It’s life, Jim…

‘Guest Post’ by Copernicus

I enjoy taking a certain immoderately smug view of myself predicated on a few pleasing cultural tropes. I have browsed intelligently among the moderns and the postmoderns, committed to memory verses both metered and free. I prize meaningful engagement with the prose poetry of the literary novel and strum contemplatively on my Taylor guitar by the glow of the recessed minimalist firebox in my living space as I imagine the troubadours of Languedoc, flower of their age, once plucked whimsical madrigals to beguile the hours at the court of proud Eleanor of Aquitaine. I own a pair of Palermo-purchased Raybans and a cashmere sweater and am not unpossessed of a kind of shimmering male beauty in the classical mould. Hey, I get as big a kick out of the Satyricon as the next guy in the boutique Italian espresso bar where I take my morning cappuccino. And yet…

Were you to seek me out in the quiet watches of the night, you might well espy through the floor-to-ceiling glass of my swank apartment a content face bathed in the prismatic glow of a Sky One Star Trek episode on its umpteenth repeat. Quite content indeed. But much as I enjoy the anesthetic certainties of its wall-to-hull carpeted universe, tea (Earl Grey, hot), pastel uniforms and mildly fascistic socio-military structures, too often the delicate carapace of a soothing cocoon has its integrity breached by certain recurring plot devices, so irritatingly flawed in their conception that a drunken Klingon could pilot a Bird-of-Prey with compromised helm control through the holes they create, and whose sole, hubristic, purpose is to showcase the acting chops of the dedicated thesps so liberally strewn across various iterations of the franchise. (I’m leaving Patrick Stewart out of this as his dignified gravitas has often been single-handedly responsible for lending credibility and achieving benefit of doubt in respect of what would otherwise be outrageous, saccharine drivel).Last night’s TNG (Star Trek; the Next Generation) repeat represented a particularly good example of the phenomenon as the crew of the Enterprise raced against time to piece together a jigsaw puzzle seeded in genetic material scattered liberally among the stars by an unknown species 4 billion years previously (if you count time at a rate of one second per second, presumably, which, it must be owned, the ST universe rarely ever does). Cue coming together of the antagonistic races of the Alpha quadrant, Earthling (or Terrans as they no doubt prefer to be known), Klingon, Romulan and Cardassian on a distant, rocky, M-class dump to discover their common ancestry and look at one another anew (Holo-envoy from the past: There is something of us in all of you and so, there is something of all of you in each other). Pass me the puke bucket, please, and no, I don’t think I can handle the wafer thin mint after that lot.

The most insulting thing is that the writers clearly expect this to explain away the rampant incidence of bi-pedalism among those strange forms of new life encountered out there in the cosmos in a way the bi-pedalism so rife among Paramount’s stable of guest starring actors cannot. Once again, Star Trek gets confused between disbelief already suspended and disbelief which needs to be dispelled and gets it horribly wrong.

For the subject of today’s lesson is the hybrid character brought spontaneously into life through TreknobabbleTreknobabble, which includes a rapidly proliferating list of quantum particles, is often used as a convenient deus ex machina. Apparently, writers on the show who get to certain plot impasses stick “insert treknobabble” in their scripts and pass them along to the appropriately skilled team. That this system has its limits will be known to any viewer who has heard the word “compensating” in an episode; as in, the ship is in trouble captain, but I’m, er, compensating for that to move the plot along. and typically aborted in the same way. Off the top of my head, Riker (oh, how often it is Riker) has played 3,467 hybrid and alternative universe (in the spirit of d’Internet let’s call them ‘alt.u’) characters on TNG (Irish readers note; this acronym refers to ‘The Next Generation’, not TnaGYou’d know this if you’d read footnote 1, which will learn you.), including a trill ambassador, a Holodeck musician and another version of himself (Transporter accident, don’t askOk, do. Pop along to this wikipedia link and scroll down to “notable Transporter malfunctions”. Also responsible for the Tuvix abomination, of which more anon, and the good and evil versions of Kirk in The Enemy Within (TOS, season 1) the granddaddy, er, grandaddies of all hybrid/alt.u characters.) called Tom. Also worthy of mention are: The Schizoid Man (TNG, Season 2), in which a mad scientist downloaded himself into Data (who also, of course, played Lore, Drs. Noonian and Arik Soong and the totally crappy B-4); the entire cast of DS9 who have played their evil alt.u selves in an alt dot universe; and, we must not forget, the Transporter-forged Mr. Tuvix, a hybrid character of Lt. Cmdr Tuvok, annoying Vulcan, and Mr. Neelix, annoying Delta quadrant alien.In case anyone thinks I’m exaggerating, I found this at a site for Star Trek: The Customised Card Game in which “all seven of the bridge crew have appeared on multiple personnel cards. Some of them are different versions of the character’s main persona; some are Alternate Universe versions; and others are impersonators, Mirror Universe versions, or even holograms. In addition, some of the actors portrayed completely different characters who got their own personnel cards.” From a quiz they ran over there:

Q1. Which character’s actor appears on the most personnel cards?

Originally I thought the answer to this was unequivocally Data (Brent Spiner), with a total of 17 personnel cards including all versions of Data and his holodeck characters, plus Lore and Dr. Soong. However, I decided it is questionable to include Data’s Body, which does not actually show Brent Spiner (one assumes) but rather a headless “body.” Now, arguably the character could be said to have been played by Brent Spiner (i.e., once the head was reattached), but since the actual card does not show Spiner, it’s ambiguous at best. If we discount Data’s Body, that leaves Brent Spiner tied at 16 with Worf (Michael Dorn), who has not only a couple of AU versions but also played his ancestor Colonel Worf in a movie. So I accepted either Data or Worf as correct. Both just edged out Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard), who only has 15 personnel cards to date.

That’s right kids, only 15 cards.

While Mr. Tuvix conforms to many of the hybrid/alt.u conventions and throws up the usual ethical dilemmas,The resolution of the Tuvix dilemma (which does not, sadly, involve putting him an airlock and blasting him into space) forces Janeway to confront the much-vaunted Prime Directive, to which all Starfleet captains pay lip-service but honour more in the breach where exigencies of plot require. At least that other Starfleet captain Voyager encountered in the Delta quadrant had the honesty to take it to the vaccuum bog in his private quarters and use it to wipe his arse. the job of bringing to life the ticks and mannerisms of a pair of two-dimensional characters in one two-dimensional character (I know, one would have expected at least four dimensions) were, unfortunately, farmed out to a guest performer and cannot, therefore, come under our microscope here. No, today we are concerned with the episode I saw only the other night in which Voyager’s holographic Doctor is downloaded into Seven of Nine’s Borg brain architecture, or something, to avoid his capture by a Lokkirrim ship whose crew think he’s a photonic, holographic insurgent. This allows the Seven actress, Jeri Ryan, to reproduce the Doctor’s eccentricities and frantic manner for our viewing pleasure and to our considerable awe, but that’s not all. The episode guide here tells us everything we need to know:

For the first time, the Doctor is able to have sensory experiences, including touch and smell.

Oh dear.

Plucking Seven of Nine (Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One) from her Borg Cube and sticking her in a catsuit had an upward effect on Voyager’s ratings, as well as one or two other things, and there was plenty of milking to be done. With the Doctor in her cybernetic tubules, this cold, severe and unemotional ice queen could be presented in pseudo-orgasmic delight while scoffing Replicator cheesecake or aquiver at the Sapphic frisson of a little girl-on-girl massage.No, you’re wrong. This episode sucks, seriously, and not in a good way. No need to worry, though; Seven’s not gay because, hey, that’s the Doc in there guys (“You were sexually aroused in my body” – I actually think no double entendre is intended here); and when the tall, dark alien captain lunges at Seven for a kiss, why it’s just an example of that special hilarity where a straight man accidently kisses another man in drag. Phew, that won’t upset our sexual worldview, but, oddly, only reinforce it after the mild thrill of a little licensed transgression.

The Star Trek universe has a very unhappy history with sex,I don’t advise people who don’t know and aren’t comfortable with a little something called “slash fiction” to google “Star Trek sex”. to wit the Jonathan Frakes directed Insurrection which opens with Riker, played by Jonathan Frakes, taking a bubble bath with Counselor Troy. At least I think it was Troy, but there was a lot of vaseline smeared on the camera lens. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Tom Riker. Toes curl across the galaxy when the writers’ thoughts turn to love and their coy, sub-Kinsey Institute version of it which feels about as liberated as a 60s sex comedy, ie not very liberated at all. I’d prefer if they gave me my science fiction a whole lot coyer. I don’t want to see Seven, possessed by the manic energy of the Doctor, waltzing inebriatedly around an alien vessel with a tall, bepointy-foreheaded humanoid male or discover that Tuvok’s neurochemical imbalance indicates the onset of ‘Pon (surely Porn? Ed.) Far’, the seven-yearly inflicted Vulcan mating instinct which requires him to visit the Holodeck to take care of business.Fans of Kevin Smith’s Clerks will be put instantly in mind of its reference to the job of jizz-mopper and wonder to whom this duty falls on Voyager. I hope it’s Neelix. Certainly casts the phrase “swab the decks” in a different light. And for what? Let us consult once more the oracle of the episode guide:

Back on Voyager, the Doctor is paid a visit in Sickbay by Seven, who brings delicacies and wine that she previously would have considered “indulgent.” Since the Doctor can no longer share the experience of eating and drinking, Seven promises to describe the meal to him so he can enjoy it vicariously.

Our Data’s-surrogates double act are pushed a little further along their becoming-more-human-than-the-humans-themselves story arc, and we, the viewing audience, are perhaps gently encouraged to consider the delicate flower and quotidian miracle that is our own, so often taken for granted, humanity.

Waiter, a fresh bucket for Monsieur.Today’s footnotes are heavily influenced by the work of David Foster Wallace. I still like Star Trek.