Star Trek and History

Description

A guide to the history that informs the world of Star Trek?just in time for the next JJ Abrams Star Trek movie

For a series set in our future, Star Trek revisits the past constantly. Kirk and Spock battle Nazis, Roman gladiators, and witness the Great Depression. When they're not doubling back on their own earlier timelines, the crew uses the holodeck to spend time in the American Old West or Victorian England. Alien races have their own complex and fascinating histories, too.

The Star Trek universe is a sci-fi imagining of a future world that is rooted in our own human history. Gene Roddenberry created a television show with a new world and new rules in order to comment on social and political issues of the 1960s, from the Vietnam War and race relations to the war on terror and women's rights. Later Star Trek series and films also grapple with the issues of their own decades: HIV, ecological threats, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and terrorism.

How did Uhura spur real-life gender and racial change in the 1960s? Is Kirk inextricably linked with the mythical Old West? What history do the Klingons share with the Soviet Union? Can Nazi Germany shed light on the history and culture of the Cardassians? Star Trek and History explains how the holodeck is as much a source for entertainment as it is a historical teaching tool, how much of the technology we enjoy today had its conceptual roots in Star Trek, and how by looking at Norse mythology we can find our very own Q.

• Features an exclusive interview with Nichelle Nichols, the actress behind the original Lt. Uhura, conducted at the National Air and Space Museum
• Explains the historical inspiration behind many of the show's alien races and storylines
• Covers topics ranging from how stellar cartography dates back to Ancient Rome, Greece, and Babylonia to how our "Great Books" of western literature continue to be an important influence to Star Trek's characters of the future
• Includes a timeline comparing the stardates of Star Trek's timeline to our own real world history

Filled with fascinating historical comparisons, Star Trek and History is an essential companion for every Star Trek fan.
Acknowledgments: A Piece of the Action: The Pleasures of Sharing Star Trek xi

A Timeline of Stardates xiii
Alan Kistler

Star Trek Series and Movie Titles: A Universal Translator xxv

Introduction: Time Warps and Future Histories 1
Nancy R. Reagin

PART ONE Characters [Are] Welcome: Backstories

1 Riding Posse on the Final Frontier: James T. Kirk, Hero of the Old West 7
Alice L. George

2 More Than “Just Uhura”: Understanding Star Trek’s Lt. Uhura, Civil Rights, and Space History 22
Margaret A. Weitekamp

3 The Compassionate Country Doctor and Cold-Blooded Biomedicine: Bones, Spock, and Medicine beyond the Machine 39
Brenda Gardenour

4 Who Is Q? 57
Alan Kistler

PART TWO Kirk and Spock Take on Earth History

5 The Final Reflection?: A Mirrored Empire?: Klingon History and American History 71
Lori Maguire

6 Vietnam, Star Trek, and the Real Future 87
H. Bruce Franklin

7 You’re Doing It Wrong: Cause and Effect in Star Trek’s Histories 109
Michael Lewis

8 If This Is the (Final) Frontier, Where Are the Natives? 125
Amy H. Sturgis

9 Terrorizing Space: Star Trek, Terrorism, and History 143
John Putman

10 To Boldly Go When No One Has Gone Before (or After): Star Trek’s Timelines 158
Karma Waltonen

PART THREE Future Culture

11 Shakespeare (and the Rest of the Great Books) in the Original Klingon 179
Elizabeth Baird Hardy

12 Information Technology in Star Trek: Android versus Android, iPads versus PADDs, Facebook versus the Borg 194
Brent McDonald

13 History on the Holodeck 212
Marcus Schulzke

14 Why Star Trek’s Cartography Is So Stellar, or How the Borg Mapped/Changed Everything 226
Matthew D. Mingus

15 Who’s the Devil?: Species Extinction and Environmentalist Thought in Star Trek 242
Dolly Jørgensen

PART FOUR Other Races Have Histories Too, You Know

16 Nothing Unreal Exists: The Contradictory Logic of Vulcan History 263
Alex Robles

17 Alien Babes and Alternate Universes: The Women of Star Trek 280
M. G. DuPree

18 Klingons: Going Medieval on You 295
Christian Domenig

19 Nazis, Cardassians, and Other Villains in the Final Frontier 307
Amy Carney

Negotiating the Legacy of Star Trek and Its Fans 323
Rick Worland

Starfleet Academy Instructors 341

Index: Databanks 349

Sujets

• Histoire
• Uhura
• Lists of television programs
• Cardassian
• History
• Nichelle Nichols
• Spock
• Nyota Uhura
• Star Trek

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 05 mars 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781118239506
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Contents
Acknowledgments
A Timeline of Stardates
Star Trek Series and Movie Titles
Introduction
Part One: Characters [Are] Welcome: Backstories
Chapter 1: Riding Posse on the Final Frontier
Western Culture Lassos Eastern Hearts?
Noble Savages in the Neutral Zone
The Federation s Manifest Destiny
JFK, JTK, and the Final New Frontier
Chapter 2: More Than Just Uhura
Changing the Way People See Us
The Next Einstein Might Have a Black Face
Be Careful What You Wish For
Was I Not One of Your Top Students?
Chapter 3: The Compassionate Country Doctor and Cold-Blooded Biomedicine
The Country Doctor and Biomedical Science at the Crossroads
Dr. Bones McCoy: Marcus Welby in Space
Bones and Spock at the Heart of the Matter
Chapter 4: Who Is Q?
Testing Humanity and the Frankenstein Complex
The Shifting Faces of Q
It s a Hell of a Life, Jean-Luc
The Coyote Parallel
Part Two: Kirk and Spock Take on Earth History
Chapter 5: The Final Reflection?
We Need No Urging to Hate Humans
Too Klingon to Be Human
Hell Hath No Fury . . .
Foreign Engagements
What Hope Is There for the Empire?
Chapter 6: Vietnam, Star Trek, and the Real Future
Vietnam Genesis, Cosmic Exodus
Wars for Peace?
The Enterprise Changes Course!
Chapter 7: You re Doing It Wrong
Gangsters in Space
The Accidental Time Travelers
The Historian s Folly
The Rise of the Nazis
Explaining the Holocaust
The Rome That Never Fell
Back from the Future
Doing It Wrong
Chapter 8: If This Is the (Final) Frontier, Where Are the Natives?
No One Here but Us Noble Savages
A Cartoon but Not a Caricature
You Can Tell by Their Outfits
Boldly Going . . . a Step Backward
Does Out of Sight Mean Out of Mind?
Who Mourns for Chakotay and His Imaginary Tribe?
A Mixed Grade for a Mixed Legacy
Chapter 9: Terrorizing Space
One Man s Terrorist Is Another Man s George Washington
They re Terrorists, Dammit : So Let s Negotiate with Them
The Terrorists among Us
The Xindi as al-Qaeda
Chapter 10: To Boldly Go When No One Has Gone Before (or After)
The Directive
Time Travel: Possibilities and Paradoxes
The Observation Effect, Butterflies, and Further Causality Paradoxes
Violating the Temporal Prime Directive versus Preserving the Timeline
Conclusions and Continuums
Part Three: Future Culture
Chapter 11: Shakespeare (and the Rest of the Great Books) in the Original Klingon
A Fondness for Antiques
You Do Have Books in the Twenty-fourth Century?
I Wrote It Again Yesterday
Actually, I Never Read It
Dammit Jim, I m a Doctor, Not a Literary Historian!
Chapter 12: Information Technology in Star Trek
I Can Has Internet?
Techies for Trekkies
The Android with a Billion Apps (or: Why Don t I Have Cool Stuff Like That?)
Jean-Luc Picard Has Joined Faceborg
Chapter 13: History on the Holodeck
The Big Goodbye
A Fistful of Datas
Elementary, My Dear Data
A New Life-Form Rides the Orient Express
Behaving Badly on the Holodeck
Edutainment of the Future
Chapter 14: Why Star Trek s Cartography Is So Stellar, or How the Borg Mapped/Changed Everything
Lines, Logs, and a Frenchman Named Picard
A History of Star Trek s Cartography
ber-mapping the Unimatrix: The Borg Shift
It s All Over: The Map
Chapter 15: Who s the Devil?
Live and Let Live
What We Don t Know Can Hurt Us
Intervening to Right Past Wrongs
The Enterprise s Evolving Environmental Mission
Part Four: Other Races Have Histories Too, You Know
Chapter 16: Nothing Unreal Exists
Vulcan Is Not My Idea of Fun : Life on a Desert Planet
Is Biology Destiny?: The Nature of Vulcan Difference
Vulcans. Deep Down, You re All Just a Bunch of Hypochondriacs : The Dreaded Vulcan Sex Drive
My Mind to Your Mind . . . My Thoughts to Your Thoughts . . .
The Animalistic Past: Ancient Vulcan and the Rise of Surak
The Time of Awakening
Relationships with the Galactic Community
Reformation
The Federation and Beyond
Logic Is the Cement of Our Civilization: Vulcan Humanism
Logic Is the Beginning of Wisdom, Not the End
Chapter 17: Alien Babes and Alternate Universes
I Am the Goddess of Empathy: The Women of The Next Generation
Warrior Women
A Commanding Woman
To Boldly Go . . . or Not
New Civilizations, Old Patterns
Chapter 18: Klingons
The Savage Race of Klingons
The Medieval Mirror
Kahless the Unforgettable and Karolus Magnus
Even Half Drunk, Klingons Are among the Best Warriors in the Galaxy
Chapter 19: Nazis, Cardassians, and Other Villains in the Final Frontier
Nazis in the Star Trek Canon
The History of the Cardassian Empire
The Nazis of Star Trek
Cardassians Aren t Always Nazis; Sometimes They re Soviets
The Place of Cardassians in Star Trek History
Negotiating the Legacy of Star Trek and Its Fans
Starfleet Academy Instructors
Index: Databanks
Wiley Pop Culture and History Series

Series Editor: Nancy R. Reagin
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Star Trek and History
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Copyright 2013 by John Wiley Sons. All rights reserved
Cover Design: Wendy Mount
Cover Photograph: Stocktrek images/Getty Images
Chapter opener design by Forty-five Degree Design LLC
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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For Anne,
Beth, Camille, Claire, KC, and Viki: sisters under the skin
Acknowledgments
A Piece of the Action: The Pleasures of Sharing Star Trek
Spock: One man cannot summon the future.
Kirk: But one man can change the present. . . . In every revolution, there s one man with a vision.
-TOS, Mirror, Mirror
The man with a vision who first imagined the Enterprise and her crew was Gene Roddenberry, and any book about Star Trek must begin by acknowledging the man s profound drive and creativity. The Star Trek films, series, novels, and other spin-offs created since the original show aired have attracted a universe of talented writers, actors, producers, technicians, and others who bring them to life. But Roddenberry was the one who began it all, and like all Star Trek enthusiasts, I am in his debt. The first television series I was a fan of was Star Trek , and without Gene Roddenberry s creation I would not have become a fan of imagined worlds and universes in the same way; and, of course, this book would not exist.
My fellow fans have inspired me, too. Part of the joy in being a fan of any imagined world lies in sharing it with others, discussing and analyzing the characters and the series that you find so compelling. I am fortunate that some of these fans are also scholars who contributed to this book. They ve created chapters for this volume that offer clever insights and interesting research for any discussion of the Enterprise and its crew and the universe and franchise that Roddenberry created. I d like to thank all of them for bringing their passion for Star Trek to the job of writing about it.
I also thank Ruth Abrams, who helped me and some of the authors to say what we wanted to say more clearly. She always had great suggestions for how to improve the chapters that she read and helped edit, and her comments improved the volume substantially. Janice Liedl was my coconspirator and collaborator on other popular history projects during the months I was working on this book, and I am grateful for her constant encouragement, wonderfully pragmatic judgment, and rock-solid reliability, as well as her intricate knowledge of many canons. Connie Santisteban, Eric Nelson, and Lisa Burstiner at Wiley make the publishing process seem easy; they re experienced at understanding the ways of academics (and fans), and they are a joy to work with.
Star Trek -its many characte