Star Trek: The Joan De Arc Generation

by J. Bueker

     Hard to believe as it may be, it was forty years ago this fall that Scotty first beamed us up and we boldly went where no man had gone before.

     So much has been written and said about Star Trek that a neighborhood newspaper must plead the limitations of space and time (pun intended), and deliver but a brief history and a few local anecdotes about this ‘60s icon that simply refused to die. What other TV program from any era has had half the enduring influence of this show, and even one tenth its perpetual success?

     Although the long term impact of Star Trek weaves a richly complicated web that continues to evolve, the beginnings of the story are relatively straightforward and generally well known. A man named Roddenberry dreamed the whole thing up and finally sold the idea to a somewhat reluctant NBC in 1966. There you have it.
     Lost in Space premiered a full year before Star Trek, and was certainly the most popular playtime activity for kids on Joan De Arc during this era, but there were periods in 1967-68 when Star Trek play took clear pre-eminence. In contrast to its competitor on CBS, Star Trek was a more adult-oriented science fiction show, one that actually took pains to instill a degree of scientific realism and plausibility. Whereas the aliens on Lost in Space for example would usually simply blink in and out of existence on the screen during their comings and goings, the handling of such details on Star Trek was far more imaginative and sophisticated, as when the Enterprise is seized in space by a disembodied hand in “Who Mourns for Adonis?” Precisely because we didn’t really understand all of the political, historical, sociological, and scientific references made in the show, we somehow felt more grown up and serious when we played Star Trek.
     The bridge of the USS Enterprise of course was the focal point of the show, and the kids on Joan De Arc used several different locations on the street for this setting, including the Mitchell’s garage and Wells’ backyard. Probably the most effective of these sites turned out to be the back patio of the Dickey’s house, which Bill and Hazel had enclosed with wood siding and window screen in 1967. The area was thus self-contained and fairly large, and yet we could see outside of the space as we envisioned our warp speed excursions through the galaxy. A picnic table and patio chairs provided plenty of seating for the crew, and there was a shelf in each patio corner that made for a nifty instrumentation panel. Once beamed down to a planetary surface, we could continue our adventure anywhere else on the street and beyond.
     The greatest strength of Star Trek was unquestionably its beautifully conceived characters, and herein lay much of the fun in our Trek play. Mr. Spock, the half-human and half-Vulcan science officer and second in command, is surely one of the most marvelous achievements of characterization in the entire history of television. The persistent inner conflict between his logical and emotional selves created an important dynamic for the show that led to some of its greatest moments, and provided a reflection of the same kinds of conflicts that we all face when we struggle to achieve either logical or emotional clarity in our own lives. My brother Charles made a convincingly logical Mr. Spock in our play, and he seemed to relish the role. On the other hand, his uncanny ability to perfectly mimic the Russian accent of navigator Ensign Chekov made Charles the ideal choice for this character as well.
     Meanwhile, I of course usually insisted on portraying Captain Kirk, although my guess is that we probably took turns playing the role of the legendary and gallant starship commander. Kirk was smart, unrelentingly brave, unbelievably focused, and he always scored the babes. Always. Chris Dickey for his part was fond of the role of the irascible ship’s surgeon Dr. McCoy, Spock’s frequent foil, while Mark Wells preferred to play the generic crewman who would beam down to the planet with the landing party for the sole purpose of being horribly killed. Then there was the Joan De Arc senior communications officer of the Starship Enterprise.
     Julie Mitchell was a big fan of Star Trek, and her participation in the Trek play was always highly desirable. Julie was fond of recounting a dream she once had about the show, wherein the Enterprise makes an unannounced visit to the Mitchell home and James T. Kirk himself bestows a kiss upon her cheek. Julie enthusiastically embraced the role of Lt. Uhura in our play, the exotic and feisty communications officer on the ship. If I’m not mistaken, she even devised an antenna-like device to place in her ear, just as Uhura used on the show for picking up sub-space messages. I cannot recall now the actual object that Julie employed for this purpose.
     I similarly cannot remember whether Julie herself conceived of the clothespin phaser weapon that she introduced into our Star Trek play, but this idea still stands as one of the truly great playtime innovations in all of Joan De Arc kid lore. We needed only to access the clotheslines that were in just about everyone’s backyard on the street at that time to restock our supply of this indispensable weapon prop. The metal spring mechanism of the pin was designated as the switch that would control the force of the phaser beam to either kill or merely stun the target, and the weapon was fired simply by squeezing the clothespin open. Ingenious. If you were playing Star Trek on Joan De Arc Avenue without your clothespin phaser, you were toast, bud.

     We worked hard to emulate the heroic deeds of the Enterprise crew in our Star Trek play, which could lead at times to rather unfortunate consequences. One Saturday morning in the Dickey backyard, Mark Wells and I were on a mission for Star Fleet that resulted in Mark coming under the influence of a malevolent alien presence. Fearing for my safety and intent on escape, I mimicked an action that I had seen on ‘60s TV action shows time and again: I grabbed a pile of dirt from the nearby ground and flung it forcefully into poor Mark’s face. Immediately sensing the inappropriate nature of this maneuver, I stood in silent trepidation as my friend whimpered in pain, clutched at his eyes, and scampered home with breathtaking dispatch. Invoking the displeasure of Art and Mary Wells was generally speaking a good thing to avoid, so I discreetly walked back across the street and sat at home to await the inevitable fallout. Surprisingly enough, it never materialized. A little later that day, Mark was happily back out on the street, apparently fully recovered from his dusty ordeal. I had successfully purged him of the alien presence. Job well done.

     The aforementioned limitations of space and time prevent even a cursory reference to the major motion pictures, TV series, animated series, books, novels, magazines, comic books, toys, collectibles, games, web sites, conventions, fan clubs and amusement rides spawned by the original Star Trek. The astonishing success of the franchise is all the more spectacular when one considers that the show aired for but three brief seasons on NBC before being summarily abandoned due to consistently low Nielsen ratings. In fact, the third season was produced only after there emerged an unprecedented fan mail campaign appealing to the network to continue the show. Those loyal fans never let go, and after a highly successful syndication run in the ‘70s, the phenomenal resurrection of Star Trek commenced with the first movie in 1979. The rest is ongoing history.
     There has been a disturbingly fashionable tendency amongst succeeding generations of Star Trek fans to deride the original series as laughably primitive and unsophisticated, with cheesy sets and lame special effects. This sadly misguided perspective overlooks both the context and the level of achievement of the original show. Without the groundbreaking vision and innovative production values of the original Star Trek, there would have been no Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, nor any of the rest. And no later incarnation of the show has ever approached the masterful achievement of characterization inherent in the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triad, nor the first rate writing of the very best episodes of the original series.
     The needs of the many do indeed outweigh the needs of the few, or something to that effect. The needs of 1960s sci-fi fans on Joan De Arc were certainly met by the breakthrough of the immortal Star Trek, and we shall continue to celebrate Gene Roddenberry’s imperishable contribution to our popular culture.
     By the way Mark, sorry about that dirt in the face thing.

 

The top five of Trek by J. Bueker My personal Top Five List of favorite episodes from the original Star Trek series, in no particular order: 1. “The Menagerie” – The original pilot for the show (“The Cage”) was skillfully interwoven with an entirely different plot about Mr. Spock on trial for mutiny to produce a spectacularly wrought two-part episode. The flashback sequences derived from the pilot were convincingly evocative of the Enterprise and its crew during the pre-Kirk period. Plus, Susan Oliver looked terrific with green skin. 2. “The Corbomite Maneuver” – The fear of the unknown is a theme skillfully exploited in this splendidly paced and suspenseful episode. The sight of the vastly larger alien ship Fesarius as it approaches and then dwarfs the Enterprise is a special effects tour de force of the day, as is the eerie and sinister appearance of its commander Balock on the Enterprise bridge viewing screen. The twist at the end of the episode with the diminutive and angelic Clint Howard emerging as the true “big bad” alien provides a nice “appearance vs. reality” thematic touch. But go easy on the tranya. 3. “Specter of the Gun” – On an urgent diplomatic mission to the mysterious world of Melkot, Kirk and crew disturb the reclusive natives, and the landing party of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott and Chekov winds up trapped in what appears to be a bad remake of a “Shootout at the OK Corral” movie. Yet the surreal beauty of a fragmented 1880s Tombstone unfolding beneath a red alien sky combines with a chillingly malevolent Earp gang and one of Spock’s greatest triumphs of logic to produce a truly first rate episode. 4. “Mirror, Mirror” – The whole “parallel universe” idea doesn’t actually stand up very well to rational scrutiny, but who cares? This awesomely cool episode set a standard for TV science fiction that has yet to be surpassed. When the device of a bearded (that is, evil) Spock can be borrowed and used without comment on Cartman in an installment of South Park, you know that “Mirror, Mirror” represents an exceptionally important milestone in TV history. 5. “All Our Yesterdays” – Named, like a number of episodes, after a famous line in Shakespeare, this was one of the series’ most effective explorations of the time travel theme. The plot device of a world’s entire population escaping its planet’s demise by retreating into the past provides a fascinating premise, and Spock for a change gets to score with the babe (Mariette Hartley as Zarabeth), while McCoy sulks and Kirk beats up Puritans. What’s not to like here?

 

Bonus kid’s Star Trek riddle

 

A Star Trek riddle popular at Sahuaro School, circa 1968:

What did Mr. Spock find in the Enterprise men’s room?
The captain’s log.