WILL EVER

BE THE SAME

Shill.

I’ve left a few comments here and there about how I’d like to see Trek move to a more episodic nature, akin to that taken by Battlestar Galactica (the Ron Moore version). Personally, I want to see Trek embrace the fact that we live a linear existence, that people change, and that events can extract a toll even from fictional characters. (Why must it always be an anonymous redshirt that dies?) Yet I always encounter strong pushback by the traditionalists who want nothing more than another 175 episodes of serial television filled with utopian themes that is wrapped up in a tidy 45 minutes.

I think that when we are challenged, as in the ending of a movie like “Seven”, we’re taken aback when the hero doesn’t end up the way we envisioned. Would we be able to accept a re-envisioned Trek where a central character like Spock or McCoy was killed, permanently? I don’t think so. Yet we endlessly complain about how movies and books contain few surprises anymore or that, when an author or screenwriter dares to risk our ire with an unpleasant twist, they are somehow using a “cheap gimmick” to titillate their audiences.

I’m not trying to be all philosophical or deep, but how in the world can we hope to examine ourselves if we refuse to face the facts that we are flawed, that we evolved as self-centered, aggressive animals, and that even our most heroic efforts can end in failure and death? As a guy that’s been watching this stuff for years and years, I have to wonder if we’ll ever get out of this rut or if we’ll continue to regurgitate the same stories again and again and again.

Meh. To argue against human nature–the refusal to address death head on–is a lost cause and I know it. None of us like to be reminded of it, and so we turn to movies to escape it. I just think it’s rather disingenuous that filmmakers would warn their audiences about the variable nature of their characters when it’s their stock-in-trade to protect their franchises at all costs.