I was going to discuss Star Trek but all I could do was really replay the dogmatic mythological history of a timeline that was so well documented until the most recent movie simply called “Star Trek” and all I got out of myself was stuff that everyone else has already discussed at length. The only truly interesting discussion to be had about Star Trek is the utopian vision Gene Roddenberry had way back when. It was big news that the cast was multi-cultural and even a bigger scandal when Kirk kissed Uhuru. Apparently there was a time when many Americans objected to a white guy kissing a black woman. I know, I know, how archaic, barbaric and civil rights era Mississippi politics was that way of thinking.

The discussion of this Utopian vision centered around the humancentric view of the series that we are the sole bastion of being able to balance emotion with logic as well as our tenacity and perseverence to overcome most implacable enemies we had to face. We made friends with Klingons through a series of conflicts where we or at least Kirk fought honorably, since they were largely driven by honor much like Vikings happier to die in battle than of old age in bed. We pacified the Borg through weaponry and cunning. We pacified the Romulans after a coup d’etat threatened to have Romulus destroy Earth rather than conquer us. We also got the Vulcans off our backs through sheer will as they worked to suppress our need to explore since they felt we weren’t ready. You see, those pointy-eared logic driven Vulcans suppress their emotions in favor of blunt, often arrogant and cold logical thinking based on the best and simplest responses. They have no filter in their honesty.

So, to balance things out we are given Spock who is half Vulcan/half human, which means that while he is mostly a logical being Kirk is able to teach him to channel his emotion into doing things that would often appear illogical. Data was an android who at first had no emotions since his brother stole the emotion chip his creator hid for him back home. So, he was very similar from Spock except that he was striving to be human rather to remain Vulcan and after he got his emotion chip and the humor that ensued from it the series thankfully ended before it became too much of a joke about how close Data was to being human. To give an example, Starfleet decided years after they’d made him the tactical officer and third in command of the Enterprise that they needed to study him and that he was property since he was created in a lab rather than born to at least one human parent but the fact that he’d had sex with another crew member a few years earlier that proved he was a sentient being. Wow, having sex proves sentience in that universe. Well, from a writer’s standpoint it’s always interesting when you have a seemingly impossible situation with a surprise loop-hole way out of it that hopefully the viewer or reader never saw coming.

Star Trek also suggested that if we were to meet an alien species for the first time, which is something Reagan actually suggested as well when he was president then we would suddenly stop bickering and all get along so well that poverty and money and all the other trapping of our lives would be traded for exploration of space. That’s a nice vision but highly unlikely since Stephen Hawking suggests that if we were to meet an alien race that he undoubtedly believes that there is a high probability that we are not on the only planet to support life in the universe then it would be a very bad thing, closer to the War of the Worlds scenario where they come to kick our butts for our resources.

I suppose Star Trek differs from so many other sci fi stories because it is ultimately about getting along while exploring the universe. The main goal is not to either conquer, survive or escape from a greater alien force.

There have been other series with this theme. “Lost In Space” was along those lines except that they were literally lost in space and trying to get back, which  “Star Trek Voyager” echoes as well.

Another theme that’s come up is about conflict within the purpose of getting along. One controversy was over which came first in concept between “Star Trek Deep Space 9” and “Babylon 5”. It’s hard to say, it could be like the old argument that Microsoft ripped off Apple or it could be similar to why when you get one big sci fi movie there seems to be another just like it but often not nearly as good, like “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact.” “Babylon 5” and “Deep Space 9” were both about a base in some remote part of space where different disparate species were thrown into collision for some really fun but ultimately always resolved in one-hour conflicts.

Then there is the rock from space theme, which is what “Armaggedon” and “Deep Impact” were about. Oh my God, a rock the size of Texas is gonna hit us in like two weeks and we have no way to protect ourselves. Wait, Bruce Willis has a team of oil drillers we can train for a suicide mission to destroy the darned thing and avoid us from going out like those punk dinosaurs did. Of course, “Deep Impact” was a completely different animal cause Robert Duvall was cracked out of mothballs to lead the team exploding the rock but this time the smaller part of the rock after they succeeded his the Atlantic ocean and turned Oklahoma into beach front property.

It seems to me that sci fi is often about tapping into the fear of doomsday. Man, blame those wacky believers in the Book of revelation as well as Dante for his Inferno cause we love to be scared by all the stuff in the universe that could destroy us. Doomsday doesn’t always come from space. Sometimes an unanticipated and totally surprising natural disaster destroys a major city, usually New York or Los Angeles. Those things never seem to destroy Oklahoma City cause that takes a crazy white supremicist, which ain’t sci fi worthy. These include volcanoes under Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, global warming melting the polar ice caps causing the suddenly and rapidly rising oceans to cover the eastern seaboard of America in water that ultimately then freezes after the heat wave causes the next ice age causing Americans to flee as refugees into Mexico, which is reverse of what happens down there now. You need your irony in humor when the planet is killing us. There are the Earthquakes.

There are also man made disasters like a drug to cure stuff that ultimately kills us. There are the plague movies, which Planet of the Apes fits into based upon “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, where James Franco test an alzeimer’s drug on chimps and then his father only to find out that the drug makes simians smarter than we are while killing the majority of us off at the same time.

The ones I love are the robot or AI destroys or enslaves us like “The Terminator” or “The Matrix”. They are all reimagined versions of “Frankenstein’s Monster” in that we created what ultimately destroys us. We created the ultimate defense system that of course becomes self aware and nano seconds later decides we need to die right after we try to destroy Skynet.

That leads me to time travel stories because these are totally fantastic. I mean, it could be really cool or really disheartening to go back and meet your parents but what if they are dweebs or something uncool. I love “Back To the Future” but based on the principle that when you observe something you change it means that the moment Marty interfered with his father meeting his mother then there was a pretty good chance we had a paradox since the likelihood of getting them back was in doubt but that’s the plot. Now, he got them back together in such a way that his father was able to dominate Biff rather than the other way around before Marty left but the butterfly effect and chaos theory suggests that the interference greatly decreased Marty’s chances of being conceived and so on. The interference also most likely changed Doc Brown as well since why would he then need to wait until 1985 to unveil the time traveling DeLorean except that the plot dictates that to avoid the paradox of time travel then Doc needed to not let Marty know he knew exactly what was going to happen that night so that Marty would go back and the time line would be preserved even though it was so messed up especially in the sequel when Biff from the future gets a hold of the almanac and somehow magically figures out how to get the time machine back to 1955 to give young Biff the book and then get back so that Doc and Marty don’t realize that’s messed up the whole time line and so on. I love it when I’m not trying to figure out how they didn’t destroy everything.

“The Terminator” series also plays god with time travel because in the first one it suggested that because the Terminator came back in time to kill Sarah Connor and left behind a few parts that by the second one we were on the verge of creating the technology that makes Skynet et al possible. So, let me get this straight, James Cameron, something that possibly won’t exist from a future that may not happen comes back in time and therefore by the butterfly effect creates and then destroys itself. I loved the series cause a killer robot that has no weaknesses is out to kill this helpless waitress cause she’s going to give birth to the savior is awesome even if it’s an immaculate conception cause if Kyle Reese is his father then Kyle only came from the future to follow the Terminator. Of course John Connor himself knowingly sends his own father who must be half his age back in time to ensure that John himself is actually born to ultimately send his father back in time.

So, regardless of how cool the movie is time travel stories based on linear time don’t make logical sense as possible. Since Marty McFly may have actually prevented his own birth when he went back means that logically he can’t actually make the trip in the first place. “Star Trek The Voyage Home” gave us the same future effecting the past thing. For one they go back in time and Scotty magically figures out how to type even though they don’t have keyboards in his century and he manipulates an old pre-Windows or GUI computer into showing a company how to make translucent aluminum while kidnapping two whales and a whale researcher in the process. Loved it but ooh that’s painful to discuss.

So, I prefer the time travel stories that involve alternate realities. These propose that the moment you go back the time line skews into an alternate. There you go, no paradoxes allowed here. You can actually go back and kill yourself without preventing Punky Brewster from ever happening. One of the best examples is “Source Code”, which refers to a top-secret and experimental project that allows a pilot to jump back in time to the last 7 or 8 minutes of a guy’s life who died when the train was destroyed by a terrorist bomb. He does it over and over again and ultimately keeps changing things until he figures out what he needs to do. There are so many alterations to the timeline each time but since it’s no secret that this movie is about alternate realities then they can do that without the paradox pain.

“Star Trek” the 2009 movie does the same as I’ve mentioned before except that Spoke and Nero obviously came from one alternate reality into another one cause any Trekkie or Trekkor will tell you that Romulus never was destroyed in the entire 40 year Star Trek history especially since the last of the original time line “Nemesis” involves the Romulans in their backyard.

So, what else does Sci fi offer us? Oh yeah, alien conquest. It seems that most aliens coming here are not nearly as friendly as E.T. who just wanted to eat Reese’s Pieces as well as phone home but then again we humans were the bad guys cause we just had to dissect him to learn his secrets. “K-Pax”, “Starman” and a host of other innocent aliens who came in peace only to blanked over by us curious humans have been portrayed but none in my opinion better than “Paul”. Here we have an alien who resembles those alien hunter images of the big head, big eyes and so on image that Paul reveals to his rescuers were based upon him anyway. He explained in funny language that he ran from Area 51 after he suddenly realized that he was never truly a guest of the US Government. That will happen when you find out they want to remove your brain cause they’ve exhausted what knowledge you can give them. The movie lampoons all those alien conspiracy movies as did “Men in Black”, which I found brilliant.

So, we get to alien conquest and they are all based upon conquest for our resources and they must destroy us rather than barter with us for them. Seems to me they are parables to the colonizing of the world that has happened so often in history. Wipe out the locals to get at their gold or beer or pot or women or whatever. Maybe they just have more cable options, who knows. So, traditioinally we have the aliens coming here and most seem to be based on “War of the Worlds” cause they have an overpowering enemy force that we can’t defeat who don’t want to talk and in the end a virus kills them cause their immune systems hadn’t evolved to handle our stuff. Kind of like if I went to Mexico and drank the water. I’d probably get really sick next to a local who laughs cause he can take it.

In this genre there are so many to talk about but the funniest one to me or the most ludicrous was “Independence Day”. Now, I am pointing this one out cause it was a virus from Jeff Goldblum on a 3rd generation, pre-giga-anything, pre-internet laptop that gave the computer virus to the alien ship. Man, if you know your history, networking one of those laptops required tech help from the Geek squad and he was able to figure out how to do it with an alien ship and beyond that you mean to tell me that the aliens didn’t have virus protection? Are you nuts, I won’t go to Wikipedia or Google without virus protection let alone an alien ship. That and all the brightest minds in the world couldn’t figure squat out except for Jeff Goldblum, a cable operator out of New York City who also magically got from gridlocked and panicking New York City down to the White House in Washington in shorter time than I think it normally takes when there aren’t aliens looming ominously over both cities. Anyone who travels from NYC to Washington tries to time their journey around local traffic cause it always backs up around Baltimore and Philly. So, imagine if all cities had people fleeing.

Moving right along, what I’ve seen recently is the same plot but from the vantage point of the indigenous alien group. Basically, we are the conquerors out for the plunder and we’re going to wipe out the savage natives as in “Avatar”

Now, that introduces the timeless plot device of They-counted-on-everything-except. This was made really popular after “Die Hard”, so, in the case of “Avatar” Jake Sully is the X-Factor because without him jumping ship and joining the natives then of course we would have wiped them out. So, I guess we’ll have to wait for the two sequels to find out if he still survives the return of the nasty humans.

There are more genres within sci fi cause I failed to really talk about “Star Wars”, which originally was a galactic civil war turned into the rise and fall of a guy needing anger management counseling. I also didn’t mention “Alien”, which is we go to space and pick up a nasty parasitic alien force that’s just doing what it’s genes tell it to do, which is impregnate anything breathing and I’m sure they’re sorry that God made them this way but their offspring need a place to incubate.

I could also point out how these stories are all based on cultural feelings because otherwise who’s gonna pay the ticket price for something that’s not in someway relevant to pop culture. We tend to root for the small guy like David who is up against the big guy who is Goliath. We rarely wonder why Goliath is there in the first place. We rarely look beyond the conflict to realize that perhaps we precipitated the conflict.

One example of us being the aggressor was “Starship Troopers”. It was based on a Robert Heinlein book that was based in part upon his philosophy that there could be a working version of Fascism that isn’t about killing inferior races or enemies of the state. We are sold the concept that we are being wrongly attacked by alien bugs. Now, the bugs were neat looking CGI and that stuff always is eye candy but if you watch the newsbite images that director Paul Verhoeven weaves into the movie as he’s also done with “Robocop” then you’ll pick up on the fact that those newsbites are propaganda and the reason the bugs attacked was because we’ve been aggressively invading their territory. It is never ascertained whether they launched the Rio destroying meteor as an offensive or defensive act. There’s no evidence that they are invading other than propaganda suggesting so.

I have also touched on the cyborg thing and android thing. We have the killer cyborg like “Terminator”, we have the killer reanimated soldiers from “Universal Soldier”, we have the reanimated cop in the funky suit in “Robocop”, we have the Borg and Data from “Star Trek”, which by the way I’d seriously consider becoming a Borg if they all looked like Seven-of-Nine. Speaking of hot cyborgs, how about the those Cylons. Do you blame Baltar for what he did cause I suppose you could simply chalk his stupidity up to trying to get some tail. Oh, wait, I’m a stronger man than that but if I didn’t know she was a Cylon then who knows. Um, wait, I’m still too strong to be stupid enough to let anyone compromise my high paying, high profile and high powered job since he was apparently in charge of all defenses but hey, she was cute. Personally, I found Boomer way cuter myself.

What I think these all have in common is that for one sci fi gives us a vehicle to dream of what could be. Future tech is really cool but in the ‘60’s the bridge of the Enterprise was high tech but by today’s standards it looks like they patched together a bunch of old mainframes from the ‘50’s. They didn’t exactly envision touch screen back then and that’s because future tech dreaming is often based upon the next few logical steps. Star Trek also didn’t have much of a budget, which is why they invented transporters cause it would cost too much to land the ship each week. Meanwhile, there are scientists working hard to prove that all that Star Trek tech could possibly actually work as well as making it happen.

I know from writing my own stories that sci fi and future tech gives you free reign to reimagine old story themes. The skies the limit when it comes to stuff that is only either theoretical or a wishlist. Such things as OLED screen technology, touch screen technology, communications tools, space travel and how to break the laws of physics without violating trhe space/time continuum are fun things to work around. They also give us a chance to explore what social issues may be there in the future as well as to suggest those that won’t be the issue they are today. I’ve discussed how a kiss between a black woman and white man was scandalous back in the ‘60’s but today we’re rooting for the new Uhuru and Kirk to get it on as well cause they are so cute and hot and all that attractive stuff especially since Zoe Saldana was kicking butt in “Colombiana”.

The last thing is that sci fi also gave us the emergence of the strong female character. Often they are portrayed as if they were written as men and then given female bodies but “Alien” changed that. Ripley was a believable woman in the first movie. She wasn’t portrayed as anything more special other than having a good brain and a strong will to survive. Later she also added pissed off at the corporation who gave a rat’s butt about her except for her connection to the alien life form. Perhaps, Jamie Lee Curtis actually began that in “Halloween” but Sigourney Weaver really brought it mainstream.

I love sci fi even if there are so many glaring things I find annoying like the ending of “Inception”. I suppose if I were a DeCaprio fan then maybe I’d find it cool that the ending was so ambiguous that I wanted to throw a shoe at the screen but I’m not and therefore disappointed. Sci fi allows us to dream of a future and hopefully debate about it. I’m still discussing “Blade Runner” cause that made us question whether the bad guy was really that bad. All he wanted was something we all want, more life. So, I hope they keep pushing the envelope but if you’re gonna keep charging me more money for those 3D glasses then make the movies that much more interesting.