Once Upon a Tribulation
Telford Work
January 1, 2003
If you want to know what life was like in the late sixties, skip the history books. Just watch reruns of the original Star Trek.The Federation is the United Nations back when everyone took it seriously. Kirk, a swashbuckling American romantic, is a Freudian poster child. Spock and his race of utterly rational Vulcans are modernity triumphant. McCoy is a glowering medical aristocracy that knows it has all the answers. Scotty's militaryindustrial complex can do anything—even without the 30 minutes demanded by the laws of physics. Uhura is civil rights before feminism. Klingons are Soviets, Romulans Chinese. The galactic issues that face the twenty-fourth century are, amazingly enough, the same social issues that faced Americans with color televisions in 1968.
Yet Roddenberry's vision still transcended its era. After catching on in reruns and several motion pictures, the Star Trekfranchise opened a new frontier in 1987. The Next Generation's seven seasons chronicle its times too. The Federation is now the European Union, Captain Jean-Luc Picard an efficient French bureaucrat. William Riker, like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, is the icon of a military culture rising from Vietnam-era contempt to Gulf War glory. Data is Spock in reverse, taking baby steps out of modern rationalism like—well, like a Trekkie getting a life. Geordi is a multicultural Übermenschin the bright young days of political correctness: blind and black, a brilliant engineer and a trusted friend. The Borg is collectivism, Worf is the men's movement, and Counselor Deanna Troi is Pamela Anderson channeling Joseph Campbell.
What is true of science fiction is also true of fantasy. The British war years drive the mood of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, ...
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