Star Trek as Myth: Essays on Symbol and Archetype at the Final Frontier (review)

Abstract

Matthew Wilhelm Kapell. Star Trek as Myth: Essays on Symbol and Archetype at the Final Frontier. London: McFarland, 2010. 229 + ix pp. $39.95 (USD). ISBN: 978-0-7864-4724-4 Star Trek as Myth is a compilation of fifteen essays that demonstrate how "Star Trek is a kind of contemporary mythological system" (1). The anthology is divided into two sections and includes an introduction by Kapell, which offers a fascinating commentary on the relation of the Star Trek phenomenon in its infancy to the Moon Landing in 1969, the year Star Trek (The Original Series, hereafter called TOS) was cancelled. Kapell argues that the basis of Star Trek's power over the American psyche is its presentation as "mythos cleverly disguised as a kind of speculative logos" (7). Star Trek creates stories that seem to agree with the logic of science while creating a mythos of the future to which contemporary scientific advances appear to be heading. As a distinctly American phenomenon, the Star Trek mythos is informed by the historical formation of the United States. As testament to this, Kapell's study relies on Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis that "it was an ever-expanding western frontier, continually opening before American Manifest Destiny, full of free land and opportunity that created the American way of life" (8). Although there has been significant research done in frontier theory since Turner forwarded his groundbreaking "Frontier Thesis" in 1893, Kapell does not acknowledge this and instead draws a straight line from Turner's thesis to Gene Roddenberry s "Wagon Train to the stars" (9). The first of two sections of the text, "A Partial Cannon of Star Trek Myth Criticism" contains essays whose original publication dates run from 1977 to 2001, each of which includes a brief postscript written by its original author speaking to the enduring relevancy of the franchise. The first essay is William Tyrell's "Star Trek as Myth and Television as Mythmaker" in which he examines the recurring theme of paradise in TOS to make a larger argument about the "power of television" (19). Peter J. Claus' essay relies on structural analysis of the TOS series to find "the same significance in myth of television" that Levi-Strauss found in traditional forms of myth (40). Scott Littleton's essay argues that a "secularized mythology of the future" is apparent through the study of "fundamental mythic themes and motifs" in TOS as well as the first three films released between 1979 and 1984. Next, Ace Pilkington draws on the same incarnations of Star Trek to show a message of hope for the future in Star Trek's "multiplicity of mythic messages" (44). Kapell's essay in this section convincingly argues that the holocaust on the planet Bajor in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (DS9) is a dangerous simulacrum based not on history, but on Americanized representations of the Holocaust which ultimately "lessens the dramatic impact of the spectacle and harms the memory of the event" (68). …