Celebrate Earth Day With Star Trek
Star Trek Is One Of The Oldest Hollywood Franchises To Be Environmentally Friendly
Star Trek celebrates Earth Day, and has done so in nurturing spirit for many decades. This fantastic warp driven spaceship of the imagination has always travelled far ahead of its time in all respects. Its social commentary, technological predictions, political aspirations and environmental awareness spans the pop culture tenure of the groundbreaking science fiction franchise born of legendary creator Gene Roddenberry.
Come now as we effortlessly travel through the flowing rivers of time and space. Join me in a little time warp around our favorite celestial body. Let’s go space travel in style to the early, embryonic green scene with Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), as the USS Enterprise gets environmentally friendly.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Khaaaaaaaaaaan! Khaaaaaaaaaaaaan!
Listen closely… You’ll undoubtedly hear the most unforgettable yell - Kirk at Khan - in all of Star Trek history. Was Kirk simply chastising the infamous Khan for not being an environmentalist? Khan Noonien Singh played by Ricardo Montalban, perhaps best known as Mr. Roarke on TV’s Fantasy Island, was guilty of many things, but above all he may be the most dastardly environmental terrorist in all of science fiction.
In Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, Kirk and crew must stop Khan from using the stolen Genesis Device - developed by Kirk’s old flame, Federation scientist Dr. Carol Marcus, - to wreck violent havoc throughout the galaxy. This 1982 feature film directed by Nicholas Meyer is still regarded by most fans as the greatest cinematic trek of them all. Montalban played Khan in the original series episode, Space Seed. It’s from that hardy narrative crop which provides so much of the film’s dramatic power and cool nostalgia for the formative years of the Enterprise adventures.
It’s also - by virtue of the miraculous Genesis Device’s tech magic - the most interesting kind of environmental anchored plot. Dr. Marcus invents a kind of terraforming grenade. When activated and deployed, the Genesis bomb programming overrides the natural ecosystem of any world where it detonates.
Dr. Marcus is mind numbingly careful in selecting a target world to experiment on with her tech toy - firmly urging the Starship Reliant’s Chekov and his Captain Terrell to locate a world devoid of all life where she could finally test her device within a real world situation. Avoiding destroying existing biology and the ecosystem of a planet is clearly responsible ecological behavior.
Khan’s environmentalism contribution? Nah. Not so much.
The great ecological terrorism happens in the film’s last act. The dying Khan in his last gasp of vengeful hate, spits his last toxic breath at Kirk by deploying the Genesis Device aboard the flaming, crumbling USS Reliant starship.
We briefly see the fabulous Genesis Planet in the close of Star Trek II, however, it won’t be until Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, where we get to assess the full damage, and subsequent resurrection, which Khan’s brutal, though ultimately oddly beneficial legacy, has thrust upon Kirk’s Enterprise crew.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Admiral! There be whales here! - Montgomery Scott, The Voyage Home
Yes, Scotty, you beamed up a couple of humpback whales so you can take them back to the future to tell a weird probe what to do with itself. Good man!
Released in 1986, and regarded as one of the most fun Trek romps ever, The Voyage Home was directed by Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy. After Nimoy directed his trekking colleagues in Search For Spock, it was only logical for Spock’s alter ego to take the helm of the sequel.
After a mysterious, mammoth probe overtakes Earth’s defenses and basically trashes the entire planet with torrential flooding, it seeks an answer to its probing, audio transmitted distress call. Humanity realizes that because of the ecological mistake of allowing the intelligent, graceful humpback whale to become extinct on Earth, it may have doomed its entire species. When the whales are time warp slung back to a devastated Earth, they save the day, and our crew even gets to go for a relaxing swim.
‘Homeward’ - The Next Generation
This Next Generation episode is one close to my heart - since my own script was used as basis for the episode.
Focused on Worf (Michael Dorn) and his brother, Nikolai, played by Paul Sorvino, the plot centers on a group of aliens who lose their home world to a planet wide atmospheric catastrophe. It’s up to a more than crafty Nikolai to convince Captain Picard to ferry the whole lot of these aliens to a new suitable planet so they can set up home. The complex tale involves the act of refugee resettlement; to care for and manage people who are basically homeless who need not just a new plot of land to farm and cultivate for their village, but require an entire new world to develop and call their own. Overall, the episode ends happily, but sadly, not without a tragic casualty.
Star Trek can be seen and enjoyed in so many diverse ways. There are scores of fans who literally live much like their beloved fictional crews in the various TV shows and films. And yes, sometimes for its more than passionate, even obsessive fandom, it has taken more than a few hits and even endured a bit of mockery. But one thing is certain. When judging Trek over many other sci-fi properties, its firm commitment to intelligently discussing environmental issues makes it stand out from the space opera or science fiction crowd.