Category: Culture

While we’re talking about Trek, lemme mention something that many may remember but many may have forgot or never known about.

There’s a sixth Star Trek series that is seldom discussed today except in fearful whispers.

Despised and shunned more than Voyager, it is Star Trek: The Animated Series (TAS).

It ran for two years (22 episodes) in the 1973-1975 seasons.

To quote H. P. Lovecraft: "It was horrible . . . blasphemous . . . loathsome . . . abnormal."

Or was it?

The series did indeed have clunker episodes, and a disproportionate number of them. But then so did The Original Series which ran 78 episodes and, in the words of Phillip J. Fry were "About a third of them good."

TAS had the advantages of having the original cast members (Bill Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, etc.) doing the character voices. It had the advantage of Star Trek veterans and mainstream sci-fi writers doing scripts (Larry Niven, David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana). Its animated format allowed the creation of aliens, including crew members, who could never have been done in a live-action series at the time. It also introduced the holodeck technology that reappeared and became a fixture starting with Next Gen.

Some of the stories were very well done, including one (Yesteryear) set on Vulcan during Spock’s boyhood that was so well done details of it later became canonical on live-action shows despite the fact that the animated series has generally been ejected from continuity.

Yes, the series is regrettably considered non-canonical by most. Thus (except for events mentioned in Yesteryear) it is not included in Michael and Denise Okuda’s Star Trek Chronology. This is a pity because the two-year animated series could serve as a nice completion of the Enterprise’s famed "five-year mission" which only ran three years in the original series. Instead, the Chronology treats the five-year mission as having begun two years before TOS and ejects TAS from the timeline.

Admittedly, the series wasn’t up to the same standard. It had more clunker episodes, and even the good ones suffered from being only twenty-one minutes long (as opposed to about fifty for TOS) and aimed to a greater degree at children. Still, I have a fondness for it and, as bad as Trek has been on other occasions, I incline toward including it in the canon.

The series is currently out on VHS. Hopefully it’ll be out on DVD.

In the meantime,

HERE’S A SITE WHERE YOU CAN LEARN ALL ABOUT STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES.

Folks may know that DS9 veteran Manny Coto is serving this year as show runner on the now-final season of Star Trek: Enterprise.

He’s doing good stuff.

What folks may not know is that a slot as executive producer on the show was offered to Joe Michael Straczynski (JMS) of B5 fame, but he turned it down.

He did, however, collaborate on a work that was sent to UPN about how to revitalize the Star Trek franchise.

In the wake of Enterprise’s cancellation, just after midnight, he sent out

THIS NOTE TO B5 AND TREK FANS IN WHICH HE OPENLY LOBBIED THEM TO ASK UPN TO LET HIM AND DARK SKIES’ CREATOR BRYCE ZABEL CREATE A NEW STAR TREK SERIES.

Among other interesting things, he wrote:

Bryce Zabel (recently the head of the Television Academy and creator/executive producer of Dark Skies) and I share one thing in common. We are both long-time Trek fans, from the earliest days, who felt that the later iterations were not up to the standards set by the original series. (I’m exempting TNG because that one worked nicely, and was in many ways the truest to the original series because Gene was still around to shepherd its creation and execution.)

Over time, Trek was treated like a porsche that’s kept in the garage all the time, for fear of scratching the finish. The stories were, for the most part, safe, more about technology than what William Faulkner described as "the human heart in conflict with itself." Yes, there were always exceptions, but in general that trend became more and more apparent with the passage of years. Which was why so often I came down on the later stories, which I did openly, because I didn’t feel they lined up with what Trek was created to be. I don’t apologize for it, because that was what I felt as a fan of Trek. That’s why I had Majel appear on B5, to send a message: that I believe in what Gene created.

Because left to its own devices, allowed to go as far as it could, telling the same kind of challenging stories Trek was always known for, it could blow the doors off science fiction television. Think of it for a moment, a series with a forty year solid name, guaranteed markets…can you think of a better time when you take chances and can tell daring, imaginative, challenging stories? Why play it safe?

When Enterprise went down, those involved shrugged and wrote it off to "franchise fatigue," their phrase, not mine.

I don’t believe that for a second. Neither does Bryce. There’s a tremendous hunger for Trek out there. It just has to be Trek done *right*.

Last year, Bryce and I sat down and, on our own, out of a sheer love of Trek as it was and should be, wrote a series bible/treatment for a return to the roots of Trek. To re-boot the Trek universe. Understand: writer/producers in TV just don’t do that sort of thing on their own, everybody always insists on doing it for vast sums of money. We did it entirely on our own, setting aside other, paying deadlines out of our passion for the series. We set out a full five-year arc.

He said that, though he had lots to keep him busy until 2007, he’d set it all aside for the chance to do the Trek series he had in mind.

A few hours later (JMS stays up crazy late at night) he sent out

THIS POST BELAYING THE REQUEST AS HE HAD LEARNED THAT PARAMOUNT PLANS TO LET THE STAR TREK TV FRANCHISE LIE FALLOW FOR A YEAR OR TWO.

He expressed hope, though, that when Paramount is ready to reactivate the franchise that his schedule will be clear and he’d get a shot at doing the show.

I don’t necessarily agree with JMS about the quality of Trek declining after Next Gen. My current impression (this may change after the DVD release of Enterprise) is that the Trek series are to be ranked from best to worst in this way:

1. Deep Space 9
2. Next Gen
3. Original Series
4. Enterprise (if the fourth season is counted)
5. Voyager
6. Animated

I thus feel DS9 rather than TNG was the highpoint.

Nevertheless, I think JMS doing Star Trek could be awesome.

I’m a little cautious about his use of the term "re-boot" in connection with the Star Trek universe. I’d like to see existing Trek continuity stay intact, though I have to admit that I’ve pondered where the franchise might go next, given all that has been established. They’ve written such an extensive backstory that writers may be boxed in creatively. After Voyager closed, their best chance for finding new creative room was in doing a prequel, and they botched that (until the current season). This prevents them from doing another prequel to TOS. If they go further into the future than VOY, they run the risk of having so much technological wizardry that it overwhelms the story. ("Activate a trans-warp conduit! We’ve got to get to the other side of the galaxy before the next commercial break!") So I’m at least theoretically open to the idea of a re-boot.

I suspect that most fans are not, however. Jettison all their beloved stories and intricate continuity and chronology debates and they will be far less understanding than comic book fans were when DC rebooted its universe.

On the other hand, I suspect that JMS may have been using the term "re-boot" in another sense: Just a reinvigoration rather than a complete restart from scratch.

Either way, I’d like to see him get his shot.

I think he could do for Trek what Ron Moore did for Battlestar Galactica. (Though I’m not entirely satisfied with the latter, it’s still several Quantum Leaps [pun intended!] above the 1970s version.)

A while back there was a flap over Jim Dobson and comments he made regarding a video involving SpongeBob SquarePants.

To hear some tell it, Dobson accused SpongeBob of being homosexual or of promoting homosexuality in the new video.

Since I have previously said that I find SpongeBob funny, a number of readers sent me links to stories and asked me for comment.

I didn’t comment at the time because of what I considered an absence of hard fact. The stories seemed shaky to me–long on conjecture and short on fact. Frankly, I didn’t trust them. I suspected that something was being blown out of proportion somewhere.

Sure enough, by coincidence I happened to catch an appearance of Dobson on the Hannity and Colmes program in which he vociferously denied having claimed that SpongeBob was gay or that the video–which only has a few seconds of SpongeBob in it and which features just about every major cartoon character currently on Nickelodeon and similar networks–promotes homosexuality.

What he had said was that certain teaching materials associated with the video (which features cartoon characters singing the song "We Are Family" and which is to be distrubuted to schools for showing to children) are in some way supportive of homosexuality. He said that SpongeBob and the video were fine in and of themselves, but they were being used as part of a bait-and-switch strategy on school kids.

There’s some merit to that charge.

While the teaching materials that Dobson (is alleged to have) quoted aren’t readily available, the website of the makers of the video is, and it contains the following "Tolerance Pledge":

Tolerance is a personal decision that comes from a belief that every person is a treasure. I believe that America’s diversity is its strength. I also recognize that ignorance, insensitivity and bigotry can turn that diversity into a source of prejudice and discrimination.

To help keep diversity a wellspring of strength and make America a better place for all, I pledge to have respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own [SOURCE].

The (probably deliberately) ambiguous phrase "sexual identity" can well be construed as referring to those who have "sexual identities" other than the straightforward biological categories "male" and "female." It likely is meant to cover people of one biological sex who have homosexual (or other) temptations. Certainly it’s ambiguous enough that it lends itself to this interpretation. The words are clunky and suggestive of an interpretation meant to cover more than what the simple word "sex" would have covered.

If I were a parent with a kid in school, I’d certainly be critical of any attempt to get my kid to say a pledge like that, including showing him a video of his favorite cartoon characters that is sponsored by an organization promoting this pledge.

Even apart from the "sexual identity" clause, there are better, more direct, and more effective ways of teaching kids to be tolerant of the legitimate differences of others besides encouraging them to say pretentious pledges. For that matter, there’s too much "tolerance" rhetoric in the schools (and in society) than is good for us, as it’s used as a codeword to stigmatize those who want to maintain traditional moral values.

"Tolerance" is not an abstract virtue any more than "intolerance" is an abstract vice. Some things ought not to be tolerated (murder, for example). Whether tolerance in any particular case is virtuous depends entirely on what one is proposing as the object of tolerance. Propose the wrong object and tolerance of it is a vice.

Now, why have I decided to comment on all this now when I didn’t at the time?

Basically, because I ran across

THIS WENDY McELROY EDITORIAL THAT CAME OUT LAST WEEK.

She says a number of things in it that I find valuable, including underscoring the basic point that people shouldn’t be dogpiling on Dobson or creating a media furor without first investigating the facts of the case, and the facts in this case are precious few.

I always like it when people in the media point out that we shouldn’t go off half-cocked before we have the facts (the latter being a chronic danger of their profession).

McElroy also points to contributing factors that led to the furor, including the fact that the media is simply hostile to Dobson.

I’d add an additional contributing factor that McElroy fails to mention: SpongeBob has been at the center of rumors of homosexuality for some time. I’ve encountered the "SpongeBob is gay" rumor a number of times from well-meaning Christians who have never watched the show but who have heard it from others.

Lemme set the record straight on that: So far as one can tell from the show, SpongeBob ain’t gay. He even has a (kind of) girlfriend. (I say "kind of" because shows meant to be enjoyed by young children tend not to get into romance very far these days.) It is very easy to explain what SpongeBob is:

He’s Jerry Lewis.

Like Jerry Lewis, SpongeBob is a comic character trapped perpetually between childhood and adulthood. He’s a perpetually awkward character who in some ways functions as an adult (he has a job, a house, he lives on his own) but has many of the mannerisms and limitations of a child (he’s socially inept, can’t drive a car, has a high-pitched voice, and is naive as all get out).

There are only two major differences between SpongeBob and Jerry Lewis: (1) He’s a sponge, and (2) he’s actually funny.

I’m given to understand (though I have not verified this) that some in the homosexual community have tried to adopt SpongeBob as a mascot, and it’s easy to understand why they might want to do so. Many in the homosexual community (like any community) enjoy the thought of popular figures being members of their community, and the fact that SpongeBob is a popular and perpetual awkward man-child unlikely to ever overtly contradict the idea that he’s gay (when was the last time you saw a cartoon character do that?) makes him a tempting target.

Indeed, there is even an impulse in the homosexual community to take wholesome images of adolescence and turn them into a kind of homosexual parody. That’s why homosexual men dress up as Judy Garland from The Wizard of Oz at gay pride parades. Judy Garland’s character Dorothy is such a wholesome image of a person trapped between childhood (where the character was) and adulthood (where the actress clearly was) that homosexual activists have delighted in corrupting that image.

Well, that’s their lookout. I’m not about to let the fact that some of them have tried to subvert Dorothy into some kind of gay icon stop me from enjoying The Wizard of Oz, and if some are trying to do the same for SpongeBob, I’m not going to let that stop me from laughing at his humor.

All this does go to the question of why the Dobson vs. SpongeBob thing took off as fast as it did, though.

Though I appreciate much of McElroy’s editorial, I’m not persuaded by all of it. In particular, I’d cut Dobson more slack than she does. I’d also challenge her on one particular point. She writes:

[O]ne of the first questions I would ask is whether he would object to cartoon characters being used to inculcate sexual values with which he agrees. Frankly, I doubt he would protest Winnie the Pooh being used to advance the traditional family or the choice of women to become mothers and housewives.

Yet those choices, no less than homosexuality, are politically charged and offensive to some.

After beating up on others for conjecturing rather than checking the facts, it’s a little surprising that McElroy would feel to free to conjecture what Dobson would say about a situation without checking with him.

That aside, I’ll speak directly to the merits of the question she raises: What schools should do is reinforce the traditional moral values that society needs to keep running and that promote human dignity. Heterosexuality, the traditional family, and the choice of women to become mothers and housewives are high on that list. Those are the things that keep society running and they should be encouraged for all too obvious reasons.

If American social fabric has disintegrated to the point that this idea is now taboo in schools, all I can say is, "Well, that’s one more reason my children (should I be so fortunate as to have any) will never be placed in public schools."