Star Trek: Generations and Changing Characters Fundamentally

(Authors Note: The following post contains spoilers. It discusses major plot points of Star Trek: Generations, which came out in 1994. If that bothers you, I'm sorry, but you've had twenty-nine years to see it before I spoiled it and I kinda think that's enough lead time. You have been warned.)

Once upon a time, when I was a wee little Jimbo, I used to be (and really, still am) a huge nerd. I got picked on a lot at school. It hurt. I mean, of course it did. I was a kid and while I gave back as well as I got, and got suspended for fighting a couple of times (I'm a McCoy. Ask a Hatfield what it's like to try and pick on one of us. Better yet, ask my father what he thought about it and what my reaction should be.) but it still sucked. I know a lot of my readers can relate, because I was a long way from the only one who went through this.

Still and all, though, I got through it, using a mixture of grit, hatred, adrenaline and grudge-carrying (I'm working of forgiveness as a Christian, but if God hadn't commanded it, I wouldn't be bothering.) and I'm a stronger person because of it, I think. The fact remains that I needed an escape, a way out. I was too young to even think about substance abuse (My parents would have lost their ever-loving minds if I had gone that route at that age-justifiably so) and I needed a way out. My way out was geekery, which in some ways made it worse, but it worked too, and no system is perfect.

To this day, my way of escaping my problems is to disappear into my books and my games, my TV shows and movies and forget about it all. It's cheaper than drugs, doesn't cause the problems that other coping methods do (Seriously, you can't overdose on Star Wars. A person who does too much heroin dies. A person who binges too many Mandalorian episodes needs a shower and possibly a meal, if they didn't order something by delivery.) And that's why my most favoritest character of any series or story was Spock.

Spock, you see, was Vulcan. They couldn't feel emotions. So, naturally, if someone said something mean to Spock it wouldn't matter. I didn't get the whole half-human thing till later. I don't remember not being a Star Trek fan and nuance is simply lost on a four year old. It wasn't my fault.

It wasn't until later that I got to start checking books out of the big kid part of the library that I happened upon the Log books and found out that Spock could feel emotions and that he had been devastated as a  child when he was picked on, it tore me up. Not just because I could identify with what he was going through, although believe me I could, but because he was my hero precisely because that crap didn't matter to him. And it sucked because I had always idolized the guy, to the point of pretending to be Spock when people would talk trash, thinking that he wouldn't feel the pain. My one get out of "jail" free card was gone. I don't know who, if anyone, shares this experience but it was a terrible feeling for me. Here I was getting my one chance at being "represented" as an outcast and it killed me.

Enter Star Trek: The Next Generation and Lieutenant Data. Data was what I always wanted to be for real. He was an android, a machine. He was literally incapable of feeling emotions. Even when he was threatened with being dismantled and studied in "The Measure of a Man" , he didn't freak out, didn't cry, didn't wail emotionally about the unfairness of it all. He did - and very well should have - object to it, but he didn't emote about it. He handled the situation in a logical manner, did the right thing, accomplished his goal and moved on with his life.  "The Measure of a Man" is and always will be one of my favorite Trek episodes for precisely that reason.  He stayed that way through the entire ST:TNG TV series. But then came Star Trek: Generations.

I love the movie, although I know that not everyone would agree. Generations catches crap from Trek fans and actors both. Leonard Nimoy, who not only played Spock in both TOS and TNG refused to have anything to do with the movie because he thought it sucked and there are those fans that would agree with him, but I liked it. In a way, it was more Trek than any of the TNG movies actually attempted to be. Seriously, watch Star Trek: Insurrection sometime. It's a good Space Opera popcorn flick with plenty of action, but it's not really Trek. It's got the window dressing but not the feel.

But I digress.

So today, I decided to watch a movie and, seeing as I couldn't find anything else I felt like watching I went with Star Trek Generations. For those that aren't familiar, which probably doesn't include most of the followers of this blog, in Generations Data gets an emotion chip. It allows him to feel emotions. Almost immediately, he heads to Ten Forward (that's the bar, for those that missed it) and has a drink which he totally HATES. He's oddly happy about hating it and it's one of the funniest moments in all of Trek. But then later, things get a little less funny.

When Data is cornered and under fire, he should have done the logical thing, although at considerable risk to himself, and went and saved his buddy Geordi. He didn't because he was scared. 

*SIGH*

Listen, I'm not debating about risks versus reward in the real world with actual lives on the line. I'm not trying to criticize any real world people or say that I wouldn't have acted the same while being shot at. I've never been shot at, so I have no way to compare my behavior to his. I'm just saying this:

Data failed to rescue Geordi, not because of any type of tactical analysis, but because he was scared. They had killed the essence of the character at that point. And yes, watching him say "Oh SHIT" as the ship was about to crash at the end was every bit as funny as watching him find his cat in the debris of the wreck was touching. None of that matters though, because they took my Data away from me.

Now, the totally logical, totally able to function character that I loved was ripped away. He could feel stuff again. I had to go from loving Data to loving pre-emotion chip Data. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming Brent Spiner. That dude can act. I'm just saying that they changed the character in a very fundamental way and I hated it. I felt disrepected. This isn't the character I had grown up loving (and I was not quite eleven when ST:TNG debuted in 1987. It was a major part of my childhood.) I still like the rest of the movie, but...

Yeah

The Data I knew was deader than disco, doornails, Dracula and Sturm Brightblade all rolled into one. They took him away from me and gave him back broken. Fans of The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever know what I mean. It still irritates me.

And that, my friends, is why I don't like race/gender/orientation swaps in my fiction. Now I'm not saying that minorities shouldn't be represented. I mean, yeah, I grew up on James T. Kirk and Jean-luc Picard, but I also grew up on Nyota Uhura, Hikaru Sulu, Geordi Laforge and Worf, Son of Mogh. I loved both shows. I'm just saying to leave existing characters alone.

If you want a character that is black/Latino/gay/bi/transgender/whatever else you can come up with, that's fine. Make a new character and make them matter to the story. Frankly, if you can't come up with a reason for the representative character to matter to the story, you're patronizing the group you're representing anyway and stating flat out that they don't matter, but their money does. You're looking for ticket sales, not showing respect. 

And, by handing the fans who have supported your product with their time, money and yes, emotions for years or maybe decades something broken you are pissing in their face. At that point, they have no reason to continue to support your product. And yes, this means that if there is a Next Gen reboot with a new cast, that Geordi and Worf should both be black. But it also means that if you want to add a LGBT representative/couple/  you need to come up with (a) new character(s) and create something. (If you still can't figure this out. Gay Riker = lose. New bridge officer who is gay = win.)

No one freaked out when Jadzia Dax was bi because she was a new character who didn't have a history of heterosexualness (probably the wrong word. Work with me.) and so you weren't slapping your fans in the face by tearing one of their favorite characters apart. Stop talking about how "Audiences weren't ready for..." and include people in a way that WILL work. The audiences ARE ready if you do it right. And, given the fact that you're in the business of making money off of an established property, you might want to do right by the fans. They're where your profits come from.

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