If Praxis had not exploded
So It Turns Out, #31
Hi,
So here are some things I’ve been thinking about this week.
So it turns out that Praxis exploded
As a child, I was obsessed with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, watching it over and over again until the video tape wore out. It’s, at least in some ways, the best Star Trek movie. It’s got everything — spaceship battles, comedic subplots,1 Klingons that inexplicably declare that Shakespeare was an alien2 and quote Hamlet, heroes and villains all round.
The movie is, in many ways, perfect because it’s a gloriously unnecessary capstone to the Original Series era of Star Trek. By that time, Star Trek: The Next Generation had already been on TV for years, establishing a clear continuation for the Trek franchise with an era where all was, fundamentally, well: the Federation and the Klingons weren’t adversaries, but allies; a Klingon served on the bridge of the Enterprise-D; and both sides had stopped being a Cold War metaphor and became an End of History metaphor.
The implicit task for The Undiscovered Country, then, is to show us how we got there. It begins with a bang, explicitly modeled by scriptwriter Nicholas Meyer after the Chernobyl disaster:
We soon learn that the Klingon Empire, at least as Kirk, Spock and McCoy understand it, is dying. The Klingons homeworld has lost its main energy-production facility on its moon of Praxis3, in a disaster that has (it seems) ecologically doomed the planet and threatens the sanctity of the empire. In short: the long cold war and military buildup between the two sides is no longer tenable, and the Klingons (unbelievably) sue for peace, enabling Federation to mothball Starfleet, and declare peace.
The old guard on each side refuses to accept it. The Klingon hardliners fear losing their martial culture and becoming a lame copy of the Federation. The Enterprise crew, except for Spock, doesn’t believe that peace is possible; after all, Captain Kirk’s own son was murdered by the Klingons in cold blood, and they’ve all spent decades fighting them.
Unfortunately, this offers a convenient opportunity to "realist” leaders on both sides, who prefer their dance of deterrence and mutually-assured destruction to the uncertainty of peace. They conspire together to sabotage the fragile, emerging peace between the Federation and the Klingons, and frame James T. Kirk and the Enterprise crew for the assassination of the Klingon High Chancellor. And so, the Federation President has to agree to let Jim Kirk take the blame, to avoid a war that neither side could win.
***
But here’s the thing: as the audience, we know this all turns out okay. We know that the Klingon homeworld isn’t doomed, isn’t evacuated, is restored to its full glory. We know that the Federation turns its back on militarism and re-embraces its original mission of exploration and peace.
So, on some level, there (should be) no dramatic tension. So what’s the conflict?
***
Robert Heinlein, one of the archetypal writers of science fiction, once argued there were only three stories: Boy Meets Girl, The Little Tailor (or as we’d know it, “Rags to Riches”), or A Man Learns a Lesson.
This is the third.
***
The Federation — and our hero Jim Kirk included — has on some level always espoused an optimism that they didn’t believe. The swaggering hero who, himself, famously believed there’s “No such thing as the No-Win Scenario” realizes he couldn’t actually believe in a non-zero-sum future, where both Federation and Klingons won. And so, at the end of his career, he decides that the future he can’t envision is more important than the past he can’t forget.
So, too, the new Klingon High Chancellor — the old one’s daughter — reframes how we see Klingons, perhaps a moment that calls forward to the warrior poets we see them as in The Next Generation, rather than the craven barbarians of The Original Series. It’s something that, well, has stuck with me since I first heard it as a kid:
“Many speculated about my father’s motives [for seeking peace]. There are those who said he was an idealist; others said he had no choice. If Praxis had not exploded, then quite possibly my father’s idealism might not have found fruition.”
A year ago, maybe that was well, abstract to our ears. A Cold War metaphor. But now we all know what that means.
If COVID had not happened, then quite possibly we wouldn’t be the people we are now. A world where millions of people would still be alive, a world that I wish we were in, but one where we wouldn’t be forced to admit that lots of things were broken. If our lives hadn’t been forcibly changed for a year, we wouldn’t be forced to ask whether we live up to our own ideals, to who we want to be.
***
This summer, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the undiscovered country we found ourselves in, an unplanned-for future. Thinking about the things that failed us, like governments and too many of the Official Experts. Thinking about the things that saved some of us, like volunteer-led efforts, iconoclastic experts, and the kindness of strangers. And thinking about the role that I want to play in building that future better than we can imagine.
Imagine that you knew, you knew that your descendants would view this time as the bad part before the better future. What would you do, if you knew they were watching?
May this cat sleep on its hammock line
May these robots win our war against moths
Disclosures:
Views are my own and do not represent those of current or former clients, employers, friends, or my cat.
Some of which, admittedly, ages extremely poorly. If you’re a fan of the film, I’m sure you can guess the scene I’m referring to. But let’s not dwell on that.
Yes. Really. See, e.g., https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/William_Shakespeare
Star Trek isn’t subtle with its metaphors, folks.