Introduction
2021; Penn State University Press; Volume: 23; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5325/intelitestud.23.3.0289
ISSN1524-8429
Autores Tópico(s)Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction
ResumoCommenting on the as-yet-to-be-released Star Trek: Picard (PIC), CBS All Access executive Julie McNamara touted the upcoming show as “a really nice hybrid” of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) and Star Trek: Discovery (DSC) (Hurley, 2019).1 While McNamara was referring to the new show's amalgam of TNG's narrative style and DSC's production values, her observation could serve as a meta-comment on the franchise as a whole. Starting with Gene Roddenberry's pitch to NBC executives that Star Trek would be “Wagon Train to the stars,” Star Trek has been a self-consciously hybrid universe. Hybridity has been embraced by a diverse range of writers, directors, producers, and actors over more than five decades. Although associated most obviously with science fiction, Star Trek pushed, and continues to push, against a narrow understanding of that genre. Within any given iteration, viewers might see textbook examples of genres as diverse as action, Western, comedy, horror, mystery, courtroom drama, and melodrama, to mention just a few. Additionally, individual episodes (and even whole series), employ vastly different tones and styles, from the utopian to the dystopian. Star Trek, moreover, manifests not simply as multiple television shows and films but also as innumerable books, magazines, comics, video games, board games, toys, costumes, conventions, podcasts, museums, and more—the full list boggles the mind. With respect to content, the franchise has regularly engaged with hybrid characters and species. Indeed, Star Trek even has hybrid timelines and universes.One might suggest, moreover, that part of the wide appeal of Star Trek stems from its concerted use, and contemplation, of hybrids. While not quite representing “infinite diversity in infinite combinations,” Star Trek nevertheless suggests the power and possibilities—not to mention the threats and dangers—of hybridity, of recombining and refining experience and technology on a galactic scale. Indeed, one might view the very notion of the United Federation of Planets as an ideological hybrid whose greatest asset is its sharing and remixing of ideas. Even when faced with a much-diminished Federation, for instance, Michael Burnham (DSC) looks to the potential of the institution as her guiding principle: “The Federation isn't just about ships and warp drive,” she says. “It's about a vision and all those who believe in that vision,” (DSC, “That Hope Is You, part 1”). Aspirational in nature, “that vision” reflects Gene Roddenberry's conception of the future as a place where multi-cultural cooperation and exchange is not only desired but necessary for the evolution of humanity.Given such a rich amalgam, then, academic interest in the hybridity of Star Trek has reflected the brand's thematic and extra-thematic concerns. Numerous critics, such as Sue Short, Margaret Rose, Aviva Dove-Viebahn, and Geraldine Harris, view Star Trek through the lens of hybridity in order to investigate it as a socio-political barometer. This special issue aims to add to this tradition by both theorizing and problematizing hybridity in fresh ways and considering a wealth of examples from the original series through Star Trek's latest incarnations. Encoded in its narrative DNA, as it were, hybridity impacts nearly every aspect of Star Trek, from beloved characters such as Spock and Jadzia Dax to villains such as the Borg and Voq (who is implanted in Ash Tyler.) Hybridity thus offers scholars of Star Trek a valuable way to discuss a myriad of important topics from science and bioethics to legal definitions of life and personhood. Hybrid vessels such as the USS Voyager (the eponymous technological magpie), V'ger (Star Trek: The Motion Picture), or the Romulan drone ship (ENT), for instance, exemplify both the hope and threat of scientific progress, while episodes highlighting hybridity, such as “Tuvix” (VOY), “Dr. Bashir, I Presume” (DS9), and “Choose Your Pain” (DSC) place bioethical issues in the foreground. Indeed, questions of hybridity surround even the very definition of life and personhood in episodes like “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” (TOS), “Measure of a Man” (TNG), “Shadowplay” (DS9), and “Et in Arcardia Ego” (PIC).The issue begins with Jackie Hogan and James M. Decker's “Hybridities on the Final Frontier: Bio-utilitarianism in Star Trek,” which examines the franchise's treatment of five types of hybrids. While generally representing biological and cultural hybrids positively, Star Trek portrays nontherapeutic enhancements—such as cybernetic implants and genetic engineering—and artificial intelligence as far more problematic. Hogan and Decker suggest that the apprehension over such enhancements reflects larger cultural anxieties about the potential misuse of such technologies. Such real-world fears also inform the next essay, “‘Am I real?: Hybridity, Strategic Multiplicity, and Self-Actualization in Star Trek: Picard’” by Kyoko Kishimoto, Matthew D. Barton, Edward M. Sadrai, Michael B. Dando, and Sharon Cogdill. The authors focus on the show's exploration of the ongoing trauma caused by nonconsensual hybridity, particularly that experienced by former Borg characters. Resisting “reassimilation” into the dominant culture of the Federation, various characters in the series find empowerment in their hybridized identities, and challenge essentialist notions of purity. Francis Steven Mickus similarly argues in “A Culture of One: Cultural Homogenization across the Star Trek Universe” that Star Trek subverts its celebration of diversity by positioning planetary subcultures as a threat to the “homogenization” that the Federation requires to maintain (relative) harmony. There is typically little variation (cultural or even physical) within Star Trek's many species, and hybrid characters who do not align with one species stereotype or another often experience psychological trauma and alienation.In “Ethics, Experimentalism, and Hybrid Purpose: Navigating Science and the Military in Star Trek: Discovery,” Octavia Cade contends that the Federation's ideals come into conflict with Starfleet's military aims and that Starfleet itself is a hybrid organization. Focusing on several episodes of Discovery in which the crew's scientific mission clashes with a potential tactical advantage in the Klingon War, Cade demonstrates that as a hybrid institution, Starfleet reflects both the scientist's need for slow, concerted study with the military commander's need for expediency. Ultimately, Cade suggests that Lorca's status as a Mirror Universe refugee undercuts the effectiveness of the Tardigrade arc because it skirts the question of whether a “true” Starfleet officer would put aside the qualms of scientific ethics in order to save millions of lives. Judith Clemens-Smucker probes a similar moral conundrum in “The Monstrousness of Humans in ‘Scorpion: Parts 1 & 2.’” Clemens-Smucker argues that Voyager's crew exhibits the same tendencies for self-preservation and exploitation that they decry in their enemies, the Borg and Species 8472. Viewing itself as ideal, humanity will resort to any tactics, including those used by the Borg, in order to survive. The final essay, Eliza Gellis's “Spock's Jewish Hybridity” moves beyond typical discussions of the science officer as half-human and half-Vulcan and posits that Leonard Nimoy's original portrayal of Spock incorporated elements of Jewish identity and culture. Gellis traces how Nimoy infused Spock's character with Jewish signifiers, including the famous Vulcan salute, in creating a positive self-representation of Jewish Otherness. She further posits that Spock's Jewishness serves to destabilize readings of hybridity as binary.The essays in this volume highlight the capacity of Star Trek to challenge the boundaries between species, between organic beings and machines, between animate and inanimate, between life and death, between self and Other. Across its many iterations, the franchise both examines and exemplifies hybridity in almost infinite combinations.
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