Star Trek and History (43 page)

Just as Vulcan origin stories have parallels in Earth's religious cultures, Vulcan's social institutions and rituals show what a society that creates a cult of reason rather than a religious belief system could look like. Although Vulcans do not worship a deity or deities, they have rituals and other practices reminiscent of religion, and their society has a strongly monastic cast. Vulcans are often shown in robes, engaging in hours of meditation. A coming-of-age ritual, the kahs-wan, resembles such religious rituals as the Australian Aboriginal walkabout or the vision quests of North American Indian tribes such as the Ojibway. Another ritual, Kolinahr, is undertaken only by adepts, and it resembles monastic rites in several Earth traditions.

The Vulcan greetings, “Peace and long life” and “Live long and prosper,” are accompanied by a salute, a hand gesture separating the index and middle fingers from the ring and pinky fingers, to make a V, for Vulcan. The salute is often used in greetings and good-byes. The first actor to play a Vulcan on
Star Trek
, Leonard Nimoy, borrowed the gesture from the Jewish priestly blessing given in Orthodox synagogues.
3
The gesture brings the sense of the sacred from a real Earth religion to invest Vulcan nontheistic philosophy with a sense of majesty and solemnity.

The basis of Vulcan philosophy is IDIC, “infinite diversity in infinite combinations,” or in Vulcan,
kol ut shan
. This idea both affirms a tolerance for the diversity of life and the vast array of variables in the universe. The symbol for the IDIC consists of geometric shapes overlapping upon each other—a crescent with an overlapping triangle that has a circular shape at its tip. As a symbol Vulcans wear, this IDIC emblem is similar to a religious symbol such as a cross or an eagle feather.

The values of Vulcan society are scientific inquiry, self-control, peace, and tolerance, and Vulcan institutions reflect that. The Vulcan Science Academy, for example, is one of the most important organizations in Vulcan society. Research conducted at this institution benefited all member species of the Federation, and it resulted in the development of time travel, red matter, and transporters. The academy is also a symbol of the central place of science in this society.

The Vulcans are a people with strong emotions who deify logic, placing it at the center of their culture where human religions put God. They consider themselves uniquely destructive and animalistic, more so than humans. This resonates with ideas in Earth religions about sin and human imperfection. Vulcans believe Surak's teachings about logic saved them twice, once at the Time of Awakening, when he persuaded them not to destroy themselves through civil war, and again during the Reformation, when Surak was effectively reincarnated through the Syrrannites. It is never clear whether the Vulcan ability to master emotion and rely on reason is inherent in them as a species or is only the result of culture. Nowhere is this more evident than with Spock.

As a person of mixed Vulcan-human heritage, Spock often struggles to maintain a Vulcan identify. Many Vulcans did not see him as a true Vulcan because he had difficulty mastering his emotions. He attempted to sever his human side and left Starfleet for several years so he could train for the Kolinahr ritual. At the ritual, Spock's emotions began to surface, and he found himself unable to complete it. Traditions such as the Kolinahr are vital to the Vulcan identity. Did this make Spock less of a Vulcan?

In the “reboot” timeline, all Vulcans may have to grapple with similar challenges. Can Vulcans maintain both their collective and individual identities if they have lost the planet where those originated? The most recent
Star Trek
movie takes place in an alternate “parallel” universe that resulted when Spock and the Romulan Nero were sucked into the black hole. In this new universe, Vulcan has been destroyed by a black hole, and the Vulcans are an endangered species.

What would
Star Trek
's universe be without Vulcans? In the reboot timeline, the original Spock, or “Spock Prime,” found a planet where a new Vulcan colony could be established, and the younger Spock was able to evacuate some of the Vulcan elders before the destruction of the planet in order to preserve the essence and culture of Vulcan. Spock was able to rescue his father, but the katras of many important Vulcans were surely lost, and we have no information about the fate of others who were living on Vulcan at the time of the Romulan attack. In this new reality, all bets are off. The reboot series has thus created a Vulcan diaspora, which may have to use time travel and the existence of parallel universes to reestablish Vulcan culture and to maintain its philosophy and culture of logic within the
Star Trek
universe.

In creating the Vulcans, Gene Rodenberry offered speculations about a culture in which God-centered religions were replaced by a veneration of science and knowledge. The
Star Trek
creators, including both writers and some of the actors who created Vulcan characters, developed this idea even further. Vulcans have rituals like those attached to religions, the practice of meditation, and disciplines that look monastic. The Vulcans' view of their own history contains the same conviction that some human religions are based on: that people are flawed beings overcoming their own violence and uncontrollable passion through grace—but their grace is the grace of science and logic, not of anything spiritual or irrational. It is no wonder that many fans want to adopt the Vulcan way of life.

Notes

1.
Fernand Braudel,
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
, Volume 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 773.

2.
We are introduced to Sela, the blond-haired character whose mother was human and whose father was Romulan, in
TNG
, which suggests that a blond-haired Vulcan might be possible.

3.
Nimoy describes the origin of the hand salute in an interview on the Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/21/leonard-nimoy-describes-h_n_864911.html
.

M. G. DuPree

In 1966, a test audience in Los Angeles sat down to watch a pilot, titled “The Cage,” for a new science fiction show called
Star Trek.
Its creator, Gene Roddenberry, awaited their verdict anxiously. The show starred a handsome, impetuous, born-to-command captain, backed up by his able first officer, who was dedicated, brilliant, and utterly emotionless. No, it wasn't Kirk and Spock: it was Captain Pike (played by Jeffrey Hunter) and Number One (played by Majel Barrett). This first officer, with many of the same character traits that would make Spock such a fascinating figure to decades of fans, was a woman, and the audience hated it—and her.
1

Roddenberry later recalled being particularly disappointed with the reaction of the women in the test audience. Expecting that they would cheer upon seeing a woman on-screen in a command role, he was surprised that the overall reaction was not “Go sister, go!” but “Who does she think she is?” Both men and women in the test audience were uncomfortable with what appeared to be the upending of traditional gender roles.
2
However, in an unexpected move, NBC was not willing to give up on the idea of a science fiction series, and they sent Roddenberry (in whom network executives apparently still had faith) back to the drawing board. This time, Kirk and Spock emerged, and the woman a heartbeat from command on the bridge had been replaced by a woman at the communications station—Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols, whose role in the beginning was essentially that of a glorified cosmic receptionist. Throughout the original
Star Trek
, women would serve as foils, as temptresses, as paths not taken, as threats, or as subordinates, while Kirk romped his way across the galaxy. It would be twenty-nine years before TV audiences had another chance to see, in
Voyager
's Captain Janeway, a lead female character in a
Star Trek
series, much less a woman in command.
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It was as though in making his pilot episode, Roddenberry had forgotten the essential structure of myth, which of course is what science fiction is. Myth, in any culture, is the working out of present anxieties against a backdrop of a time (and sometimes place) removed from one's own—as though the fanciful setting allows one to see the dilemma of what needs working out more clearly, like a microbe in a petri dish. Myths—whether ancient Greek, Aztec, or Chinese—are remarkable not for how different from the audience their heroes are, but for how similar.

Hera and Zeus hurl thunderbolts and mountains, defy the boundaries of time and space, and arbitrate wars, and yet they are as recognizable to us in their manipulations and marital squabbles as they were to the ancient Greeks. In order to be powerful storytelling, myth must partake of present reality in its social constructs and behaviors, even as it plays make-believe with the settings of present reality—a sort of “let's pretend” in which the audience is transported to a fanciful past (or future) but travels as their essential selves. By using Number One to turn traditional gender roles upside down, Roddenberry had deeply upset his audience's understanding of myth, and he had troubled the network executives who needed a financial success.

In terms of gender issues, this would be the consistent story of the forty-five-year franchise. Even as women made strides in the workplace, in civil rights, and in gender equity across the globe,
Star Trek
would remain mired in a reassuring narrative of male empowerment and female subservience. At the same time, the language and window dressing shifted to accommodate more modern sensibilities: in
Next Generation
's famous shift in the opening credits away from the gender specificity of “to boldly go where no man has gone before” to what a 1990s drinking game (circulated in e-mails among fans) wryly referred to as “boldly splitting infinitives in a nonsexist manner.”
4

With that single word shift from “man” to “one,”
The Next Generation
seemed to be announcing a new frontier of gender relations. Women would have a much more prominent role in this series—both Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) and Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) would be central figures in this series.

And yet once again, the command structure on the bridge was males only. Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby), as phaser-toting chief security officer, came the closest to stepping outside traditional female roles, but her death at the end of the first season of what would be an unprecedented seven-year run meant she quickly faded from view. Troi and Crusher became the dominant female stars, and they both inhabited roles that were easy to assign to the realm of the feminine—Troi's entire raison d'etre as the ship's counselor (and one is hard-pressed to imagine Kirk's
Enterprise
in need of such a thing) was to help the crew to get in touch with their feelings, feelings to which Troi herself, as an empath, was preternaturally attuned.

Troi was the archetype of femininity writ large, from her form-fitting unisuits that no one else on the crew seemed to be wearing to her nymphlike waterfall of hair, her childishly enlarged irises (Sirtis wore contacts for that), and her heightened emotional sensitivity. True, women were no longer largely invisible, as they had been in the original series.
The Next Generation
seemed to be affirming and embracing the presence of women, but it did so only in roles that would not have challenged the gender stereotypes of 1966, let alone those of 1987, when the show premiered. As medical officer and ship's counselor, these women were the caretakers, the healers of body and soul and the support system for the other officers.

Even Guinan, Whoopi Goldberg's unflappable bartender in Ten Forward who enjoys the implicit trust of Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart), might be a transplant from the set of
Bonanza
—the wise and utterly desexed older woman who is a font of sterling advice. In Guinan's case, she is literally older, since “Time's Arrow” and “Rascals” reveal her to be somewhere between five hundred and seven hundred years old. Guinan, whose species is described as “listeners,” is frequently able to make Picard consider a different point of view, just as Troi is able to induce him to get in touch with his deeper emotions and Crusher is able to patch him back together and send him off again to the bridge. Women here are visible as they were not in the original series, but they are there to buttress and support the men, not to tell them what to do or to assume command roles.

However, in two instances in season 6, Dr. Crusher does assume command when there is no one else to do the job. Here her assumption of command is something like a Rosie the Riveter scenario: she takes over a man's job only as an extension of her feminine duty, and she relinquishes any pretensions to authority once the menfolk return. Troi experiments with command as well: in “Thine Own Self,” Troi has returned from a reunion of her Starfleet class, chagrined to have discovered that she is the only one of her class not to have qualified for commander. Determined to rectify this, she enters training for the Bridge Officer's Test with Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes), most of which involves a holodeck simulation of a no-win command scenario.

Troi keeps getting it wrong: she tries solution after solution, when in fact the only solution is to send a crewmember to his death in order to save the ship. Being an empath, this is naturally difficult for her to do. It is as though Troi, as the über-feminine, cannot quite wrap herself around the emotional (or rather, emotionless) demands of command, and although she eventually passes the test, she expresses diffidence at the end, telling Riker that he may have been right about her unfitness for command. Riker reassures her—and his assessment of her fitness for command is right—but the viewer is left with the impression of her uncertainty and self-doubt, emotions rare to any of the male senior staff. In this episode, as in the series as a whole, female value is affirmed, but only as traditionally understood females.