(The crippled Enterprise plummets to Earth in this scene from Star Trek: Into Darkness. Are we viewing a CGI portrayal of a fictional spaceship? Or, are we viewing an allegory?)
I'll admit it, I'm a trekkie. I can still remember quite clearly the first time we ever channel-surfed into an episode. It was a shot of the bridge of the Enterprise, facing the viewscreen from the perspective of the captain's chair. The drab interior surrounded an image of a black star-studded void beaming in from the viewscreen. I must have only been 7 or 8, but I remember how it immediately caught the interest of our entire family.
Thus began a near-lifelong obsession with the franchise, beginning with our family watching Star Trek: Voyager on a weekly basis, and when the show had ended, the reruns, until they had disappeared off cable altogether. To date I have seen all episodes of Voyager and Deep Space Nine, most of the Next Generation and Enterprise, some of the Original Series, and all but one or two of the movies. Even now I can watch clips from episodes and look up random trivia facts about the Star Trek universe until three in the morning.
(If anything validates my nerd card, it's this. I stay up until three in the morning watching...clips from Star Trek on Youtube. I don't know what's more odd, putting myself in that much danger of falling prey to the Internet's dark and tempting nether, or the fact that I find Star Trek so captivating I don't have the desire to wander into the Internet's dark and tempting nether. What can I say except Zachary Quinto.)
In spite of all of this, I've never really been prone to identifying as a “trekkie.” I certainly don't experience the draw to geeky arguments so stereotypical of what I envision "trekkies" to be, blowing their plasma manifolds with explosive debates over its superiority to other franchises or its scientific exactness. Certainly if I judged this art by such standards, Star Trek would inevitably fail -- it is science fiction, after all, not a universe derived from the plotline of some theoretical science journal. (If so it wouldn't've made NEAR as much money, except perhaps as an insomnia cure.) It is a deeper inspiration behind Star Trek that captures me, and it is one of the messages contained in these deep philosophies that I want to explore in my blog post today, within the narrative of the most recent installment: Star Trek: Into Darkness.
Humanism at its finest
(Preach it, Picard.)
One of Star Trek's basic inspirations is the hope derived from the principles of goodness and nobility manifest in humanity. Above all things, this is what has always drawn me to it. The optimistic, almost childlike humanist beliefs of the show's creators can be seen in the place that humanity has come to within their creation. In the Star Trek universe, humankind has risen above a dreadfully war-torn past and used technology to advance themselves into a political and economic system so advanced that it no longer uses money, with complete political and economic equality. It is a core world and capital of an alliance of free worlds known as the United Federation of Planets, whose defensive and exploration arm Starfleet is headquartered on Earth. Its mission is one of peaceful exploration, scientific discovery, contact with other species, and diplomacy. Starfleet's strict regulations include the refusal to give technology away, not interfering with another race's natural development, and diplomacy before weaponry. As a theme running throughout the series and movies, the main characters' integrity to these humanistic ideals is routinely tested and almost universally passed.
Into Darkness
In the second of the reboot movies, Star Trek: Into Darkness, the plot is thick with the tension between these principles and the principles of darkness that humanity is capable of...and shows how that darkness could destroy the goodness. It is a great lesson on the importance of integrity.
One of the threads running throughout the Star Trek universe is the existance of a secret arm of Starfleet called “Section 31:” the organization is named after a section of Starfleet's original charter, permitting the bending of the rules in time of war. This rogue intelligence and paradefense agency's goals and methods run counter to Starfleet and Federation ideals. Its self-identified purpose is to protect and secure the Federation, which it does at the cost of any opposing principle or force and outside the bounds of justice. Within each Star Trek storyline where they manifest, Section 31 is shown to be capable of great atrocities, such as genocide, in order to obtain its ends.
In terms of screenwriting, it is a brilliant method of injecting tension into the entire narrative of Federation idealism, the darkness within the light.
And Star Trek: Into Darkness explores how that darkness, a parasitic outgrowth of hypocrisy permitted to fester at the roots in a garden of ideals, nearly manages to choke the entire ecosystem.
The Framework
(Houston...we have a problem.)I'm assuming at least some familiarity with this Star Trek movie on part of the reader. If not, this brief synopsis will tell enough detail for you to know what's going on:
Kirk and Enterprise embark on a mission to capture and execute a rogue Starfleet officer who has engaged in terrorist attacks on Starfleet bases and individual officers.
However, all is not as it seems. The officer, John Harrison, turns out to be Khan Noonien Singh, an ancient shadow of Earth's war-torn past who had been revived by Section 31 for his ruthless, cold intellect, holding his cryogenically-frozen crew hostage to force him to design warship and weapons for Section 31 in preparation for a seemingly-impending war between the Federation and their old enemy, the Klingons.
Enterprise, against orders, decides to capture Khan instead of killing him. Section 31, represented by Admiral Marcus, knowing their cover is about to be blown, attacks Enterprise just before it reaches Earth's orbit in a huge warship named Vengeance, nearly destroying it. Through strategy and luck, Enterprise crewmembers sabotage the Vengeance before its captain can execute the final volley of shots.
Kirk and Khan, along with other crew, manage to go to the Vengeance, where Khan overpowers Kirk and his crew, kills admiral Marcus, and takes control of the Vengeance. Again through another brilliant strategy, Spock manages to permanently disable the Vengeance before Khan can destroy them, but not before he deals damage that causes the most dramatic sequence of events in the entire movie.
The Symbols
The symbolic nature of Enterprise and its menacing alter-ego, the Vengeance, captures the entire conflict of the movie: The U.S.S. Enterprise and its crew, with its Captain Kirk, Starfleet's official flagship, representing its ideals of peaceful exploration and discovery and, more deeply, the potential of humanity. The second, the Vengeance...Admiral Marcus's warship, a monstrosity three times the size of Enterprise, heavily armed and armored, a creation of the villainous Khan, a war machine built to extend death, representing Section 31 with all its Hydra-like force and subversion. With the Federation on the verge of a potentially destructive war, the spread of Section 31's methodology and philosophy represents the coming of a crucial turning point for Starfleet and humanity: do we compromise our ideals for survival? It asks. Section 31's clear answer is yes.
It is not by accident that the creators of the movie introduced and depicted both ships in this manner. As co-writer Damon Lindelof said in interview, “So I think, in a lot of ways, Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise is fighting for the soul of Starfleet in this movie(1)."
(I have a great idea. Let's wake up this savage, brilliant, sociopathic war criminal and have him design a ship for us! I'm sure it will help us in our mission of peaceful exploration and scientific discovery, right? Riiiiight? *nudge nudge*)
Enterprise Falling
The scenes after Vengeance's final disabling contain the crux of the movie's powerful philosophical and moral concepts. Enterprise's power fails as a consequence of the damage it has sustained, and begins to fall from orbit. Watch these clips as Captain Kirk and chief engineer Montgomery Scott race the clock to fix the problem, culminating in one of the most touching scenes in all of Star Trek's history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv65AoK0zmQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESWsgJ__dY
Batter me all you want, you won't beat me until my core misaligns.
As I watched these gorgeously choreographed scenes once again late one night a few weeks ago, I came to the crux realization In these scenes, Enterprise is symbolic of Starfleet's in-universe idealism: Stricken, battered and nearly destroyed by its own subversion through Section 31, tumbling in the gravity of the problems it faces.
If Enterprise and its idealism is an allegory for humanity, then the message is clear.
I am only beaten if my core misaligns.
Enterprise took a huge number of hits. Its hull crumpled and tore open under the pressure of volley after volley, dozens of crewmembers thrown out into the abyss, helpless in the face of Vengeance.
But despite all the damage and destruction it endured, Enterprise stayed upright and powered. Representing the best of human engineering within that Star Trek time period, its systems and computers and engines remained operative in the face of extreme damage...until the core misaligned. With the warp core's misalignment came the complete loss of power, and the resultant plummet to Earth that was nearly its destruction.
Can you see the great symbolic message being shared here? Just as Enterprise's destruction loomed only when its core, the source of its power, went out of alignment. Accordingly, if we have built ourselves on ideals, we will lose our power if we compromise our integrity.
Once I have found truth, then it is my responsibility to adhere to it. Only in adherence to true principle will I be permitted to tap into my full power as an individual.
Even if I were to have perfect adherence to principles of right living, (which I damn well don't, I might emphatically add!) the resulting power does not manifest as some kind of personal superiority over others. Life is life, and oftentimes those with the most integrity are the most challenged. No...integrity does not give me power over others.
Integrity is not power over others; it is power over oneself. It would not matter if I was engineered at the best shipyard and crewed with the crème de la crème. My power is dependant on a core of foundational principles. if I say, and do not; if I say one truth and live another; if my integrity is in anyway compromised, and my life is a lie in the face of my knowledge of truth; then, my core is misaligned. I am dead from the beginning, walking in darkness at noonday, inevitably pulled into the gravity well of my own human weakness and the power of my will is destroyed. An aligned core grants us power to live, move and have meaningful being even in face of the most trying of circumstances.
And because none of us are perfect in integrity, we have been given a Captain who sacrificed His life for His ideals, to give us the power to align our cores.
When we forsake integrity for power
Remember the Vengeance? It fell to Earth too, after losing its power to Enterprise's sabotage. A furious Khan turns upon his former masters in a final act of...wait for it...vengeance. Watch the tragic results of Starfleet hypocrisy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ9VMaNRF4s
Isaiah 49:26 gives a relevant warning. “And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine...”
Those who forsake their integrity will inevitably reap the consequences of their own duplicity.
Starfleet learned this at the cost of half of 23rd century San Francisco and, presumably, the lives of thousands of people.
I sincerely hope that we will make effort to ensure that these terrible personal consequences will only play out in the realm of fiction, and not the inner workings of our lives.
1)
: StarTrek.com staff. Exclusive Interview: Damon Lindelof, part 1.
Accessed 10/24/14 from
http://www.startrek.com/article/exclusive-interview-damon-lindelof-part-1.
