Customer Reviews

The Meaning of Star Trek

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Thomas Richards neither flaunts nor abandons his academic training in his book, 'The Meaning of Star Trek.' Rather, what he is presenting is a thesis paper for popular consumption, much like Stephen Hawkins presented physics in his, 'A History of Time & Space.' Mr. Richards goes to great lengths to bury what could be tedious references within his text while presenting enough detail to emphasize his essential points. He is careful to reacquaint the casual Star Trek admirer with information before he goes on to underscore his conclusions. Unfortunately, in his effort to please so broad an audience he disappoints the academian, draws criticism from Star Trek aficionados, and irritates well informed followers of the overall scr-fi genre.

For my taste, there are three major flaws. The first is redundancy for the purpose of emphasis and clarity. Mr. Richards belabors his favorite topics by repeating the same examples from exhaustive perspectives. It is as though he is anticipating criticism and he wants to leave no room for any interpretation but his own. It is of no surprise that not only would this be a technique employed in the presentation of a thesis/paper for academic review, but is is also a device found in several of the ST:TNG episodes, "A matter of Perspective," and, 'Measure of a Man,' among others. Like a lawyer, Mr. Richards has points that he does not want us to miss, and he doesn't want us to be able to undermine his conclusions either.

The second flaw is an uncomfortable element of contradiction. For example, Mr. Richards states, '... most characters do not actually develop over time.'(pg.68) But he concludes the segement with, '... experience... turns out to be a strengthing factor in the development of the character.'(pg.100) Personally, I would only single out Miles O'Brien as THE character who walked into the Star Trek universe naked of personality and history. And ONLY James T. Kirk was able to board and disembark The Enterprise as nearly immutable. Every other major character appears with strongly rooted histories that support development within a given episode or demonstrate an evolution as they make their way through the Star Trek universe. I would point to Picard and Worf as the most obvious examples, even if confined to ST:TNG.

Finally, Mr. Richards occasionally becomes distracted by a particular event then leaps to a gross generalization. Instead, he should stick to his formula of defining his position then presenting his support. Case in point: Mr. Richards ruminates the death of Tasha Yar as an event and a storytelling vehicle, then extrapolates it to the conclusion that Star Trek cannot handle the broader topic of death. This seems myoptic given Spock's & Kirks's demise on the big screen, the murder of Jadzia Dax & the disposition from life of Benjamin Sisko on ST:DS9, and the explosion of Kes out of Voyager's plane of existence. Mr. Richards misses 'The Meaning' by getting lost in the singular example, a regretable tendency repeated throughout his book. Admitedly, the 'death episodes' are not the most memorable, but the death experience resonates the Star Trek underscore: Hope. The conviction within the Star Trek universe is that nothing is allowed to dissolve into an inescapable pessimism. Even death is merely regarded as an,'Undiscovered Country,' if you'll excuse my free-wheeling of the quote.

I would not dismiss Mr. Richards', 'The Meaning of Star Trek.' Rather, I would re-title it,'A Personal Interpretation of Star Trek.' It is by no means a bad interpretation. If I was offering a course on Star Trek, Mr. Richards' book would appear on my suggested reading list. However, it is simply not the last word.

Anyone who's not a devoted fan of Star Trek, particularly of its Next Generation incarnation, is likely to find this book incomprehensible. They're also unlikely to buy it in the first place. Richards does ST the honor of taking it seriously, and he offers steady supply of nifty interpretations of what it has to say about life, the universe, and everything. His glosses of individual episodes are superb, and he's led me to rethink several of my favorites. This is literary scholarship written for a literate nonspecialist audience . . . and good scholarship at that.

Well, mostly good.

As noted elsewhere, Richards purports to cover the entire ST mythos, but focuses 80% of his major arguments on the "Next Generation" series. This weakens some of his interpretations, which fit TNG better than the mythos as a whole. The theatrical movies get virtually no coverage, again glossing over some troublesome diversity of data.

Richards fares considerably worse when he ventures outside of ST. His perceptions of Science Fiction as a genre are based on "Star Wars," Asimov's "Foundation Trilogy," Herbert's "Dune," and some passing references to Verne and Wells. His entire reading in SF history and criticism seems to have been Brian Aldiss's brilliant but notoriously polemical 1973 history "Billion Year Spree."

Virtually every generalization Richards makes about SF as a genre is, to be charitable, in dire need of qualification. Trek fans unfamiliar with the genre should *not* take them at face value. Trek fans familiar with the genre should brace themselves. Profane exclamations of disbelief are optional.

I bought this book under the title 'Star Trek in Myth and Legend' and didn't get quite what I was expecting. However, a lot of the analysis is of interest, mostly to the point and at least gives you a place to start thinking.

I just wish he'd put a little more effort into the research - particularly the section on Lwaxana Troi. Apart from getting her title wrong he misses some very fundemental points when analysing her character, especially in the episode 'Cost of Living' and so loses the opportuntiy to make some far more interesting comments than are given, and this leads him to view her as a parasite, when this is far from the function she fulfils in the show.

There again, critical analysis should give you something to discuss - and this book does that.

Thomas Richards book is outstanding. It is a very deep analysis of Star Trek from a cultural - historical and a literature point of view. The author is focusing almost on Star Trek - The Next Generation alone, - that is a shame, i.e the Dominion of Deep Space 9 would have been worth analysing.

The thing that struck me most about this book is how much it reminded me of how my friends and I used to write in High School. We'd have some topic to go over, usually one we didn't care about, and we'd just put out any old thing to just get credit. The Meaning of Star Trek almost seems like that.

The biggest problem that I have with the book is that it is so selective in terms of the material it looks at when attempting to prove a point. On the whole, I believe the author discusses about ten to fifteen episodes in depth, and mentions another 10-15. This is from a series of shows that have literally hundreds of episodes to choose from. He just selects the episodes that let him prove his point and ignores all the rest, even if they do not agree with the point he is making.

He does put a perspective on the Star Trek universe that was new and different from my own thought and what I've read in other books, but his perspective is very biased. It almost seems like he decided beforehand that he wanted to say some things were true of Star Trek and then only focused on those episodes that would specifically prove his point, rather than examining the serieses in detail and drawing conclusions based on the whole picture.

I have read many non-fiction Star Trek books of this type and I must say, hands down, this is the worst. At best, the book is factually inaccurate (ex. "Junior" is not the name of any episode I am familiar with, the episode being referred to is "Galaxy's Child"). At worst the book is still factually inacurate, it generalizes themes from one example which the author distorts to make it sound like it is a frequent occurace(ex. "Usually when {Spock} comes out of {a 'spiritual discipline'}, he admits he has gone too far and wants to rejoin Starfleet...". How many times has this happened? One. Yet the author clearly indicates that is happens all the time!), and in doing all this he isults the intelligence of anyone who has ever seen more than a handfull of star trek episodes, and that is probably going to include anyone who is reading the book. In fact, I wouldn't even give it one star, but, unfortunately, this is not an option.

I have no idea why "The Meaning of Star Trek" is also published as "Star Trek in Myth and Legend." They look like two books from the same series, and if a buyer isn't careful, he is liable to bring home two copies of the same thing. Could this be another ploy to cash in on the Star Trek phenomenon? It really passes off as two distinct books.

Within the front and back cover of the book are inconsistencies which are bothersome. Some supposed facts are actually misconceptions posing as truth. Gene Roddenberry did NOT invent the Prime Directive as Mr. Richards assumes. Gene Coon deserves the credit. The creator of the Foundation series is Isaac Asimov, not Azimov.

Petty details aside, I find the attempt to analyze the Star Trek mythos a noble one. The author is seeking legitimacy for a phenomenon that has long been ignored by the literary world. It would do good, though, if the author were to immerse himself more deeply into the culture that surrounds Star Trek. A wealth of research on Star Trek history exists (most of them available in Amazon, thank you very much) and it would do well for the author to exhaust the entire literature of canon books (not the apocryphal novels) for any future works.

My brother-in-law was very interested in this book. It takes some very interesting ideas about the series. Though I myself am not a Trekker, I love theories like these.

Various reviewers have sneered at Richards for analyzing and attempting to find meaning in what is "just a tv show.", treating it like it's "the Bible or Shakespeare". After all, the show's producers were motivated only by capitalist greed, and so couldn't produce a vision such as Richards credits them with. Why not?

A Tale of Two Cities was written in installments, for Dickens' profit. Shakespeare's plays were produced primarily to generate income for the Bard. The capitalist motivations for a work doesn't disqualify it of any merit. Granted, the nature of television makes it less intrinsicly intellectual than books. Still, a television show containing purpose and thought is possible--if accomplished far to seldomly (see the current range of garbage offered). Such a creation was Star Trek.

I find The Meaning of Star Trek a brilliant, thoughtful analysis of the politics, diplomacy and intellect of this fictional yet consistent work. I recommend it for anyone who enjoyed The Next Generation, whcih is the primary subject of analysis. For those who enjoy this book, I also consider The Ethics of Star Trek worth reading, though considerably inferior to 'Meaning'.

If the fact that legions of people regularly trek (no pun intended) into the mountains to learn the Klingon language isn't proof enough that some folks take Star Trek far too seriously, then this book should be the final piece of evidence. This book looks at Star Trek, particularly The Next Generation, and venerates it as if it were the Holy Bible or the complete works of William Shakespeare.

One thing the author fails to fully take into account is that Star Trek, in all its forms, is, ultimately, a television show and it's raison d'etre is to generate profits. This is what keeps the show alive and, therefore, has a correlating influence on the writing. The writers of Star Trek, like any other show, attempt to pen scripts that the show's target audience will find entertaining, which maintains viewership and keeps advertising dollars flowing. In other words, all of the noble and laudable ideals of Star Trek are driven by nothing other than good old fashioned capitalism, yet Richards writes as if Gene Roddenberry, et al were completely untainted by such influence and were scribing a treatise on the human condition for the ages.

The author is classically trained and, to his credit, he uses his skill to craft a literary-style criticism, but the fact is there is hardly any material that could be considered critical of Star Trek. The book is technically well written, but the general arguments are akin to those made by high school aged music geeks who drone on about the poetic merit of rock lyrics, as if Richards is desperately trying to legitimize his preoccupation with Star Trek. He is so blinded by his affinity for the show that he views it through rose-colored glasses, offering only glowing praise and awed reverence. One may argue that such a fan is the only person who could write a book like this, but to maintain credibility the author must be somewhat objective.

Science fiction has the ability to capture the imagination of people like no other genre. With the possible exception of Star Wars, Star Trek has cultivated a following that has no equal. However, there is a line between enthusiasm and obsession and it seems that Star Trek has more than its share of obsessive fans who increasingly display their inability to discern fact from fiction. This is the type of person who will find this book edifying and will take it seriously. Richards has earned himself a permanent card table at future Sci Fi conventions where he can autograph this book and debate its contents endlessly with 35-year-olds in Borg costumes. The uninitiated should stay away.