Star Trek and History (8 page)

7.
This story is also in Nichelle Nichols,
Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories
(New York: Putnam, 1994), 164–165; and J. Alfred Phelps,
They Had a Dream: The Story of African-American Astronauts
(Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1994), 62.

8.
Nichols interview, May 24, 2011.

9.
Ibid.

10.
Ibid.

11.
Joseph D. Atkinson Jr. and Jay M. Shafritz,
The Real Stuff: A History of NASA
'
s Astronaut Recruitment Program
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1985), 143.

12.
NASA's previous experience with
Star Trek
included naming the first space shuttle orbiter
Enterprise
in response to a fan write-in campaign in 1976. Women in Motion, Incorporated, NASA Contract NASW-3049, “Final Report by Women in Motion, Inc.,” August 10, 1977, NASA; Astronaut Recruitment (Nichelle Nichols) report file, 8935, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters History Office, Washington, DC (hereinafter Nichols report, NASA HQ).

13.
Amy E. Foster,
Integrating Women into the Astronaut Corps: Politics and Logistics at NASA, 1972–2004
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 71; Carrie Rickey, “Star Recruiter,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, December 12, 1986, Nichols bio file, NASA HQ.

14.
Rickey, “Star Recruiter”; Nichols bio file, NASA HQ; Nichols interview, May 24, 2011.

15.
Nichols interview, May 24, 2011.

16.
“New Post for Lieutenant Uhura,”
Newsweek
, March 7, 1977, Nichols report, NASA HQ; “Lt. Uhura of ‘Star Trek' Recruits for Life in Space,”
People
, June 13, 1977, Nichols report, NASA HQ; and Judy Stein, “‘Star Trek' Actress Is Successful as a Recruiter for Space Agency,”
National Enquirer
, October 18, 1977, Nichols bio file, NASA HQ; Rickey, “Star Recruiter,” and “Nichelle Nichols . . . Lt. Uhura in ‘Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan,'”
Baltimore Afro-American
, June 5, 1982, both in Nichols bio file, NASA HQ.

17.
Nichols interview, May 24, 2011.

18.
Associated Press, “Names,” April 8, 1993, Nichols bio file, NASA HQ.

19.
Janet Kagan,
Uhura's Song
(New York: Pocket Books, 1985).

20.
Constance Penley,
NASA/TREK: Popular Science and Sex in America
(London: Verso, 1997), 101, 126–127. Arguably, Uhura's relationship with Scotty, suggested in
Star Trek V
(1989) but never really developed in the films, reinforces this perspective, as this detail added little to the depiction of either character.

Brenda Gardenour

McCoy:
Compassion. That's the one thing no machine ever had. Maybe it's the one thing that keeps men ahead of them. Care to debate that, Spock?

Spock:
No, Doctor. I simply maintain that computers are more efficient than human beings, not better.

McCoy:
But tell me, which do you prefer to have around?

Spock:
I presume your question is meant to offer me a choice between machines and human beings, and I believe I have already answered that question.

McCoy:
I was just trying to make conversation, Spock.

Spock:
It would be most interesting to impress your memory engrams on a computer, Doctor. The resulting torrential flood of illogic would be most entertaining.

—TOS,
“The Ultimate Computer”

The true heart of the USS
Enterprise
as it glides silently through space in the original
Star Trek
series is not the dilithium crystal chamber that powers her life support and enables her warp drive, but a triad of men: Captain James T. Kirk, chief medical officer Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy, and chief science officer and second in command on the bridge, Mr. Spock. Bones and Spock are not only two of Kirk's most valuable officers but also two of his closest friends. Despite this connection, both men are diametrically opposed and often in conflict. On one side, we have Bones McCoy, the country doctor from the American Deep South whose irascible temper, sarcastic wit, passion, and compassion mark him as fully human, making him an honest adviser and a faithful friend. These same qualities, along with his extensive biomedical and surgical training, make him an excellent physician and medical researcher. On the other side, we have the half-Vulcan Spock, whose full name is unpronounceable by humans, for whom logic and rational thought beyond emotion are the only valid means of understanding the universe and those who inhabit it.
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As first officer, these qualities in conjunction with his formidable intelligence and scientific training allow Spock to make rational decisions even in the most difficult situations and to develop technological solutions to the Gordian knots that seem to beleaguer the crew of the
Enterprise
.

Bones and Spock are often at loggerheads because of their fundamental differences and uniquely stubborn personalities. Bones typically taunts Spock about his cold, green Vulcan blood, his pointy ears, and his absence of emotions. After finding out that Spock was still alive in “A Private Little War,” for example, Bones says, “I don't know why I was worried. You can't kill a computer.” While Bones's passionate accusations often revolve around Spock being a dead and empty machine, Spock's retorts generally come in the form of calmly delivered and pointed comments about the irrationality of emotions and the pitiful state of being illogical and human. His quiet disdain for human emotion extends to his own partial humanity, which sometimes proves “to be an inconvenience” (
TOS
, “Operation—Annihilate!”).

Occasionally, Spock harasses McCoy for the sheer human joy of upsetting him. For example, in the episode “Operation—Annihilate!” when Kirk asks Spock whether he had an emotional response to recovering from blindness, Spock says, “I had a very strong reaction. My first sight was the face of Doctor McCoy bending over me.” To this, Bones responds with, “Tis a pity your brief blindness did not increase your appreciation for beauty, Mister Spock.” In rare cases, usually when Captain Kirk is not present to act as a mediator, the tension between Bones and Spock becomes genuinely hostile. In “Court Martial,” McCoy, who has just walked in on Spock playing chess against the ship's computer, accuses Spock of being the “most cold-blooded man I've ever known” for playing a game while Starfleet is preparing to “lop off the captain's professional head.” His anger is only abated when he realizes that Spock is playing the game as a means of revealing the computer's corrupt programming and therefore proving Kirk's innocence.

Beneath this hostility, both playful and serious, Bones and Spock share a friendship predicated on mutual respect and the realization that they need each other, that they are, in fact, two parts of a larger whole, much like the diastole and systole of a beating heart. The duality and unity of Bones and Spock are evident in the final scenes of “The Tholian Web.” With Captain Kirk trapped in interspace, Spock takes command of the ship, using logic as his guiding principle and the safe return of Kirk as his ultimate goal. While a form of space madness sabotages the crew and the Tholians attack the
Enterprise
, Bones repeatedly berates Spock for sealing Kirk's death and risking the
Enterprise
. When Spock calmly reminds Bones of his duties in the laboratory, the doctor accuses him of being selfish, saying “No hurry, Mister Spock. The antidote probably doesn't concern you. Vulcans are probably immune, so just take your time.” Bones then accuses Spock of wanting to be decorated as a captain and to be given command of the
Enterprise
, to which the calm Vulcan replies, “I
am
in command of the
Enterprise
.” The argument continues until the two play a taped message from Kirk, which is only to be viewed after Kirk's death.

Ever the mediator, Kirk reminds the men that they need each other, telling Spock, “Use every scrap of knowledge and logic you have to save the ship. But temper your judgment with intuitive insight . . . if you can't find them in yourself, seek out McCoy.” Kirk then addresses McCoy: “Bones, you've heard what I've just told Spock. Help him if you can. But remember he is the captain. His decisions must be followed without question. You might find that he is capable of human insight and human error. They are most difficult to defend, but you will find that he is deserving of the same loyalty and confidence each of you have given me.” After listening to Kirk's message, the two men soften their posture and turn toward each other, humbled by the realization of their connectedness both to Kirk and to each other. This is the turning point in the episode, after which an antidote is found for the space madness, the Tholian web is diverted, and the Kirk is returned safely to the
Enterprise
. When Kirk intimates that Bones and Spock might have listened to his message, the two men deny having done so, a silent pact between brothers to protect their shared friend and colleague.

Bones and Spock are not only wonderful and ultimately human characters in the future world of
Star Trek
but also are personifications of two very different ways of seeing, knowing, and treating the human body. Both men wear the blue uniform designated for medical and science crewmembers, seeming to suggest a strong connection between these disciplines. For academic and popular audiences in mid-twentieth-century America, however, the relationship between medicine and science was as troubled and troubling as that between Bones and Spock. By 1966, the year in which
Star Trek
made its debut, the art of medicine had long coalesced in the character of the physician, an individual who filled many roles, including those of a father figure, a man of science, and a fearless, self-sacrificing hero.

The image of the physician as loving patriarch is exemplified in the paintings of Norman Rockwell that permeated popular culture for over four decades. Rockwell's earlier images, such as
Doctor and the Doll
(1929),
Doc Melhorn and the Pearly Gates
(1938), and
A Family Doctor
(1947), capture with quaint nostalgia the ideal country physician lovingly attending to children and playfully extending his services to their little friends, in one case using his stethoscope on a doll and in another taking a doll's pulse, all within a home setting. The physician's bedside manner is the theme of Rockwell's
Doctor and Boy Looking at Thermometer
(1954), which depicts a doctor, still willing to make house calls, taking the time to show a young boy how to read a temperature. By 1958, however, the setting of Rockwell's idealized physician had moved from the middle-class home and comfortable bedroom to the modern physician's office, with its hospital-green walls and sterile-looking linoleum floor. In
Before the Shot
, a young boy holds his pants at half-mast and stares at the doctor's credentials while the physician, turned away from his little patient, prepares an injection.

This shift—from the image of the kindly father who offers love and advice from the family rocking chair to the professional man of science who inoculates against disease while wearing a white lab coat in a modern clinic—hints at midcentury changes in medical practice. At the center of these changes was the increasing role of scientific research and technology in medical education, diagnosis, and treatment. The tensions between medical art and biomedical science, between the loving touch of the physician and the cold steel of the computerized medical machine hinted at in the bucolic works of Rockwell, are writ large a decade later in the conflicted relationship between McCoy, the kindly physician, and Spock, the diagnostic machine.

Mid-twentieth-century Americans idealized the physician as not only a loving and authoritative father figure but also as a brilliant scientist, a biomedical superhero with the power to cure the incurable, to stop the spread of villainous disease, and to save the lives of the innocent. This image of the physician as scientific superhero permeated popular culture in the 1940s and 1950s through “true life” comic books such as
Science Comics
and
True Comics
, the latter's tagline being “
Truth
is stranger and a thousand times more thrilling than
Fiction
.”
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In the mid-twentieth-century comic book versions of medical history, the pioneering doctor became a true action hero, an Indiana Jones whose daring research was paramount to the survival of the innocent. This same image of the physician was projected into the American imagination through radio shows such as
Lux Radio Theater
(1934–1955), which told the adventurous tales of medical heroes such as Walter Reed and Sister Kenny.

Alongside these more traditional narratives, recent events such as Jonas Salk's discovery of the polio vaccine (1952), John Heysham Gibbon's development of the heart and lung machine (1953), James D. Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA (1953), and John Franklin Enders's vaccine for measles (1963) were hailed by newscasters as military victories in the biomedical battle against disease, perhaps even against mortality itself. Medicine in conjunction with scientific research, after all, had raised the life expectancy for the average American from forty-seven in 1900 to over seventy in 1960. The potential of medical science, it seemed, was limitless if not truly miraculous.
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