Hello everyone.
This is the first post on here.
Prelude:
I was reading the forum and read through the thread on canon.
On Facebook (as I'm sure many have seen in their various social media groups) the ST
SC discussions have exploded into a visceral topic of canon.
It provoked me to ponder how I don't feel like most of the volume of what makes up the Star Trek series' is what I consider to be "Star Trek", and why that is.
I was provoked to consider this because as I read through the various canon debates, I continued to be aware that I didn't really care about canon all that much. That wasn't what defined Star Trek to my sense of identity for Star Trek.
After some time considering, and engaging in various conversations, I've worked that out to be what I'll refer to as the, "Form".
Disclosure:
Firstly, however, let me provide some context of my general tastes by quick survey of my general interests regarding entertainment television and some related hobbies that aid in this information.
I separate out Movies from Television in this context because I have rather different preferences when approaching the two mediums due to one being a very large and very temporal opus, and the other being a continual and familiar interaction of experience, respectively.
I don't really gauge shows that I enjoy by their quality of writing, if by writing we refer to a quality of character growth, continuity, dramatics, or narrative story arcs. For me, writing quality is gauged by how well it accomplished the goal of causing me to think or laugh, and what I funny contains a common prerequisite of cleverness.
I don't enjoy comedians, for example, who spend their time making fun of their self, nor regaling me with stories of their life as the primary focus. As a general rule, I don't find people's lives interesting, and I don't have an interest in the interpersonal dramas they face as a consequence of existing as who they are within the context of where they came from and where they are now.
Similarly, non-comedic shows for me are likely to retain my repeated viewership when they focus on things other than the characters as the main focal point. I enjoy character growth and exploration, but as a secondary component of a show and not the primary.
The more heavily tense, dramatic, and character focused a show is, the less likely it is that I will continue watching it beyond a couple of seasons; if I watch it at all.
Examples of this are House of Cards, Marco Polo, or Game of Thrones. These are all very well written shows, and each is quite high in quality. However, I dropped out of all of them after a few seasons because I have a low saturation tolerance for the attributes which they carry very well.
I enjoyed them for a while, but eventually, I don't have an interest in them because I don't enjoy feeling those sensations provoked by such narrative focuses; that is sensations of tenuousness and anticipation.
Within a movie format I am perfectly fine with this because it is a finite experience, but with a television show, I eventually tire of such sensations. For a weekly, or daily, interaction, I don't enjoy such levels of artificial emotional excitation.
I am rather well aware that this places me at considerable odds with the general television programming, so I am not herein asserting that my conclusions and judgement are universal or even common.
This is probably correlated in pattern to why my hobbies are things like music composition, philosophy, neurology, astrophysics, and anthropology.
On any given day, I am found much more likely to prefer to be provoked to think than to feel.
What Made Star Trek Unique:
In its origin, Star Trek stands radical in departure from a typical television show of our current zeitgeist. Many discussions have been had about what made Star Trek unique, and attempting to define the properties of it which made it resound with audiences.
Of course, one of those is simply imagination; the very notion of space exploration.
Another aspect which is often times identified is its philosophy. However, the philosophy often cited as a quality of Star Trek is often implicit. That is, the sociopolitical positions in which the show promotes, such as diversity and inquisitiveness as opposed to exclusivity and closed-mindedness.
Yet, I do not think this really is the final point which Star Trek was unique for.
Further, I don't think that Star Trek was originally incredibly unique in degree, but instead that a subtle shift in the format's treatment of a common form produced radical differences.
At the time that Star Trek came out, there were many shows which were slow in pace. I do not mean slow in pace by comparison to today, but instead that they focused on discussions taking place about a topic each episode and interspersed with activities of some nature (other drama aside from the main topic, action, or some other temporal distraction to break things up a bit).
Most of these shows at the time were of a Moral Topic form; that is, each episode of a show addressed some moral dilemma and would answer the right and wrong of that moral question by the end of the program.
In this regard, there is not a large amount of difference between Andy Griffith, Lassie, or Bonanza, from the original iteration of Star Trek.
However, there was a subtle difference aside from a science fiction show getting more than just explosions and robots which lacked any deeper substance (which was pretty common at the time).
That subtle difference was that Star Trek shifted from morality to ethics, and would not provide the viewer with a solid answer of the ethical dilemma of the episode by the end.
Star Trek was, and still is, rather unique because the Form that it chose to employ was probably one of the hardest there is to use because it is among the most abstracted and challenging to discretely define.
With moral issues, we can link directly to characters for the identification of working out the dilemma - we are provided the challenges and answers by alignment with our favoritism and emotional investment in those characters. Something is wrong or right because it hurts or benefits our favored characters.
Ethics inherently distances from the individual and instead address the concept of the setting, situation, and collective on an indefinite timeline of application. It is not a question of whether a given action was wrong for a given character, considering another given character and their position and actions. Instead, it is a question of whether a general concept of conduct, or position of classification, is harmful or beneficial if all characters are considered equal in their moral standing - that is, no one is "evil", "bad", "good", or "right". That is, we shift from heroicism to egalitarianism.
By consequence of this small shift, the topics which are raised become philosophical by their nature instead of emotional, universal in scope rather than local, and broad rather than narrow.
This was amplified by maintaining the Moral Drama method of the time which was, again, to make the topic the primary focus of the episode and not the characters.
Today, we mostly look at characters within a situation, but at the time it was more reversed: a situation given a set of characters.
So the topic took center stage, and the examination of that moral topic was principle (and some shows were very strict regarding the handling and answering of those topics during the episode; only allowing social norms to be the end result - which was why shows like Bonanza were as big as they were; because they allowed an end result to the moral topic to go against social norms of the time).
Star Trek, having switched to ethics and philosophy over morality and emotionality, yet maintaining this topical front-stage method really caused the philosophical topics to leap out.
There wasn't an interpersonal drama, character arc, serialized plot, or militant plotline which took the focus and behind it sat an implied philosophical pondering.
Instead, there was a philosophical dilemma pronounced unmistakably and character concerns took a back seat, relying upon the context of the topic for their definition. A character was defined as a tool and would be used to react to the situation which represented a philosophical dilemma and their inherent and consistent character definition's reaction aided in the definition of understanding the topical position and progress through the digestion of it.
Characters in Star Trek, originally, were very static. They were like having different types of objects and we would watch these different types of objects thrown at this unknown other object, which was the philosophical dilemma of the episode, and how those different character objects reacted to hitting that unknown object of inquiry collectively, each in their own way, was our means of understanding the definition of what that philosophical dilemma object was.
However, we were not given a solid answer by the end of the episode, even when we were shown a character making a conclusion of their own.
It was never the case that we were told what is wrong and right for ourselves, nor how we should think or not think.
Instead, we were shown how the characters drew their choices during the show which netted a certain result, and from which they drew a certain conclusion - not all characters having reached the same conclusion, and we were to engage as an additional character - the viewer - and wrestle our our own conclusion. Each viewer was thus charged implicitly to do likewise and from such, varying degrees of conclusions about what a given episode meant, implied, or concluded was produced and sparked many, many discussions and debates among the viewing audience.
Two people sitting right next to each other could easily walk away from an episode of Star Trek with an entirely different understanding of the conclusion, and why that conclusion was drawn.
In this form, Star Trek wasn't out to answer questions, but instead to raise them.
My personal favorite Original Series episode, Space Seed, is probably one of the heaviest philosophical dilemmas of this form that we are delivered. I don't know if there is any episode more grand in scope of topical address than this.
For in this episode Star Trek juxtaposes utilitarianism and ethics against individualism and morality, and further, doesn't answer which is ultimately correct.
Kirk represents the latter, while Khan represents the former, and Kirk and Khan, neither, can judge the other as wrong and can only agree that they are incompatible and both due a right to their way since neither can draw a final judgement of the other.
It is entirely left to the viewer to conclude who was right; Kirk or Khan, and it is not described outright as to which is a bad or good choice - even the character object Spock, representative of pure logic, cannot fully conclude either as absolute in correctness, nor error.
In The Next Generation, Q and Picard repeatedly play roles over topics of examination in much the same way as Khan and Kirk in Space Seed, but Q is adjustable and not fixed to one philosophical idea, unlike Khan, which allows him to bring about more topics of examination than Khan.
These last two are specific examples of the overall description preceding them, and the point here is that Star Trek was unique for placing the ethics of philosophy front and center, and characters were used to help in defining and exploring a given topic. For this purpose, it was crucial that the characters change little over time, or the ability to define the explored topic becomes ever more difficult due to a lack of consistent measuring tools; for if the measuring tools are changing regularly, then they cannot be used to assess another unknown thing.
Evolution:
The Original Series and The Next Generation (at least for most of its run) were both of this format, and both rated fairly well.
This allowed for a new genre to open up in form; Philosophical Scifi.
That is, a science fiction show that is topical by its definition, where characters change little and take secondary priority to the topic, and where there will be lots of talking; not lots of action.
Due to the topical nature, this category of a show is further not really maintained well by serialization as it is ever difficult to explore a new topic as freely in a serialized format which is driven by an arcing and on-going narrative which must be regularly maintained, as a show set to conclude within each, or a few, episodes a given temporal narrative.
Many writers found this format very frustrating because a writer is trained to write a story which is fundamentally grounded in spawning from a character, or characters, and revolves around those characters, and further, progresses the character along a growth.
It's generally understood in writing that a story is sympathized and made understandable because the character is sympathized with and understood by the audience.
Star Trek cardinally stood at odds with this standard.
It is of no surprise, then, that by the time of DS9, many writers shared the same sentiment regarding Star Trek, as often spoken of by Behr - the want to write principally about the characters and to be able to do so in serial form. To be able to explore issues and dilemmas that were paramount to the characters, rather than some vague conceptual discourse with an unknown importance and of no long-term narrative meaning.
From DS9 on, Star Trek, then completely changed how it felt because it changed, not the the canon, but the Form.
Star Trek moved from being Philosophical Scifi to being Scifi Drama with some character philosophy accompaniment.
The difference is analogous to the difference between a Murder Mystery and a Crime Drama.
Both have murder in them, and both are about solving crimes, but one is about the puzzle of solving the crime and the character is a tool of delivering information to solve the crime with, while the other is about some characters who solve crime and the crime is a tool to deliver information about the characters' makeup and growth.
Conclusion:
For myself, I miss the old form.
I still look forward to a day when that form may perhaps return, and I actively look for shows which provide a similarity to this form.
I find very, very few.
The closest that I've recently found is The Librarians (which, not surprisingly is shared in production and creativeness by Jonathan Frakes who pairs up in the overseeing of the show with Noah Wyle), which is partially serialized and partially episodically topical. The characters do grow, and they do have arcs, but they are often second to the priority of the given episodes moral or philosophical topics (which both are definitively answered, and left to be answered variously in different episodes).
So, it's not canon which defines Star Trek to me.
It's the founding form that defines it, and the deviation from that form has been what has lessened my interested in subsequent series of Star Trek over time.
I still check them out, but I usually don't enjoy them very much because they're just not the Trek format that I'm looking for.
Cheers!
Jayson TheStumps
This is the first post on here.
Prelude:
I was reading the forum and read through the thread on canon.
On Facebook (as I'm sure many have seen in their various social media groups) the ST
SC discussions have exploded into a visceral topic of canon.It provoked me to ponder how I don't feel like most of the volume of what makes up the Star Trek series' is what I consider to be "Star Trek", and why that is.
I was provoked to consider this because as I read through the various canon debates, I continued to be aware that I didn't really care about canon all that much. That wasn't what defined Star Trek to my sense of identity for Star Trek.
After some time considering, and engaging in various conversations, I've worked that out to be what I'll refer to as the, "Form".
Disclosure:
Firstly, however, let me provide some context of my general tastes by quick survey of my general interests regarding entertainment television and some related hobbies that aid in this information.
I separate out Movies from Television in this context because I have rather different preferences when approaching the two mediums due to one being a very large and very temporal opus, and the other being a continual and familiar interaction of experience, respectively.
I don't really gauge shows that I enjoy by their quality of writing, if by writing we refer to a quality of character growth, continuity, dramatics, or narrative story arcs. For me, writing quality is gauged by how well it accomplished the goal of causing me to think or laugh, and what I funny contains a common prerequisite of cleverness.
I don't enjoy comedians, for example, who spend their time making fun of their self, nor regaling me with stories of their life as the primary focus. As a general rule, I don't find people's lives interesting, and I don't have an interest in the interpersonal dramas they face as a consequence of existing as who they are within the context of where they came from and where they are now.
Similarly, non-comedic shows for me are likely to retain my repeated viewership when they focus on things other than the characters as the main focal point. I enjoy character growth and exploration, but as a secondary component of a show and not the primary.
The more heavily tense, dramatic, and character focused a show is, the less likely it is that I will continue watching it beyond a couple of seasons; if I watch it at all.
Examples of this are House of Cards, Marco Polo, or Game of Thrones. These are all very well written shows, and each is quite high in quality. However, I dropped out of all of them after a few seasons because I have a low saturation tolerance for the attributes which they carry very well.
I enjoyed them for a while, but eventually, I don't have an interest in them because I don't enjoy feeling those sensations provoked by such narrative focuses; that is sensations of tenuousness and anticipation.
Within a movie format I am perfectly fine with this because it is a finite experience, but with a television show, I eventually tire of such sensations. For a weekly, or daily, interaction, I don't enjoy such levels of artificial emotional excitation.
I am rather well aware that this places me at considerable odds with the general television programming, so I am not herein asserting that my conclusions and judgement are universal or even common.
This is probably correlated in pattern to why my hobbies are things like music composition, philosophy, neurology, astrophysics, and anthropology.
On any given day, I am found much more likely to prefer to be provoked to think than to feel.
What Made Star Trek Unique:
In its origin, Star Trek stands radical in departure from a typical television show of our current zeitgeist. Many discussions have been had about what made Star Trek unique, and attempting to define the properties of it which made it resound with audiences.
Of course, one of those is simply imagination; the very notion of space exploration.
Another aspect which is often times identified is its philosophy. However, the philosophy often cited as a quality of Star Trek is often implicit. That is, the sociopolitical positions in which the show promotes, such as diversity and inquisitiveness as opposed to exclusivity and closed-mindedness.
Yet, I do not think this really is the final point which Star Trek was unique for.
Further, I don't think that Star Trek was originally incredibly unique in degree, but instead that a subtle shift in the format's treatment of a common form produced radical differences.
At the time that Star Trek came out, there were many shows which were slow in pace. I do not mean slow in pace by comparison to today, but instead that they focused on discussions taking place about a topic each episode and interspersed with activities of some nature (other drama aside from the main topic, action, or some other temporal distraction to break things up a bit).
Most of these shows at the time were of a Moral Topic form; that is, each episode of a show addressed some moral dilemma and would answer the right and wrong of that moral question by the end of the program.
In this regard, there is not a large amount of difference between Andy Griffith, Lassie, or Bonanza, from the original iteration of Star Trek.
However, there was a subtle difference aside from a science fiction show getting more than just explosions and robots which lacked any deeper substance (which was pretty common at the time).
That subtle difference was that Star Trek shifted from morality to ethics, and would not provide the viewer with a solid answer of the ethical dilemma of the episode by the end.
Star Trek was, and still is, rather unique because the Form that it chose to employ was probably one of the hardest there is to use because it is among the most abstracted and challenging to discretely define.
With moral issues, we can link directly to characters for the identification of working out the dilemma - we are provided the challenges and answers by alignment with our favoritism and emotional investment in those characters. Something is wrong or right because it hurts or benefits our favored characters.
Ethics inherently distances from the individual and instead address the concept of the setting, situation, and collective on an indefinite timeline of application. It is not a question of whether a given action was wrong for a given character, considering another given character and their position and actions. Instead, it is a question of whether a general concept of conduct, or position of classification, is harmful or beneficial if all characters are considered equal in their moral standing - that is, no one is "evil", "bad", "good", or "right". That is, we shift from heroicism to egalitarianism.
By consequence of this small shift, the topics which are raised become philosophical by their nature instead of emotional, universal in scope rather than local, and broad rather than narrow.
This was amplified by maintaining the Moral Drama method of the time which was, again, to make the topic the primary focus of the episode and not the characters.
Today, we mostly look at characters within a situation, but at the time it was more reversed: a situation given a set of characters.
So the topic took center stage, and the examination of that moral topic was principle (and some shows were very strict regarding the handling and answering of those topics during the episode; only allowing social norms to be the end result - which was why shows like Bonanza were as big as they were; because they allowed an end result to the moral topic to go against social norms of the time).
Star Trek, having switched to ethics and philosophy over morality and emotionality, yet maintaining this topical front-stage method really caused the philosophical topics to leap out.
There wasn't an interpersonal drama, character arc, serialized plot, or militant plotline which took the focus and behind it sat an implied philosophical pondering.
Instead, there was a philosophical dilemma pronounced unmistakably and character concerns took a back seat, relying upon the context of the topic for their definition. A character was defined as a tool and would be used to react to the situation which represented a philosophical dilemma and their inherent and consistent character definition's reaction aided in the definition of understanding the topical position and progress through the digestion of it.
Characters in Star Trek, originally, were very static. They were like having different types of objects and we would watch these different types of objects thrown at this unknown other object, which was the philosophical dilemma of the episode, and how those different character objects reacted to hitting that unknown object of inquiry collectively, each in their own way, was our means of understanding the definition of what that philosophical dilemma object was.
However, we were not given a solid answer by the end of the episode, even when we were shown a character making a conclusion of their own.
It was never the case that we were told what is wrong and right for ourselves, nor how we should think or not think.
Instead, we were shown how the characters drew their choices during the show which netted a certain result, and from which they drew a certain conclusion - not all characters having reached the same conclusion, and we were to engage as an additional character - the viewer - and wrestle our our own conclusion. Each viewer was thus charged implicitly to do likewise and from such, varying degrees of conclusions about what a given episode meant, implied, or concluded was produced and sparked many, many discussions and debates among the viewing audience.
Two people sitting right next to each other could easily walk away from an episode of Star Trek with an entirely different understanding of the conclusion, and why that conclusion was drawn.
In this form, Star Trek wasn't out to answer questions, but instead to raise them.
My personal favorite Original Series episode, Space Seed, is probably one of the heaviest philosophical dilemmas of this form that we are delivered. I don't know if there is any episode more grand in scope of topical address than this.
For in this episode Star Trek juxtaposes utilitarianism and ethics against individualism and morality, and further, doesn't answer which is ultimately correct.
Kirk represents the latter, while Khan represents the former, and Kirk and Khan, neither, can judge the other as wrong and can only agree that they are incompatible and both due a right to their way since neither can draw a final judgement of the other.
It is entirely left to the viewer to conclude who was right; Kirk or Khan, and it is not described outright as to which is a bad or good choice - even the character object Spock, representative of pure logic, cannot fully conclude either as absolute in correctness, nor error.
In The Next Generation, Q and Picard repeatedly play roles over topics of examination in much the same way as Khan and Kirk in Space Seed, but Q is adjustable and not fixed to one philosophical idea, unlike Khan, which allows him to bring about more topics of examination than Khan.
These last two are specific examples of the overall description preceding them, and the point here is that Star Trek was unique for placing the ethics of philosophy front and center, and characters were used to help in defining and exploring a given topic. For this purpose, it was crucial that the characters change little over time, or the ability to define the explored topic becomes ever more difficult due to a lack of consistent measuring tools; for if the measuring tools are changing regularly, then they cannot be used to assess another unknown thing.
Evolution:
The Original Series and The Next Generation (at least for most of its run) were both of this format, and both rated fairly well.
This allowed for a new genre to open up in form; Philosophical Scifi.
That is, a science fiction show that is topical by its definition, where characters change little and take secondary priority to the topic, and where there will be lots of talking; not lots of action.
Due to the topical nature, this category of a show is further not really maintained well by serialization as it is ever difficult to explore a new topic as freely in a serialized format which is driven by an arcing and on-going narrative which must be regularly maintained, as a show set to conclude within each, or a few, episodes a given temporal narrative.
Many writers found this format very frustrating because a writer is trained to write a story which is fundamentally grounded in spawning from a character, or characters, and revolves around those characters, and further, progresses the character along a growth.
It's generally understood in writing that a story is sympathized and made understandable because the character is sympathized with and understood by the audience.
Star Trek cardinally stood at odds with this standard.
It is of no surprise, then, that by the time of DS9, many writers shared the same sentiment regarding Star Trek, as often spoken of by Behr - the want to write principally about the characters and to be able to do so in serial form. To be able to explore issues and dilemmas that were paramount to the characters, rather than some vague conceptual discourse with an unknown importance and of no long-term narrative meaning.
From DS9 on, Star Trek, then completely changed how it felt because it changed, not the the canon, but the Form.
Star Trek moved from being Philosophical Scifi to being Scifi Drama with some character philosophy accompaniment.
The difference is analogous to the difference between a Murder Mystery and a Crime Drama.
Both have murder in them, and both are about solving crimes, but one is about the puzzle of solving the crime and the character is a tool of delivering information to solve the crime with, while the other is about some characters who solve crime and the crime is a tool to deliver information about the characters' makeup and growth.
Conclusion:
For myself, I miss the old form.
I still look forward to a day when that form may perhaps return, and I actively look for shows which provide a similarity to this form.
I find very, very few.
The closest that I've recently found is The Librarians (which, not surprisingly is shared in production and creativeness by Jonathan Frakes who pairs up in the overseeing of the show with Noah Wyle), which is partially serialized and partially episodically topical. The characters do grow, and they do have arcs, but they are often second to the priority of the given episodes moral or philosophical topics (which both are definitively answered, and left to be answered variously in different episodes).
So, it's not canon which defines Star Trek to me.
It's the founding form that defines it, and the deviation from that form has been what has lessened my interested in subsequent series of Star Trek over time.
I still check them out, but I usually don't enjoy them very much because they're just not the Trek format that I'm looking for.
Cheers!
Jayson TheStumps
