Star Trek and History

by Reagin, Nancy

  Kira’s personal angst only reinforces her long-standing hatred for Dukat, yet their tumultuous relationship throughout the series raises one final issue. For all of the traits given to Cardassians that liken them to the Nazis, part of the reason a comparison between the two is possible is how Bajorans are defined as a people and in relation to the Cardassians. In many regards, the Bajorans represent the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.22 Beyond the aforementioned parallel of how Bajorans are akin to the conquered peoples of Eastern Europe, the Bajorans are presented as an extremely religious species. Many Bajorans allude to the fact that religion sustained them during the occupation and now provides them with a focal point to unify them when political strife threatens to do the opposite (DS9, “Emissary”). Faith and religious observance also sustained some Jews in the ghettos and camps, where they sometimes practiced their religion clandestinely. In addition, they created a Jewish cultural life that incorporated both religious and secular expressions of identity and solidarity. Although only some of the Jews imprisoned by the Nazis were religious, many of them rebelled against the authorities in part by preserving their religious practice and secular culture.23

  This Bajoran-Jewish correlation buttresses the Cardassian-German association, as does the simultaneous representation of Bajorans as comparable to the Vichy government in France and the French resistance. Bajorans vilify their collaboration government after the Cardassian withdrawal for having sent Bajorans to work at the Cardassian camps, and therefore to their deaths (DS9, “The Collaborator” and “Destiny”). Many French people similarly criticized the Vichy government for cooperating with German occupiers and colluding in the deportation of the Jews, and they subsequently placed previous legitimately elected French leaders on trial.24 In addition, in the post-occupation period, Bajorans revel in glorifying their resistance movement. A similar pattern of mythologizing the resistance existed in France, and only more recent histories have separated real heroism from postwar glorification.25

  Cardassians Aren’t Always Nazis; Sometimes They’re Soviets

  The Cardassians are like the Nazis in many ways; they believe in their own racial superiority, and they have a government dominated by militarism with an important role for the secret police. Nonetheless, there are several notable differences. After World War II, Germany was split into two states, both of which disassociated themselves from their Nazi past. Although the Cardassians no longer occupy Bajor by the events of Deep Space Nine and are no longer at war with the Federation, there is little disruption in continuity between one military-dominated government and the next. This difference is significant when comparing post-occupation relations between Cardassia and Bajor to those between Germany and the nations that the Nazis occupied or tried to destroy. Star Trek writers even based an entire Deep Space Nine episode on what would have happened if Jews and Nazis had been forced to work together after the war.26 Stuck together on a ship and facing an implacable Klingon foe, Kira has no choice but to join forces with Dukat in order to survive (DS9, “Return to Grace”).

  The fate of the Cardassian Empire and the possible continuation of its post-occupation relationship with Bajor remain unclear following Cardassia’s alliance with the Founders and its participation in a second war. Ironically, the Founders order the Cardassians exterminated—another facet that distinguishes Cardassia from Germany as it is both the perpetrator and the victim of genocide. Nonetheless, despite the war and the slaughter of eight hundred million people, Cardassia still exists, leaving the possibility that a peaceful civilian government could emerge, as happened in postwar West Germany. Yet, given Cardassia’s past, the return of a militant regime cannot be precluded, because most of the casualities are civilians. The future of Cardassia has not been determined yet by the Star Trek canon.

  The Cardassians are different in a third respect—no Hitler. There could have been no Nazism without Hitler; it was incapable of existing without him.27 The Cardassian Empire, by contrast, has existed for centuries, meaning that its success was not contingent on a single charismatic leader. Dukat aspired to become that dominant figure, but Cardassians never revered him as the Germans did Hitler, and Cardassia’s government continued afterward under Damar.

  A final distinction relates to the Cardassian judicial system.28 In “The Maquis, Part II,” Dukat describes this system during a conversation with Captain Sisko, the Federation commander of Deep Space Nine:

  Dukat: On Cardassia, the verdict is always known before the trial begins, and it’s always the same.

  Sisko: In that case, why bother with a trial at all?

  Dukat: Because the people demand it. They enjoy watching justice triumph over evil every time. They find it comforting.

  Sisko: Isn’t there ever a chance that you might try an innocent man by mistake?

  Dukat: Cardassians don’t make mistakes.

  Sisko does not find this perspective comforting, nor does O’Brien, his chief operations officer, who finds himself on the wrong side of the Cardassian legal system. He is arrested before he knows the charges, and he only learns what he is accused of at the start of the trial as per tradition in Cardassian jurisprudence. O’Brien discovers that he does not need to prepare a defense, because he is already guilty. The purpose of the trial is to establish how the state reached its conclusion, meaning that all crimes are solved and all criminals are punished. O’Brien does have an attorney, but the lawyer’s purpose is to get him to confess to his crimes. At the start of the trial, the judge likewise urges O’Brien to confess. The trial is being broadcast on monitors around the planet—much like the all-pervading telescreens in Orwell’s 1984—and O’Brien’s confession, according to the judge, would enlighten the people and educate the children.29 Instead of complying, with the assistance of Odo, O’Brien is able to overturn the charges—a first in Cardassian jurisprudence (DS9, “Tribunal”).

  The Nazis certainly used the legal system to establish control. For example, numerous laws codified the persecution of the Jews, including the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.30 They were also not above orchestrating a show trial.31 However, the Nazi regime was not known for show trials; its ideological enemy, the Soviet Union, was. Throughout the mid- to late 1930s, the USSR held a series of show trials designed to purge the Communist Party of potential rivals to Joseph Stalin on the pretense that they were enemies of the state. The defendants routinely confessed, mostly because they had been tortured.32 Based on what is revealed during O’Brien’s trial, the Cardassian court resembles the Soviet judicial system more than its Nazi counterpart.

  Finally, writer and producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe observed that a parallel can be drawn between the decline of Cardassia during the start of its conflict with the Klingons and the rise of Dukat on one hand and the decline of Weimar Germany in the 1920s and the rise of Hitler on the other. Yet, he also likened this change to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, describing it as a military dictatorship being replaced with a civilian government that immediately experienced growing pains. Unlike contemporary Russia, which officially remains a democracy, Cardassia reverts to its militaristic ways when it joins the Founders, which Hewitt claimed the writers had planned from the beginning.33

  The Place of Cardassians in Star Trek History

  Nazi Germany clearly served as the primary historic template for the Cardassians, although they are not simply twenty-fourth-century Nazis. Star Trek writers also drew on other historic eras and regimes when creating this fictional species. These historical references augment the militant and fascist character traits that make the Cardassians a unique species, different from the many others in the Star Trek universe. This reliance on the past—to create a fictional future and to populate it with species that are simultaneously alien while still identifiably human—demonstrates the continuing significance of Earth culture and history in enriching Star Trek. The past has become the fictional future, in more ways than one.

  Notes

  1. Although none provided an in-depth analysis, severa
l scholars and journalists have characterized the Cardassians as villainous or described them as fascist. David Golumbia, “Black and White World: Race, Ideology, and Utopia in Triton and Star Trek,” Cultural Critique, no. 32 (Winter 1995–1996): 75–95; Teresa Malcolm, “Deep Space Nine,” National Catholic Reporter 35, no. 31 (June 4, 1999): 13–14; and Harry F. Waters and Jeanne Gordon, “Star Trek Sets a Bold New Course,” Newsweek 121, no. 1 (January 4, 1993): 40–41.

  2. Several authors have discussed the use of Nazis as fictional villains: Tony Barta, “Film Nazis: The Great Escape,” in Screening the Past: Film and the Representation of History, ed. Tony Barta (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998); Florentine Strzelczyk, “Our Future—Our Past: Fascism, Postmodernism, and Starship Troopers (1997),” Modernism/Modernity 15, no. 1 (January 2008): 87–99; and Mike Alsford, Heroes and Villains (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006).

  3. Ian Kershaw evaluated the major approaches to historical studies of Nazism in The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (London: Arnold, 2000).

  4. The reference is to Lebensraum, better translated as “living space,” which Hitler spoke about on many occasions; it was the belief that a growing German population needed more land to live on, land that would be found in eastern Europe. For more on the concept and Hitler’s uses of it, see Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936: Hubris (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998); Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945: Nemesis (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000); and Joachim Fest, Hitler (Boston: Harcourt, 1974).

  5. Many works explore the use of Shakespeare in Star Trek: Larry Kreitzer, “The Cultural Veneer of Star Trek,” Journal of Popular Culture 30, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 1–28; Paul A. Cantor, “Shakespeare in the Original Klingon: Star Trek and the End of History,” Perspectives on Political Science 29, no. 3 (Summer 2000): 158–166; Mary Buhl Dutta, “‘Very Bad Poetry, Captain’: Shakespeare in Star Trek,” Extrapolation 36, no. 1 (March 1995): 38–45; and Thomas Richards, The Meaning of Star Trek (New York: Doubleday, 1997).

  6. For a short political analysis of the Cardassian government, see Paul Christopher Manuel, “‘In Every Revolution, There Is One Man with a Vision’: The Governments of the Future in Comparative Perspective,” in Political Science Fiction, eds. Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997).

  7. Deep Space Nine executive producer Ronald Moore referred to them as Nazis in Terry J. Erdmann and Paula M. Block, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (New York: Pocket Books, 2000), 234.

  8. Garak often refers to himself as a “simple tailor” and never directly admits his previous occupation as a spy, making him the Star Trek equivalent of many characters in John Le Carré’s spy novels.

  9. Loyalty to the sovereign state is discussed in Rudolf Vierhaus, Germany in the Age of Absolutism, trans. Jonathan B. Knudsen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Gregg Kvistad, The Rise and Demise of German Statism: Loyalty and Political Membership (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999).

  10. Although the morals of their stories are opposite, the pervasiveness of militarism in many segments of German culture is well illustrated in two famous war novels: Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Random House, 1982), and Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel (New York: Penguin, 2004).

  11. For an overview of this concept, see Jane Caplan, Government without Administration: State and Civil Service in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), and Richard Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995).

  12. For more on the Nazi cult of heroism, see Jay W. Baird, To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).

  13. Erdmann and Block, Star Trek, 22.

  14. For more information on the Gestapo, see Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

  15. In the DS9 season three special features, writer and producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe referred to an Obsidian Order operative as a Gestapo agent.

  16. Jeremy Bentham discussed the relationship between state power and punishment, although Michel Foucault explored the idea in greater depth. Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon (London: T. Payne, 1791), and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).

  17. For an overview of Nazi policy, see Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), and for information about Jews in Nazi Germany, see Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Extermination, 1939–1945 (New York: Harper, 2008).

  18. Erdmann and Block, Star Trek, 100.

  19. For information on Nazi medicine: Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), and Michael Kater, Doctors under Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).

  20. For information on collaboration during World War II, see Roni Stauber, ed., Collaboration with the Nazis: Public Discourse after the Holocaust (New York: Routledge, 2011).

  21. For information on comfort women, see Yoshiaki Yoshimi, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).

  22. For more on this representation of Bajorans, see Matthew Kapell, “Speakers for the Dead: Star Trek, the Holocaust, and the Representation of Atrocity,” in Star Trek as Myth: Essays on Symbol and Archetype at the Final Frontier, ed. Matthew Kapell (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2010).

  23. For more on religious sustenance and theology, see Donald L. Niewyk and Francis Nicosia, The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).

  24. For more on Vichy France, see Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

  25. For more on the resistance, see Matthew Cobb, The Resistance: The French Fight against the Nazis (London: Simon & Schuster, 2009).

  26. Erdmann and Block, Star Trek, 307.

  27. Again, for more on Hitler, see Kershaw’s and Fest’s respective biographies.

  28. For a brief analysis of the Cardassian legal system, see Robert H. Chaires, “Star Trek as a Pedagogical Vehicle for Teaching Law and Justice,” in Star Trek Visions of Law and Justice, eds. Robert Chaires and Bradley Chilton (Dallas: Adios Press, 2003), and Paul R. Joseph, “Science Fiction,” in Prime Time Law: Fictional Television as Legal Narrative, eds. Robert M. Jarvis and Paul R. Joseph (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1998).

  29. Erdmann and Block, Star Trek, 150.

  30. For the text of the Nuremberg Laws, see Roderick Stackelberg and Sally A. Winkle, The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts (New York: Routledge, 2007).

  31. For information on the Katzenberger show trial, see Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews.

  32. For more on Stalin and the show trials, see Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (New York: Vintage Books, 2003).

  33. Erdmann and Block, Star Trek, 274 and 427.

  Negotiating the Legacy of Star Trek and Its Fans

  Rick Worland

  Almost from the moment its original NBC network run ended in 1969 after an only modestly successful three seasons, Star Trek steadily built popularity in multiple media incarnations until it became one of the most lucrative entertainment properties ever. Initially, the show’s expanding success in rerun syndication fueled a passionate fan phenomenon revealed by the first Star Trek convention held in New York City in early 1972. So powerful was the show’s legacy by the time Paramount engaged producer J.J. Abrams to reboot the movie franchise with a feature simply titled Star Trek (2009), its new caretakers had to steer a tricky path between attracting fresh audiences without perturbing veteran fans, cohorts whose experiences of Star Trek were now separated by as much as forty years.

  Yet this challenge was not new. In the de
cade following the cancellation of the original series while Paramount and producer Gene Roddenberry engaged in a wary dance to revive Star Trek as either a weekly series or in feature films, other producers and networks delving into science fiction had to contend with the burgeoning popularity of the old show. Creators of new episodic series such as Planet of the Apes (CBS, 1974), Logan’s Run (CBS, 1977), Space: 1999 (syndicated, 1975–1977), and Battlestar Galactica (ABC, 1978–1979) clearly hoped to attract devotees of the starship Enterprise as their basic formats, production history, and exchanges with fan-targeted media all demonstrated. Despite increasingly impressive visual effects, these series were generally unsuccessful, in part, as I will argue, because they all resembled the more downbeat science fiction movies of the early 1970s, in contrast to the confident, heroic tradition of space opera that Star Trek continued.

  That first fan convention was significant in itself and for what it augured. Before it opened in Manhattan in late January 1972, the organizers hoped it might attract five hundred people, but the convention ended up drawing more than three thousand. It also attracted significant press attention through a combination of the as-yet-unrecognized devotion of fans and a dexterous nudge of publicity by interested media companies. According to Joan Winston, Star Trek fan extraordinaire and the convention’s publicity chairman, shortly before its opening, Bob Newgard, “a Paramount Vice President,” arranged an interview for her with Variety.1 She had already parlayed industry connections to commit Gene Roddenberry, actors including Leonard Nimoy, science fiction author Isaac Asimov, and others associated with the show to appear over the weekend. Paramount was also supplying film prints of Star Trek episodes, and NASA was sending a large space program exhibit.

  In fact, Newgard was not just any executive; he was the head of Paramount Domestic Syndication, and while Star Trek was still in production, he had negotiated the first important deal for the reruns with Kaiser Broadcasting, the owner of five major market UHF stations.2 Kaiser’s skillful handling of Star Trek demonstrated its commercial potential to other independent stations so that only weeks after its last NBC airing, Paramount boasted in trade ads that the show was already running nationally on sixty-one stations. By January 1971, a year before the convention, the studio announced that Star Trek had cracked its one-hundredth domestic market.3