JohnBillingsley.Net
February 2005
Magazine: DREAMWATCH
Issue: #125
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
John Billingsley, the popular Star Trek: Enterprise actor writes for Dreamwatch!
Mrs. Backus, my sixth grade composition teacher, always said “When working on an essay, start with a compelling topic sentence and go from there. Speak it out loud. If you’re stuck, just keep spewing out compelling topic sentences until you hit on a topic sentence that is so damned compelling that you feel, well, compelled, to build an essay around it.”
(Apologies to Mrs. Backus, she really said no such thing, but that quote does accurately reflect the spirit of her comp. lessons)
Anyway, I’ve been spewing out compelling topic sentences out for over an hour, spewing them across the room in the general direction of, my long-suffering wife, actually, and so far nothing doing. Neither she nor I have been compelled in any way. I’m stuck.
My wife suggested I write an essay comparing the Bush Administration to different alien species - i.e. the Bush Administration embodies Klingon bellicosity, Andorian paranoia, Vulcan insularity, etc, etc, etc. A friend of mine suggested I write about ‘The Erotic Subtext’ of life on the Enterprise set, but I don’t think there’s any subtext on set at all, much less erotic subtext or else it’s being carefully concealed from me. Too bad, that would have been a good story.
Then I thought, well, why not write about how the Enterprise cast and crew celebrates Christmas? Nice, wholesome family fare and easily accomplished in 1,200 words (or less). But, nah, I said to myself, it’d be well past Christmas by the time this piece appears and how interesting would that be. Plus – Nice? Wholesome? ME ?
However, coincident to my agreeing to write about a subject of my choice (so long as it was somewhat Star Trek related), I was asked to join the board of a charitable organization I’ve been involved with for some time, which provides services, education and advocacy for men, women and children affected by and at the risk of HIV/AIDS.
In some weird, inchoate way that I’m not sure I’m going to be able to articulate, all my topic sentences and random musings kinda fell together into a mosh pit and clambered out as a single essay that’s sort about the religious right’s stigmatization of healthy, human sexuality and sorta about what the spirit of Star Trek has always been about for me and why I like and respect the franchise.
TRUE TO LIFE
I guess the gooey way to go is to talk about a certain spirit of tolerance that I’ve always felt the best imaginative fiction and Star Trek, in particular, has served to perpetuate over the years. The concept of a Prime Directive, for example, argues that our species should not seek to influence another species’ development (don’t leave a footprint, don’t interfere, don’t pass judgement, don’t moralize) and many of the best episodes from the franchise’s dramatic history are about the unintended consequences of well-meaning but ill-conceived ‘interventions’ into alien cultures. And although I’m doubtless offending some with what will be perceived as inappropriate political musings, it strikes me that in America today there is a disturbing propensity for ‘well-meaning and ill –conceived interventions into alien cultures.’
I’m not referring to our incursion into Iraq and our other global misadventures, actually, so much as I’m referring to the myriad ways in which a resurgent American Moral Brigade is effectively imposing ever more Draconian restrictions on what Americans (and all global citizens, actually) can do with their bodies, and, consequently, with their hearts and minds.
The charitable organization I mentioned previously, for instance, is not eligible for any government funding unless it emphasizes and prioritizes the promulgation of “abstinence-only teaching guides and literature” to its entire clientele.
This clientele consists, in part, of sexually active adolescents and young adults whose greatest, and most immediate, need is for assistance maintaining their home, getting to medical appointments, preparing meals etc. They may have unresolved mental health or substance abuse issues. They may need counseling in a wide range of areas, including safe sex practices and sexual hygiene. The government’s failure to appreciate or understand these ‘alien beings’, and the concomitant belief that the government knows best about what their real problems are, strikes a profoundly troubling chord for me. Gay relationships are demonized as ‘immoral’, a woman’s right to choose whether or not to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is being threatened in our courts and legislative bodies, and even such basic rights as being able to choose from among multiple birth control methodologies are being threatened in a multiplicity of ways by our new ‘Daddy Knows Best’ quasi-theocratic state.
There’s hostility in the US, these days, to the perception of the ‘alien’, and a deep desire to ‘fix’ the alien’s perceived behavioral problems through the application of ‘superior’ standards of conduct, achieved through legislative means. (And this cuts both ways, I freely grant: there is no end of disdain and derision aimed at people whose values are perceived as less ‘cosmopolitan’, even though the ‘alien’ in this case, call him Mr. Red State to be glib, would probably say he was simply less hedonistic, and would rather not have ‘Blue State’ cosmopolitanism rammed down his throat.)
‘TIS THE SEASON…
Now how this all ties back into how the Enterprise cast and crew celebrates Christmas…Well, it’s gonna be a reach, but what the hell! Every year, at Christmas, we have a tradition (which may be very familiar to some of you: I know I was aware of it initially in college) called Secret Santa. Secret Santa, apropos of nothing, has largely been kept alive as a Star Trek tradition through the heroic efforts of the luminescent Suzanne Diaz Westmore, one of our show’s make-up people.
Here’s how it works. Everybody on the show who wants to participate writes his or her name down on a slip of paper and puts it in a hat. Each participant then draws somebody else’s name from the hat and for a week before we break for the Holidays, whoever you’ve picked, that’s the person you give gifts to, one a day, for a full week, (trying to maintain your secrecy as gift-giver all the while, mind you). All of this culminates in a big party where the ‘piece de resistance’ gifts, the crowning glory gifts, are given out and people try to guess who their ‘gift-giver’ was.
What interests me, particularly, about all of this is that you usually don’t know all that much about the person whose name you’ve selected – their tastes, interests, and proclivities – and so before you can begin ‘gift-giving’ you have to investigate, you have to learn about them, ask questions, figure out what they might like, or need, or find funny.
I’ve always felt this exercise honors both the best aspects of Christmas tradition and the
non-judgmental spirit of
Star Trek, something I wish was more prevalent in our society today. We should ask more questions about the people we want to give things to, and the charitable impulse should be an impulse arising from our curiosity, and our generosity, not our need to control or inflict our esthetic and moral choices upon other people. The gifts we give, the charities we promote, the policies we promulgate in the political sphere, should be truly reflective of what the recipient of those gifts and charitable donations and policies will genuinely cherish and need.
And, not to be salacious, but some of the gifts that get given during our Secret Santa week, well…HOOBOY!!!
But these private exchanges, which all take place in a semi-public sphere and run the gamut of taste from good to, well, not so good, are all appropriate and are all enjoyed because the understanding exists that the gift given was, first and foremost, appreciated by the recipient and nobody else’s opinion really matters.
I guess that is what I’m getting at, in a way, about Star Trek. I cherish Star Trek’s non-judgmentalism, and even when it talks about the difficulty of keeping your judgments in check. While I know there are many fans who want the show to be uncontroversial, and not deal with sex, or violence, or any of the unpleasant realities of life, I would actually like to see it become more bold about honoring its mission: exploring life in all of its ‘Infinite Varieties’ with deep curiosity, deep compassion and deep tolerance for the differences, the profound differences, than can and never should be eradicated by ‘those who know best.’
Anyway, a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Submitted by Jo Healy