āRisk is our business,ā James T. Kirk once said. āThatās what this starship is all about. Thatās why weāre aboard her.ā
More than a half-century later, the performer who breathed life into the fabled Enterprise captain is, at age 90, making that kind of risk his own business and heading toward the stars under dramatically different circumstances than his fictional counterpart. And in doing so, William Shatner is causing worlds to collide, or at least permitting parallel universes to coexist ā the utopian spacefaring vision of āStar Trekā and the evolving, increasingly commercial spot that āspaceā holds in the American psyche.
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When Shatner boards Jeff Bezosā Blue Origin NS-18 in Texas at around dawn Wednesday, his one small step into the craft creates one of the ultimate crossover stories of our era.
Itās about space and exploration, sure, and certainly about capitalism and billionaires and questions of economic equity. But itās also about popular culture and marketing and entertainment and nostalgia and hope and Manifest Destiny and, and, and ā¦ well, you get the idea.
āWhat will I see when Iām out there?ā Shatner wondered last week, talking to Anderson Cooper on CNN. An equally valid question is this: What will WE see when heās out there?
It will be a complex blend of human dreams superimposed upon technology and hope, braggadocio and cash, and the notion that space travel elevates us ā all orchestrated by a company under criticism for what some call the decidedly un-utopian, tech-bro ways that it operates.
Is all that and āStar Trekā a good fit?
THE WORLD OF `STAR TREKā
Since its 1966 premiere with one of the most diverse casts TV had ever seen, āTrekā has grown from Gene Roddenberryās fever dream of a āāWagon Trainā to the starsā into an intricate transmedia universe full of subtleties and traditions and rules.
Among them: Human beings avoid killing each other. Money is generally outdated, as are hunger and poverty. Greed is aberrant. Noninterference in other cultures is the most sacred principle of all. And within the United Federation of Planets, the spacefaring United Nations of āStar Trek,ā exploration, not domination, is the coin of the realm. In short, unlike a lot of humanity right now.
That 1966-69 original series used allegory to evade network censors and tell stories about racism and xenophobia and even the Vietnam War. How could they get away with all that? Because the adventures of Kirk's Enterprise took place against a backdrop of 23rd-century space travel ā something directly relevant to the world as well, given that humans first set foot on the moon 47 days after the original seriesā final episode.
Over the next half century, backed by a vocal fan base, āStar Trekā roared back for more and, in the process, led the way in cementing space travel as an ideal canvas for relevant storytelling.
Even as NASA's Apollo era ebbed into the space shuttle program (where an early craft was named āEnterpriseā) and eventually into uncertainty, āTrekā remained one of the cultureās central vehicles for a spacefaring future.
Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura on the show, was a particularly tireless advocate, working with NASA to recruit Americans of color and women and make sure they could occupy the center of such ambitions as the missions marched forward.
In the 1980s, movies about the original crew dealt with aging and regret. āStar Trek: The Next Generationā offered a more cerebral but still utopian vision. Another spinoff, āStar Trek: Deep Space Nine,ā set at an outpost preserving a delicate detente, presented a darker take ā but still one in which avarice was anomalous and worthy of scorn. And āEnterprise,ā a 2001-2005 prequel, offered a season-long arc about the aftermath of a 9/11-style extraterrestrial attack on Earth.
Two of the latest iterations of the myth, āStar Trek: Discoveryā and āStar Trek: Picard,ā have dipped deeper into darkness than their predecessors and have toyed with the notion that not all humanity wants to be quite that utopian.
In all that varying storytelling, though, one constant remained: the notion that human space travel would become a vector of ethics and goodness that elevated the galaxy rather than plundered it.
THE PROFITABLE FRONTIER
Which brings us to companies like Blue Origin, Elon Muskās SpaceX and Richard Bransonās Virgin Galactic ā endeavors that build their brands not upon countries but corporations.
They offer the culture a late-stage capitalism variation on the theme ā a narrative that space travel isnāt just for scientists and diplomats but for you and me, too. If, that is, you and me happen to have a few hundred thousand dollars or more of walking-around money on hand.
āThe United States always has had private people working for the public purpose,ā says Ravi S. Rajan, president of the California Institute for the Arts and a āTrekā fan since childhood. āBut how much is done privately and how much is done publicly, that changes.ā
Many have impugned the billionaire space mogulsā actions, including the secretary-general of the United Nations, and the troubles of Blue Originās corporate culture are well-documented of late.
But the motives of the Amazon founder himself remain unclear. It is evident, though, that the popular culture of space travel has influenced him deeply.
Bezos, who tells a story of exploring space to help ensure Earthās continued prosperity, is a longtime āTrekā fan. He made a cameo as an alien Starfleet official in the 2016 movie āStar Trek Beyond.ā And according to biographer Brad Stone, Bezos even fleetingly considered calling Amazon āMakeitso.com,ā after Capt. Jean-Luc Picardās favorite command in āStar Trek: The Next Generation.ā
āThe whole ethos of `Star Trekā showed people who were different-looking, with different skills, working together. We are in the opening moments of something like that,ā says Richard B. Cooper, vice president of the Space Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for the global space industry. āPeople can look at this environment and say, `Hey ā I belong there, too.'"
Prohibitive costs aside (and thatās a big aside), Cooper has a point. Though the likes of Shatner may not be āregular people,ā the shift from the dominance of the test pilot and the scientist tracks with the populism of our era, where ā it must be said ā the exactitude of science is being called into question as never before. And as Cooper points out, āit gives people hope. And if thereās one thing the worldās in short supply of, itās that essential payload.ā
That kind of storyline ā hope, heroism, competitive dominance and an unerring sense of competence that can at times overlap with testosterone ā could be one key reason why the commercial space outfits are thriving. At a moment when NASA and nation-focused space travel lacks a compelling Hollywood narrative, the entrepreneurs and their marketers step right in.
āAmerican dominance in space, nobody cares about it. Itās Bezos who says, `We canāt go on living like this. We have to save the planet,āā says Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a professor of religion and science in society at Wesleyan University. What results, she says, is āa kinder, gentler colonialismā in which humans take to orbit under premises that seem justifiable but require closer scrutiny.
āItās the billionaires who have the utopian visions,ā says Rubenstein, author of the upcoming book āAstrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race.ā
āThe states canāt muster them,ā she says. āThey have no story.ā
LAUNCHING SHATNER
We live in an era where the fictional and the real have an intricate relationship, and sometimes itās hard to separate them. Something like this, a collision of dreams and real-life ambition and achievement, couldnāt have a more effective ambassador than the outsized personality that is William Shatner.
āI was there last week rehearsing, whatever they call it,ā Shatner told Anderson Cooper.
āTraining I think is what they call it,ā Cooper said, to which Shatner responded: āI think of it as rehearsal.ā
And there it is again ā the storyline, compelling as ever, stealing oxygen from other important questions. Should we even be colonizing space? Donāt we have enough going on here at home to worry about? Arenāt there people with problems more pressing than this who could use the cash?
And what if we encounter life thatās not life as we know it, and harm it out of obliviousness or greed? Itās not as if that hasnāt happened countless times here on the ground, in the land that put a man on the moon but still grapples with a history brimming with horrors from slave markets to smallpox blankets. These are only some of the questions that will ascend and descend with Shatner on Wednesday.
Is it a stunt? Sure. Is it a genius marketing ploy? Absolutely. Is it cynical and self-aggrandizing and designed solely to make more money and grab more attention for the worldās richest man? Youāre going to have to decide that one yourself.
In the meantime, consider the autobiographical song called āRealā that Shatner recorded in 2004 with country singer Brad Paisley.
āIād love to help the world and all its problems. But Iām an entertainer, and thatās all,ā he says in it. āSo the next time thereās an asteroid or a natural disaster, Iām flattered that you thought of me ā but Iām not the one to call.ā
Turns out, he is ā this time. But next time? In the future of the final frontier and the culture that has grown up around it ā in this unusual realm where risk IS the business ā thatās eventually going to have to be addressed.
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Ted Anthony, director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation at The Associated Press, has been writing about American culture since 1990 and watching āStar Trekā since 1969. His younger sonās middle name is Kirk. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted