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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
A touring exhibition of genuine "Star Trek" gimcracks reminds us of the virile greatness of the original Shatner/Nimoy series -- and the p.c. limpness of all the spinoffs.
Feb 26, 2003 | The first thing that greets me is Capt. Kirk's package. Jim's intergalactic manhood is clearly, alarmingly outlined against the fabric of his tight 1960s-cut black trousers, dressing very much to the left. I assure you I wasn't looking for it -- it just loomed up like a de-cloaked Romulan Bird of Prey. It shouldn't be surprising that James Tiberius Kirk, the famously gung-ho Starfleet commander, went commando, boldly swinging where no man had swung before. Maybe that, as much as his twinkly mascara'd eyes and his captaincy of the fastest, flashiest vehicle in the galaxy, the USS Enterprise, was the secret of caddish Jim's phenomenal success with lady humanoids and aliens alike.
Indubitably, as his first officer might have said, raising one angled eyebrow: This was the crucial difference between the sweaty, highly Freudian original "Star Trek" series and the sexless, sweatless, p.c. "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Can you imagine Jean-Luc Picard not wearing spotless knickers with a built-in containment field, changed twice a day and incinerated after use?
Alas, I'm not actually in the humbling presence of the godlike genius of William Shatner himself. Rather, I'm gazing up at a monitor playing a clip from "The Trouble With Tribbles" in a medley of "classic 'Star Trek' moments," at an exhibition dedicated to a genre and a universe that have, so to speak, sprung from his loins. "Star Trek: The Adventure," held in a "climate-controlled" "hi-tech" 7,000-square-foot tent in London's Hyde Park, showcases the "Trek" universe, from the original series more than 35 years ago to the newest feature film, "Star Trek: Nemesis." Sets, costumes, props and models from "Star Trek," "The Next Generation," "Deep Space Nine," "Voyager" and the current "Trek" series, the low-tech "Enterprise" prequel, are all here. Billed as the biggest "Star Trek" exhibition ever, the London show has been a great success. This is only the first stop on a world tour, taking in Europe, Australia and the U.S., on a "five-year mission to boldly go where 'Star Trek' has never been before" -- although where that would be is something of a mystery.
In addition to six successful "Trek" TV series, each of them being rerun somewhere in the world right now, there have been 10 "Trek" movies, grossing well over $1 billion. Amazon lists 1,238 "Trek" books, 1,832 "Trek" auctions, 515 videos, 73 music items, 61 PC and video games. I simply refuse to enter "Star Trek" into a Web search engine, as I fear it will cause some kind of terrible e-feedback loop and global net overheating of the kind that happened whenever Kirk asked some upstart out-of-control alien computer to compute "love."
The whole phenomenon is, to use another Spockism, fascinating. The "Trek" series is not only the most frighteningly successful and profitable TV series of our "timeline" but also one that has helped to make television what it is -- and us what we are. "Star Trek" really did turn out to be the future -- not of faster-than-light space travel, but of couch-potato entertainment. We have been, to use yet another Trekkian phrase, assimilated. Resistance was futile.
If the original "Star Trek" series was an exercise in the power of human imagination -- and frustrated aspiration -- the massive "Trek" exhibition can only be called an exercise in hubris. Perhaps that is why the monitor on which I glimpsed Kirk's package is swaying a little, as is everything else suspended from the ceiling -- the vast "hi-tech" tent is moving in the wind, making slightly distracting and very nonfuturistic clanking noises. Close up, imprisoned behind glass cases, the props and costumes look rather disappointing and forlorn, like deeply discounted items in a theatrical supply store. The disrupters and phasers are bits of badly painted wood; the scale models of the various Enterprises are the discarded toys of rich kids. The recreated bar from "Deep Space Nine" looks like the sort of place you wouldn't hang out in unless you wanted to pick up a low-rent transvestite (mind you, if that had been true of the infantile series itself it might have been worth watching).
The armory from the "Enterprise" series, complete with photon torpedo launchers, is more impressive but something of an elaborate tease. Like the other control-panel-based exhibits here, much of the instrumentation is covered with glass screens and large signs warning "DO NOT TOUCH." What other reason would you have to come to a "Star Trek" exhibition except to press, in Stimpy-esque tongue-lolling abandon, all those buttons you've seen winking at you on TV over the years?
The Scimitar brig restraint cage from the "Nemesis" film, in which Picard is all too briefly imprisoned, is here, but has, like the film itself, the rather tired, S/M-catalog feel that dominated the later, Borg-rich episodes of "Next Generation" -- the nearest that series ever got to sex. The Borg were, after all, everyone's nightmare fetish-party people -- sadomasochists who tried to accessorize themselves a personality and considered themselves irresistible.
My pulse begins to quicken near the exit, however, when I spot, like a beacon, Capt. Kirk's cocky chartreuse green velour shirt with gold braided cuffs and also his black trousers. They are, in a display of costumes from the original series, wrapped around a headless dummy instead of around Kirk's corseted, bewigged torso. No doubt I'm a terminal nostalgic -- as a boy I watched "Star Trek" on '70s TV in a state of arousal bordering on psychosis which, obviously, has yet to subside -- but the original "Trek" uniforms, like the series itself, seem much more exciting than anything that followed. These are not clothes so much as archetypes. Like "Trek" technology, they embody an idea of function rather than a practical elaboration of it. Here is the cool, intellectual blue of Spock's tunic, with his trusty tricorder handbag slung over the shoulder; here the feisty red of Lt. Uhura's costume, breasts surging forward like rockets, with streamlined waist, miniskirt tailfins spouting a plume of long, long tights, and knee-length pointy black boots.
