement about literature. To apply that ethic thorouhly would push one back into realistic fiction and out of speculative fiction altogether.

Further, among of the primordial creations of the human race was mythology and folklore, in which natural law is broken right and left. Unless you want to say that these are intrinsically unworthy enterprises–forming as they do the primordial ground of and constant inspiration for the corpus of human literature–then you’re going to have to allow the existence of varying degrees of departure from science as permissible in fiction.

The selection of any particular degree of departure (e.g., alternate history, hard SF, science fantasy, pure fantasy) is simply a matter of personal taste.

As to the original Star Trek not having an interest in "deeper issues," this is just false. Card apparently hasn’t watched Star Trek in so long that he’s forgotten all the episodes.

Not every episode may have had a deep issue at its core, but the series regularly explored concepts like the existence and nature of God, the necessity of human freedom, war and peace, racial discrimination, and numerous others. I might not like all of the answers Roddenberry and his colleagues proposed for these questions, but you can’t say that they weren’t interested in them.

The most preposterous claim Card makes, though, is right at the end. Having griped about the failings of The Original Series exclusively in his article, he then lumps all the subsequent series in with it as if they all were of similar quality. (They ain’t.) Having tarred all incarnations of Star Trek with the same brush, he then says:

Screen sci-fi has finally caught up with written science fiction. We’re in college now. High school is over. There’s just no need for "Star Trek" anymore.

Right.

This is why there are no Star Trek fans anymore. They have all become devotees of Being John Malkovitch and Eternal Sunshine. Instead of calling themselves "Trekkers" they’re now calling themselves "John Malkovitches" and holding conventions with "This Space For Rent" written on their foreheads and filling the Internet with countless fanfic stories about Eternal Sunshine.

Not!

Now don’t get me wrong. I agree with Philip J. Fry’s assessment of the original Star Trek: "Made 78 episodes–about a third of them good." There was a lot of stupid, stupid stuff in those shows, and a number of episodes are simply painful to watch.

But to be as dismissive of the whole corpus of Star Trek as Card is reveals a writer who, now that he has graduated from "high school" is in the process of proving how mature he is in "college" and so takes himself waaaay too seriously and has a restricted scope of aesthetic appreciation. He’s afraid to let himself enjoy sophomoric things anymore lest it take away from the gravitas he wants himself to have as a college man.

But y’know what? After college you start having kids. And then you have the fun of reading them bedtime stories and watching cartoons with them. And you realize: "Y’know, these are better than I thought." And you start to enjoy "childish" things all over again.

Because you no longer have to prove how grown up you are.

Orson Scott Card ought to know this because, in reality, he is an adult with several children of his own, but then he’s also a sci-fi author and they don’t get no respect from literary types, so it’s understandable if he wants to prove how "serious" a field sci-fi can be.

But he goes too far in this case.

For all its numerous flaws, Star Trek in its various incarnations really spoke to folks. It wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did without that happening. I find it as annoying as anybody else when I’m watching a Star Trek episode and hit something that painfully takes me out of the story because it’s so implausible. But the idea that Star Trek as a whole is worthless is just wrong. Many episodes of Next Gen and DS9 and even the original series were worthwhile entertainment, however unscientific or "unconcerned" with deeper issues they were.

Orson, lemme know when you’re out of "college" and aren’t trying to prove yourself anymore.

I’ve got some cartoon and childrens’ book recommendations that might come in handy.

Orson Scott Card Is Right!

In his book How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy (a Writers’ Digest book), Card analyzes Star Trek and says (EXCERPTS):

The original series creator [Gene Roddenberry] wanted characters with the power to make decisions, and centered on the captain and executive officer of a military starship. Unfortunately, however, as anyone who knows anything about the miltary will tell you, the comanders of ships and armies don’t have many interesting adventures. They’re almost always at headquaters, making the big decisions and sending out the orders to the people who do the physically dangerous work.

In any real starfleet there would be teams of trained explorers, diplomats, and scientists ready to venture forth at the commander’s orders. If Star Trek had been about one such team, the stories would have been inherently more plausible–and there would have been room for tension between the ship’s officers and the exploration teams, a rich vein of story possibilities that was virtually untapped.

Instead, Star Trek centered around the characters with the highest prestige who, in a realistic world, would have the least freedom.

Any captain of a ship or commander of an army who behaved like Captain Kirk would be stripped of command for life. But the series would not have worked otherwise.

At this point you might be saing to yourself, "I should be so lucky as to make mistakes like Star Trek–I could use a few bestsellers." But the point I’m making is that Star Trek could not possibly have succeeded if the captain had actually behaved like a captiain. Centering the series around a commanding officer was such a bad mistake that the show immediately corrected for the error by never, for one moment, having Kirk behave like a captain [p. 68].

In saying this, Card is right (except that–in a few individual minutes–Kirk did behave like a captain). Kirk, and the captains that followed (even on other series, like Capt. John Sheridan of Babylon 5) did not behave like captains when it came to leading missions themselves.

Star Trek thus violated a real-world law.

So what. Sci-fi does that all the time.

And in this case there may well be a reson: When Star Trek started, in 1967, would the networks have bought a show that focused on an exploratory team instead of a commanding officer? I don’t know that at all. A network today would buy that (think: Stargate SG-1), but in 1967 the networks had such a limited undrstanding of science fiction that they barely bought it to begin with (thinking Star Trek "too cerebral" and rejecting the idea of Mr. Spock utterly in the first pass), so it is quite plausible to suppose that the network would have simply passed on the idea if it focused on ordinary soldiers.

Having set the mold for TV space opera with Kirk (who is not, incidentally, without precedents like action hero Capt. Rocky Jones), other captains followed in his stead.

Over time, though, TV and movie sci-fi would have the chance to evolve away from this formula, and that’s something we can all be glad about.

Unfortunately, not all of Card’s analysis of Star Trek is so on the money.

More in a bit.

Religion & Star Trek

Some folks have been questioning the status of religion in Star Trek.

This is a complex subject.

The fact is, religion is not given a consistent treatment in Star Trek. Sometimes it’s treated positively, sometimes neutrally, sometimes negatively. One can’t draw simplistic conclusions about how Star Trek regards religion. Star Trek has produced over 700 hours of material, and in reality how religion is treated has do to with who was writing those individual hours.

This is true from The Original Series onward.

In The Original Series we had some episodes, that spoke respectfully of religion. For example, there was "Bread and Circuses," in which the crew visited a parallel planet where the Roman Empire never fell and there were televised gladitorial matches and such. During the episode they learned of an underground group of sun worshippers and were perplexed by this as ancient Rome <false claim>didnt’ have a lot of sun worshippers</false claim>. At the end of the episode, Uhura informs them that she’s been listening to the planet’s broadcasts and that the sun worshippers don’t worship the sun in the sky, they worship the Son of God, and the show closes with a direct allusion to Christianity and the possibility God is incarnating on other planets.

(It also, apparently, indicates a problem where the Universal Translator gets confused with homophones. Where’s Hoshi when you need her?)

OTOH, there were episodes of TOS that were very disrespectful of religion. The worst was "Return of the Archons" where a parody of the Christian religion is at the center of the episode. In this one, they visit a planet controlled by a being known as Landru, who is in total mental domination of the inhabitants, whose are "absorbed" by lawgivers (priests) into Landru’s "Body" and become smiling, 19th century zombies totally given over to "the will of Landru" in a stultified society that never makes any progress and that represses the violent and sexual urges of the people to the point that they have to have a bacchanalia evey year to blow off steam.

"Landru" is lader found out to be a 6,000 supercomputer programmed by a(n ostensibly) altruistic guy who, in Kirk’s words, nevertheless could not give the computer "his wisdom" and so the society he created to save his planet from the ravages of war ended up being not such a paradise after all.

This nice-talk about the historical Landru is a load of fetid dingo’s kidneys meant to deflect charges that the episode is anti-Christian, because the truth is that Landru is a cipher for Jesus, the lawgivers are ciphers for priests, and the "Body" is a cipher for the Church, which Roddenberry (who wrote this episode) mocks by presenting us with a repressed, totalitarian, society of smiling fuddy-duddy zombies.

This was not the only time Roddenberry let his anti-Christian streak show. Multiple episodes (and the first Star Trek movie) are all based on the idea of going into space and symbolically finding God and finding out that he’s a fraud, or an alien, or a child, or a computer, or insane, or some combination of these. The two twin themes Roddenberry felt drawn to were "God is unworthy of worship" (for one reason or another) and "There ain’t no paradise except the Federation" (all other paradaisical societies having some horrible hidden flaw).

Paramount didn’t let Roddenberry go whole hog on these themes, so he had to mask them (with things like Landru), but they’re there. In other episodes (even ones Roddenberry co-wrote, like "Bread and Circuses") religion is treated more respectfully.

When it was time to make Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Roddenberry’s original treatment included the idea that the V’Ger machine was really behind Jesus Christ (another God as childish supercomputer theme)–a fact that would have been made explicit to the audience by the V’Ger (briefly) projecting an image of itself as Jesus Christ.

Paramount totally nixed that idea.

Roddenberry was thus suitably enraged when Bill Shatner got to incorporate an explicitly God-oriented (and braindead) plot in Star Trek V: The Search for God (or whatever it was called).

Things got worse when Roddenberry got to do Next Gen, in which he had far fewer shackles on his secular humanism compared to what he was allowed to put on television in the 1960s. Not only were the episodes in which Picard gleefully proclaimed that humans are merely electro-chemical machines, there was also the awful "Who Watches The Watchers" episode in which the ship finds a planet of primitive proto-Vulcans and accidentally starts a religion among them, leading to a prime-directive violation in order to stamp it out. Secular humanism is in full force in this episode, and religion is treated very disrespectfully.

Roddenberry’s secular humanism was one of several dumb things he imposed on the series. The idea that the Federation was a paradise and didn’t have money were others.

But this wasn’t the end of the story.

Roddenberry died, and afterward the franchise passed into other hands. These folks, whatever their flaws, tried to undo some of the conceptual damage that Roddenberry had done and loosened the ideological straightjacket into which he had put certain elements of the show.

The franchise then got more friendly toward religion. In fact, the next two series–Deep Space 9 and Voyager–both contain episodes that are extensively devoted to and positive about religious themes.

Deep Space 9 has three major religions in focus: Bajoran religion, Dominion religion, and Klingon religion. It never proclaims any of them true (and in fact, it’s quite clear that the Dominion religion is false), but it offers the show extensive changes to discuss things like the value of faith, the role of evidence for faith, what the prerogatives of God are, how one may need to sacrifice personal power and prestige in order to embrace true spirituality, how seeminly unconnected events can be part of a divine plan, how the loss of faith and the betrayal of faith are bad things.

There’s one moment in a DS9 episode in which the Kai (the main Bajoran religious leader) discovers that someone close to her has embraced the Bajoran equivalent of Satanism and, stunned, her instant reaction si to slap him very hard and cry "Heretic!"–and the thing is, you agree with her! He is a heretic! He needs to be slapped! The Kai (for once) did the right thing.

Sure, the moment is masked with the trappings of an alien religion, but how often do you find a moment on television that affectively conveys to the audience the horror of what heresy is.

This is something that simply could not be achieved without the sci-fi setting. If you had the pope slapping a Satanist here on Earth and yelling "Heretic!" at him, the audience would be pulled into all kinds of analysis and introspection about Christian history and "oppression" and violence and love and compassion and such and the emotional horror of heresy would be muddied.

But in the sci-fi setting, even secular members of the audience are on the Kai’s side, cheering her on, making the moment a protoevangelium for them.

Unfortunately, the Kai’s resolution is fleeting and she subsequently succumbs to the same heresy herself, only to find redemption (another religious theme) later on.

Even when we know the religion we’re being shown is false the series still manages to pull out interesting insights. For example, there is one episode in which the Dominion character Weyoun, who has been genetically programmed to worship the Founders of the Dominion, is discussing the matter with someone who points out that the Founders have controlled the development of his species so that he worships them.

Weyoun replies: "Of course! That’s what gods do!"

(Think: Genesis.)

In another episode, Weyoun is chuckling to himself about how silly and superstitious the Bajorans’ worship of the Prophets as gods is and another character points out that Weyoun himself worships the Founders as gods.

Weyoun instantly becomes very serious and says: "That’s different."

"How so?"

"The Founders are gods."

We, the viewers, know that Weyoun’s religion is false, but they still admire Weyoun for sticking by his beliefs. He may be immoral in other ways, but he’s going to stick by the priciples of his faith even if others don’t, and you respect him for that.

There is even a very touching moment when Weyoun dies (one of the times he dies) in which he knows he may have sinned and is extremely anxious to receive his god’s "blessing" (read: "absolution") before he passes into the next world. Weyoun is genuinely fearful of what may happen to him if he isn’t absolved before he dies, and it is a moving moment.

Star Trek Voyager also has significant exploration of religious themes. In this show we finally get a human character who is overtly religious (Chakotay, who follows a religion based on the beliefs of Native Americans), and there are episodes that directly imply (in a variety of different contexts) that matter is not everything and that there is a spiritual dimension to the world that we need to pay attention to and that we may need to rely upon for help.

There is even an episode ("Barge of the Dead") that warns that we need to take the possibility of going to hell seriously. In this episode, the half-Klingon B’Elanna Torres experiences has a near death experience in which she is made to understand that, if she says on her current path, she will go to hell (albeit a Klingon-themed hell).

The current series–Star Trek Enterprise–has also touched on religion in non-dismissive ways.

In a first season episode the alien Dr. Phlox comments positively about his study of Earth religions, mentioning in particular his visit to India to learn about Hinduism and his attending Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

This season we got to see the Vulcan equivalent of the Reformation take place (though the differences are enough that there is no Catholic-bashing message here; it’s just a Reformation-like event on another planet), and afterwards the Vulcan first officer T’Pol is shown spending a lot of time reading a book that is explicitly referred to on screen as a "Vulcan ‘Bible.’"

Who’da thought we’d see a character doing the sci-fi equivalent of Bible study on Star Trek?

So, while Star Trek has many flaws, and while Gene Roddenberry was an anti-Christian secular humanist, it is not accurate to portray the series as if it was uniformly hostile to religion. While there are anti-religious episodes, there are an increasing number of positive and even interesting treatments of religion on the show.

Religion & Star Trek

Some folks have been questioning the status of religion in Star Trek.

This is a complex subject.

The fact is, religion is not given a consistent treatment in Star Trek. Sometimes it’s treated positively, sometimes neutrally, sometimes negatively. One can’t draw simplistic conclusions about how Star Trek regards religion. Star Trek has produced over 700 hours of material, and in reality how religion is treated has do to with who was writing those individual hours.

This is true from The Original Series onward.

In The Original Series we had some episodes, that spoke respectfully of religion. For example, there was "Bread and Circuses," in which the crew visited a parallel planet where the Roman Empire never fell and there were televised gladitorial matches and such. During the episode they learned of an underground group of sun worshippers and were perplexed by this as ancient Rome <false claim>didnt’ have a lot of sun worshippers</false claim>. At the end of the episode, Uhura informs them that she’s been listening to the planet’s broadcasts and that the sun worshippers don’t worship the sun in the sky, they worship the Son of God, and the show closes with a direct allusion to Christianity and the possibility God is incarnating on other planets.

(It also, apparently, indicates a problem where the Universal Translator gets confused with homophones. Where’s Hoshi when you need her?)

OTOH, there were episodes of TOS that were very disrespectful of religion. The worst was "Return of the Archons" where a parody of the Christian religion is at the center of the episode. In this one, they visit a planet controlled by a being known as Landru, who is in total mental domination of the inhabitants, whose are "absorbed" by lawgivers (priests) into Landru’s "Body" and become smiling, 19th century zombies totally given over to "the will of Landru" in a stultified society that never makes any progress and that represses the violent and sexual urges of the people to the point that they have to have a bacchanalia evey year to blow off steam.

"Landru" is lader found out to be a 6,000 supercomputer programmed by a(n ostensibly) altruistic guy who, in Kirk’s words, nevertheless could not give the computer "his wisdom" and so the society he created to save his planet from the ravages of war ended up being not such a paradise after all.

This nice-talk about the historical Landru is a load of fetid dingo’s kidneys meant to deflect charges that the episode is anti-Christian, because the truth is that Landru is a cipher for Jesus, the lawgivers are ciphers for priests, and the "Body" is a cipher for the Church, which Roddenberry (who wrote this episode) mocks by presenting us with a repressed, totalitarian, society of smiling fuddy-duddy zombies.

This was not the only time Roddenberry let his anti-Christian streak show. Multiple episodes (and the first Star Trek movie) are all based on the idea of going into space and symbolically finding God and finding out that he’s a fraud, or an alien, or a child, or a computer, or insane, or some combination of these. The two twin themes Roddenberry felt drawn to were "God is unworthy of worship" (for one reason or another) and "There ain’t no paradise except the Federation" (all other paradaisical societies having some horrible hidden flaw).

Paramount didn’t let Roddenberry go whole hog on these themes, so he had to mask them (with things like Landru), but they’re there. In other episodes (even ones Roddenberry co-wrote, like "Bread and Circuses") religion is treated more respectfully.

When it was time to make Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Roddenberry’s original treatment included the idea that the V’Ger machine was really behind Jesus Christ (another God as childish supercomputer theme)–a fact that would have been made explicit to the audience by the V’Ger (briefly) projecting an image of itself as Jesus Christ.

Paramount totally nixed that idea.

Roddenberry was thus suitably enraged when Bill Shatner got to incorporate an explicitly God-oriented (and braindead) plot in Star Trek V: The Search for God (or whatever it was called).

Things got worse when Roddenberry got to do Next Gen, in which he had far fewer shackles on his secular humanism compared to what he was allowed to put on television in the 1960s. Not only were the episodes in which Picard gleefully proclaimed that humans are merely electro-chemical machines, there was also the awful "Who Watches The Watchers" episode in which the ship finds a planet of primitive proto-Vulcans and accidentally starts a religion among them, leading to a prime-directive violation in order to stamp it out. Secular humanism is in full force in this episode, and religion is treated very disrespectfully.

Roddenberry’s secular humanism was one of several dumb things he imposed on the series. The idea that the Federation was a paradise and didn’t have money were others.

But this wasn’t the end of the story.

Roddenberry died, and afterward the franchise passed into other hands. These folks, whatever their flaws, tried to undo some of the conceptual damage that Roddenberry had done and loosened the ideological straightjacket into which he had put certain elements of the show.

The franchise then got more friendly toward religion. In fact, the next two series–Deep Space 9 and Voyager–both contain episodes that are extensively devoted to and positive about religious themes.

Deep Space 9 has three major religions in focus: Bajoran religion, Dominion religion, and Klingon religion. It never proclaims any of them true (and in fact, it’s quite clear that the Dominion religion is false), but it offers the show extensive changes to discuss things like the value of faith, the role of evidence for faith, what the prerogatives of God are, how one may need to sacrifice personal power and prestige in order to embrace true spirituality, how seeminly unconnected events can be part of a divine plan, how the loss of faith and the betrayal of faith are bad things.

There’s one moment in a DS9 episode in which the Kai (the main Bajoran religious leader) discovers that someone close to her has embraced the Bajoran equivalent of Satanism and, stunned, her instant reaction si to slap him very hard and cry "Heretic!"–and the thing is, you agree with her! He is a heretic! He needs to be slapped! The Kai (for once) did the right thing.

Sure, the moment is masked with the trappings of an alien religion, but how often do you find a moment on television that affectively conveys to the audience the horror of what heresy is.

This is something that simply could not be achieved without the sci-fi setting. If you had the pope slapping a Satanist here on Earth and yelling "Heretic!" at him, the audience would be pulled into all kinds of analysis and introspection about Christian history and "oppression" and violence and love and compassion and such and the emotional horror of heresy would be muddied.

But in the sci-fi setting, even secular members of the audience are on the Kai’s side, cheering her on, making the moment a protoevangelium for them.

Unfortunately, the Kai’s resolution is fleeting and she subsequently succumbs to the same heresy herself, only to find redemption (another religious theme) later on.

Even when we know the religion we’re being shown is false the series still manages to pull out interesting insights. For example, there is one episode in which the Dominion character Weyoun, who has been genetically programmed to worship the Founders of the Dominion, is discussing the matter with someone who points out that the Founders have controlled the development of his species so that he worships them.

Weyoun replies: "Of course! That’s what gods do!"

(Think: Genesis.)

In another episode, Weyoun is chuckling to himself about how silly and superstitious the Bajorans’ worship of the Prophets as gods is and another character points out that Weyoun himself worships the Founders as gods.

Weyoun instantly becomes very serious and says: "That’s different."

"How so?"

"The Founders are gods."

We, the viewers, know that Weyoun’s religion is false, but they still admire Weyoun for sticking by his beliefs. He may be immoral in other ways, but he’s going to stick by the priciples of his faith even if others don’t, and you respect him for that.

There is even a very touching moment when Weyoun dies (one of the times he dies) in which he knows he may have sinned and is extremely anxious to receive his god’s "blessing" (read: "absolution") before he passes into the next world. Weyoun is genuinely fearful of what may happen to him if he isn’t absolved before he dies, and it is a moving moment.

Star Trek Voyager also has significant exploration of religious themes. In this show we finally get a human character who is overtly religious (Chakotay, who follows a religion based on the beliefs of Native Americans), and there are episodes that directly imply (in a variety of different contexts) that matter is not everything and that there is a spiritual dimension to the world that we need to pay attention to and that we may need to rely upon for help.

There is even an episode ("Barge of the Dead") that warns that we need to take the possibility of going to hell seriously. In this episode, the half-Klingon B’Elanna Torres experiences has a near death experience in which she is made to understand that, if she says on her current path, she will go to hell (albeit a Klingon-themed hell).

The current series–Star Trek Enterprise–has also touched on religion in non-dismissive ways.

In a first season episode the alien Dr. Phlox comments positively about his study of Earth religions, mentioning in particular his visit to India to learn about Hinduism and his attending Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

This season we got to see the Vulcan equivalent of the Reformation take place (though the differences are enough that there is no Catholic-bashing message here; it’s just a Reformation-like event on another planet), and afterwards the Vulcan first officer T’Pol is shown spending a lot of time reading a book that is explicitly referred to on screen as a "Vulcan ‘Bible.’"

Who’da thought we’d see a character doing the sci-fi equivalent of Bible study on Star Trek?

So, while Star Trek has many flaws, and while Gene Roddenberry was an anti-Christian secular humanist, it is not accurate to portray the series as if it was uniformly hostile to religion. While there are anti-religious episodes, there are an increasing number of positive and even interesting treatments of religion on the show.

An Audible Hack

No, I don’t have a chest cold!

Y’know how they have those books at there called "Google Hacks" or "eBay Hacks" or things like that?

They’re not really about how to hack Google or eBay or similar services. The so-called "hacks" are really tips on how to use the services. Sometimes they’re undocumented tips, but often they’re just things you’d know if you actually . . . like . . . read the instructions.

Well, here’s a similar "hack" for using the Audible.Com book service.

Depending on what kind of subscription you have to it, you get to download one or two audiobooks a month. The problem is (if you’re like me) you’ve already listened to them way before the month is over and are wanting to download something new without having to pay a huge price for it.

The Old Testament, for example, will run you either 1 book credit as one of the monthly downloads you get or, if you’ve already used up your monthly book credits (which are about $10-12 each, or half of your monthly subscription) then the Old Testament will run you $119.

It’s really hard after you’ve used your monthly book credit because you’re sitting around going "Oooo. . . . I want to read that. But I don’t want to pay 70 bucks for it! I wish it was my renewal date so I’d have another couple of book credits to use."

Audible is always having sales on things, but usually not on what I want to read at the moment.

Currently, though, they’re having a sale where you can give your mom or anybody you care about 10 book credits for $119, or about $12 each.

So I thought: Per St. Thomas, I care about myself. Why don’t I send these 10 audio book credits to myself?

So I did.

And the system let me!

Cool!

Now I have extra book credits sitting in my account that I can use even when it ain’t renewal time.

Just thought frustrated Audible fans might want to know this is possible. (If you have $120 you can part with at the moment.)

Star Trek's Immigration Problem

Last night they started airing the penultimate episode of Star Trek Enterprise. Next week is the big finale.

I won’t spoil too much here lest folks haven’t seen it yet. (CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS.)

I do, though, want to comment on a few things.

The episode is better than I expected.

From the previews, I knew that it featured sci-fi regular Peter Weller (a.k.a. Buckaroo Bonzai a.k.a. RoboCop) in the role of an extremist leader who makes fiery speeches. Something about seeing this in the previews gave me a sinking feeling that they were going to do the standard things of giving it a religious/moral values overlay that would allow the series creators to make a veiled statement about "the religious right" (the way they did in that stupid, stupid Deep Space 9 episode where Fundamentalism and the Moral Majority was portrayed under the name "Foundationalism").

But they didn’t!

They had Weller playing a character named Paxton who leads a purely secular extremist group. No talk about religion or values or anything like that.

Paxton’s group is concerned with alien immigration and influence on human society.

The episode also starts setting up the founding of the Federation (to be seen in the series finale, next week).

It’s understandable that many in human society would be hesitant about joining the Federation.

Folks here don’t want to give up their sovereignty to the United Nations (and justly so! thoroughly corrupt and unjust body that it is). Why should people go unhesitatingly into a federation of planets?

It’s natural that there would be a xenophobia problem (particularly if Earth had just been attacked by an alien race like the Xindi!).

The show’s producers even let Weller’s character get in some good points–like the fact that Starfleet has been galavanting around the galaxy giving other, possibly hostile species’ knowledge of the whereabouts of Earth.

There is also mention of the fact that there are numerous "unregistered" aliens on Earth–a deliberate allusion to the U.S.’s current illegal immigration problem.

But despite these fair points, Paxton’s group is still, at bottom, evil, and the episode makes that clear.

What I found suprising was the name of the group.

"Terra Prime."

Y’know what that means in (fractured) Latin?

Earth First.

(It’s fractured Latin because it should really be Terra Prima.)

Still, "Earth First" is a good name for a xenophobic, Earth-centric organization.

Like that there xenophobic, Earth-centric group on Babylon 5, which was also called . . .

"Earth First."

Guess that name was already taken or something.

Star Trek’s Immigration Problem

Last night they started airing the penultimate episode of Star Trek Enterprise. Next week is the big finale.

I won’t spoil too much here lest folks haven’t seen it yet. (CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS.)

I do, though, want to comment on a few things.

The episode is better than I expected.

From the previews, I knew that it featured sci-fi regular Peter Weller (a.k.a. Buckaroo Bonzai a.k.a. RoboCop) in the role of an extremist leader who makes fiery speeches. Something about seeing this in the previews gave me a sinking feeling that they were going to do the standard things of giving it a religious/moral values overlay that would allow the series creators to make a veiled statement about "the religious right" (the way they did in that stupid, stupid Deep Space 9 episode where Fundamentalism and the Moral Majority was portrayed under the name "Foundationalism").

But they didn’t!

They had Weller playing a character named Paxton who leads a purely secular extremist group. No talk about religion or values or anything like that.

Paxton’s group is concerned with alien immigration and influence on human society.

The episode also starts setting up the founding of the Federation (to be seen in the series finale, next week).

It’s understandable that many in human society would be hesitant about joining the Federation.

Folks here don’t want to give up their sovereignty to the United Nations (and justly so! thoroughly corrupt and unjust body that it is). Why should people go unhesitatingly into a federation of planets?

It’s natural that there would be a xenophobia problem (particularly if Earth had just been attacked by an alien race like the Xindi!).

The show’s producers even let Weller’s character get in some good points–like the fact that Starfleet has been galavanting around the galaxy giving other, possibly hostile species’ knowledge of the whereabouts of Earth.

There is also mention of the fact that there are numerous "unregistered" aliens on Earth–a deliberate allusion to the U.S.’s current illegal immigration problem.

But despite these fair points, Paxton’s group is still, at bottom, evil, and the episode makes that clear.

What I found suprising was the name of the group.

"Terra Prime."

Y’know what that means in (fractured) Latin?

Earth First.

(It’s fractured Latin because it should really be Terra Prima.)

Still, "Earth First" is a good name for a xenophobic, Earth-centric organization.

Like that there xenophobic, Earth-centric group on Babylon 5, which was also called . . .

"Earth First."

Guess that name was already taken or something.