Qapla!
Transcript
BOB GARFIELD: In this era of participatory media, we sometimes forget that there is one media franchise that has been shaped and elevated and kept alive almost entirely by its fans. And so to mark the 40th anniversary of "Star Trek," we've managed, through great effort, to secure a committed Trekkie to explain what's kept the franchise afloat. I'm sorry. Trekkie? I mean Trekker.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. I can hear that tone in your voice. I'm used to it. Because I admit it – I am, and have ever been, a "Star Trek" fan. [ORIGINAL "STAR TREK" THEME MUSIC] [VIDEO CLIP] [SOUND OF RECORD SCRATCH]
WILLIAM SHATNER: Get a life, will you people? [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
WILLIAM SHATNER: For crying out loud, it's just a TV show! [LAUGHTER] [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: When William Shatner said that on "Saturday Night Live" – though, to be fair, he didn't write it – it stung.
BARBARA ADAMS: I think a lot of fans feel like they are not respected. They're almost ashamed to admit they're fans of "Star Trek" unless they hear two or three references to "Star Trek" in the conversation.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Not Barbara Adams. So moved was she by the series' optimistic, pluralistic vision of the future that when serving on the jury in the Whitewater trial 10 years ago, she wore the uniform of a Starfleet officer. “If it helps to make people think a little more about what those ideals are, then I'll keep wearing this uniform,” she said, and then was promptly dismissed for talking to the press. ["STAR TREK" THEME MUSIC]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Those ideals were codified by Gene Roddenberry, a former flack with the LAPD, who cut his teeth writing "Dragnet" scripts on spec for Jack Webb. His Enterprise was staffed by a crack multiracial crew, and though that crew was prohibited by the Prime Directive from interfering in developing societies, as they hopped from planet to planet, Captain James T. Kirk found some way to stamp out race hatred, fascism and religious extremism wherever he went. As Tim Cavanaugh observes in the current issue of Reason magazine, the world of "Star Trek" was not so much a utopia as a kind of galactic Great Society, which, he says, eerily predicted the “era of total interventionism.”
TIM CAVANAUGH: "Star Trek" prefigures neo-conservatism because it's socially liberal, but any time there's a whiff of totalitarianism or just something that [LAUGHS] Kirk doesn't like about a planet, he'll find a way to overthrow the government. And they'll leave at the end of the episode. It's like, okay, well, we got rid of, you know, the god that these people have been worshipping for 5,000 generations or something, and now they're on their own. You'll enjoy freedom.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Roddenberry allowed us to examine the convulsions of the '60s, like the Cold War, poverty and hippies, at a distance, mostly through aliens, since he had decreed that there would be no serious conflicts among the crew. But occasionally, controversy did creep onto the bridge, as when Kirk and his black female communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols, engaged in America's first interracial TV smooch. Despite network fears, it didn't spark much rage, perhaps because -
TIM CAVANAUGH: There are mind-controlling aliens who make them do it, and, you know, they're sort of fighting it all the way, which, of course, just makes it even hotter. [VIDEO CLIP][MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
LIEUTENANT UHURA: I'm so frightened, Captain! I'm so very frightened! I wish I could stop truly.
CAPTAIN KIRK: Try – not – to think about it. Try. [LAUGHTER] [END VIDEO CLIP]
TIM CAVANAUGH: Part of the "Star Trek" lure is that Nichelle Nichols, and this is a first-person claim by her, that she wanted to quit the show at some point in its run, and Martin Luther King personally appealed to her to keep doing the show because she was the only bBlack woman on TV who wasn't playing a maid. And that's below the Voting Rights Act or Brown versus Board of Education or something in terms of achievement, but it was actually big stuff then. I mean, it was seen controversial at the time. [VIDEO CLIP]
NICHELLE NICHOLS: And I would hear your voice from all parts of the ship. [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But controversy didn't kill the show. After three seasons, the ratings did. And for almost two decades, as the ranks of fans swelled through reruns and conventions, they wrote their own episodes and lobbied the network. Henry Jenkins, the MIT professor who spoke earlier with Bob, says that much of that pressure came from an unexpected quarter.
HENRY JENKINS: I think if you go back and look at the original letter-writing campaign that kept the series on the air for that third season, which made it viable for a syndication package, the majority of the leaders of that campaign were women. And while they were disappointed in the ways they were portrayed on "Star Trek" often, it kept alive this idea that women, alongside men, would be active participants in shaping the future.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So, finally, after a short-lived animated show and a handful of movies, a new live-action series was launched. And instead of "boldly going where no man had gone before," the new crew was to – ["STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION" THEME MUSIC]
JEAN-LUC PICARD: To boldly go where no one has gone before. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
RICK BERMAN: We had three female cast members on "The Next Generation."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Executive producer Rick Berman.
RICK BERMAN: One was Counselor Troi, one was the doctor, and there was some discussion that here we had two women in caretaker roles, which seemed a little sexist. But Gene also created this character, Tasha Yar, who was the head of security on board the ship, and she was a tough broad, and probably the sexiest of the three.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Berman was hand-picked by Roddenberry to launch the second series, but he's been widely reviled by the fans for coming to the franchise as a newbie and for failing to fully commit to the founder's vision.
RICK BERMAN: If I could sit and corral all the things that have been said over the years, especially on the Internet, you could put me just a little bit this side of Himmler. Did I see the original series as sacrosanct and sacred? No. Did I do my very best to keep from contradicting anything that occurred in those episodes? Absolutely.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: "Star Trek: The Next Generation" also depicted a crew on a voyage of exploration, this time captained by the resolutely rational Jean-Luc Picard, a contrast to the impulsive Kirk. It lasted seven years, book-ended by episodes in which an omnipotent being called "Q" put humanity on trial. [VIDEO CLIP]
Q: You will now answer to the charge of being a grievously savage race.
JEAN-LUC PICARD: Grievously savage could mean anything. I will answer only specific charges.
Q: Are you certain you want a full disclosure of human ugliness? [LAUGHS] So be it, fool. Present the charges! [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It's a squeaker, but guess who wins? In "Star Trek," humanity always wins. The sole exception was series number three, "Deep Space Nine," mounted by Berman after Roddenberry's death. Set on a space station in a time of war, humans and aliens were forced to confront crime and corruption within the crew, and the humanity within all these species did not always win. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER] [VIDEO CLIP]
ODO: Will that be all, commander?
COMMANDER SISKO: I want you to know I don't personally believe that you are responsible for this.
ODO: Really? Now, how can that be true? You don't know me, so don't tell me there isn't some doubt inside of you, some question about whether or not I murdered the man. [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Some die-hard fans grumbled about the dark nature of "Deep Space Nine" – very un-Roddenberry. But that series also lasted seven years. The fourth series, "Star Trek: Voyager," was set on a ship flung to the outer reaches of the galaxy. Its mission was simply to return home, and it also marked a return to the original vision – only this time the glass ceiling was broken. Rick Berman.
RICK BERMAN: We wrestled a great deal with trying to find an actress who could play the captain on "Voyager" who at the same time could be feminine and tough. [VIDEO CLIP]
CAPTAIN JANEWAY: We don't run. [BEEPING]
MAN: Don't be foolish. Leave now and save yourselves.
CAPTAIN JANEWAY: Give me my people and we'll do just that.
MAN: They're mine!
CAPTAIN JANEWAY: Then get ready for a fight. Red alert! [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Did you have to grapple with the idea of femininity or did you just leave that whole discussion off the table?
KATE MULGREW: No. Of course I had to grapple with it, and it was one of the hardest things, and it was in extreme evidence from the first moment.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Kate Mulgrew played Captain Kathryn Janeway.
KATE MULGREW: And I realized that what was at stake was their largest and most robust demographic – young men from the ages of 20 to 35. How was I going to transcend the fact that they could be watching their – potentially watching their mother?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In fact, they watched her for seven years, even though the bodacious Borg, Seven of Nine, was added to the crew to boost ratings. But even she represented more than just sex appeal, because in "Star Trek," humanity was always the real final frontier. So the best-loved characters were not human. The half-Vulcan Spock in the first series, the android Data in the second, Odo, the shape-shifter in the third, and Seven of Nine in the fourth – they showed what it meant to be human by reacting against it, or, more often, groping toward it. Here's Data on a date. [VIDEO CLIP]
ENSIGN JENNA D’SORA: This is all part of a program?
DATA: Yes, one which I have just created for romantic relationships. I have written a subroutine specifically for you. I have devoted a considerable share of my internal resources to its development.
ENSIGN JENNA D’SORA: Data, that's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me. [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Later, Data gets an emotion chip, but ultimately rejects it. Spock would approve. He never understood Kirk's infatuation with humanity. [VIDEO CLIP]
SPOCK: But, Captain, we both know that I am not human.
CAPTAIN KIRK: Spock, you want to know something? Everybody's human.
SPOCK: I find that remark – insulting. [END VIDEO CLIP] [SOUND OF CROWD IN BACKGROUND]
EMMA: I love Spock. He's really awesome.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What's your name?
EMMA: Emma.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How old are you?
EMMA: Fifteen.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We found Emma at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Northern Connecticut, checking out a display of "Star Trek" memorabilia soon to be auctioned by Christie's. Like thousands of others, Emma writes fan fiction, original stories based on the series, and she posts them on her blog, as do many of her friends.
EMMA: Most of them write from the original series, Kirk and Spock. They either write slash or just friendship.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What's slash?
EMMA: Slash is the gay romance, and it's very popular all over the Web. And I write some of it, but I prefer the friendship.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: She says the fans she's met online hated the last series, called "Enterprise," set in a time before the original series, and they're very riled up about the new movie, another prequel which recasts Kirk and Spock as students at Starfleet Academy.
EMMA: And people say, they can't do this to our franchise, and they call it their franchise. I know it's definitely not our franchise, but I think we have a big part in it, because without the fans, there would be no like, continuation. There would have been no "The Next Generation" or "Deep Space Nine" or "Voyager."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Through the fans, "Star Trek" lives long and prospers in cyberspace, where they create and consume thousands of news stories and hundreds of videos, including new episodes. It's not what Trekkers solemnly regard as "Star Trek" canon. It's called "fanon," a tapestry of new plots and back stories endlessly embroidered by fans. And for decades, they have boldly taken "Star Trek" where no network ever would, including, as Emma just said, slash fiction, as in Kirk-slash-Spock, as in the love that dare not speak its name. MIT prof Henry Jenkins.
HENRY JENKINS: All of fan fiction is interested in exploring the emotional lives of characters.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Consider Spock's death scene in "The Wrath of Khan" behind a wall of glass.
HENRY JENKINS: Kirk is on one side of the glass. Spock is on the other. And Spock comes closest to speaking the emotional truth of their relationship. [VIDEO CLIP]
SPOCK: The needs of the many outweigh –
CAPTAIN KIRK: - the needs of the few.
SPOCK: - or the one. I have been and always shall be – your friend. Live long – and prosper. [END VIDEO CLIP]
HENRY JENKINS: If we accept that Kirk and Spock are the most powerful friendship in the series and that Spock or Kirk would sacrifice any female lover to save the other, then we understand what's at stake. But what slash does, or Kirk/Spock stories do, is remove that glass. Sex becomes the vehicle for exploring emotional intimacy between these two characters. So it's an enormously innovative and rich site of grass roots media.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I asked Kate Mulgrew what she thought of the Trekkers she'd met.
KATE MULGREW: Whereas I may have looked once upon these people with a jaundiced eye, as the years passed, I began to understand that this was a very uncommon group of extremely intelligent people who had thrown their imaginations into the final frontier. So I find them very forward-thinking, very innovative, and, by and large, extremely moral.
TIM CAVANAUGH: We grew up really loving "Star Trek" in the purest possible way.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Reason magazine's Tim Cavanaugh.
TIM CAVANAUGH: We just loved it as kids. You get to high school, you get to college, suddenly you become this super ironist and you realize how campy it is and over the top, and every joke about Captain Kirk getting it on with green women or about crew members wearing red shirts and dying or what Mr. Spock found in the toilet, they've all been made. To some degree, the show has outlived all of that stuff.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Which may be irrelevant to fans for whom the show may have actually outlived the show.
BARBARA ADAMS: I don't think fans should worry about there not being a "Star Trek" series on. If it's not a good "Star Trek" series, if it's not showing us what we want to see in "Star Trek," we don't have to have it there.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: For instance, the most recent series, called "Enterprise," was not embraced by erstwhile Whitewater juror Barbara Adams, and she's communications officer for her fan club, called the Federation Alliance, which requires most of its members to do community service, to make this world, now, a better place.
BARBARA ADAMS: I think that we should work at that future that Gene showed us 40 years ago. The ideals can still survive within our minds and certainly within our communities, as long as we work at it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: At some point, for fans like Adams, "Star Trek" shape-shifted from a franchise to a kind of creed, perhaps because Roddenberry made it seem almost plausible, because it made use of real science and referenced real history. Or maybe it's because his founding vision was bound up in the belief that ultimately it is our shortcomings, our passion, our restlessness that will save us – that as much as Vulcan logic and detachment are venerated in the Trek world, it's somehow better to be human. ["STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION" THEME UP AND UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York and Mike Vuolo and edited – by Brooke. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. This is On the Media from WNYC. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. [VIDEO CLIP]
Q: [LAUGHS] So be it, fool! [MUSIC TAG]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. I can hear that tone in your voice. I'm used to it. Because I admit it – I am, and have ever been, a "Star Trek" fan. [ORIGINAL "STAR TREK" THEME MUSIC] [VIDEO CLIP] [SOUND OF RECORD SCRATCH]
WILLIAM SHATNER: Get a life, will you people? [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
WILLIAM SHATNER: For crying out loud, it's just a TV show! [LAUGHTER] [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: When William Shatner said that on "Saturday Night Live" – though, to be fair, he didn't write it – it stung.
BARBARA ADAMS: I think a lot of fans feel like they are not respected. They're almost ashamed to admit they're fans of "Star Trek" unless they hear two or three references to "Star Trek" in the conversation.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Not Barbara Adams. So moved was she by the series' optimistic, pluralistic vision of the future that when serving on the jury in the Whitewater trial 10 years ago, she wore the uniform of a Starfleet officer. “If it helps to make people think a little more about what those ideals are, then I'll keep wearing this uniform,” she said, and then was promptly dismissed for talking to the press. ["STAR TREK" THEME MUSIC]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Those ideals were codified by Gene Roddenberry, a former flack with the LAPD, who cut his teeth writing "Dragnet" scripts on spec for Jack Webb. His Enterprise was staffed by a crack multiracial crew, and though that crew was prohibited by the Prime Directive from interfering in developing societies, as they hopped from planet to planet, Captain James T. Kirk found some way to stamp out race hatred, fascism and religious extremism wherever he went. As Tim Cavanaugh observes in the current issue of Reason magazine, the world of "Star Trek" was not so much a utopia as a kind of galactic Great Society, which, he says, eerily predicted the “era of total interventionism.”
TIM CAVANAUGH: "Star Trek" prefigures neo-conservatism because it's socially liberal, but any time there's a whiff of totalitarianism or just something that [LAUGHS] Kirk doesn't like about a planet, he'll find a way to overthrow the government. And they'll leave at the end of the episode. It's like, okay, well, we got rid of, you know, the god that these people have been worshipping for 5,000 generations or something, and now they're on their own. You'll enjoy freedom.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Roddenberry allowed us to examine the convulsions of the '60s, like the Cold War, poverty and hippies, at a distance, mostly through aliens, since he had decreed that there would be no serious conflicts among the crew. But occasionally, controversy did creep onto the bridge, as when Kirk and his black female communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols, engaged in America's first interracial TV smooch. Despite network fears, it didn't spark much rage, perhaps because -
TIM CAVANAUGH: There are mind-controlling aliens who make them do it, and, you know, they're sort of fighting it all the way, which, of course, just makes it even hotter. [VIDEO CLIP][MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
LIEUTENANT UHURA: I'm so frightened, Captain! I'm so very frightened! I wish I could stop truly.
CAPTAIN KIRK: Try – not – to think about it. Try. [LAUGHTER] [END VIDEO CLIP]
TIM CAVANAUGH: Part of the "Star Trek" lure is that Nichelle Nichols, and this is a first-person claim by her, that she wanted to quit the show at some point in its run, and Martin Luther King personally appealed to her to keep doing the show because she was the only bBlack woman on TV who wasn't playing a maid. And that's below the Voting Rights Act or Brown versus Board of Education or something in terms of achievement, but it was actually big stuff then. I mean, it was seen controversial at the time. [VIDEO CLIP]
NICHELLE NICHOLS: And I would hear your voice from all parts of the ship. [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But controversy didn't kill the show. After three seasons, the ratings did. And for almost two decades, as the ranks of fans swelled through reruns and conventions, they wrote their own episodes and lobbied the network. Henry Jenkins, the MIT professor who spoke earlier with Bob, says that much of that pressure came from an unexpected quarter.
HENRY JENKINS: I think if you go back and look at the original letter-writing campaign that kept the series on the air for that third season, which made it viable for a syndication package, the majority of the leaders of that campaign were women. And while they were disappointed in the ways they were portrayed on "Star Trek" often, it kept alive this idea that women, alongside men, would be active participants in shaping the future.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So, finally, after a short-lived animated show and a handful of movies, a new live-action series was launched. And instead of "boldly going where no man had gone before," the new crew was to – ["STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION" THEME MUSIC]
JEAN-LUC PICARD: To boldly go where no one has gone before. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
RICK BERMAN: We had three female cast members on "The Next Generation."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Executive producer Rick Berman.
RICK BERMAN: One was Counselor Troi, one was the doctor, and there was some discussion that here we had two women in caretaker roles, which seemed a little sexist. But Gene also created this character, Tasha Yar, who was the head of security on board the ship, and she was a tough broad, and probably the sexiest of the three.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Berman was hand-picked by Roddenberry to launch the second series, but he's been widely reviled by the fans for coming to the franchise as a newbie and for failing to fully commit to the founder's vision.
RICK BERMAN: If I could sit and corral all the things that have been said over the years, especially on the Internet, you could put me just a little bit this side of Himmler. Did I see the original series as sacrosanct and sacred? No. Did I do my very best to keep from contradicting anything that occurred in those episodes? Absolutely.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: "Star Trek: The Next Generation" also depicted a crew on a voyage of exploration, this time captained by the resolutely rational Jean-Luc Picard, a contrast to the impulsive Kirk. It lasted seven years, book-ended by episodes in which an omnipotent being called "Q" put humanity on trial. [VIDEO CLIP]
Q: You will now answer to the charge of being a grievously savage race.
JEAN-LUC PICARD: Grievously savage could mean anything. I will answer only specific charges.
Q: Are you certain you want a full disclosure of human ugliness? [LAUGHS] So be it, fool. Present the charges! [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It's a squeaker, but guess who wins? In "Star Trek," humanity always wins. The sole exception was series number three, "Deep Space Nine," mounted by Berman after Roddenberry's death. Set on a space station in a time of war, humans and aliens were forced to confront crime and corruption within the crew, and the humanity within all these species did not always win. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER] [VIDEO CLIP]
ODO: Will that be all, commander?
COMMANDER SISKO: I want you to know I don't personally believe that you are responsible for this.
ODO: Really? Now, how can that be true? You don't know me, so don't tell me there isn't some doubt inside of you, some question about whether or not I murdered the man. [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Some die-hard fans grumbled about the dark nature of "Deep Space Nine" – very un-Roddenberry. But that series also lasted seven years. The fourth series, "Star Trek: Voyager," was set on a ship flung to the outer reaches of the galaxy. Its mission was simply to return home, and it also marked a return to the original vision – only this time the glass ceiling was broken. Rick Berman.
RICK BERMAN: We wrestled a great deal with trying to find an actress who could play the captain on "Voyager" who at the same time could be feminine and tough. [VIDEO CLIP]
CAPTAIN JANEWAY: We don't run. [BEEPING]
MAN: Don't be foolish. Leave now and save yourselves.
CAPTAIN JANEWAY: Give me my people and we'll do just that.
MAN: They're mine!
CAPTAIN JANEWAY: Then get ready for a fight. Red alert! [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Did you have to grapple with the idea of femininity or did you just leave that whole discussion off the table?
KATE MULGREW: No. Of course I had to grapple with it, and it was one of the hardest things, and it was in extreme evidence from the first moment.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Kate Mulgrew played Captain Kathryn Janeway.
KATE MULGREW: And I realized that what was at stake was their largest and most robust demographic – young men from the ages of 20 to 35. How was I going to transcend the fact that they could be watching their – potentially watching their mother?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In fact, they watched her for seven years, even though the bodacious Borg, Seven of Nine, was added to the crew to boost ratings. But even she represented more than just sex appeal, because in "Star Trek," humanity was always the real final frontier. So the best-loved characters were not human. The half-Vulcan Spock in the first series, the android Data in the second, Odo, the shape-shifter in the third, and Seven of Nine in the fourth – they showed what it meant to be human by reacting against it, or, more often, groping toward it. Here's Data on a date. [VIDEO CLIP]
ENSIGN JENNA D’SORA: This is all part of a program?
DATA: Yes, one which I have just created for romantic relationships. I have written a subroutine specifically for you. I have devoted a considerable share of my internal resources to its development.
ENSIGN JENNA D’SORA: Data, that's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me. [END VIDEO CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Later, Data gets an emotion chip, but ultimately rejects it. Spock would approve. He never understood Kirk's infatuation with humanity. [VIDEO CLIP]
SPOCK: But, Captain, we both know that I am not human.
CAPTAIN KIRK: Spock, you want to know something? Everybody's human.
SPOCK: I find that remark – insulting. [END VIDEO CLIP] [SOUND OF CROWD IN BACKGROUND]
EMMA: I love Spock. He's really awesome.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What's your name?
EMMA: Emma.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How old are you?
EMMA: Fifteen.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We found Emma at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Northern Connecticut, checking out a display of "Star Trek" memorabilia soon to be auctioned by Christie's. Like thousands of others, Emma writes fan fiction, original stories based on the series, and she posts them on her blog, as do many of her friends.
EMMA: Most of them write from the original series, Kirk and Spock. They either write slash or just friendship.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What's slash?
EMMA: Slash is the gay romance, and it's very popular all over the Web. And I write some of it, but I prefer the friendship.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: She says the fans she's met online hated the last series, called "Enterprise," set in a time before the original series, and they're very riled up about the new movie, another prequel which recasts Kirk and Spock as students at Starfleet Academy.
EMMA: And people say, they can't do this to our franchise, and they call it their franchise. I know it's definitely not our franchise, but I think we have a big part in it, because without the fans, there would be no like, continuation. There would have been no "The Next Generation" or "Deep Space Nine" or "Voyager."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Through the fans, "Star Trek" lives long and prospers in cyberspace, where they create and consume thousands of news stories and hundreds of videos, including new episodes. It's not what Trekkers solemnly regard as "Star Trek" canon. It's called "fanon," a tapestry of new plots and back stories endlessly embroidered by fans. And for decades, they have boldly taken "Star Trek" where no network ever would, including, as Emma just said, slash fiction, as in Kirk-slash-Spock, as in the love that dare not speak its name. MIT prof Henry Jenkins.
HENRY JENKINS: All of fan fiction is interested in exploring the emotional lives of characters.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Consider Spock's death scene in "The Wrath of Khan" behind a wall of glass.
HENRY JENKINS: Kirk is on one side of the glass. Spock is on the other. And Spock comes closest to speaking the emotional truth of their relationship. [VIDEO CLIP]
SPOCK: The needs of the many outweigh –
CAPTAIN KIRK: - the needs of the few.
SPOCK: - or the one. I have been and always shall be – your friend. Live long – and prosper. [END VIDEO CLIP]
HENRY JENKINS: If we accept that Kirk and Spock are the most powerful friendship in the series and that Spock or Kirk would sacrifice any female lover to save the other, then we understand what's at stake. But what slash does, or Kirk/Spock stories do, is remove that glass. Sex becomes the vehicle for exploring emotional intimacy between these two characters. So it's an enormously innovative and rich site of grass roots media.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: I asked Kate Mulgrew what she thought of the Trekkers she'd met.
KATE MULGREW: Whereas I may have looked once upon these people with a jaundiced eye, as the years passed, I began to understand that this was a very uncommon group of extremely intelligent people who had thrown their imaginations into the final frontier. So I find them very forward-thinking, very innovative, and, by and large, extremely moral.
TIM CAVANAUGH: We grew up really loving "Star Trek" in the purest possible way.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Reason magazine's Tim Cavanaugh.
TIM CAVANAUGH: We just loved it as kids. You get to high school, you get to college, suddenly you become this super ironist and you realize how campy it is and over the top, and every joke about Captain Kirk getting it on with green women or about crew members wearing red shirts and dying or what Mr. Spock found in the toilet, they've all been made. To some degree, the show has outlived all of that stuff.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Which may be irrelevant to fans for whom the show may have actually outlived the show.
BARBARA ADAMS: I don't think fans should worry about there not being a "Star Trek" series on. If it's not a good "Star Trek" series, if it's not showing us what we want to see in "Star Trek," we don't have to have it there.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: For instance, the most recent series, called "Enterprise," was not embraced by erstwhile Whitewater juror Barbara Adams, and she's communications officer for her fan club, called the Federation Alliance, which requires most of its members to do community service, to make this world, now, a better place.
BARBARA ADAMS: I think that we should work at that future that Gene showed us 40 years ago. The ideals can still survive within our minds and certainly within our communities, as long as we work at it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: At some point, for fans like Adams, "Star Trek" shape-shifted from a franchise to a kind of creed, perhaps because Roddenberry made it seem almost plausible, because it made use of real science and referenced real history. Or maybe it's because his founding vision was bound up in the belief that ultimately it is our shortcomings, our passion, our restlessness that will save us – that as much as Vulcan logic and detachment are venerated in the Trek world, it's somehow better to be human. ["STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION" THEME UP AND UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York and Mike Vuolo and edited – by Brooke. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. This is On the Media from WNYC. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. [VIDEO CLIP]
Q: [LAUGHS] So be it, fool! [MUSIC TAG]
Produced by WNYC Studios