Review of Star Trek Into Darkness

It's been out for about a month now and I finally got around to seeing Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). First of all I must say that I think it was a better film than the original Star Trek (2009). It's not that the first film was bad, but it had just a ton of plot holes that I still can't get past. The current film feels much more cohesive, if derivative (but I'll get to that).

Oh, if you haven't seen this movie yet, this is your one and only warning that my review contains major spoilers. You have been warned.

The movie starts out with Kirk and Bones on an alien planet where Kirk has pissed off the locals by taking some sort of artifact or god or something. They're running for their lives and Kirk, confronted by a huge monster that came out of nowhere, stuns the beastie, only to learn from McCoy that it was their ride.

Meanwhile, Spock, Uhura, and Sulu are in a shuttlecraft heading into a live, about-to-erupt volcano to stop the fireworks. Failure to do so will result in every living being on the planet dying (that's some badass volcano), even though their orders from star fleet said only to survey the planet, not save it.

Spock is lowered down in some super heat resistant suit with a fusion bomb (why that would make a giant volcano inert is beyond me). His line to the shuttle breaks and the heat threatens to destroy the shuttlecraft so Sulu is forced to fly (limp) back to the Enterprise, which is hiding under the nearby ocean.

Spock is alone and if he can't get out of there in just a minute or so, Young Spock will die and there'll be no Genesis planet to revive him.

Kirk breaks the prime directive to save Spock by pulling the Enterprise out of its watery cover so they can beam Spock back. All the pre-industrialization aliens see the ship and there are strong indications that it becomes their new god.

In the original series, Kirk broke the prime directive with such regularity, it seemed like the law was made to be broken.

Not so in the reboot movies. Kirk loses his command (thanks to Spock filing a truthful report...Jim's log was full of "half-truths") and the Enterprise goes back to Pike. Kirk goes back to school.

Fortunately villainy is afoot and the mysterious John Harrison saves the life of a star fleet officer's daughter in exchange for that officer blowing up an archive...which just happens to really be a secret star fleet weapons development center (or should I say "centre") in the heart of 23rd century London.

Pike calls in some favors and gets Kirk assigned as his first officer (Spock is reassigned to the USS Bradbury and Kirk is still pissed at him for not understanding why Kirk broke every rule in the book to save his life). Kirk is the only one to figure out (but not in time) that after a disaster such as the one in London, all starship captains and first officers are called into a mandatory confab at Star Fleet headquarters...a perfect set up.

And it was. Harrison swoops in with a ship and peppers their meeting room with gunfire. I must say Star Fleet air security was really lax. In the 21st century, air traffic controllers and the military know when an aircraft is anywhere near restricted air space. If the room in the film had been the White House, the President would have been toast.

Admiral Marcus makes it. Kirk not only makes it but brings down the attacker (but Harrison beams himself halfway across the galaxy before his ship actually crashes) Spock makes it.

Pike isn't so lucky.

Amazingly Admiral Marcus gives Kirk his command back, reassigns Spock as first officer, and gives Kirk seventy-two highly classified photon torpedoes to kill the attacker with, who has beamed himself to an uninhabited area on Chronos, the Klingon homeworld. Kirk's orders are to hang at the edge of Klingon space, lock onto Harrison, and fire without warning.

Kirk is OK with this morally, but Spock, Bones, Scotty, and just about everyone else isn't and try to talk Kirk out of it. Scotty even quits his job over it. A new, and might I add beautiful science officer Carol Wallace (Alice Eve) is assigned to the Enterprise right before launch.

So far so good. Kirk got a good talking to by Pike before he bit the dust and frivolous, womanizing Kirk has had this "comeuppance." Pike was the closest thing Kirk had to a father and watching him die right before his eyes has left him hungry for revenge. In that sense, we can almost forgive him for not noticing that a star fleet admiral has just ordered him to commit murder and risk interstellar war all for the sake of getting one man. No attempt at a capture, not even a warning to be issued. Why would Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) even do such a thing?

On top of all this, Spock and Uhura are barely on speaking terms but the reason isn't made clear until later. Neither is the reason that Spock could face his own death with little emotion but he was shocked the moment Pike died.

So off to Chronos the Enterprise goes.

I must say at this point that Scotty's transwarp beaming equation has made transporters too powerful. If Khan, uh, I mean "Harrison" (why the heck couldn't they get an actor from India or of Indian descent to play a Sikh warrior from India is beyond me) can beam from Earth to Chronos across hundreds if not thousands of light years, who needs starships?

With Scotty partying back on Earth, Chekov, who should be about 21 years old by now, is made chief engineer (people are promoted awfully fast in this version of Star Trek...Kirk was made Captain before he ever graduated the academy) and he's got a big problem. Somewhere near Klingon space, the Enterprise just stops dead. There's a leak in the warp cooling system and it's going to take Chekov hours if not days to track it down (he's no miracle worker).

Kirk, after much soul searching, which we don't actually see, decides to not fire the mysterious torpedoes (they're resistant to scanners...no one can even figure out what kind of fuel they use) and instead is going to lead Spock and Uhura (she can speak Klingon) on a covert mission to try and capture Khan (yes, it's Khan) and bring him back to Earth alive to stand trial.

They make it to Chronos but not undetected. They encounter first one and then several rather overly designed birds of prey and have no choice but to land. Uhura tries to negotiate with a group of rather overly designed Klingon warriors, all carrying overly designed batleths, but no go (it's like the folks in charge of making Chronos and everything Klingon decided that it all needed lots and lots of modular lumps, and knobs, and doohickies all over everything. The Klingon world and all the Klingon stuff looks like a bunch of black and white legos...but really, really sharp.)

Khan, of all people, comes in at the last second to rescue Uhura with some sort of big particle weapon and takes out almost all of the Klingons and their ships. Oh, he saves a few for Kirk to fight but it's really Khan who saves the say.

Khan surrenders after finding out that Kirk has exactly seventy-two specialized, long range torpedoes on board, and allows himself to be put in the brig.

And then Khan lays it all out for Kirk while Bones is studying Khan's highly unusual blood sample.

He's three-hundred years old. He and a group of enhanced human beings were launched into space as war criminals. Marcus found their ship, thawed only Kahn out and held the other seventy-two members of Khan's crew in status to force Khan to develop new ships and weapons technologies for the Admiral. After the whole mess with Nero in the previous film, Admiral Marcus decided that the only way to prevent another such happening is to turn star fleet into a military organization...and he plans to start a war with the Klingons to do it. The torpedoes, the Enterprise's break down, everything was part of Marcus's plan. Khan even gives Kirk a set of co-ordinates near one of Jupiter's moons that contains the proof.

As all this is going on, Spock discovers that Carol Wallace is really Carol Marcus, the Admiral's daughter, who is snooping around to find out why her father has gone so "black ops" lately. Kirk calls up Scotty and his alien friend and pleads with them to investigate the co-ordinates near Jupiter. Simon Pegg plays Scotty with lots of attitude and crankiness, but not much personal resolve. Off to Jupiter he goes.

Bones examines Khan in sickbay and is trying out some of Khan's blood on a dead tribble (yeah, but only one tribble).

Later Bones and the now confessed Dr. Carol Marcus try to open up a torpedo and find not only explosives but a highly enhanced human being in status...it was Khan's plan to try and free his people by hiding them in the weapons he built, but he was found out and Marcus took the torpedoes before Khan could smuggle them away from the weapons center. Khan's murderous attack is explained as revenge for the Admirals poor treatment of him and his people and in protest for his "evil plan".

And who should show up before Chekov's repairs on the warp coolant leak are finished...the Admiral in a secret attack ship that had just been assembled near one of Jupiter's moons.

I won't give you the rest of the blow-by-blow, but Kirk, backed into a corner, learns the meaning of responsibility and command, something he was sorely lacking by the end of the first film. I was afraid that J.J. Abrams was going to leave Kirk not only a jerk, but an inept one at that. This entire second movie is to develop Kirk into the Captain he's supposed to be. For the most part, it works.

We also find out that the destruction of Vulcan has left Spock more vulnerable than anyone imagined. Uhura was mad at him for risking his life and accepting certain death because he didn't care about her and how she would feel. But it was his feelings Spock was trying to protect. He mind melded with Pike at the moment of death and he has been trying to hide just how "emotional" he's been about relationships. Spock "felt" Pike's confusion, anger, and fear when he died, and those feelings mirror how Spock feels about Vulcan...and those closest to him if they should die. It's not that he doesn't love Uhura enough but that he loves her too much.

And then things get too rewired and it's like the ghost of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) moves in. After Kirk and Khan get on board the Admiral's ship with a little help from Scotty who stowed away, to rescue Carol, who Admiral Marcus beamed aboard once he realized she was on the Enterprise, Khan kills Marcus, beams the Enterprise trio back onto their crippled starship and as he's about to destroy them, they pull a surprise warp jump and head for Earth.

They almost make it. But the engines are damaged. Kirk (and not Spock) enters the radioactive chamber to fix the engines so the Enterprise doesn't crash on Earth. After the touching "I shall always be your friend" scene, it is Spock who has to helplessly watch his friend Jim die, so soon after he's lost Pike. It's Spock (and not Kirk) who screams in rage, "Khhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnn!!!!!!!!"

Spock has also pulled a fast one and agreed to beam seventy-two torpedoes on board Khan's (well, it's Khan's ship now) ship but really, the people and cryochambers were removed before hand...not so the explosives which Spock armed.

The Enterprise is saved but Khan's ship is hopelessly crippled by the exploding torpedoes and crashes into San Francisco. Khan (of course) survives, and Spock goes after him and revenge.

Meanwhile, the dead tribble that Bones had treated with Khan's blood revives and the resurrection of dead Kirk (minus a Genesis planet) is assured. But Bones needs Khan alive to get enough blood to save Kirk.

Khan, for his part, isn't all that easy to kill, or even stun. He's absolutely ruthless in a way that Ricardo Montalban's Khan never was...and a lot stronger. Even Spock's neck pinch doesn't work...and when Uhura beams down to stop Spock from killing Khan, even her phaser on heavy stun doesn't quite do the job. But using some piece of machinery like a boxing glove, Spock beats and beats and beats Khan up which finally does the trick.

But we had far, far too much "Wrath of Khan" storyline for my tastes and just how emotional is Spock going to be from here on in?

Months later, Kirk has recovered, and one year later, at the Enterprise's re-christening ceremony (she was pretty badly beaten up), Pike is eulogized by a much more mature and worthy Captain James T. Kirk. With the crew and ship in top shape and ready, they finally embark on their five year mission, the longest ever attempted by a starship.

Space, the final frontier.

It was good. It was long. All the stuff pulled from that 1982 movie was way over the top. The actual origin story for Khan and his people (not one of them were revived, although you'd think Bones would have wanted to test their blood, too) was never detailed so how they were created on Earth sometime in the twentieth century remains a mystery. At the end of the film, Khan is refrozen, begging a sequel.

Oh yeah, Bones synthesized a serum from Khan's blood so in theory, now star fleet medical has an immortality potion. If you die, it's not permanent. If you want to go to the other end of the galaxy, you can just beam there. Things happen fast in this version of Star Trek...and they're getting more powerful by leaps and bounds. Pretty soon, they'll even be able to stop Superman...except at the box office.

What Went Wrong with Star Trek Enterprise?

In the wake of Jonathan Frakes' recent declaration that for him, Star Trek: Enterprise's series finale was "an unpleasant memory," actress Marina Sirtis has also come out on the controversial final episode. But instead of blasting it, she defends it as a fitting finale for ... The Next Generation.

In another of Star Trek.com's lengthy interviews, the 56-year-old actress—who had to slip back into one of Counsellor Deanna Troi's skintight uniforms after 18 years in the role (and three years after Star Trek: Nemesis) in May of 2005 for the controversial Enterprise final episode ''These Are the Voyages''—said about the finale.

-Nathalie Caron
"Marina Sirtis defends Enterprise finale as a fitting end for TNG"
blastr.com

I've tried repeatedly to create a comment in reply to this blastr blog post but I keep getting an error message. Guess I'll have to write a wee blog of my own about it. First off, here's part of what I was going to say in my comment:

Wow! She's 56?

Anyway, I guess this means I'll have to get around to watching the final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise one of these days. Actually, I stopped watching the show at the end of the third season. It just failed to hold my interest the way that the rest of the Star Trek franchise shows did.

I don't think this was the fault of the cast or crew. The producers set it too early in history and created too many plot holes in terms of the already established "Trek" history. They introduced things like view screens and transporters when, according to the "official" time line, they shouldn't have existed yet. Then there were the desperate attempts to revive interest by introducing Romulans, Ferengi, and Borg when humanity hadn't met them yet, either. "Enterprise" could never create its own niche because it lacked most of the elements the Trek audience had come to know and love. The producers should have set it in the Romulan-Earth or Klingon-Earth wars or even when Capt. Pike 1st took command of the Enterprise. Now that would have been a riveting series, if handled correctly.

To continue, I think Berman and Braga just became arrogant and complacent. They assumed all you'd have to do is stick the title "Star Trek" on a show and everyone would spontaneously "nerdgasm" all over it.

Wrong.

They should have put a lot more thought and research into the concept of a "pre-STTOS" show. Instead, they goofed and shot Bakula, Blalock, Billingsley, and the rest of the cast in the collective foot. They also assumed (probably thanks to Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager, that a pair of really large breasts would make up for good stories, consistent plots, and character development. Wrong again. Big boobs aside, my favorite character was "Trip", played by Connor Trinneer. I found him very human in his struggle to apply his personality and preconceptions on a rapidly unfolding interstellar exploration.

I could go on and on about what went wrong with the show and what could have been right, but I don't feel like writing a novel today. Like I said before, the one big thing I'd change, if I could, would be to set the show later in history but still before Kirk's time.

Point's moot because with the full Star Trek reboot, history is up for grabs again.

Set course for the Talos star group. Time warp, factor five. Engage.

Star Trek 2: The Klingons

No, no, no, no, no! I have no idea about what the next Star Trek film will be like. I have no idea who or what will be in the next Star Trek film. This is just my imagination. Never, ever say that I told you that Klingons will be in the next J.J. Abrams Star Trek film. It would be a lie. I haven't the faintest idea what's up his sleeve.

I did just read the latest blastr.com blog on the next Star Trek film including a quote by Zoe (Uhura) Saldana:

"I know it's gonna be amazing. We still haven't gotten a script yet," she said of progress on the film, which Access has confirmed with a source will begin shooting in mid-January, and won't be called Star Trek 2. "We're very excited to read it and get back into space."

"I know it's gonna be amazing. We still haven't gotten a script yet." Cute.

So, who or what should be featured in the sequel to Abrams' 2009 runaway hit? I once read an article about Star Trek that said its success rose and fell by the use of its villains. That's probably true. When a Trek film or TV episode doesn't have a definitive "bad guy", it isn't nearly as interesting. I think that's what made Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) so much fun. It's not the best film in the world, but Ricardo Montalban must have had an absolute blast playing Kahn.

So who are the 23rd century's best Star Trek baddies? The Romulans and Klingons, of course. Don't even suggest the Borg or any of Picard's other playmates. For lack of anything better to do, the rather disappointing Star Trek: Enterprise series threw in a bunch of races that weren't supposed to even be a whisper in the 22nd century, and it screwed up the Trek continuity even more than it already was. The idea of a Star Trek reboot is to wipe away all of that stuff and start from scratch.

But not completely. One of the things that "Enterprise" did right was to bring back cool races like the Andorians and the Tellurites (see the STTOS episode Journey to Babel for details). I think that's at least a portion of what the Abrams films should do, preserve the best of the original and clean up the leftovers.

OK, I'm tossing the Romulans out of the second film just because a bunch of futuristic Romulans were prominently featured in the first film. That leaves the Klingons (and remember, I know nothing...nothing). This would be a good time to try and get Klingons straight. For instance, when first seen in the original Star Trek series, they were a bunch of swarthy thugs with no redeemable social qualities. No honor. No glory, No Bat'leths. They were just interstellar jerks (although Michael Ansara as Kang was pretty good). Romulans were a lot more compelling (especially since Mark Lenard played a Romulan before he ever became Spock's daddy).

By the time the first (awful) Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) came along, somebody decided to change their appearance to make them seem more alien, probably because the film had a $40 million budget and they had money to burn on a little extra latex (and Mark Lenard cameoed as a Klingon in the beginning of the film...cool trivia bit). But no one ever explained the change in appearance.

It came to a head in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Episode Trials and Tribble-ations where Worf and the DS9 gang travel back in time and invade the original series episode The Trouble with Tribbles. Worf is a 24th century Klingon. The original "Tribbles" episode is full of old, 23rd century TV Klingons. The two look nothing alike. The only comment Worf makes is: "We don't like to talk about it."

Thanks to reboot city, all of the inconsistencies that have built up in the Star Trek timeline just go bye-bye. Any mistakes that happen now belong to Abrams and company (and they already screwed up by "disappearing" Jim Kirk's older brother George Samuel Kirk).

The Klingons and Romulans were introduced in the original series as a parallel to the cold war era and the U.S. "relationship" with the Soviet Union and Communist China. If Abrams keeps the same basic history (and Klingons were briefly mentioned in the first film), then there was a Federation/Klingon war at some point. It didn't go well for either side and a rough truce was formed. There's a neutral zone between the two "empires". It's the cold war all over again with border skirmishes, spies, political intrigue, and all that cool space 007 stuff.

Or the war hasn't happened yet. Abrams could decide to go big and have the Earth/Klingon relationship start off hesitant and untrusting but not outright hostile...until the second film. Then all Sto'Vo'Kor...uh, hell breaks loose. Either way, rewriting history and reinventing the Klingon race into a more complicated, not entirely evil but always dangerous enemy would be fabulous.

Of course, that's only one possible option. If Kirk meets and has a relationship with Carol Marcus this time around, maybe there'll be a future David to be killed by the Klingons all over again in 30 years or so. In the meantime, Kirk could still get to kick some alien ass, make plenty of enemies, and seduce his way across half the quadrant like in the good old days.

We'll just have to wait and see. None of the principal actors have even seen the script yet.

Pon Farr Victim

For anyone who considers themselves a Star Trek fan, the words "Pon Farr" conjure up the long discussed but rarely (if ever) witnessed act of emotionally and sexually repressed Vulcans getting all hot and bothered and "hitting it". The words and concept were actually created by famed science fiction author Theodore Strugeon for the Star Trek (original series) second season opener Amok Time and have since become legend.

While the Pon Farr is a fairly common occurence in the Star Trek universe now, in the mid-1960s, it must have been a bit of a chore to figure out how supposedly "emotionless" Vulcans reproduced (especially since Spock is the product of a human mother who likely had "needs"). Since Vulcan's pride themselves are not expressing emotions and having sex is a pretty emotional experience (unless you're Data doing the nasty with Tasha Yar), how was this supposed to work, and get past the rather rigid censors in control of what appeared on TV screens in 1967?

Strugeon's answer was to create a "mating instinct" in Vulcans similar to lower (Earth) life forms such as Trout. Every 7 years, Vulcan males are compelled to return to their homes and take a mate, do what's expected, supposedly impregnate her, then ignore her for the next seven years. Kind of brutal on a relationship, but these are Vulcans after all.

In childhood, the parents of a boy and girl arrange a bethrotal where the two youths are joined telepathically. At the right time, some combination of hormones flips a psychic switch and they home in on each other like minks in heat (which they pretty much are at this point). Sturgeon sort of suggests that females may be sexually active at other times, since Spock's "wife" the faithless T'Pring actually wants to hook up (or maybe already has) with a blockhead Vulcan named Stonn. While the female doesn't appear to lose control of even the slightest bit of emotion, the male, if we can use Spock as an example, absolutely goes bat shit. If he doesn't get laid in a timely fashion, he either goes toes up, probably in a very unpleasant way, or has to beat or hack something to death to get his rocks off.

I assume that a visit to the bathroom with a magazine full of photos of naked pointy earred women won't "do it", since the process is telepathic as well as biochemical. The person you mate with has to have a mind for a mild meld to work (though in T'Pring's case, maybe not much of a mind).

Fortunately, even though T'Pring tells him to get lost or at least, "fight for me, lose, and die", he is tricked into "killing" Kirk (another faked TV "death") which cools his rocket pack considerably. Spock realizes that T'Pring is a stone bitch and gives her over to Stonn, secretly knowing that she'll make his life hell on earth, uh...Vulcan, for the next century or so, and returns to the Enterprise. Finding Kirk actually alive, he just about flips out with joy (many have wondered if Spock would prefer to "Pon Farr" with the Captain) and when the whole mess is over, they all have a nice chuckle and move on to their next adventure.

Yeah, I wanted to see Arlene Martel get naked too, but such was not to be, particularly in the 1960s (see the image just above for why).

Since then, the rules for Pon Farr have changed a little. They now apply to women, if Star Trek: Enterprise and T'Pol can be believed (and apparently she can have sex on other occasions, as her relationship with "Trip" testifies. Actually, I suspect Vulcans can really mate at any time, but they are only fertile once every seven years (so your kids would all come exactly seven years apart). That explains why Spock's mother Amanda didn't go insane from the frustration of having sex with Sarek only once every seven years (unless she had other "outlets").

I mention all this because last year, I was completely blown out of my Nikes (no, not that way...I know we're talking about sex) when Spock and Uhura found a few private moments in the turbo lift to crawl all over each other. They were pretty cozy in the transporter room, too...and in front of Kirk and other people. What the heck happened in the Star Trek reboot film?

Now don't get me wrong. Spock's got great taste. Who wouldn't want to jump Zoe Saldana at any opportunity? I for one hope the romance takes a more public turn in the next film. While the audience was treated to an Uhura strip scene (at least down to her bra and panties), could we get a little more detail in the sequel?

Probably not, but I can dream.

Back to the "what happened?" question. I haven't been able to find a specific explanation (at least nothing "official"), but along with all of the other changes that came with the reboot (whatever happened to Kirk's older brother George Samuel Kirk, anyway?), Vulcan's apparently have a less restrictive libido as well. If it's common knowledge in the Star Trek reboot universe that Vulcans can get it on more or less at will the way humans can, I wonder why Kirk was so surprised to discover the Spock/Uhura relationship? Maybe, in typical Kirk style, he just couldn't understand how any woman would prefer any male other than him.

While the reboot Vulcan sex drive made for a wonderful bit of spice in the film, I still think a few words of explanation should be forthcoming in the next movie. I got the distinct impression that human/vulcan relationships weren't exactly encouraged on the now blown away home world. Sarak and Amanda seemed an anomally. Is Spock attracted to human females because his mother is (was) human, or is something else going on? Maybe Spock got his ears from his Dad but his "drives" from his Mom (and he beat Kirk to a pulp on the bridge to prove it).

Time will tell. In the next movie, should Uhura be showing a little Vulcan "baby bump"? Also, what does this mean (if anything) for the original (Leonard Nimoy) Spock who started all this business now that he's gone back in time to an alternate Star Trek universe?

Oh. I didn't make the title of this article up. Some years ago, I was at a Star Trek convention. One of the other attendees was pregnant and the t-shirt she was wearing over her impressively abundant belly was (you guessed it) Pon Farr Victim.

Addendum: Having a conversation on twitter with @CK61938 about what would happen if the Spock/Uhura love scenes were played out with the original stars, Leonard Nimoy and Nichelle Nichols with their appearances digitally changed to make them look as they did in the mid 1960s. What do you think?

Different than the Sum of Our Programming

I've been spending a little time blogging about how mechanization and cybernetics have been affecting human beings. In Misfit, I suggest that two "robotic" DC comic characters Cyborg (from the Teen Titans) and the Doom Patrol's Robotman, although enabled as "superheroes" by their prosthetic bodies, are also alienated from the humanity they seek to serve. In my more recent blog A Human Heart and Courage, I point to the fact that, regardless of how much of our bodies are made up of artificial parts; our humanity transcends our physicalness and inhabits perhaps a more ethereal space. We are more or at least different than the sum of our parts.

Edward Page Mitchell's short story The Ablest Man in the World was published in 1879 and recounts the tale of a man who has a computer implanted in his head, causing him to become a genius. If we can tie into every other body part and organ with cybernetics, will we one day really be able to augment the human brain with computer chips?

That's pretty far out, but consider that in some ways, people are already "programmed" with a set of instructions that determines our perceptions, responses, and behavior. These instructions vary from person to person, based on how they were raised, their experiences, and how that input was encoded and given "meaning" for the person. I was about to say that, as we develop, we begin to think independently, but anyone who has been around a two year old, realizes that people are very independent at the beginning and that our programming provides the framework for complying (to one degree or another) with society's behavioral expectations and the expectations of our particular family, peer, and associative groups.

In science fiction, we often attempt to impose how people learn onto robotic and computer programming. Consider the Star Trek original series episode The Ultimate Computer. Written by Laurence Wolf and D.C. Fontana, the story relates how the Enterprise is reduced to a skeleton crew and has a revolutionary computer device called the M5 installed in engineering for testing, as ordered by Star Fleet. The M5 is supposed to be able to perform most of the functions that normally require a human(oid) crew aboard a starship. Kirk argues that the one thing it can't do is make value judgments. The M5 can't actually "think"...or can it?

It's creator, Dr. Richard Daystrom, the scientist who originally invented the computer systems currently used aboard Federation starships, says that he has developed a "whole new approach" which solves the "thinking" problem, by imprinting his own memory engrams on the computer circuits, giving the M5 what amounts to a personality.

This is a very, very old story in science fiction with an old conclusion. Turns out that Daystrom is an unstable personality and that mental instability was transferred to the M5. When the computer mistakes a series of war game exercises as a real attack and begins destroying starships and killing people, both Daystrom and the M5 are "unplugged" by Kirk, "proving" that people are ultimately superior to machines.

Comic book lore of the same era addresses the same issue of over dependence on machines at the cost of human liberty and autonomy. Magnus, Robot Fighter: 4000 AD is the story of a man, raised in a hidden base under the Antarctic by a benign and wise Robot named 1A to become the guardian for humanity, both philosophically and physically, and to defend against Robot overdependence among humanity and any physical robotic threats against mankind. Magnus becomes the ultimate man and role model, trained to mental and physical perfection...almost a Messiah-like figure who can beat up robots with his bare hands and who continually warns the people around him that they'll lose their uniqueness as people if they keep letting robots "take care" of them (think WALL-E). Jack Williamson's novel The Humanoids conveys the same essential message.

Are people superior to machines in our "programming"? Do we behave better or more "morally" than a robot would if we could program a robot to a human level of complexity? Isaac Asimov asked that question in one of his short stories in the I Robot collection called Evidence. At some future date, Attorney Stephen Byerley is running for the office of Mayor of New York. His opponent Francis Quinn levels a rather odd accusation against him. Quinn says that Byerley is a robot created in human form, with an outer shell of human flesh, much like a Terminator. Think about it.

Asimov's classic three laws of robots state:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.


2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.


3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

If you tweak the wording of the laws just a little bit (and they have been so you don't have to reinvent the wheel), the three laws describe the behavior of a reasonably moral human being. If people were "programmed" with the three laws, how would our behavior be different? In Asimov's story, Byerley manages to prove he's a human being be punching a heckler during a speech, something a robot would not be able to do, but to the end of the story, it's always uncertain whether Byerley is really human or a cleverly disguised robot (Byerley could have arranged for the heckler to be another humanoid robot, enabling him to hit the heckler without breaking the first law).

I'm not suggesting that we program human beings as we would machines. That story too has been told in another Star Trek original series story What Are Little Girls Made Of?, written by Robert Bloch. Another, "free will humans are better than programmable humanoid android" story. Yet, what if we would choose to structure our lives around something like "the three laws"?

I seem to be focusing a lot of the works of Gene Roddenberry because one obvious example of a "machine who would be man" leading the way to more "human" behavior is Lt. Commander Data from the Star Trek the Next Generation series. More than once in STTNG episodes, Data refers to himself as having been programmed with the three laws and that his basic functioning depends on those laws.

Data is actually based on a failed TV pilot written by Roddenberry called The Questor Tapes (1974). Robert Foxworth plays the android Questor, designed and built by a brilliant scientist named Vaslovik. Vaslovik has disappeared, but a team of scientists, including Vaslovik's protégé Jerry Robinson (played by Mike Farrell, best known as B.J. Hunnicut on TV's M*A*S*H series), attempt to finish Vaslovik's work by programming Questor.

The Vaslovik programming tapes were damaged when project head Geoffrey Darrow (John Vernon) attempted to have them analyzed so when Questor eventually is activated (after everyone else has gone home for the night), he has all of his intellectual capacities but, like Data, has no emotional awareness. Like Data, Questor also has a compelling drive to understand the people and world around him and a need to help human beings. Although unstated, it's likely that Questor is "three-laws" compliant based on his actions.

Questor, Vaslovik, and a long series of androids before them, as the audience discovers during the film, were placed on Earth by an alien race to help guide humanity into maturity and prepare us to join the interstellar community of intelligent races. Vaslovik had to take himself out of service before activating Questor to replace him, due to exposure to contaminants produced by modern technology. Questor is to be the last in the series, with a "lifespan" of 200 years. Since he is without the emotions he was intended to possess, Robinson joins Questor as his "emotional mentor" on his mission to covertly guide selected people to become teachers and other leaders, gently shepherding human society into a more peaceful existence.

In real life, we probably can't depend on some wise alien species coming to Earth and either overtly or secretly giving us a hand and helping us not to be jerks on a planetary scale. However, our science fiction and fantasy stories do possess the hint of an answer to all of the problems people seem to create.

While people can't be programmed the way machines can, we have the ability to learn from our experiences and to make a few right decisions. If we don't know what those decisions should be, we could potentially point to the Asimov three laws as a foundation. Rather than saying that human beings are somehow better than our fictional robots, maybe we should let them be our guides, at least metaphorically. If we acted like the robotic guides in our fantasies, maybe reality and humanity would be a bit more livable.

The thing is, unlike a computer, or a person with plug-ins such as Neo in The Matrix, we can't depend on some outside force inserting a device into our heads and instantaneously giving us what we need to know, including the will to obey the instructions provided. We also can't depend on blindly obeying what others have taught us "robotic-like", but rather, must exceed our "programming". We have to think and decide for ourselves what do to and then have the courage to do it.

Epilogue: I got the last image from the typepad.com blog. Seemed a fitting description of how human beings act in real life.