Month: May 2003

Paul Ford writes:

An editor, could I persuade one to read this far, would correctly say, “where is the story?”

My weak reply: this is not a story but a marker. People will find it in the future, as they come across these pages, and they will see that after the water boiled and I drank my tea, I kept writing. 2004, 2005, 2006, 2020.

Other failures and successes in love and work will be marked on the same long tape of language, unspooling from its reel until cancer, or the nuclear suitcase, gives the Fates cause to snip it. I can look back at the last 6 years, the last 1000 attempts to put an idea into a string of words, and know that nothing is finished, that no matter how strong the sense of lost hope, there is always going to be sleep. And then rising, feet on the floor, blinking hard at the light coming in through the blinds. It is not enough, but it is enough for now.

No reason, just felt like sharing.

I’ve only ever seen a handful of Enterprise episodes — it’s syndicated at odd times on Sunday afternoons here, often preempted by football or NASCAR or whatever else the local Fox not-quite-UPN-affiliate decides to show — so I can’t really comment too much on the validity of this argument (discovered through tranquileye). But it’s an interesting read nonetheless:

I can only think that this Star Trek was set in the past–uh, I mean 150 years into the future–so as to give it a convenient excuse for turning back the galactic clock on race and gender. But given the place Trek holds in so many people’s imaginations, the shift of the Trek world to the right makes it feel as though the future has suddenly been foreshortened.

I have liked certain elements of the show, but it does often feel like an unfortunate step backwards: equal parts nostalgia and revision. I have to wonder whether Trek‘s current ratings are really “astronomical”, and whether The Next Generation was truly as subversive as Minkowitz claims, but she may very well have a point. Part of what made Star Trek special was its inclusiveness, Roddenberry’s (possibly flawed) vision of a future where race and gender were irrelevant and exploration of the galaxy (and ourselves) was all-important.

But, again, I haven’t seen more than maybe six or seven episodes. (The last one I saw, of course, was this one, so I’m somewhat favoring Minkowitz’s opinion at this point.) I’ve always thought that a more interesting Trek series would be one that took place many years after the most recent series, perhaps in a distant future where the Federation has all but collapsed. That way, more attention could be paid to making the familiar seem alien than to making the alien seem threatening.

[And yes, I’ve just realized that the date on Minkowitz’s article is March 7, 2002. I’m not sure that makes her argument any more or less valid, however. From what little I’ve seen — and anyone should feel free to correct me if I’m wrong — Enterprise hasn’t much changed since its first season.]