Pedophillia and Star Trek?

My fellow blogger Orac has on occasion had some pointed comments about The Huffington Post, primarily for their one sided coverage of the links between use of Thimerosal in children's vaccines and autism which seem long on innuendo and accusations and short on actual facts. To this I should like to add my own complaints about something in The Huffington Post, an article by Ellen Ladowsky called Pedophillia and Star Trek, reaction to which has been echoing around the Blogosphere.

Ladowsky bases her piece on an article which appeared in the L.A. Times - she says recently but in fact the times article is dated April 27, 2005 and is so old that it isn't available online except by paying $3.95 U.S. for it. The article contains what she describes as the "mind-boggling statistic: of the more than 100 offenders the unit has arrested over the last four years, 'all but one' has been 'a hard-core Trekkie.'" There's just one minor problem - this statement has pretty much been debunked. Ernest Miller, who publishes the weblog Corante and whose credentials I respect more than Ladowsky (because he states them in his blog) and yet is dismissed as "Blogger Ernest Miller" actually bothered to follow up the story with the Toronto Police detective quoted in the original L.A. Times story. Miller writes of his conversation with Detective Constable Ian Lamond of the Toronto Police Sex Crimes Unit "He claims they were misquoted, or if that figure was given it was done so jokingly. Of course, even if the figure was given jokingly, shouldn't the Times' reporter have clarified something that seems rather odd? Shouldn't her editors have questioned her sources?" According to Lamond a majority show "at least a passing interest in Star Trek, if not a strong interest" and while "there was sometimes other science fiction and fantasy paraphenalia, Star Trek was the most consistent and when he [Lamond] referred to a majority of the arrestees being Star Trek fans, it was Star Trek specific." Canada's Maclean's Magazine picked up on the story in a piece called The Star Trek Connection although the phrase "Star Trek" appears in the article four times. There are two interesting statements in the article, one at the beginning and one at the end. In the introduction to the piece author Jonathon Gatehouse writes "A surprising number of child sex abusers appear to be Trekkies. Trying to figure out what that means, however, shows how little we really know about pedophiles." The other statement is at the end and refers to an ongoing study by psychologists Michael Seto and Angela Eke which will be looking through the arrest files of 400 child porn offenders in Ontario: "One of the things they will be looking for is reports of suspects with sci-fi collections, especially Star Trek. Seto hypothesizes that the pedophiles might be using their toys and memorabilia to groom victims - a view that Blanchard [Ray Blanchard, head of clinical sexology at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health] shares. "They have to adapt their strategies," he says. "Just like a regular heterosexual guy sets up situations to get women in sexual proximity."

So those are the facts that Ellen Ladowsky so blithely ignores in her article, which then goes on to examine why Star Trek screws people up so. First of all though she takes a detour to the Heaven's Gate mass suicide at Rancho Mirage California in March 1997 and links it to Star Trek: "Those involved in the Heaven's Gate mass suicides in Rancho Sante Fe in March 1997 also purported themselves to be avid Star Trek fans. One may recall that the cult forced its members to wear unisex clothing, had a strict policy of celibacy, a ban on all sexual thoughts, and eight of the members had surgically castrated themselves." The only link to Star Trek that I can actually recall being made public was that Nichelle Nicholls younger brother Thomas was one of those who committed suicide. The cult actually believed that on shedding their earthly bodies they would be transported aboard a UFO hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet.

Some of her points are amazing in their attempts to link Star Trek - and here she apparently constantly refers to the original series not to the four follow-up series - to bizarre sexuality. Item: "At first blush, the crew might seem kind of sexy - big-breasted, scantily clad female crew members, men in skin-tight uniforms, and Captain Kirk ripping off his shirt at the slightest hint of heat - but the features of their sexuality are exaggerated in the manner of a comic book, creating a hygienic distance from anything to do with real sexuality." Item: "The male crew members demurely ignore the sexually enticing (if antiseptic) female crew members. There seems to be a tacit agreement that any sexual relationships would destroy the unity of the crew." Item: "Captain Kirk displays a truly astonishing emotional poverty. He goes from planet to planet, having trysts with an assortment of nubile women, but never forms any real attachments. By the next episode, the last female partner is forgotten. (Although we don't know all that much about pedophilic sexual offenders, one thing we do know is that they have trouble forming authentic adult romantic relationships.)" She even brings up the Kirk-Spock relationship that is so much a fixture of fan fiction: "The one longstanding attachment Kirk has is to Mr. Spock. In fact, their bond is so intense that there's an abundance of gay porn written about the two. (Oddly enough, it's frequently written by heterosexual women.)" (Oh and by the way she also has a take on Spock: "It's easy to imagine how the garden variety pedophile might identify with the half-human, half-Vulcan character who is bereft of human feeling, essentially neither male nor female, and living in a society where those around him seem to have a different set of rules. (It turns out that autistics also strongly identify with Spock, but that's another story).") She even links the Utopian nature of society in Star Trek with Pedophilia: "There is another aspect of Star Trek that likely makes it irresistible to perverts. It is utopian, in the sense that all the differences and distinctions which create tensions here on earth have been eradicated. Despite their exaggerated sexual characteristics, for example, the crew members are citizens of a utopian interracial and interplanetary world where the usual conflicts associated with gender do not apply. [New paragraph in the article] In perversion, there is an attempt to obliterate any distinctions that provoke unconscious anxiety. First and foremost, this entails a denial of the difference between the sexes and the difference between the generations. Pedophiles are, at the very least, attempting to deny the difference between the generations. The utopian fantasy here is to normalize sex between adults and children."

Okay, right. Virtually all of the things that Ladowsky points to can be explained in four words: It was the Sixties! Televisions shows didn't bother with continuity beyond what they absolutely had to. Richie on The Dick Van Dyke Show would have a dog one week and the very next week be begging his father to get a dog without reference to the pooch he had the week before, and men were seriously dating one week and worried about not having dates the next. Male Bonding was the rule rather than the exception - Friday and Gannon, Malloy and Reed, Lt. Gil Handley and Sgt. Chip Saunders, hell even Jim Phelps and Rollin Hand (isn't it suspicious that none of the men on the IM Force was trying to get into Cinnamon Carter's undoubtedly expensive panties?). On the other hand big busted women in scanty clothes was also the rule of the day when they could get away with it: the daughters on Petticoat Junction, the various secretaries - notably Miss Trego - on The Beverly Hillbillies, and even Judy Robinson on Lost in Space. As for sexual relationships, remember that the Enterprise was a military ship and even today relationships between superior officers and either enlisted personnel or junior officers even today are grounds for disciplinary action, discharge or even court martial. The real life military sees "that any sexual relationships would destroy the unity of the crew." Don't even get me started on implied sexual relations in an era when people who were married on TV slept on twin beds, with plenty of separation. It wasn't until Bewitched that a married couple shared a bed (well except for Ozzie and Harriet). Finally we come to the "utopian argument". Of course the United Federation of Planets was a utopian society. Most science fiction of that period that was set in the future envisioned that future as utopian. Certainly "space opera" did as an extension of the belief that in order for a planet to send voyagers not just to other worlds but to the stars that planet must have a unitary society, one where we are all united and "the differences and distinctions which create tensions here on earth have been eradicated." The rise to prevalence of dystopian societies in science fiction was a later trend, and even the human society in a show such as Babylon 5 at least has a veneer of a utopia even if underneath it is seething with dystopian elements such as the Psi-Corps, Free Mars, the Night Watch and the Shadow Conspiracy surrounding President Clark.

In the end I think that Ladowsky's article is a misguided piece of writing, putting forward as new a story which has been, if not fully discredited, at least put into proportion by writers who have actually bothered to dig a little deeper for the truth. Ladowsky's article doesn't even add much to the argument presented in the L.A. Times article (and I ask again, why was it written now, and why is the Huffington Post running it now). Rather she travels off in a direction that can only be described as tenuously linked to it. About the only thing Ellen Ladowsky's article is guaranteed to do is to raise the ire of fans of the show. But of course all I am is a Blogger.

James Doohan - 1920-2005

James Doohan, probably best remembered for playing the chief engineer of the original starship Enterprise died today at age 85 of complications from Alzheimer's Disease and Pneumonia. He also suffered from Pulmonary Fibrosis, probably related to exposure to chemicals his service during World War II. Reportedly he will be cremated and his ashes will be sent into orbit.

Born in Vancouver, Doohan grew up in Sarnia Ontario. He attended Sarnia Collegiate and Technical School where he excelled in math and science. He joined the army during World War II. As a Captain in the Royal Canadian Artillery he participated in the D-Day landing at Juno Beach. At 11:30 on June 6, 1944 he was wounded by machine gun fire. He took four wounds to the legs, one to his right hand (which shot off his middle finger) and a bullet to the chest. In the sort of event that is usually thought to be a Hollywood cliche, the bullet that hit him in the chest was stopped by his silver cigarette case. After recovering from his wounds he returned to active service this time as a pilot of an artillery observation plane - he was labelled " the craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Forces."

Following the war Doohan became an actor. His first radio appearance was in January 1946, and he soon became a popular performer. He attended Lorne Greene's legendary Academy of Radio Arts, and along with another Academy student named Leslie Nielsen he won a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York where among his fellow students were Tony Randall and Richard Boone. The immediate postwar period is considered the "Golden Age" of Canadian radio drama, and Doohan was in the middle of it. He appeared in over 4,000 radio programs, which meant working with such actors as Greene, Tommy Tweed, and John Drainie, writer Lister Sinclair, and producer Andrew Allan (trust me these were extremely important people in Canadian radio). In fact Doohan was one of the stars of the notorious CBC drama The Investigator (available from Scenario Productions), written by Allan and starring Drainie and Barry Morse. He was also a mainstay in early Canadian TV. In fact he was one of the stars of one of the first Canadian TV series, 1952's Space Command (of which only one episode apparently survives) and was hired to play "Timber Tom" the equivalent of "Buffalo Bob" in the Canadian version of Howdy Doody; Doohan's agent wanted more money for the role and CBC refused to pay it - the role went to another actor. Before the debut of Star Trek he appeared in over 400 TV parts although only a fraction of those are mentioned in his IMDB filmography. One of the most famous was as the former Spitfire pilot who has to land a commercial airliner in Flight Into Danger by Arthur Hailey. This was later remade as the Hollywood movie Zero Hour with Dana Andrews as Ted Stryker and eventually satirized as Airplane! in 1980.

It was of course for Star Trek that Doohan was best known. When auditioning for Gene Roddenberry Doohan did seven accents and which asked which he thought was best suggested that the ship's engineer should be a Scot. The show reunited him with another actor from the CBC, William Shatner. Doohan and Shatner appeared together in at least one episode of Star Command, and when Doohan was fired from the "Timber Tom" role and Peter Mews, who was supposed to take the part, wasn't available for the first week of the show William Shatner as "Ranger Bob". Much of the rest of his life was involved with Star Trek related projects - one way or another. He did some of the earliest fan conventions, and with his talent for accents and radio training provided many of the voices for the Star Trek animated series. He appeared in all of the "original cast" movies including Star Trek: Generations and also did an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Even his character of "Pippin" in Homeboys From Outer Space was a satire on Star Trek and his relationship with the captain, although he did balk at an appearance in a 2002 episode of the animated series Futurama, the only living cast member who refused to do it. One little known thing is that while Doohan is not credited with it he developed the Vulcan and Klingon languages used in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, with the Vulcan words actually being made to fit the lip movements of the scene which had already been shot in English for the Kolinahr scene. Later, linguist Dr. Marc Okrand who was serving as a dialogue coach on the movie developed the rules of syntax and grammar and added more words to the Klingon language.

Doohan's relationship with Shatner was never good. In his autobiography, Beam me up, Scotty: Star Trek's "Scotty"- in his own words Doohan states that "I have to admit, I just don't like the man. And, as has been well-documented elsewhere, he didn't exactly have a knack for generating good feelings about him." This clearly relates to the various memoirs put out by other cast members, but Doohan had known him longer than any of the others. He added "I like Captain Kirk, but I sure don't like Bill. He's so insecure that all he can think about is himself." If the chapter on Shatner in Knowlton Nash's Cue the Elephant: Backstage Tales at the CBC is to be believed there were a lot of people that he worked with in Canada who didn't care for him either.

James Doohan was married three times (although the IMDB only lists two), first to Judy Doohan with whom he had four children, then to Anita Yagel. His third marriage in 1974 to Wende Braunberger who was 37 years his junior, produced three children including his youngest daughter Sarah, who was born in April 2000, when Doohan was 80. He received an honorary degree in Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and many of the students at the school - and indeed at other institutions - stated that they had been inspired to go into the field by "Scotty". He received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in August 2004, shortly after it was revealed that he was suffering from Alzheimers. At the "James Doohan Farewell Star Trek Convention" Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on the moon revealed that he was a Star Trek fan, and a fan of Commander Montgomery Scott.

Fare thee well Mr. Scott.

Star Trek Enterprise Finale

Last night saw the season finale of Numb3rs and the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise. The finale of Numb3rs was the sort of episode you'd expect from a series that was pretty much sure of coming back next season. (Network upfronts are coming in the next week or so, but some series look to be confident about returning.) About the most spectacular thing about it was the complete absence of Sabrina Lloyd. She's been seen less in the past few episodes so maybe they're just phasing her character out. Shame on them if they are.

I really want to write about the Star Trek: Enterprise finale though, but first let me just repeat my usual refrain about it being long past time for the team of Berman & Braga to leave the Star Trek Franchise forever and not let the door hit them on the ass on the way out. They should go out backwards and let it hit them in the .... well you get the idea. There, that felt good.

The series finale was a two one hour episodes. The first was the wind up of last weeks episode in which Trip Tucker and T'Pol discover that there's a Human-Vulcan hybrid child with their DNA, created by an anti-alien group "Terra Prime", headed by the often underappreciated Peter Weller. In the episode, the Enterprise crew managed to defeat Terra Prime's nefarious scheme to destroy Star Fleet Command, prevent the signing of a trade agreement between Earth and a number of alien races, and force all aliens off earth. There's the usual amount of daring-do and in a touching note the baby - named Elizabeth by T'Pol and Trip - dies as a result of genetic complications. Phlox however leave the door open for a certain future blessed event when he explains that the cloning process used by Terra Prime was flawed and Human and Vulcan DNA is in fact compatible enough to allow a child to be born and survive.

On the whole that episode would have been a pretty good opener to a fifth season - the end point of a cliffhanger - or even an end the series, but no, someone couldn't leave well enough alone. We had to be treated to a different final episode. We are catapulted six years into the future, when the Enterprise is heading back to Earth to be decommissioned and put into the mothball fleet (a term that originated with the US Navy for ships that have been retained for emergency service but aren't crewed and receive minimal maintenance). Suddenly there's an announcement calling all senior staff to the bridge and we discover that what we're seeing is a holodeck program being run by Commander Bubble Butt - sorry, Commander William T. Riker. Yes they decided that they needed an episode with Next Generation characters, so we got to see William Frakes who appears to have been eating his way out of his depression after Thunderbirds flopped, and Marina Sirtis who really should lay off the Baklava and hit the gym if she wants to wear that uniform again.

The storyline is a disappointment after so many good episodes in the past year. Riker is participating in the Holodeck reconstruction of the final days of the new original Enterprise (as opposed to the original original Enterprise which was Kirk's ship) because he's pondering a decision. In fact it's the decision that he made in the Next Generation episode "The Pegasus", to disobey orders and tell Picard about the illegal tests of a Federation cloaking device that occurred aboard the USS Pegasus. Apparently Troi told him that he could get greater insights about the decision he has to make by experiencing the last days of Archer's Enterprise. The plot there focusses on Shran, who is supposed to be dead but is really on the run. After leaving the Andorian Imperial Guard (and why would he do that?) he fell in with an unsavoury element, who now want him to return something he doesn't have and have kidnapped his daughter to get it. Early on Troi and Riker let us know that Trip doesn't survive, so during the time that the crew are trying to rescue Shran's daughter on Rigel 10 we're wondering if this is when Tucker's going to kick the bucket. In fact, it doesn't happen until after the rescue when the guys who have kidnapped the child (and supposedly only have a Warp 2 ship) suddenly show up on Enterprise and want the Shran and the kid. Tucker does the heroic thing, putting himself in a potentially life threatening situation to kill the bad guys and save Archer. Throughout the episode we are treated with meetings between the Enterprise Chef and several senior crewmembers. Chef of course isn't the "real" Chef but Riker. Troi has told him that since the ship didn't have a counsellor (or a bar tender) people tended to talk to Chef. Needless to say the insights Riker gains all centre on the Archer-Tucker relationship, which gives Riker the answer he needs to decide to trust his instincts and tell the man he trusts unconditionally (that would be Picard) about the secret of the Pegasus. This episode was such a terrible send-off for the show that it is difficult to believe that Manny Cotto did it of his own free will, given the episodes that have come before in this season. The idea had to have come from higher up in the Paramount food chain.

Next year, for the first time in 18 years there will not be new episodes of a Star Trek series. For the first time in its history there won't be a Star Trek series on UPN. Unlike a lot of people I don't think that the franchise is dead. If anything the last season of Star Trek: Enterprise points the way forward. I've said it before and I'll say it as long as anyone wants, the time has come for Berman & Braga to go. It may be true that there can't really be a single vision for the whole franchise. If there ever is a new series (and if UPN gets desperate enough there might be) it may need a new vision, and a different vision from any future movies. The basic concepts are sound - a utopian future (because so many movies and TV shows give us a dystopic vision) and a focus on exploration rather than conflict - so a new show could be led by someone who isn't currently involved. I don't know what comes next, but I hope it's something interesting.

The Final Frontier is Cancellation

There is something sadly frustrating in the fact that Star Trek: Enterprise will be ending at the end of its fourth season. The sad part is that they are ending the series just as many of the problems that have dogged it over the years are beginning to be remedied. It was probably too late - UPN had reduced the amount they were willing to pay for the show and had moved it to Friday nights. The frustrating part is that I'm not sure whether anyone at Paramount or Viacom really realises what was wrong in the first place. There's even a bit of irony in that, if the show had been cancelled after the third season I doubt that there'd be much regret; the dominant emotion might perhaps have been relief.

In looking at the various modern Star Trek provides a certain perspective on Enterprise (as the show was originally known). The first season started well enough. Indeed in my opinion (and let's face it,all I have to offer here is my opinions) the early episodes of Enterprise were better than most of the first season episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. People looking at The Next Generation with rose coloured glasses that time provides tend to forget just how wretched much of that first season was. If the show hadn't been carried in so many markets and received such high ratings from people who were willing to cut it some slack because it was Star Trek on logic that "any Trek on TV is better than no Trek", the whole thing might have been written off as a very bad idea. The difference between The Next Generation and Enterprise is that the earlier show improved with age. The second season was better than the first and the third season and beyond gave us more strong episodes and fewer clinkers. Through it's first three years Enterprise didn't improve much and the ratio of poor episodes to good ones was depressingly bad. Many people have said the same about Star Trek: Voyager although even that show improved somewhat over time.

Star Trek fans, be they "Trekkies", "Trekkers" or people like me who just like to watch the shows without getting into philosophical discussions about the "big issues" (in Klingon of course) or dress up in pointy ears and home made uniforms, tend to point the finger of blame for the deterioration of the Star Trek franchise on Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. They were the Executive Producers - the "show runners" - for Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise after rising to leading positions on Star Trek: The Next Generation. They were also heavily involved with the writing process on all of Voyager and much of the first three seasons of Enterprise. By way of comparison, Berman and Braga had little to do with the other series in the franchise Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which I at least consider to be the best of the modern series. Although Berman carried an Executive Producer credit on Deep Space Nine the real "show runner" was Ira Steven Behr, who was also deeply involved in the writing process. In the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise, the "show runner" has been Manny Coto, who has also been highly involved in writing many of the fourth season episodes. The change has been visible.

A lot of fans of Doctor Who place the blame for that series decline squarely on the head of the show's final producer, John Nathan Turner. Turner stayed on Doctor Who as producer for nine years. Previously the longest period of time anyone had stayed on as producer of the show was five years and the average tenure was about three. The accusation made against Turner is that he stayed too long, well after his creative vision for the project had been exhausted. The same can be said about Berman and Braga with regard to Star Trek. Combining their periods on Next Generation, Voyager, and Enterprise they have been running the franchise on a day to day level for ten years and Berman has been doing it for closer to fifteen years. It is almost impossible not to believe that their creative vision on this particular front has long since been exhausted. If people with a different perspective on the property, like Manny Coto and Ira Behr before him, had been involved with Star Trek: Enterprise from the start, UPN might not have moved it to the Friday night "death slot" or cancelled it for failing to perform.