#33 The New Age Generation, part 1
Mystical speculations in one of America's most celebrated sci-fi series.
Man as Paracelsus describes him is, like the firmament, 'constellated with stars', but he is not bound to it like 'the thief to his galley-oar, the murderer to the wheel, the fish to the fisherman, the quarry to the huntsman'. It pertains to the firmament of man to be 'free and powerful', to 'bow to no order', and 'not to be ruled by any other created beings'. His inner sky may remain autonomous and depend only upon itself, but on condition that by means of his wisdom, which is also knowledge, he comes to resemble the order of the world, takes it back into himself and thus recreates in his inner firmament the sway of that other firmament in which he sees the glitter of the visible stars. If he does this, then the wisdom of the mirror will in turn be reflected back to envelop the world in which it has been placed; its great ring will spin out into the depths of the heavens, and beyond; man will discover that he contains 'the stars within himself ..., and that he is thus the bearer of the firmament with all its influences'.
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things1
I
I’m sure the reader has had no trouble recognising the image accompanying this post as a screen grab from Star Trek: The Next Generation. And he may be thinking, Why does Heg want me to read something about Star Trek? Compared with the best of DeLillo or Pynchon, Roddenberry’s franchise is not much of an intellectual touchstone. True, true... Nevertheless Trek interests me enough to pen a piece on it. In fact three pieces, which together will make up the full essay. My motivation here is a bit different to usual, being similar to the impulse which led me to write The Mother of All Battles series—a desire to return to an event, or in this case a TV series, which loomed large in my teenage years. Something which shaped me.
Having said that, Trek is interesting in itself. While the franchise’s various series certainly aren’t highbrow, they have always reflected the liberal culture of their time. And arguably more revealingly than just about any other American series. To analyse a particular iteration of Trek is to analyse American liberalism in that era.
Star Trek: The Next Generation was, and remains, the important one for me. Also I think this series is more interesting—in the context of analysing liberalism—than most would acknowledge (given the deep nerdiness of Trek and its fandom).
So let’s - ahem - make it so.
To begin, let’s recall that by the early Nineties a modernising reform of Anglosphere left-liberalism had been ongoing for perhaps a decade, driven by left-libs finding themselves shut out of power by an apparently invincible neolib conservatism. It was in the US, not the UK, that this reform happened faster and achieved concrete results sooner. Bill Clinton was elected in ‘92, two years before Tony Blair even became Labour leader, let alone Britain’s Prime Minister. Maybe this can be put down to Labour having had a stronger attachment to social democracy and socialism than the Democrats did, at any rate until the advent of neolib New Labour in ‘94.
But it would be a mistake to think of this process of reform as purely a matter of political economy, of changing policies and promises. The whole of left-liberal culture altered, shifted. In preparing for power, American left-libs developed a polished, slick, palpably vacuous style and ethos, embodied of course in the person of Bill Clinton.
The more esoteric elements of Seventies liberalism, like the New Age mysticism that survived that decade and left its mark on the Eighties, disappeared almost entirely from view. In the early Nineties, therapy-speak was in but hippy talk was out; it was time to prepare for government.
This particular change can be tracked in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The first couple of seasons, aired in the US from ‘87 to ‘89, are subtly inflected by a New Age sensibility. The reader may be surprised by that assertion. It’s something I’m going to return to later. For now, allow me to briefly share how I discovered this series almost thirty-four years ago.
“Encounter at Farpoint”, the 90-minute pilot for Star Trek: The Next Generation, was first shown in Britain on September 26th 1990, a Wednesday, almost three full years after it had premiered in the States. It was broadcast on BBC Two at 6PM. I didn’t see it; in fact it was only very recently (and thanks to Netflix) that I watched this pilot. The first episode I ever saw, or rather caught the last ten minutes of, was “Code of Honor”, the series’ lackluster third episode. If memory serves I stumbled on it while surfing channels (which never took very long—we only had four of them).
“Code of Honor”, I’ve since learned, is rather notorious among both fans and the TNG cast as a vile, racist episode, and possibly the worst forty-five minutes of Star Trek ever made. Trekkies and lib thespians being what they are, the reader can likely guess how melodramatic that assessment is (and on both counts). “Code” is the “space Africans” episode. According to Trek fansite Memory Alpha, the episode’s aliens, the Ligonians, were originally to be reptilian; presumably someone realised how expensive and/or time-consuming that would be, so a bunch of black actors were cast instead. Following The Original Series’ convention, these actors were put on screen without visible makeup or prosthetics, and viewers were simply invited to accept them as aliens. This curious old-fashioned approach was taken several times in the first couple of seasons. “Code of Honor’s” particular racial faux pas, though, was not repeated.
The Ligonians’ backward tribal customs (all-female gladiatorial combat to the death to win a husband, anyone?) meant the casting led to some controversy. Jonathan Frakes called it “a racist piece of shit episode”. That was decades after the initial broadcast, at a convention. In 1987, though, political correctness hadn’t yet got its talons fully into the culture, so whatever controversy there was in the States was muted. And happily, no one was cancelled.
In any case, you can watch “Code of Honor” uncensored and without any content warnings on Netflix, so it really can’t be anything worth having an attack of the vapours over.
But let’s return to 1990. The inactive yet useful Trek blog Space Doubt notes that the Beeb went on to show much of Star Trek: TNG’s first season out of order, for no clear reason. The earliest episodes, including that one I stumbled upon, seem to have escaped this capriciousness. I found it interesting to check the broadcast dates. Learning precisely what you were doing on a particular day well over thirty years ago is a curious feeling. “Code of Honor” I must’ve caught on October 10th. The few minutes I saw featured attractive women, a fancy starship, cool minimalist uniforms and striking, futuristic sets: more than enough to pique my 14-year-old self’s interest. But what was the programme? I probably found out what I’d watched from weekly listings magazine The Radio Times, a copy of which was always lying around. I made a mental note of “BBC Two, Wednesdays, 6PM”.
Consulting Space Doubt reveals that the first full episode I watched must’ve been “Where No One Has Gone Before” (more on which later). It was a really impressive forty-five minutes that showcased that fancy starship I’d only caught a glimpse or two of toward the end of “Code of Honor”. Needless to say, that fast and bulbous craft, the Enterprise-D, was soon zipping across our modest TV set on a weekly basis. Science fiction was irresistible for me, as for most teen boys of the time. We had hungry imaginations and devoured as much satisfying “content” as we could get our hands on: comics such as 2000 AD, where Judge Dredd busted (or just wasted) “perps”, and the relanched Eagle, home of Dan Dare and his galaxy-brained foe, The Mekon; computer games that were often pirated, the tapes that bore Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum titles being child’s play to copy; fantasy novels, from the most well regarded, like Tolkien’s and Moorcock’s, to the most ephemeral and trashy; movies on VHS which, of course, were also often illegal duplicates and violent enough to be rated 15 or 18; board games with an SF or sword and sorcery theme, like Talisman or Games Workshop’s Judge Dredd tie-in Block Mania; weekly doses of the weird, imaginative, low-budget Doctor Who, until its cancellation in 1989; gamebooks, such as the Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf and Way of the Tiger series—mini RPGs for kids lacking the resources for Dungeons and Dragons (money, space, friends).
The more family-friendly Who and Eagle excepted, it was a lurid, violent and occult-themed diet, one sorely in need of some thoughtful, wholesome fare. Star Trek: TNG filled that hole nicely. Closer to grown-up entertainment, it was unusually idealistic for a TV show, as I came to realise through the first season. There was a real moral vision there. And a philosophical bent to the stories.
I think it was TNG that first introduced me to many of the weightier ideas and themes that would preoccupy me in later years. Season one’s “Skin of Evil” dealt with sudden, meaningless death, and the struggle to make sense of it. “Conspiracy”, from the same year, delved into intrigue and paranoia. Season two’s “Where Silence Has Lease” was another death-themed episode: it touched upon the question of whether something exists for us beyond the destruction of our bodies. An episode with a touch of that New Age mysticism I mentioned earlier to it, it’s one I return to later in the essay, in part 2.
The time-travel story “Time Squared”, also from season two, eerily evoked a sense of tragic fatedness, of doom. The various holodeck stories, such as “Elementary, Dear Data”, took the series into metaphysical territory. I hadn’t heard of the Argentinian writer then, but I now recognise those stories as essentially Borgesian.
While it was the visuals and the cool concept that first drew me in, it was TNG’s exploration of these unfamiliar philosophical concerns that really hooked me.
II
“Where No One Has Gone Before”, that first full episode I watched, was one of the most intriguing episodes. Recently I recalled how fascinating I’d found this one as a teen. Revisiting it a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to discover that New Age sensibility I mentioned earlier. I’d never consciously associated it with Trek before. Indeed, out of all the early TNG episodes, it’s in “WNOHGB” that that New Age outlook is most clearly in evidence. A detailed episode breakdown is therefore warranted (spoilers ahead). However, it would be wise first to briefly define what I mean by “New Age”. A thorough explanation of this concept is outside the scope of this essay. I may well write a separate piece on it. But for this piece, I think the opening paragraphs of the entry for “New Age Movement” in Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism (Brill, 2006) will suffice:
The New Age has emerged during the 1970s and increasingly during the 1980s as a common denominator for a variety of quite divergent contemporary popular practices and beliefs. Among other things, healing, channeling, the interest in crystals, varieties of positive thinking and several forms of divination have been linked to this term. The New Age also includes various “alternative” interpretations of history and of the sciences.
The term itself originally arose in theosophical literature and in UFO cults after World War II in connection with the millennialist belief that the world stands at the brink of a major evolutionary transformation of consciousness, often identified in early New Age literature as the Aquarian Age. Many of those sympathetically involved in the first years of the New Age movement principally saw the various techniques of healing, divination etc. as tools in this transformation. This sense of the term New Age was in the later 1970s and in the 1980s largely superseded by a new and expanded meaning. It no longer refers to a specific movement that expects the coming of a new age, but refers to a wide array of ideas and practices, largely united by historical links, a shared discourse and an air de famille. The two uses of the term have been characterized (Hanegraaff 1996, 94-103) as the New Age sensu stricto and sensu lato.
Now let’s turn to “Where No One Has Gone Before”. We’ll be examining it with an eye for how the sort of beliefs described in the quote above, New Age beliefs, might be said to be given expression in the episode. I’ll assume at least a passing familiarity with Star Trek on the reader’s part—any of the various series, but ideally including The Next Generation.
An homage to The Original Series’ second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, like its inspiration this early TNG episode sends the Enterprise on a journey to, and then beyond, the limits of the known universe. Visually it’s arguably the most spectacular episode of the first season. By TV standards we’re taken on a pretty psychedelic voyage.
The plot is fairly simple, and concerns an attempt to improve the efficiency of the Enterprise’s warp engines—an endeavor that goes awry.
Things get off to an unpromising start when the Starfleet propulsion expert sent to upgrade the engines, Kosinski, turns out to be supercilious and arrogant, quickly antagonising almost everyone. Riker in particular is concerned the experiments—ordered by Starfleet—may endanger the Enterprise. Kosinski is accompanied by his assistant, a tall, rather mysterious alien whose name “is unpronounceable by humans.” Wesley and this quiet alien hit it off, but everyone else largely ignores this “assistant” of Kosinski’s.
The propulsion expert receives, from Picard, the go-ahead for the first test run. Kosinski and his assistant man consoles in Engineering and set to work. Of course Riker’s scepticism proves well-founded when the pair lose control of the warp-drive experiment, sending the Enterprise to the distant M77 galaxy, over two million light years away from its starting point.
During this “leap”, Wesley was taken aback to see Kosinski’s assistant “phase” in and out of existence. He suspects there’s more to this alien than meets the eye. While the rest of the crew debate what to do next, Wesley quizzes the now-exhausted assistant on what’s really happening during these extraordinary jumps Kosinski and his colleague specialise in. The boy’s questions soon take a mystical turn:
“Does it mean that space and time and thought aren’t the separate things they appear to be?”
The alien reacts with some alarm—the world isn’t ready for such “dangerous nonsense” (though he says this last with a smile). At this point the viewer begins to realise the alien “assistant” is possessed of special insight. He perfectly fits the guru archetype, so important to the boomer generation of course. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the Wesley / alien relationship is a self-insert on the writers’ part, a retelling of their own 60s / 70s spiritual awakening.
The mystical “space and time and thought“ theme is developed further when the attempt by Kosinski and the assistant to take the Enterprise-D back to its starting point goes even more drastically wrong than the first leap. The ship finds itself in a bizarre realm apparently at the “outer rim” of the universe. It’s a place where things from one’s past or one’s imagination are liable to suddenly materialise, then just as abruptly disappear (shades of Lem’s Solaris).
Picard, for instance, almost tumbles from the Enterprise into space (or what looks like space) when the doors of the turbolift he’s riding in unexpectedly open onto the void. Later he meets his dead mother in a corridor. She tells him that, although she has died, she is always with him. “I’ve felt that,” Picard replies. It’s an unexpected exchange on a show where talk of religion and the mystical had supposedly been categorically ruled out by creator Gene Roddenberry2.
We learn that Kosinski has been labouring under a delusion: his precious equations have played very little role in the extraordinary “leaps” he and his alien assistant have accomplished together.
Wesley: “Is Mister Kosinski like he sounds? A joke?”
Assistant: “No, that’s too cruel. He has sensed some small part of this.”
In truth, then, the “incredible explosions of velocity” (Picard’s description) have almost all been down to the extraordinary powers of the assistant. Now, with Kosiniski being such a puffed-up, pompous man, this humiliating discovery almost destroys him.
“I honestly thought it was me. I thought somehow, somehow I was operating on his level.”
Brought low, he retreats into the background. I wonder if this humbling of the vainglorious propulsion expert is intended to make a larger point about the arrogance of scientific rationalism. If so, it’s an atypical—though certainly not unwelcome—theme for an episode of Star Trek.
Kosinski’s alien assistant has been left severely weakened by the two leaps. It seems he may die. Yet he is the Enterprise crew’s only hope of returning home. In sickbay, Picard questions the mysterious alien on his adventures:
“Who are you? Or what?”
“I am a Traveller.”
“Traveller? What is your destination?”
“Destination?”
“Yes, what place are you trying to reach?”
“Ah, place. No. There is no specific place I wish to go.”
“Then what is the purpose of your journey?”
“Curiosity.”
The Traveller explains that the power of thought is key to what he does, since (as Wesley summised) space, time and thought are not really separate. Although Picard finds this reasonable Kosinski, ever the rationalist, responds with incredulity:
“Really, that’s so much nonsense. You’re asking us to believe in magic.”
Yet Picard is convinced. After consulting with Councellor Troi he prepares the Enterprise crew for the leap home:
“All decks, all stations: This is the Captain speaking. All decks, I must have your full attention. In a few moments, as we attempt to warp back home, it is vital—absolutely vital—that you center your thoughts on your duty or on the welfare of the one called the Traveller. Think of giving him some of your strength. Now, this is an order. You must try to do this. And now, attempt to concentrate completely on your duty of the moment or on the Traveller, on his well-being. Think of him as someone you care deeply for. All decks, all stations: battle stations.”
We’re shown some more goings-on in engineering and on the bridge, including Kosinski recovering some of his confidence when invited by a magnanimous Traveller to resume his station. Troi, turning to the Captain, couldn’t sound more New Age if she tried:
“I feel such an abundance of well-being on the ship. It feels… quite wonderful.”
Of course the episode’s conclusion proves the Traveller, Troi and Picard right and the earlier, sceptical Kosinski wrong, thus cementing “Where No One Has Gone Before”’s surprising New Age message.
I have to say that “WNOHGB”’s mystical speculations went largely over this 14-year-old’s head in 1990. I expect I treated the Traveller’s philosophy—that space, time and thought are not separate—simply as a plot device, not an idea to be considered. Though I was certainly able to relate to other episodes’ musings about death and fate, New Age ideas were too far outside my experience to register at that time. What fascinated me about this episode were the visual effects and the vast speeds and distances involved. Plus, of course, the fantastic notion of travelling to the edge of the universe.
The reader may find New Age culture, and mysticism in general, intriguing. He may equally find them risible. Either way, it seems to me interesting that, in the late Eighties, such ideas could find their way into a mainstream TV show. Just why these themes largely disappeared from The Next Generation in the Nineties is a question I explore in part 3 of this essay, the final part. But what of part 2? In that instalment I examine other New Age elements in the early seasons of TNG—touching upon certain other episodes (such as “Where Silence Has Lease”) as well as on the music of composer Ron Jones, which is replete with New Age textures and motifs.
Originally published as Les mots et les choses – une archéologie des sciences humaines by Gallimard in 1966. The full title of the 1970 Random House English translation is The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences.
This policy of Roddenberry’s is discussed in The Fifty-Year Mission - The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams: The Complete, Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek (St. Martin’s Press, 2016), the second volume of Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman’s comprehensive history of the Star Trek franchise, told mostly through quotes and interviews:
BRENT SPINER
Rick [Berman]* in particular was always fairly dedicated to staying within Gene’s vision. There were things we’d do that we’d say, if Gene was still alive we probably wouldn’t be doing this; occasionally religion raised its ugly head on the show, and Gene was totally opposed to any kind of reference to religion. He wasn’t particularly keen on mythology; science fact was sort of his thrust and, for the most part, the show stayed within his idea.
* See part 2 for background information on Rick Berman.
For more on Roddenberry’s “no religion” dictum, see TNG and Voyager writer Brannon Braga’s “Every religion has a mythology”, his 2006 speech to the International Atheist Conference in Reykjavik (note that that’s an archived page). A choice extract:
In Gene Roddenberry’s imagining of the future (in this case the 23rd century), Earth is a paradise where we have solved all of our problems with technology, ingenuity, and compassion. There is no more hunger, war, or disease. And most importantly to the context of our meeting here today, religion is completely gone. Not a single human being on Earth believes in any of the nonsense that has plagued our civilization for thousands of years. This was an important part of Roddenberry’s mythology. He, himself, was a secular humanist and made it well-known to writers of STAR TREK and STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION that religion and superstition and mystical thinking were not to be part of his universe. On Roddenberry’s future Earth, everyone is an atheist. And that world is the better for it.