As a child in the '60s, I immersed myself in everything to do with the fledgling American space program. Like so many kids of the era, I not only knew the names of all seven Mercury astronauts, I knew the nicknames of their spacecraft. I was all gee whiz over apogees and perigees. I was reenergized by reentries. And EVAs were A-OK with me.
When I heard that a TV series was planned that would follow an intrepid band of spacefarers as they explored the universe, my anticipation level was sky high. Oh, boy! Outer space, here I come!
There was just one problem: When “Star Trek” finally arrived, it wasn’t about outer space. The show’s lead-in credits seemed promising. There was a spacecraft with stars in the background. There was a voiceover about space exploration that aspired to be inspiring. But after nearly a decade of learning what it meant to travel in space and what challenges we would face, I was flabbergasted to find almost none of those challenges given even a cursory nod. For example:
• Even in our modest solar system, there is a staggering variety in gravity and atmospheric pressure. Even with the best and most protective spacesuit we could produce, a space traveler would either be crushed by the gravity or would bounce along with strides that would take them 50 feet up each step. On Star Trek, atmosphere and gravity were always whatever was present on the studio back lot. Not only were Enterprise crew members never seen in spacesuits, the whole universe was apparently visitable in spandex jammies. None of them ever even wore a coat for god’s sake! (Speaking of spacesuits … one of the few pluses I detected, as my teen-age libido went to full afterburner, was the outfits the female Enterprise crewmembers wore. Vavavoom!)
• In addition to tremendous variations in atmospheric pressure, many – if not most – of the atmospheres visited would be toxic to a human and would kill them both instantly and horribly.
• No acceleration or deceleration forces are ever seen on the show. Occasionally the cast is told from off camera to lean left or lean right while the director kicks the camera.
• Nearly every creature encountered on every planet walked on its hind legs, had binocular vision, and looked suspiciously like an extra in heavy makeup. As any evolutionary biologist (or sports physician) will tell you, the fact that we walk on our hind legs is one of nature’s horrible screwups, or at least a minor miracle. The vast majority of creatures on our own home planet live in the sea and have no legs at all, but among land dwellers, two legs are very unpopular. Four, six, eight or “bunches and bunches” are the preference, except for us and praying mantises. Oh, and birds. But they don’t really like to walk anyhow.
• Very little attention was ever paid to language. In China, they have two major languages and several thousand dialects. But across the span of the universe, nearly everyone speaks English with a California accent.
I know, I know. Some of you “Trekkies” are even now sputtering about the basic unfairness of my tirade. Yes, I know that its predecessors like “Buck Rogers” also ignored these things. But they had an excuse … no one had ventured into space yet. Yes, I know that Star Trek was a low budget program with little cash for special effects. Yes, I know that I’m ignoring some of the deep, philosophical issues (yawn) that Mr. Roddenberry and his writers explored (“The Trouble with Tribbles” comes to mind), but would it have been too much to ask for at least SOME attention to have been paid to these things?
The legacy of this program is that its spiritual descendents – like the Star Wars series – have also felt free to ignore these realities. Even when George Lucas has all the money that Steven Spielberg doesn’t and employs a virtual army of CG technicians, his films are still space soap operas of the same ilk as Star Trek. For shame.
The only prominent filmmaker who has made any effort to be true to the challenges of space is director Ron Howard. During the making of “Apollo 13, “ his actors made countless parabolas in NASA’s “Vomit Comet” KC-135 so that the truly amazing weightless sequences of that film could be created. Bravo, Mr. Howard.
As for Star Trek, it will always be – for me – “As the World Turns” in orbit.
