Trek goes back to the fans

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Title: Trek goes back to the Fans
Creator: Ron Moore
Date(s): February 4, 2005
Medium: online
Fandom: Star Trek
Topic:
External Links: blog.scifi.com (scroll down)
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Trek goes back to the Fans is a 2005 essay by Ron Moore.

It was written just after Star Trek: Enterprise was cancelled, a "time without a Star Trek film or TV project on the horizon."

Some Topics Discussed in the Essay, and in the Comments

  • fandom and profit
  • the Star Trek franchise
  • grassroots Trek fandom
  • fan ownership through fanworks
  • Star Trek tie-in novels and their failures
  • portrayal of gay and lesbians in the show, and in the pro books

From the Essay

Certainly there is sadness in this news. There has been a Star Trek production either in prep or being filmed on Stages 8 & 9 on the Paramount lot since 1977, when Star Trek: Phase Two began initial construction for a second series featuring all the original characters but Spock (these sets were then revamped for Star Trek: The Motion Picture). An entire infrastructure has been built around the productions, staffed by people whose involvement in the Franchise goes back over two decades. The dedication, passion, and talent of these artisans and craftsmen cannot be overstated. The unsung heroes of Trek, the people who sweat every detail, who take the time to think through continuity and try to make the vast universe consistent, people like Mike and Denise Okuda, Dave Rossi, Michael Westmore, Herman Zimmerman, Bob Blackman, and many others, are about to leave and take with them an enormous body of knowledge and talent that cannot be and will not be replicated again. That is cause for both tears and eulogies as the close of Enterprise signals the true end of an era.

However, there is another side of this story, one that perhaps is somewhat more hopeful and positive: Star Trek has now been returned to the care of its community of fans.

I say returned because there was a time when the fans were the exclusive owners and operators of what would later become the Franchise. From 1969 until 1979, a genuine grassroots movement of fans gathered together in conventions, published newsletters (in the primordial ooze of the pre-internet era, no less), wrote scads of fan fiction, created their own props and uniforms, and dreamed the dream of what it was to live aboard the good ship Enterprise.

I was one of those fans; I was a kid growing up in the 1970's who found Star Trek in strip syndication and bought every book and magazine I could lay my hands on and every piece of fan merchandise I could con my parents into buying and I can tell you that some of those efforts were abysmal and some were brilliant, but all of them were driven by a sense of passion rooted in a belief that Trek was our secret club. We, the fans, embroidered the Trek tapestry while the powers that be at Paramount dawdled. In those years, the best stories told not those written by Gene or any other "professional writers" (no offense to the short-lived, but well intentioned animated series), but by people like Sondra Marshak, Myrna Culbreath, and Jacqueline Lichtenberg. Who are they? Fans. People who loved Star Trek and were able to breath life into it during the interregnum between the show and the Franchise.

Star Trek now returns to the care of its fans and its fans can decide for themselves what kind of experience they want to have during this next interregnum. They can consume the seemingly endless licensed products available to them from the Franchise, everything from barware to shower curtains, and read only the mainstream, officially licensed and sanctioned books, or they can go their own way. Some of the most daring and creatively challenging Star Trek material has been created not by Paramount, but by amateurs, who simply had an idea for an interesting twist on the Trek universe. Think Kirk and Spock were secret lovers? Wonder about the social and cultural history of the planet Vulcan? Believe the Mirror Universe is more fascinating than our own? All these topics and many others were, and are, tackled by fans in their own fiction, their own stories, their own dreams.

Step back from the merchandising. Rediscover the joy and wonder of the universe Roddenberry created. Talk to people who share your common interest and who understand the difference between phaser mark I and mark II (duh!). You don't need another series to enjoy Star Trek. You need only your own imagination and the desire to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Fan Comments

Comments from Re: Trek goes back to the fans, Archived version, posted on February 8, 2005 to alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated:

[Chris]:

This is an amazing article. Thanks so much for posting it, Cait. When I heard about the cancellation of Enterprise, these were pretty much my thoughts as well. Whatever one might think of the fiction written by authors such as Marshak, Culbreath, and Lichtenberg (and I consider them all worth reading -- particularly Lichtenberg, who went on to create the fascinating Sime-Gen universe in her professional sf novels), the fact is that they were an part of the larger Trek fan community that did indeed keep the show alive, not to mention some of the earliest writers of fanfic who dared to deviate from a strict interpretation of the Trek canon. For that alone, we owe them a great deal.

My admiration for Ron Moore, a former DS9 writer, has grown enormously over the years, largely because of his public praise for fans and fan-fiction, and his free admission that he began his own writing career as a fanboy. His re-imagined "Battlestar Galactica" may well be the best science fiction I've ever seen on TV, and I sometimes wonder if this show, for him, might be a kind of fanfic -- an extended AU epic that revives a beloved sf icon from the 1970s.

And the fact the he references K/S slash here is simply too cool for words. You go, Ron!

BTW, anyone who is interested should seriously consider hunting out some of those old Trek zines from the 1970s. Many of them are amazing, and even the crappy ones can be enormous fun -- especially the ones that are hand-stapled and mimeographed. :-)

Chris, zine-freak

Hypatia Kosh:

Ron Moore, who has written some truly wonderful episodes of DS9 and Voyager, is a Marshak and Culbreath fan?

I don't think I can take this kind of news... *dry heaves, pupils dilate, hallucinations*

[Julianna]: Well, if nothing else, Marshak and Culbreath first introduced me to fan fiction and conventions with their first three pro books. Their two volume (and the recently released third volume) novel was so darn angsty!

[Taylor Dancinghands]:

Here! Here!

And further more, I say the franchise is *better off* in the hands of the fans. I've been saying so since the last season of Voyager. As long as B&B have anything to do with it, I'd just as soon they not do anything at all.

The Star Trek universes belong to all of us, for they have passed into the realm of mythology. Nobody owns the myths. They're Ours!

[Julianna]:

Ah, I remember those bits [from The Price of the Phoenix.] I guess because it was mostly teasing from Omnedon and not a free expression of affection on Spock's part that I didn't recognize it as slash (Not that I knew that term back then!)

"Where's my logical Vulcan?" I fondly remember that line.

[...]

It was also presented as very wholesome, as opposed to the kind of "ooo... illicit" vibe that slash sometimes gives off.

Farfalla: I think it was the candles/flowers/bond/naked/my Logical Vulcan thing. It reminded me of a wedding and i'm a complete, predictable sucker. *hangs head*

[Taylor Dancinghands]:

Angsty?! Angsty?!!

Those books were the wellspring of the hurt comfort genera [sic]!

That and they reeek, from cover to cover of (not so) thinly veiled S&M. To this day I wonder how those books got published. They certainly have never let anything like them be published since.

[Hypatia Kosh]:

Naaa, the only masochism is trying to read them.

I nearly tossed the first Phoenix book from the third story atrium of my local library down to the first floor reading room because my brain hurt so much from trying to follow their idiocy.

"hee hee! we're so clever! we snuck slash into a pro-novel! bow down to our genius!"

Goddamnit, write a good story and get out! Oh no, I'm having flashbacks ... noooo, brain, I don't want to relive my Top Ten Greatest Headaches. <where's my tea?>

[Odosgirl]: Well, I haven't actually read beyond the first few chapters of that one -- though I intend to try again (and the fact that I'm having to "try" obviously says something). But as I've admitted before, I absolutely could not put down "Triangle." I loved every trashy, kinky, slashy, Mary Sue-filled page of that book.

[Chris]: "hee hee! we're so clever! we snuck slash into a pro-novel! bow down to our genius!"

Er, well -- from what I did read of this novel, and the others, it's not so much snuck in as hiding out in plain sight. :-)

It seems to me that the sharp divide that now exists between fanfic and "pro" Trek novels really wasn't firmly in place at the time those books were published. (Obviously books were books and zines were zines, but there was no automatic assumption that fanfic was unfit for professional publication.) Marshak and Culbreath also edited two volumes of "[[Star Trek: The New Voyages]]," for Bantam, both of which contained stories culled from fanzines (and I wonder if those collections weren't what Moore was thinking of when he mentioned M&C by name...) Professionally written Trek novels evolved alongside of, and arguably in the wake of, the fanfic. The editors of the pro books, no doubt totally unaware of slash culture and possibly not even that well versed in the Trek canon, probably didn't even know what they were looking at.

I also doubt that M&C were trying to pull a fast one on Bantam by "slipping" slash content into their books. More likely they simply saw no reason to leave the slash elements out as long as they were "toned down" enough to be ambiguous. Early Trek novel publishers couldn't put a ban on slash material in their books if they didn't know what slash was. M&C probably just wrote the story that they wanted to write and then edited it until Bantam said the manuscript was acceptable. The publisher, eager to profit from the popularity of Trek, may well have rushed the books into publication with minimal attention to certain details.

There are a fair number of early Trek pro-novels that are obvious mutations of fanfic, of varying quality. What's nice about many of these early works, however good or bad they may be as literature or science fiction, is that the writers are obviously passionate about the characters and write as if they, not Paramount, own them. I think that's greatly preferable to the kind of soul-less, by-the-numbers junk that's been published in more recent years by Pocket. These newer books are so thoroughly vetted by the Trek image-police that they rarely have any creative bite. And they tend to be created by writers for whom Star Trek is just another job rather than a passion.

[Julianna]:

It was also presented as very wholesome, as opposed to the kind of "ooo... illicit" vibe that slash sometimes gives off.

What? No, I can't agree with that. The whole series is doom and gloom with a heavy dose of Sadism -- and not just from Omne.

It's very much in the bodice-ripping mysterious tall dark stranger and blushing debutante tradition, but even creepier, if possible.

That one scene in particular is cute [1] It's one of the few times Kirk expresses intent (other than his intent to get free and take down Omne). K'Sal did a good breakdown of the "plot", and I'm sad to say I can't remember her exact words, but they were reminiscent of Olive Oyl screaming to be saved from Bruno, except in this case Olive wants to get caught. I think K'Sal called the books obscene. They really are.

... what's up with them sneaking slash into a heavily suggestive story? Why not portray their relationship in wholesome terms (avoiding out-and-out slash that won't get published, of course)? Two male writers, Joe Haldeman and Gene Roddenberry in "Planet of Judgment" and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" [2], did a better job of portraying the emotional relationship between Kirk and Spock than Marshak and Culbreath did.

M & C's writing operates on pure hormones, brain not required. There's no love in these stories, only lust. I mean, reread Procrustean Petard if you don't believe me. There's another K/S story in New Voyages/New Voyages 2, by the way -- a really cute one where Spock's inhibitions are released for a moment by some hive mind of butterflies and he starts talking about a desire to get away from people and be alone with Kirk. (On the Bridge, so Kirk hastily shuts him up, of course.) PP isn't actually K/S but there's the clear implication that: Spock wants to get in Kirk's pants; and Kirk is a slut.

[Hypatia Kosh]:Just say no to Marshak and Culbreath.

(The Procrustean Petard -- which is one of the stupidest titles ever -- is easier to read and slashy too. It's a bloody-minded, stupid story, but it isn't the sheer pain that the Phoenix books are to read.)

- Hy (who doesn't get why everyone bitches about Turnabout Intruder, which was a very good episode, but nobody bitches about the suck that was Procrustean Petard. Appeal to the clit, get out of stupidity free?)

[Hypatia Kosh]:

...the pro-novels at that time were rather lousy. Also, sexual content to an extent not allowed in the Pocket series today (even for Peter David -- Imzadi wouldn't be published today under Pocket's written guidelines) was not uncommon. (Read "Spock, Messiah!" if you doubt me....)

There seems to have been a conscious effort to write slashy conversations in such a way that if the reader didn't know it was slash, they couldn't put the pieces together (and would just be confused). The book is basically an exercise in social cryptology -- if you don't get it, you don't get it. It's like an entire book written in Cockney slang.

The Phoenix books aren't "toned down" in the least. If you want toned down slash, try Margaret Wander Bonnano..

There was a very porous line between K/S and the K&S friendship stuff which was loved by a wide swath of fans (not necessarily K&S zines, but the sort of typical stuff you see in gen and pro fics between Kirk and Spock from that period, as well as on the animated series -- for example, the scene where Kirk and Spock hug in "Mudd's Passion").

The publisher was probably deficient in clue -- after all, they printed some really crappy Trek novels by scifi authors looking to make a buck, including wives and brothers of people they'd already published, and some of them really didn't know Trek. (One author had apparently learned about Trek by watching some TAS episodes.)

And if you look at the guidelines today, it's a bit broader than "no slash" -- although K/S is certainly not wanted, while certain other pairings make it into print via some mysterious process not known to mere mortals. (Like [[that Mirror Universe novel a couple of years ago where everyone is a lesbian]].) There have been gay characters in Trek books from the 80's on, although I haven't seen a really major gay character in a Trek book yet. Of course, the hint that any Trek cast character could be bi or gay is assiduously avoided. Just silly.

[...]

The only books that are worse than the Phoenix books from that run are "Spock, Messiah!" and "Vulcan!" (Hmm, noticing a pattern with the "!" in the title....)

Bantam lost their contract with good reason.

[Taylore Dancinghands]:

But this is just the fabulous double standard that you see everywhere: Gay *women* are okay, because we can just imagine that if there was a *real man* present they'd all just get it on with him, and that's okay.

[Farfalla]: Yeah, that drives me up the wall. There's an underlying social myth stemming from the warm-up acts in porn movies or something that bisexual girls are just bisexual because we're *so very horny* that we'll fuck each other if there are no guys around. The whole idea makes me so uncomfortable that I've been referring to myself internally as a lesbian for a year or so, even though I obviously have a male partner and like him, & Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc. to some extent. For a long time, I've felt very strongly about liking female bodies better, but the word 'bisexual' just feels weird to me because of all that fallacy built up around the word from both male ego and porn movies. Or something.

[Alara Rogers]: You know, I've spoken to a lot of men who like f/f, and it's not necessarily like that. A lot of them like f/f the way we like slash. It's not "ooh, if I was there they'd have sex with me"-- it's more "one chick hot, two chicks hotter!" It drives me up the wall when female slashers always assume that the male interest in femmeslash and lesbian scenarios is so nasty and prurient, but *our* interest in Teh Gay is pure and healthy. Uh, no. The main difference is that men have historically been the people who will consume a material that openly appeals to prurient interest, and women would not, so over time standards have evolved to try to sell sex to men without being totally sure how to sell sex to women. I find slash in which two snarky, emotionally repressed guys who are fun because of the undercurrent of real emotion *under* the constant insults are all of a sudden gushing with Luuuuv and acting like 16 year old girls to be just as offensive as femmeslash in which it's like, "You're a hot girl with big breasts? So am I! Let's screw! In nauseating detail! Using every rude word we know!" I admit that I wish Pocket Books had the cojones to... well... have cojones. :-) I wish they'd have gay male characters; they have to know women form a large part of their audience and that gay male characters in a book would be eaten up by every Trek slasher on the planet. But I'm fine with lesbians. If we can't get gay guys, well, at least we can have lesbians.

[Farfalla]: I don't think Trek is the only place that's happened. I've had the uncomfortable, eerie feeling these days while watching movies like "Van Helsing" that certain characters are being written certain ways in order to prevent possibility of slashy implications. First off, that's impossible. Have you seen the preposterous, "unjustified" pairings the little'uns are writing these days? There's no way to prevent slash even if the characters have never even MET each other, lol. Second of all, if it's so obvious that they're doing that, it sticks out as awkward. It takes you "out of" the story, as it were.

[Farfalla]: Bluh. I like the way they did it in "Chicago", which seems to be semi-sapphic-on-purpose anyway. It was gleefully and unapologetically anti-man (not that I'm condoning that or agree with that) and there were writhing female forms and bulging bosoms all over the place (which I condone with every cell of my body!) There are even little slashy lines thrown in all over the place -- "Keep your paws off my underwear", etc. They weren't afraid of it, BUT, if you wanted also to NOT see it, the movie's just as good without it. It's not a "lesbian" movie. But it's a movie lesbians can have a lot of fun watching. I wonder, if you asked Catherine Zeta-Jones or any of the other people involved in Chicago if there were sapphic undertones, if she'd give an answer similar to Roddenberry's t'hy'la footnote, which gives everyone carte blanche to do whatever. I am so off topic. I should be smacked. With Major Kira's bra. :P

Farfalla: Dancing hands might have been referring not to men who enjoy femslash fanfiction, but instead to society's treatment of lesbians in general. Until really recently, it seemed like everyone found lesbians less threatening for the reasons we said in our earlier posts. Now, things are more blurry--Queer Eye and the huge slash fad have made gay men "hip", and it's obvious from politics that people who feel threatened by same-sex relationships don't care about which gender it is.

[Alara Rogers]: I'm fine with lesbians. If we can't get gay guys, well, at least we can have lesbians.

[Farfalla]: Only in the MU, though, from what I hear. And in that Bonnano book I haven't read.

[Hypatia Kosh]:

Fuck it, man, I am not a female slasher, I am a gay female, and as a gay female, I found the existence of that book HIGHLY offensive.

I'm all for lesbian chic, but why is is okay for 7of9 to be gay in the fucking MIRROR UNIVERSE and not on the frigging show? Everyone who watched that fucking show -- from slobbering fanboys (hey, they're cool), to lesbians, to the indifferent -- thought she was gay. Her relationship with Janeway had obvious homoerotic undertones. But noooooo, never mind that DS9 had flirted with it, never mind that Northern Exposure had had gay characters years before, and B5 had a main character admitting to a bisexual love affair, no Star Trek main character could POSSIBLY be a ... gay. We don't have gays in the future. Nosiree.

[Alara Rogers]: See, that sorely pissed me off too. But... the books are not made by the people who run the series. (For one thing, the books are willing to establish that minor or original male characters are gay, which does not appear in the series at all.) The people who run the series are cowardly motherfuckers, and the people who write the books are trying to get away with as much as they can get away with. And it turns out, all they can get away with is mirror universe lesbians.

[Hypatia Kosh]: You know what, it's totally fine for you, as a heterosexual consumer of slash to go "oh, cool, some femmeslash for my consumption" but as a gay person, it was just one more slap in the face from the supposedly liberal but truly cowardly fuckwits who run that franchise. I have had it. Star Trek is dead to me. I'm going to play around with my happy little TOS characters and pretend that Season 7 of TNG and everything after it didn't happen. Because I am FUCKING sick of this patronizing SHIT from so-called progressives who think that the lavender menace is getting in the way of their agenda. If the agenda is truly humanistic, you don't get there by trampling on 5% of the population.

Alara Rogers: Star Trek isn't liberal progressive. It's a money-making machine. You must understand that there is a conflict within Trek between the people who *want* the thing to be liberal/progressive, because it was when it was created, and the people who want the thing to make money and rock no boats. Star Trek is still the only space show that has ever had a female lead or a black lead. I, too, am infuriated over the lack of gays, but it's because Rick Berman is a homophobe -- it's not even a Paramount decision so much as it is that Rick Berman is unwilling to make the slightest compromise, even so much as admitting that a redshirt who's gonna die later on in the movie was created to be gay. Pocket Books tries to get away with what it can (including establishing that Andorians have four sexes, which obviously Berman, Braga et al are not interested in running with), but Berman has final veto power (despite the fact that the books aren't canon and Berman isn't bound to do what they have established). And if the agenda is not humanistic, then ta-ta, liberal left, I'm not with you. I'm against you. Sure, I'm talking from a position of self-interest, but who else will? I'm in a teeny-tiny minority. And most of the time, guess what? I don't have to care about it. But sometimes I do. I've been angry about this book for a good two years about this, and I guess I still am. And I say that you cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You're not mad that there were lesbians in the MU, you're mad that there are *not* lesbians in the regular universe, and that there are not gays in either the regular or the MU. Well, that doesn't have anything to do with lesbians in the MU. Having lesbians in the MU is a tiny crack in the armor of homophobia surrounding Trek, not a spit in the face of homosexuals and bisexuals.

[Taylore Dancinghands]:

I'm certain that there are more than a few het. or bi men out there who like fem slash for reasons equivalent to the reasons I - a bi, married female - enjoy the heck out of gay male slash, and if guys like that were calling the shots in our television networks and movie studios I would have *nothing* to complain about. But they're not. The guys (and I do mean males here, primarily) calling the shots in our entertainment industry are pretty darned fucked up, sex wise, and we get to see their neuroses translated into what appears on tv and movie screens. At the heart of this bias I find a phenomenon I call "Phalliphobia" -the fear of dicks. I first observed this phenomenon back when I was working in market research. As a break from the surveys we did about brands of beans, cell phones and bed linens, we once did a poll to discern "community standards" in several midwest states. In other words, we called up a bunch of people and asked them what they thought was "obscene".

Outside of the sheer number of people who are just plain disgusted by any part of the human body, there were an alarming number of male respondents who found *no* depiction of the female body to be obscene, but *any* portrayal of a male body, particularly any portrayal which included a willy, was obscene. Evidently most men are really disturbed by seeing other men's dicks. Is this because they fear that all men's dicks are bigger than theirs? (the current craze for certain types of pharmaceuticals gives credence to this theory). Or is it that they fear that they will be aroused? Whatever the reason, it seems that an awful lot of guys are terrified of seeing other men's willys, hence: phalliphobia. Phalliphobia is what lies behind a lot of homophobia, if you ask me, and it certainly seems to be a factor in how tv and movies are created these days. Am I right?

[Chris]:

It is extremely annoying the way that the modern Treks seem to pat themselves on the back for supposed "taboo-busting" when in fact a lot of what they do just re-inscribes those stereotypes. I think that by the time TNG was made, a lot of the counter-culture ethos had been domesticated and pressed into the service of marketing, so rather than actually breaking new ground on TV, the newer Treks did a lot of pretending to be radical, trumpeting "issues" shows to prove their liberal credentials -- whereas classic Trek actually had to sneak things past would-be network censors. I very much doubt that the episode where Kirk kissed Uhura was [n]ever promoted as "a very special Star Trek."

Further Reading and Context

References

  1. ^ the aforementioned "candles/flowers/bond/naked/my Logical Vulcan thing"
  2. ^ This fan is referring to The Roddenberry Footnote in that book.
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