Star Trek and History

by Reagin, Nancy

  Bones and Spock at the Heart of the Matter

  As both a country doctor and medical researcher, Bones is aware of the powerful technology at his disposal; advanced testing procedures in the “fourteen science labs” of the Enterprise produce miraculous results, as well as instruments such as the tricorder, biobed, hypospray, and painless wound-sealer, make humane medical care possible. Without them, McCoy imagines that medicine would be barbaric, much as it was in the twentieth century, with “all the pain. They used to hand-cut and sew people like garments. Needles and sutures. Oh, the terrible pain!” (TOS, “The City on the Edge of Forever”)15 While Bones benefits from access to “the finest equipment and computers in the galaxy” as well as nearly miraculous medical technology, he realizes that all of these come at a potential cost; for this reason, the good doctor routinely questions the use of cutting-edge technologies, weighing the potential benefits against the dangers to health and humanity. Bones’s primary concern, like many members of Star Trek’s audience in the mid-1960s, was that science and technology might destroy the medical art, dehumanizing it into something completely mechanical. This struggle for the human in an increasingly mechanical and scientific world serves as the crux of several episodes centered on medical ethics, and it lies at the very heart of Bones’s and Spock’s hate-love relationship.

  In a post-Holocaust society, Star Trek questioned the morality of humanoid testing and the goals of scientific inquiry.16 In “Operation—Annihilate!” McCoy is presented with two ethical crises. First, without a cure for the parasites that infest Deneva, Kirk will have to sacrifice one million colonists to protect the billions of beings not yet infected. When Spock supports Kirk’s logical but inhuman decision, McCoy retorts, “If killing five people saves ten, it’s a bargain. Is that your simple logic, Mister Spock?” Bones’s discovery of a cure for the parasites presents him with his second ethical dilemma; without time for additional testing or proper clinical trials, the procedure must be tested on a humanoid subject in conditions similar to that of the Denevans. The infected Spock agrees to undergo the procedure, and he emerges free of the parasite but suffers an unexpected side effect—blindness. Horrified, Bones receives test results from Nurse Chapel that indicate that his rush to treatment was flawed and that Spock’s blinding was unnecessary.

  In “The Empath,” the Vians construct a menacing laboratory, complete with human-sized test tubes, in which they torture human subjects in order to elicit responses from the empathic healer, Gem. As McCoy lies near death, Gem is faced with the ultimate choice: save herself or sacrifice her life to heal another.17 The goal of the Vians’ experiment is to prove that Gem and her people are worthy of being saved from a sun about to nova. Despite the deceptively noble goal of this experiment, we are left to wonder about the ethics of biomedical research that might commit atrocities on the few to save the lives of those deemed worthy to survive.

  A recurring theme in the struggle between old-fashioned medicine and biotechnology is that of the body, be it human or alien, as a machine that can be pulled apart and tinkered with. McCoy’s distaste for dividing the physical body into microscopic particles is evident in his fraught relationship with the transporter. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Bones refuses to beam aboard; when Kirk asks where he is, an officer reports, “He insisted we go first, sir. Said something about first seeing how it scrambled our molecules.”

  For McCoy, the only thing more frightening than the fragmented machine is the soulless machine, the mechanical man without a mind or free will. In “Spock’s Brain,” McCoy is horrified to find Spock “worse than dead,” because his brain his been stolen by creatures known as Eymorg. In the course of retrieving Spock’s brain and returning it to his body, both Spock and McCoy must become “mechanical men.” First, Bones and Scotty attach wires and a transmitter to Spock’s body, essentially making him a remote-controlled robot. Second, Bones himself must become one with a machine called “the teacher” in order to transplant Spock’s brain back into his skull. The dangers of mindless mechanism, of separating the mind from the body, are reinforced in the Eymorg, whose overreliance on “the teacher and the controller” has stultified their mental development over the generations, leaving them helpless.18 In episode after episode, McCoy declares the dangers of splintering mind and soul from flesh and the treatment of the body as some sort of soulless machine.19

  Expressing the concerns of many mid-twentieth-century Americans, Bones questions the dynamic relationship between the traditional practice of medicine, which is focused on caring for the whole person, and biomedical research, which disregards the individual human being in order to examine his or her molecular, chemical, and genetic mechanisms. For Bones, the greatest struggle lies between those who believe that science exists for the benefit of humankind, a powerful tool to improve the quality of human life, and those who believe that humankind serves the master of scientific progress, a higher good that must be perpetuated at all costs. If scientific experimentation, complicated medical devices, and invasive therapies present excessive risk, damage the doctor-patient relationship, or in any way dehumanize the patient, then McCoy rejects them out of hand. Logically, however, he does not reject science and technology completely. Bones needs cold, rational science as part of his medical practice, much as he needs the pointy-eared Spock to provide valuable data and to balance his sometimes excessive human emotionality. He and Spock need each other.

  In episodes such as “The Immunity Syndrome,” “The Tholian Web,” and “Spock’s Brain,” the solution to preserving life depends not on either Bones or Spock winning an argument, but on both of them working together, often in opposition. Like a heart that requires both diastolic and systolic beats to pump blood, the constant tension and conversation between Spock and Bones keeps a balance between the seemingly monstrous and inhuman power of modern science over the human body, on the one hand, and the kind and compassionate care of the old-fashioned family physician whose concern extends beyond the mechanical body to the heart, mind, and soul of his patients, on the other. Spock might argue that such a heart, fraught with conflict, must beat erratically and therefore inefficiently. McCoy, mint julep in hand, might just smile and reply, “I’m not a magician, Spock, just an old country doctor.” (TOS, “The Deadly Years)20

  Notes

  1. On Spock’s full name, see TOS, “This Side of Paradise.”

  2. Bert Hansen, “Medical History for the Masses: How American Comic Books Celebrated Heroes of Medicine in the 1940s,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 78, no. 1 (2004): 150.

  3. Kenneth Ludmerer, Time to Heal: American Medical Education from the Turn of the Century to the Era of Managed Care (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 147.

  4. Ibid., 149.

  5. Ibid., 180.

  6. For an entertaining treatment of doctors on television, see Joseph Turow, Playing Doctor: Television, Storytelling, and Medical Power (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2010).

  7. Dr. Kildare, February 21–March 8, 1966.

  8. For the response of practicing physicians in the 1960s to the impossible idealization of their profession on television, see Joseph Turow and Rachel Gans-Boriskin, “From Expert in Action to Existential Angst: A Half Century of Television Doctors,” in Medicine’s Moving Pictures: Medicine, Health, and Bodies in American Film and Television, eds. Leslie J. Reagan et al. (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007), 270.

  9. “If I seem insensitive to what you’re going through, Captain, understand it’s the way I am.” Spock to Kirk in TOS, “The Enemy Within.”

  10. And later, “Complete empathy. She must be a totally functional empath. Her nervous system actually connected to yours to counteract the worst of your symptoms, and with her strength, she virtually sustained your body’s physiological reactions.”

  11. In this he follows the precedent of Dr. Boyce, the ship’s physician under Captain Pike aboard the first Enterprise, who pulls a martini out of his black bag as a
means of treating Pike’s stress and fatigue in TOS, “The Menagerie.” When Pike accuses him of talking more like a bartender than a physician, Boyce says, “Take your choice. We both get the same two kinds of customers. The living and the dying.”

  12. For McCoy’s reprimand of Nurse Chapel, see TOS, “Operation—Annihilate!”

  13. Polywater is water that has been transformed into a complex chain of molecules on planet Psi 2000 and behaves much like a virus.

  14. According to McCoy, “The molecular structures of the brain tissues in the central nervous system are distorting” because of the disintegration of space in the region of the USS Defiant.

  15. Bones witnesses the barbarity firsthand in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), when he has to save Chekov’s life in a twentieth-century American hospital while confronting an ancient medical man: “My God, man, drilling holes in his head is not the answer. The artery must be repaired without delay or he will die! So put away your butcher knives and let me save the patient! . . . Chemotherapy, fundoscopic examination, we’re dealing with medievalism here!”

  16. The first episode of Star Trek was also only six years before the public revelation of the Public Health Service Syphilis Study in 1972; the first letter of complaint regarding the Tuskegee Experiment was submitted to the government in 1966.

  17. The Vians observe Gem as McCoy languishes, unwilling to let her touch him and heal him: “Don’t let her touch me, Jim. I can’t destroy life, even if it is to save my own.”

  18. This is Cartesian dualism, writ large. See Christopher Biffle and Ronald Rubin, A Guided Tour of René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1989).

  19. For machines in search of a soul, see Nomad in TOS, “The Changeling,” and V’Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

  20. To which Spock replies, “Yes, as I always suspected.”

  Chapter 4

  Who Is Q?

  Alan Kistler

  Terminator 2: Judgment Day’s John Connor is afraid of killer robots that look like human beings. In Doctor Who, the titular character is afraid of tentacled aliens that pilot personal tanks and believe all “impure” races should be exterminated. But in Gene Roddenberry’s universe of Star Trek, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Enterprise NCC-1701-D learned to fear a letter of the alphabet.

  In every great saga and mythology, there is the trickster. In North America, some tribes have legends of Coyote and his cunning ways.1 In Ghana, the spider man Anansi often manipulated those around him.2 Perhaps the most notorious trickster of all comes from Norse mythology: Loki Laufeyson, the Skywalker.3

  A few tricksters have appeared from time to time in the various Star Trek programs as well. A very famous example is a being called Trelane. In the original series episode “The Squire of Gothos,” Jim Kirk and his crew fight this strange alien who seems capable of altering matter and energy by force of will, a being who amuses himself by terrorizing and manipulating the crew of the Enterprise. At one point, he even puts Captain Kirk on trial. Trelane was defeated but never forgotten. He was one of several aliens that appeared in science fiction claiming to be more civilized than the inferior humans before declaring that they would engage in cosmic-scale bullying, savagery, and genocide. We’ll discuss some examples further on.

  Many years later a being similar to Trelane appeared in the debut episode of The Next Generation, titled “Encounter at Farpoint.” But this cosmic entity claimed no titles or accolades, or even a proper name. Who was he? His answer was as simple as it was uninformative: “We call ourselves the Q. Or thou mayest call me that. It’s all the same.”

  Played by actor John de Lancie, the trickster known as Q initially seemed quite villainous. With little effort, he ensnares the Enterprise and confronts Captain Picard. He tells him that humanity has ventured far enough into the stars and needs to turn back now. In many later adventures, he would repeat the sentiment that the people of Earth were progressing and expanding faster than other, more powerful races ever predicted or wanted.

  Testing Humanity and the Frankenstein Complex

  Many fantasy and science fiction writers have put the human race on trial as a way of commenting on society and history. In the Marvel Comics universe, the powerful Celestials are known for visiting various worlds and mutating the local sentient life-form, usually creating multiple subraces as a result. They would leave for hundreds or thousands of years and then come back to decide whether the sentient life-forms had done a good job with their planet or needed to be exterminated. Evidently, the Celestials’ idea of being more evolved means that they’re allowed to commit genocide on any race that doesn’t meet their standards, not realizing or caring how hypocritical this might appear to others.4

  It brings to mind what the great author Isaac Asimov called the Frankenstein Complex. Asimov used this phrase to describe stories where the moral was that there are some things humanity is not meant to know or explore. Asimov mainly applied this idea to robot stories. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein dealt with a protorobot, an artificial being created from dead tissue that a scientist brings to life. In both the original novel, where the creature is intelligent but eventually becomes vengeful, and in the later films that tended to depict the creature as a mindless brute provoked into violence, the lesson seems to be the same: Dr. Frankenstein should have left well enough alone. Asimov very much disagreed with this moral, which is why he created his now-famous positronic brain and the Three Laws of Robotics, which were later mentioned on-screen in “Datalore” (TNG) as a major influence on the creation of the android character Data.5

  Initially, Q seems to be operating as an advocate of the Frankenstein Complex’s moral, saying humanity has overreached. He is then (at least partially) amused by the Enterprise crew and by Picard’s assertion that humanity has indeed matured enough to journey to the stars. This amusement separates him from the classic idea of a cosmic, omnipotent being who judges the human race from on high while untouched by emotion or mercy. His personality is shown even more clearly when we see how he enjoys how much his vast powers of illusion and reality manipulation unnerve Picard and his crew.

  Seemingly on a whim, Q transports Picard and a few officers into a courtroom plucked from a dark era of Earth’s past, with himself as the judge. This may seem like Trelane’s old mode of operation, and several creators involved with Star Trek, including de Lancie himself, have considered that the self-proclaimed “Squire of Gothos” was indeed a member of the Q Continuum as well. But while Trelane is a dangerous nuisance, Q plays for much higher stakes. The Enterprise crew acts as representatives for the Federation of United Planets, which means that not only is humanity on trial but so are many allied races, such as the Vulcans. Should these young explorer races be allowed to continue their expansion, or should they be caged, even destroyed for their arrogance? As Q says to Picard in “Encounter at Farpoint”:

  Q: You will now answer to the charge of being a grievously savage race!

  Picard: Grievously savage could mean anything. I will answer only specific charges.

  Q: Are you certain you want a full disclosure of human ugliness? So be it, fool.

  He is a biased judge and has no problem putting the entire Federation on trial while using only evidence taken from human history. Yet Q is not just another cosmic villain. When Kirk’s crew encounters powerful aliens who wish to have humanity bow down to their wishes, they simply throw their weight around and use force with reckless abandon. But during the trial, Q actually offers Picard and his people a chance to prove their merit, suggesting that their mission to the Farpoint Station will provide a mystery for them and a worthy test. Q makes no effort to hide his feelings that humanity should be cast aside, and he even suggests that the trial itself is proof of humanity’s guilt, since “bringing the innocent to trial would be unfair.” Yet he still listens, in spite of recognizing (or because he recognizes) his own bias.

  This outcome is clearly not your typical cosm
ic bully who enjoys batting down a weaker, younger race. For all his bluster, Q seems to operate by some form of rules and morality. He taunts the Enterprise crew by telling them that they are inferior, and yet he continually offers clues that help Picard arrive at the truth of the situation behind Farpoint, leading the Enterprise crew to pass the test. Q seems dissatisfied with this outcome, but it seems very unlikely he actually wants Picard to fail. Why offer him clues? Why even let him know to expect something strange and significant at Farpoint? Many scientists have talked about how observing a test can affect its outcome. Q not only observes; he prods and tells the Enterprise crew specifically, “this is a test,” rather than watching from afar to see how Picard will react if he is not aware he is under surveillance or that there is more to his current situation than meets the eye.

  For that matter, how likely is it that Q just happened to realize at the last moment that the Enterprise’s first mission would, by sheer coincidence, serve as an excellent test? Could Q have manipulated things even earlier, making sure that the new crew would go to, of all places, Farpoint Station for its very first adventure?

  With all this in mind, Q is clearly more trickster than villain, yet not in the classic sense. Anansi tricked others for the sake of amusement or for his own benefit. These motives don’t apply to Q, however. He is already more powerful than any member of the Federation, so he doesn’t need or covet anything they have. By sheer force of will, he can transport himself anywhere in time and space, so dominion and territory are not really things he worries about. While Picard and his crew amuse Q, this obviously is not a goal in itself or he would have stayed even after the mystery of Farpoint had been solved, coming up with a new challenge immediately.