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“Risk is our business,” James T. Kirk once said. “That’s the whole point of this starship. That’s why we boarded her.”
More than half a century later, the performer who breathed life into the legendary corporate captain took this risk as his career at the age of 90, and went to the stars in a situation completely different from his fictitious opponent. In doing so, William Shatner is causing worlds to collide, or at least allowing parallel universes to coexist-the utopian vision of space in “Star Trek” and “space” are constantly developing and increasingly commercial in the eyes of Americans Scene.
At dawn on Wednesday, when Shatner boarded Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin NS-18 in Texas, his small step created one of the ultimate cross-border stories of our time.
It is about space and exploration, of course, and it must be about capitalism and billionaires and economic fairness. But it’s also about pop culture, marketing, entertainment, nostalgia, hope, and destiny, and, moreover, you get the idea.
“What will I see when I’m there?” Shatner was puzzled when talking to Anderson Cooper on CNN last week. An equally valid question is: what will we see when he is on the court?
This will be a complex fusion of human dreams, superimposed on technology and hope, bragging and cash, and space travel to enhance our concept-all of which are carefully planned by a company that has been severely criticized, and some people call it absolutely non-existent. Utopia’s technology brothers way it works.
Is all of this suitable for Star Trek?
Former Star Trek TV series team members: From left: Leonard Nimoy, director Robert Wise, producer Gene Roddenbury, DeForest Kelly and William Shatner [File: AP Photo]Since its premiere in 1966, it is one of the most diverse cast of all time, and Trek has developed into an intricate cross-media world full of subtleties, traditions and rules.
Among them: humans avoid cannibalism. Money is usually obsolete, as are hunger and poverty. Greed is abnormal. Non-interference with other cultures is the most sacred principle. Within the Planetary Alliance, the space United Nations of Star Trek, exploration, not domination, is synonymous with the field. In short, unlike many people now.
47 days after the last episode of the original series, humans set foot on the moon for the first time. In the next half century, with the support of vocal fans, “Star Trek” gained more support, and in the process led to space travel, becoming an ideal canvas for related storytelling. Trek is still one of the core carriers of the future culture of aerospace. Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura on the show, was a particularly tireless advocate who worked with NASA to recruit Americans of color and women.
The vision has evolved, but is still utopian in general, although the two recent iterations, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, plunged deeper into darkness than their predecessors. However, in all these different storytellings, an unchanging view remains: human space travel will become a vehicle of morality and kindness, elevating the galaxy instead of plundering it.
This brings us to companies such as Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic-the brands of these companies are not based on the country but on the company. They provide a narrative that space travel applies not only to scientists and diplomats, but also to you and me. If, in other words, you and I have hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in idle funds.
Many people blame the behavior of billionaire space tycoons, including the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and the troubles with Blue Origin’s corporate culture are well documented recently.
But the motivations of Amazon’s founders are still unclear. However, it is clear that the popular culture of space travel has deeply influenced Bezos. As a long-time Trek fan, he guest-starred as an alien fleet officer in the 2016 movie “Star Trek: Beyond”. According to biographer Brad Stone, Bezos even considered calling Amazon “Makeitso.com” after Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s favorite order.
Blue Origin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is a long-time Trekkie and guest aliens in the 2016 movie “Star Trek Beyond” [File: Susan Walsh/AP]“The whole spirit of “Star Trek” shows people with different appearances, different skills, and working together. We are at such an open moment,” said Richard B. Cooper, vice president of the Space Foundation, a global advocacy firm Non-profit organization in the aerospace industry. “People can look at this environment and say,’Hey—I belong there too.'”
Leaving aside prohibitive costs (which is a big problem), Cooper makes sense. Although people like Shatner may not be “ordinary people,” the shift in the dominance of test pilots and scientists coincides with the populism of our time. It must be said that the accuracy of science is being questioned because it has never been. As Cooper pointed out, “It gives people hope.”
This kind of storyline—hope, heroism, competitive advantage, and unmistakable sense of competence, which can sometimes overlap with testosterone—is powerful. At a time when NASA and country-centric space travel lacked a convincing Hollywood narrative, entrepreneurs and their marketers immediately stepped in.
“The U.S. dominance in space, no one cares about it. It was Bezos who said, “We can’t continue to live like this. We must save the earth,” said Mary-Jane Rubinstein, professor of religion and social sciences at Wesleyan University.
“It is a billionaire who has a utopian vision,” said Rubinstein, author of the forthcoming book Celestial Bodies: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race. “The states cannot summon them. They have no stories.”
Should we even colonize space? Don’t we have enough things to worry about at home? Isn’t it possible that people with more pressing problems can use cash?
What if we encounter a life different from the life we ​​know and hurt it out of ignorance or greed? In this land, this has not happened countless times. In this land, a person has landed on the moon, but he is still struggling to deal with a history full of horrors from slave markets to smallpox blankets. These are just some of the issues that went up and down with Shatner on Wednesday.
Is it a gimmick? certainly. Is this a genius marketing strategy? Absolutely. Is it cynical and boastful, just to make more money and attract more attention to the world’s richest man? You will have to decide that for yourself.
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