Thoughts on Star Trek 2009

            Hello again, friends and readers. If you’ve read the rest of this blog, you’ve read much, my notions of the greatest speeches of star trek, my discussion of the series, my admittedly exhaustive and maybe exhausting treatment of Deep Space Nine. I wrote in my very first posting that I wanted to deal with those things first so that when I got to something I didn’t like, you’d still listen. Well that time has come. This post is devoted exclusively to the Star Trek 2009 movie. If you loved the movie, good for you. I hope you will still listen to what I have to say and consider it. If you were indifferent to it, or if you, like me, were deeply disappointed and upset by it, possibly this will articulate some of your own concerns.

            One thing I’ve learned over the years about giving feedback or reviewing things is that it’s a good idea to at least start with positives. The 2009 movie has one thing going for it. It was a great ideal. Not, idea, but ideal. I can sympathize with the frustrations of people like Leonard Nemoy, who has often expressed the opinion that the original star trek is often overlooked in favor of newer star trek. We younger fans should remember that for twenty years, the only star trek in existence was the show that came on television in 1966. It wasn’t until 1987, after the original star trek had spawned both an animated series and four feature films, that any new star trek was created. Now, it seems as though many people my age and younger have little appreciation for the original television series and the things it stands for. The movie tries to address that concern and draw our attention back to those original characters, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and all the rest, and for that effort, I call it a good ideal.

            Like any ideal, there is often a wide gulf between thought and execution. The result was, to state it bluntly, a disappointment to all of the star trek that came before it. Now, I have to acknowledge right here that I seem to be in the minority on this. The International Movie Database ranks the film with 8.1 out of 10, based on 1356 ratings, and Rotten Tomatoes rates it at 94% positive, with 270 out of 286 reviews being positive. Most people I have talked to either loved it, or are at least ok with it, seeing it as an overall good effort. That puts me in the minority. I do not “love” it, nor can I bring myself to call it even a good effort. So the first thing I asked myself is, am I wrong? Is it me? Do thousands of people see things here that I simply do not? So, I watched it again, and again. I’ve probably seen it half a dozen times, and I’ve even read the novelization of the movie written by Alan Dean Foster. I know the movie as well as I know the ten that came before it, and I am as yet unconvinced. Can I, some would ask, really go against public opinion like that? If ten thousand people love a thing, who am I to dare to say that they are wrong to do so, or that the thing is bad? Well, the right of a thing is not made certain, simply because the majority of people think so. Nor is a minority, even a small one, wrong about something, simply because its numbers are small. Lastly, before I get into the movie, let me say this. I realize that this is America, and everyone is entitled to their opinions. It’s not easy to say that an opinion is wrong. You can’t say it in the same way that you can demonstrate that what someone claims to be a fact is wrong. But that doesn’t make the opinion informed or worth acting upon. So in the sense that you can say it of opinions, most people today are wrong about Star Trek 2009. Here is why.

            Let’s start with the title. Well, that’s the first problem. It doesn’t have one. The addition of the year, 2009, is a convenient way of referencing the thing. But so far as I’ve been able to determine, the movie has no title. Now, folks, we’ve been here before. The first star trek movie, the one that came out in 1979, doesn’t have a title either. It’s called, Star Trek:  The Motion Picture. That’s like me writing a novel and calling it, The Novel. Well, it was the first star trek movie ever made, and it was by no means certain that any more would be, not ever. So the first star trek movie gets a pass on not having a title. What was ST 2009 Director J.J. Abrams’ problem then? Was he just lacking inspiration? Could no one in Hollywood settle on a title? I have to say, you know something’s likely to suck if no one can decide what to call it. Essentially, it’s called nothing at all. Star Trek. That’s as close to a title as you get. The book also doesn’t have a title. On audible.com, it’s listed as, “Star Trek Movie Tie-In.” If I’m lying I’m dying. Was this the best, the absolute best, that the production and marketing juggernaut that is Hollywood could actually do? And if it was, I ask you, what does that suggest about the quality of the film itself? I remind you, Star Trek I didn’t do that well at the box office, and while it’s story is ok, it’s not rated as anyone’s number one favorite either. So, here we go again, another star trek film without a title. They keep doing that, and even I’m going to have a hard time keeping the movies straight.

            Now to the story itself. I’m not going to summarize it here, because I’m assuming that if you’re bothering to read this, you’ve seen the movie. The first and one of the most difficult questions that comes up is, how should we understand this story in light of all the rest of the star trek universe? The words used to describe what Star Trek 2009 is meant to be include terms like, “reboot,” and “reimagination.” What does that mean? Does this single movie negate all the rest of star trek? Should we say that all the rest never happens now, or happens completely differently because this movie came along? I don’t think that’s the intent. The only other viable option is to consider the movie as a parallel universe star trek that doesn’t affect our own timeline, much like the Mirror Universe that shows up from time to time in the series. Either way, this question of continuity is a dangerous one where time travel is concerned, and it remains unresolved. So, I cannot place this movie in the events of the main star trek universe. It simply doesn’t fit. If I do place it there, it destroys all of star trek history that follows it. So, it does not belong, and if I wanted to, I could dismiss it right there as not being historical star trek and not say another word about it. That’s not even something I could do with the series, Star Trek Enterprise, but we could with this movie and we wouldn’t lose a thing by doing so. But that would not be very thorough of me, and so I will go on.

            Let’s consider the characters. I find the young Kirk and the young McCoy believable. I can believe that Jim Kirk would act as he does at that age, and I can see what McCoy will be through the portrayal of the younger man in the movie. However, the movie’s portrayal of the young Spock is galling. In one scene, we spy him and Uhura kissing in an Enterprise turbolift. What the hell is this? Are we seriously supposed to believe this? The movie implies that Spock and Uhura have had a thing going for some time, and I ask again, are we seriously supposed to buy this? I can’t blame Zackary Quinto for that; as an actor, you act the script you are given. But I expected much more from the story writers. Then, there’s the matter of the Romulan commander, Nero. Nero? Really? Seriously? Nero, as in the Roman emperor, was the best they could do? And they even made him a bit crazy, seemingly in imitation of the actual Nero. And again I ask, this is the best they could come up with? Moreover, Nero isn’t a well-rounded villain. He has no depth, unlike other villains in the movies:  Kahn, Sibok, Shinzon, and so on. Characters we know much more about. He’s very flat, almost not there, much like everyone else in the story. The rest of my talk about Nero will have to wait until I get to the plot of the movie, however.

            Let’s talk about the language and dialogue of the movie. As a linguist, I’m probably more apt to notice the structure of dialogue more readily than most, and quite a bit jumped out at me. Simply put, I can’t believe these characters because of how they talk. They talk like twentieth or twenty-first century action heroes in a present-day thriller film. Even the Romulans sound like something you’d hear in Lethal Weapon III or The Hunt for Red October. I can’t credit a Romulan with saying, “gonna,” or, “We’ve gotta…” Yet, they do. Even Kirk’s language is a bit offbeat. When Ayel is choking him, he says, “I’ve got your gun,” and shoots him. Now, leaving the scene aside, “gun,” is not a star trek era word. It sounds a bit odd in that time period, and certainly is almost never the word used when referring to an energy weapon. The language and dialogue as a whole are kitschy. The story isn’t really propelled by them at all, because it relies mostly, almost exclusively, on flashy action. Speaking as someone who recently examined star trek for its greatest speeches and as someone who has read hundreds and hundreds of great quotes from the shows and films, this movie is pretty disappointing on that score.

            Now we come to the plot. I’m not sure where to begin here. The backstory is that a star somewhere near Romulus was going supernova, and Spock was racing to inject “red matter” into the sun to save it. Spock fails, the sun goes nova, Romulus is destroyed, and Nero captures our Spock, drags him back through time and tells him he’s going to watch revenge on an epic scale. This to me sounds like exactly the sort of backstory you’d throw together if you’re a writer who is desperately grasping at straws, trying to make your impossible story mesh with what’s already been done in a series or universe like this one. It’s shoddily put together, poorly explained, and has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese. What is red matter? Why was Spock the single person in all the universe, let alone in the Romulan Empire, who could have possibly saved the star? Who exactly is Nero and why does he have access to time travel? These are only a few questions that the backstory, as explained by the elder Spock, leaves open.

            As to the actual plot, this is the worst time-travel story I’ve seen. Nero’s ship first appears in the year 2233 and takes on the Kelvin. We next here of it about 20 years later when it attacks the Klingon fleet and heads for Vulcan, beginning the movie’s main story line. So where was it for most of Kirk’s life? I don’t recall that that question was answered. Did it just hang out for all the years between its engaging the Kelvin and when it shows up again in the story? What was the elder Spock doing for all those years? And those are just plot holes, to say nothing of what’s actually done. Now let’s talk about this red matter business. Star trek’s playing with science is well-known, but even within the loose liberties star trek as a whole takes with physics, I find this hard to believe. What is red matter? And how does falling into a black hole send you back in time? Even our science wouldn’t buy that one. If you actually fall into the event horizon of a quantum singularity, you don’t come out in your time or in any other. So one of the story’s main plot devices falls apart right there. And as for triggering a quantum singularity within a planet’s core, is it me, or has no one else pointed out that even if you could do that, nothing orbiting the planet would survive? The Enterprise would’ve been sucked in right along with the Nerada and the planet Vulcan itself. They would’ve been too close to the event horizon of the black hole to escape its gravity. But I leave the science to the physicists. Moving on. So, Spock, when Kirk argues with him, boots him off the ship and strands him on Delta Vega. Really? I find that to be an extreme overreaction for Spock who, at that point, was acting logically and arguing with Kirk rationally, as we know Spock to do. The justification for that is incredibly flimsy. Last note on that, Delta Vega, as revealed in the star trek Pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” is somewhere near the galactic outer rim. That’s many light years away from where the Enterprise was at the time. No escape pod could ever have reached that planet. One final plot detail. I could say much more about the actual plot, but I don’t want to. At the end of the movie, Kirk is granted the rank of captain and is given the Enterprise. Now, I accept that his actions were exceptionally heroic, given the circumstances, and I accept that even as a cadet, he was thrust into responsibilities and decisions for which he wasn’t prepared, and that he did very well. At least as far as the internal plot structure goes. But this? Give him a medal, waive his last year at the academy and promote him to ensign straight off, or lieutenant if you’re feeling generous. But to grant him, a youth of maybe 21, an instant captaincy and the flagship of the Federation fleet right off the bat? No. I don’t see that one happening. I found that incredibly difficult to believe.

            I could go on nitpicking the plot, the characters, the discontinuities, forever. But to what end? It’s time now to move on to the deep and fundamental objections, to which all the rest are merely surface-level indicators. Star trek, as I have said again and again and again, has endured and has stood on its feet for forty-five years because of its ability to speak to universal questions, to draw our attention to the ultimate questions, to the moral truths, to questions of conscience that plague us all now in the twenty-first century. All the rest of my blog, what’s come before and what will come after this, is a testament to its ability to do that. This movie very gladly sacrifices all that. This movie, this reimagination, guts star trek of everything that has made it endure in the minds and hearts of people for almost three generations, leaving us with an action thriller that replaces good storytelling with flashy action and cheap thrills. And while I’m in the minority on this one, I’m not alone. The famous movie critic Roger Ebert, as in Sisko and Ebert, said in his review that the Roddenberry era of star trek, when the shows dealt with questions of science, ideals and philosophy, seem to be forever gone, replaced by stories containing only “loud and colorful action.” In Newsweek, Mark Bain suggests that star trek has now lost its moral relevance, a feature that has been a driving part of it since time immemorial. One of the most interesting things I read was found in SLATE, where Juliet Lapidos discusses the torture scene in the movie where Nero’s trying to get information out of Pike. She compares it with the topic of torture that comes up in the Next Generation episode, “Chain of Command.” That’s the one where Picard is captured by the Cardassians and tortured. She finds that the TNG episode dealt with the subject of torture in a more sophisticated way, drawing real parallels between it and the controversy about enhanced interrogation techniques in the U.S. Well, I don’t know if the TNG handling of torture was more “sophisticated” or not, but it was certainly more psychologically involved and the story line was a ton better. So I can see why she prefers the TNG episode for dealing with that subject.

            Why, though? Why would the makers of star trek today give up everything that has made star trek what it has been? Well, because it sells. It’s that simple. I’ve come to the conclusion that many fans are no longer interested in thinking. They don’t want a good show that might make them think. They just want the good show part, action without depth. My fiancé said it best, “this is the thing we get when Star Trek is made to breed with today's obsession with action movies, shallow plots that barely make sense, decided

on by those who don't care if the storytelling is bad, if characters don't act like themselves, as long as the end product sells.” Well, the movie grossed over eight billion dollars at the box office. Maybe she’s right. What I’m afraid of, as the sequel approaches, is summed up in another comment of hers, “maybe 2009 marks the end of real star trek.” Maybe it does. Maybe it does at that. I can hope it doesn’t. I still care about good storytelling, and I still want to see shows that deal with those eternally relevant questions. Shows like DS9’s “In The Pale Moonlight,” like TNG’s “The Measure of a Man,” like Voyager’s “Critical Care,” and like the original series’ episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Wil those days ever come again? Does star trek’s future lie now in movies like the 2009 film? Wil someone make a series or a movie like those I mentiond here? For an answer to my last question, I’m put in mind of how Spock once put it, “there are always possibilities.”

The 10 Greatest Speeches of Star Trek

            Hello once again. Once I completed my, “Greatest Moments in Trek,” series I found myself at something of a loss. Which direction do I go in now? Well, I was web surfing, checking out various compilations of best trek quotes, and the first thing I noticed is that there are a lot of them out there, everything from best character quotes to people’s varied notions of the best quotes of all trek. Then it hit me that something was missing. My favorite picks, some of them at least, were often not there. Finally I realized why. When people cherry-pick their favorite quotes, what you often get are one-liners or two-line quotes or, at most, a snatch of dialogue. There’s nothing wrong with that, except that to me, some of the most memorable quotes are longer, more like, well, speeches. So I set out to see if anyone had ever compiled a list of great star trek speeches. To my surprise, no one I found had done so. It was then that I decided that I would compile a list of what were, to me, the ten best speeches of all star trek. I present them here, with the character’s name and episode and the script writer’s name included For each speech, I talk about my reasons for including it. They’re presented here in ascending order, which is to say number 10 comes first and number 1 is near the end of this blog. So if you want to skip down to the speeches, go right ahead. For those who are interested, however, here’s how I arrived at my choices.

\           The first logical question was, how do I do this? Do I just randomly go through snatching up anything three lines or longer and saying, “that one!” Well, no. First, as with any research question, I had to define what it was I was talking about. In this case, what did I mean when I said, “speech,” in the context of star trek? Considering we’re talking about a made-for-TV show that lasts from 45-50 minutes, you’re not going to get long orations. Not even in the movies will you get long, drawn-out speeches. I finally decided that, for starters, a speech had to have two quantitatively measurable qualities. It had to be a monologue of 30 words or longer. And to make that even more precise, proper names didn’t count towards the 30 words, and I decided that certain compound words like “Starfleet Officer,” “starship captain,” and so on should count as one single word, not two separate words. That made the goal of a minimum of 30 words a bit harder to achieve, and it made the final results more rewarding. I also decided that the monologue had to be uninterrupted. If the speechmaker was talking to someone, speeches that were interrupted by questions or even by noises of agreement wouldn’t make the final cut. No verbal interruptions or interjections at all.

            I also set myself a more subjective or qualitative measure. I wanted meaningful speeches. Scotty going on about how cold starting the Enterprise’s warp engines would be impossible, well that’s not the sort of speech I wanted. I wanted speeches that represented either profound transformations in the character’s life or in the lives of their listeners, or speeches that hit at universal truths,, or speeches that really brought out truly desirable character traits in their making. Like I said, meaningful. Some of these speeches are clearly one type or the other. Many others fall into multiple categories.

            So, I began sifting. I discounted both Star Trek Enterprise and the Star Trek 2009 movie. In the latter case, that movie simply doesn’t have anything in it that fits my criteria. In the case of Star Trek Enterprise, I simply don’t like the series and don’t view it as true trek. That’s a subjective decision and you may take issue with it as you please. But I also don’t know of any speeches in it that would fit my criteria either. If you know of an ST Enterprise speech that fits the criteria mentioned above, point it out to me. If it’s truly amazing, I may revise my list. But in making this list here, I didn’t include anything from ST Enterprise. The short list I ended up with had 22 speeches on it that fit all my criteria. Speeches by Data, Gowron, Martok, Spock, Kern, Legate Damar, Rom, Picard, Riker and more. I had to narrow the list down.

            Finally I hit upon an idea. Reasoning that truly great speeches, truly magnificent monologues would have appeal even to non-trek fans, I enlisted the aid of a friend of mine. He’s not a star trek fan, having only seen a few episodes. He doesn’t know the storylines or the characters at all well, and for that reason he was perfect. I read over my list, asking him to check those speeches that stood out to him, that felt right to him. Those speeches he passed over, I deleted. I was left with 12. I went through and dropped the two that I thought were least impactful, and I had my 10 speeches. But how should I organize them?

            Organizing the speeches into a ranked list of 10 was the hardest task of all. They’re all exquisite. How to choose which one should be number 7, for example. I divided the list in half, and  decided to start by ranking the top 5. I went through my list several times, once or twice double checking my ratings with my non-trek friend just to see if we agreed. This, in my actual field of study, is known as interrater reliability. When I had my top 5, I did the same with the bottom 5, sorting them and deciding which should be top of that list and sorting down. Finally, I had 10 speeches, ranked from 1 to 10. And I present them here to you starting with 10. As with all things in these pages, I may not have picked someone’s favorite speech. Truthfully, I left out one or two of my own favorites for one reason or another. I had to stop somewhere and decide what was top 10 worthy and what just wasn’t. So, for each speech below I have included:  the rank listing,  the number of words, the speaker’s name, the series and episode title, the story writers’ name or names, the speech itself and finally, my comments. Here is my list.

Number 10. (35 Words)

Speaker:  Alexander Rozhenko.

Deep Space Nine:  “Sons and Daughters.”

By Bradley Thompson and David Weddle

You call yourself my father but you haven't tried to see me or talk to me in five years. I wasn't the kind of son you wanted so you pretended that you had no son. You never accepted me. You                     abandoned me.

Comments:  How many of us today come from a troubled family background? This speech, to me, can come out of the mouth  of every frustrated child who is both angry with and longing for closeness with an estranged parent. I’ve been there. Perhaps you have too. To trek fans, this is quite a moment. We first met Alexander when he was a small boy back on the Enterprise D. Even then he and his father didn’t see eye to eye. Now we meet him again as a man, and that troubled relationship, and Worf’s choices, had real consequences. DS9 brings those consequences home to Worf and maybe, to us too. We like to think of our main characters as heroes, untarnished. This moment really drives the point home that even our heroes, our great figures, are flawed beings themselves who make bad choices. Unquestionably, Worf was completely in the wrong in choosing to send his son to live on Earth and then forgetting him. He didn’t even tell his friend and blood brother, Martok, that he had a son. No, this is definitely not one of Worf’s finer moments. Still, as Abraham Lincoln once put it, “I would be content with a man if he were to swear that he would do no wrong henceforth, than were he to swear that he had heretofore done no wrong at all.” So the meaningful question becomes, how will Worf proceed from this moment onwards? I think there is promise at the end of that episode when Alexander joins the house of Martok and Worf makes his grown son this promise, “I will teach you what you need to know to be a warrior, if you will teach me what I need to know to be a father.”

Number 9. (31 Words)

Speaker:  Spock.

The Original Series:  “Amok Time.”

By Theodore Sturgeon.

Ston, she is yours. After a time, you may find that having is not nearly so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.

Comments:  This is the shortest speech on my list, and it barely made the cut on the basis of length. That’s 31 words excluding the name, Ston. Still, I’m glad I could retain it. How true are those words? Have you ever envied and lusted after something, or someone, and then gotten your wish only to discover that you didn’t want it? We humans are bad about that. We want, or think we want, those things that most often prove to be most detrimental to our character:  money, fame, power, that beautiful goddess of a woman or that handsome Apollo of a man, and then comes the letdown. This is not to say that there aren’t things and people out there we should most fervently want. I believe there are indeed, but we often pursue the wrong things, don’t we? I take Spock’s speech as a warning to all of us. Especially myself.

Number 8. (120 Words)

Speaker:  Elam Garak.

Deep Space Nine:  “In the Pale Moonlight”

By Peter Allan Fields and Michael Taylor.

And the more the Dominion protests its innocence, the more the Romulans will think they're guilty, because it's exactly what the Romulans would have done in their place! That's why you came to me. Isn't it, Captain. Because you knew I could do those things you weren't capable of doing. Well it worked. And you'll get what you want. A war between the Romulans and the Dominion. And if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant, and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I call that a bargain.

Comments:  If your goals are laudable, if your intentions are good, does it matter how you do a thing? Sisko struggles with the classic conflict between the ends and the means. His goals are beyond reproach, worth just about any price. Does that make what he did right? Well that’s a question we all face in our lives. We must answer it for ourselves over and over again. Philosophy is of little help. A utilitarian would say that since his goal of saving the Alpha Quadrant and stopping the war would have maximal benefit by preserving the greatest number of lives, that his actions were reasonable. A Machiavellian thinker would say that Sisko did what he did to maneuver powers into line as allies and defeat his enemies and that what he did was shrewd and necessary. This position is the point-of-view Garak represents. Garak is not a moral person. He believes that if the ends are desirable, then so too are any means necessary for attaining those ends. This is a guy you definitely want on your side if you’re losing a war. Though, I wouldn’t go to him to resolve a crisis of conscience. On the other hand, a moralist, which is what Sisko is at bottom, would still question the means and say that even one life spent like that is one too many. Sisko never likes what he did. At the end of the episode he doesn’t say, “I like what I did.” He says, “I will learn to live with it.” We must perforce live with the choices we make. Sometimes there is no right road, no clear way. And we must make the best choices we can and make the best of what we can with their outcomes and with our own conscience.

Number 7. (55 Words)

Speaker:  Jean-Luke Picard.

The Next Generation:  “The First Duty.”

By Ronald D. Moore and Naren Shankar.

The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth! Whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth! It is the guiding principle upon which Starfleet is based, and if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform.

Comments:  In every course syllabus I’ve seen, both in courses I’ve taught and in ones I’ve taken, there is a clause about academic integrity. In my university’s graduate student code of conduct, as well as in the faculty code and the undergraduate student code, there are pages devoted to the notion of intellectual integrity. In the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the collection of laws and codes governing our armed forces, there are penalties set out for lying in the course of your duties. Perjury, lying during sworn testimony before a court is itself punishable by law. In all these examples, we see a concern with the notion of truth. It pops up in every major religion, especially in the Abrahamic religions. In the Torah, for example, not to lie is one of God’s ten commandments. So much concern with truth. It suggests that being truthful is a universal virtue in humanity. One that, like all the other virtues, is easier to talk about than to do. Think about it. How hard is it to be totally truthful all the time. Little white lies, little things we leave out, shadings and colorings of the truth, lies we tell for fear of being shamed by the actual truth, all of these are part and parcel of being human. And yet, we should be as truthful as we can. Some would say that the most virtuous person is the one who is truthful even when he could not only get away with a lie, but when telling the truth would actually harm him in reputation or otherwise. Again, someone like Garak would disagree. Garak’s response might be,  “Lying is a skill like any other, and maintaining a level of excellence requires constant practice.” That’s what he actually tells Worf some years later in the Deep Space Nine episode, “By Inferno’s Light.” Picard, like Sisko, is a moralist at bottom with very definite ideas on the value of truth. This speech’s applications to all of us are so obviously universal that it had to make this list.

Number 6. (210 Words)

Speaker:  Damar.

Deep Space Nine:  “The Changing Face of Evil.”

By Hans Deimler and Ira Steven Behr.

And so, two years ago our government signed a treaty with the Dominion. In it, the Dominion promised to extend Cardassia's influence throughout the Alpha Quadrant. In exchange, we pledged ourselves to join the war against the Federation and its allies. Cardassians have never been afraid of war. A fact we've proven, time and again over these past two years. Seven million of our brave soldiers have given their lives to fulfill our part of the agreement. And what has the Dominion done for us in return? Nothing. We've gained no new territories. In fact, our influence throughout the quadrant has diminished. And to make matters worse, we're no longer masters in our own home. Travel anywhere in Cardassia and what do you find? JemHadar. Vorta. And now Breen. Instead of being the invaders, we've become the invaded. Our allies have conquered us without firing a single shot. Well, no longer. This morning, detachments of the Cardassian First, Third and Ninth Orders attacked the Dominion outposts on Rondac Three. This assault marks the first step toward the liberation of our homeland from the true oppressors of the Alpha Quadrant. I call upon Cardassians everywhere, resist! Resist today! Resist tomorrow! Resist until the last Dominion soldier has been driven from our soil.

Comments:  This is the longest speech on my list. It’s definitely one of those transformative speeches. The character who makes it has worn many hats throughout the series:  a lowly subordinate officer in the enemy military, an imperial leader, a disillusioned alcoholic, and now a resistance fighter. When we look at the grand stage of history, we find a few leaders like Damar. Robert the Bruce comes to my mind. Other possibilities might, might, include Chiang Kai Shaq and Ho Chi Min. From fiction, you might compare him with Hamlet, both positively and negatively. The speech sets the Cardassian people on the road to rebellion against their Dominion overlords, and as a result, it contributes in no small way to the resolution of the grand story that DS9 had been telling for several years up to that point. Plus, it’s just a fine oration besides.

Number 5. (163 Words).

Speaker:  Kathryn Janeway.

Voyager:  “Caretaker, part 2.”

By Michael Pillar and Jeri Taylor.

We're alone. In an uncharted part of the galaxy. We've already made some friends here. And some enemies. We have no idea of the dangers we're going to face. But one thing is clear. Both crews are going to have to work together if we're to survive. That's why Commander Chakotay and I have agreed that this should be one crew. A Starfleet crew. And as the only Starfleet vessel assigned to the Delta Quadrant, we'll continue to follow our directive. To seek out new worlds and explore space. But our primary goal is clear. Even at maximum speeds, it would take seventy-five years to reach the Federation, but I'm not willing to settle for that. There's another entity like the Caretaker out there somewhere who has the ability to get us there a lot faster. We'll be looking for her. And we'll be looking for wormholes, spacial rifts, or new technologies to help us. Somewhere, along this journey, we'll find a way back.

Comments:  Well just what do you say when you have to tell those who depend on you that they very well may not see their homes and families in their lifetimes? What is more, what do you say when you are directly responsible for the fact that they won’t see their loved ones in their lifetimes? Tough call, there. I chose to put this speech on the list because it’s one of the few speeches in all of Voyager. What is more, it sets the tone that Janeway and her crew maintain for the next seven years. It was, at times, hard to maintain that level of optimism. And by optimism, I don’t mean that cheerful, go-getter attitude that is often mistaken for optimism. I mean genuine optimism, something very much akin to faith. Something that strives ever onward even when there’s every rationale not to. It’s a belief that you will pull through even though things look bleaker than they ever have. And you know what? They did. They got home in seven, not seventy, years. We should take that speech as a challenge never to give up. Remember all the times Voyager’s crew could’ve settled down somewhere and gone about their lives. And who’s to say they would have been unfulfilling lives, at that. But they pressed on and they got home.

Number 4. (126 Words)

Speaker:  Benjamin Sisko.

Deep Space Nine:  “Call to Arms.”

By Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe.

When I first took command of this post, all I wanted was to be somewhere else, anywhere but here. But now five years later this has become my home, and you have become my family. And leaving the station, leaving you, is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. But this war isn't over yet. I want you to know that while we were keeping the Dominion occupied, a Starfleet-Klingon task force crossed the border into Cardassia and destroyed the Dominion shipyards on Toras Three. Your sacrifices, our sacrifices, made that victory possible. But no victory can make this moment any easier for me. And I promise, I will not rest until I stand with you again. Here, in this place where I belong.

Comments:  You know, somebody on the production team had to have mentioned Douglas MacArthur. I’m reminded of MacArthur’s evacuation from the Philippines during the second world war and his famous promise he made while in Australia, “I came through and I shall return.” Personally, I think Sisko’s speech is more memorable, and Avery Brooks’ delivery undoubtedly has a lot to do with that. In fact, Sisko inspired a character of mine in a game I play, but that’s neither here nor there. This speech is simply heartfelt, and you just get that feeling that everyone there never forgot it. And like MacArthur, Sisko did return. I also take note of the episode title. This is not Hemmingway. There is no Farewell to Arms in this speech or this episode or, indeed, the series as a whole. The title was aptly chosen, “Call to Arms.” As for my criteria, Sisko is a transformed man when he delivers this speech. When he arrived to take command of the station, he really did not want to be there. He hated the place, his son hated the place, just about everybody hated the place except maybe, and only maybe, the resident vole population. But it became a home to Sisko and his son and to many others besides. You can hear the truth of that in the man’s voice and see it on his face as he stands there in Ops, talking. And when he returns some time later, we get the impression he really does feel like he’s come home to his family.

Number 3. (134 Words).

Speaker:  Jean-Luke Picard.

The Next Generation:  “The Measure of a Man.””

By Melinda Snodgrass.

Your Honor, a courtroom is a crucible. In it we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product, the truth, for all time. Now sooner or later this man, or others like him, will succeed in replicating Commander Data. Now the decision you reach here today will determine how we regard this creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of people we are, what he is destined to be. It will reach far beyond this courtroom and this one android. It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom, expanding them for some, savagely curtailing them for others. Are you prepared to condemn him and all who come after him to servitude and slavery? Your Honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits, waiting.

Comments:  This episode is special to me, because it’s the one I invariably use when introducing a person to star trek who has never seen it before. It’s a profoundly resonant episode, and you don’t have to know star trek well to understand its ideas. A lot of the actors who did star trek cut their teeth on Shakespeare. But Patrick Stewart takes the cake. The producers knew this, because look at all the speeches his character makes throughout Next Generation and the TNG movies. Picard’s no conversationalist, but get him started declaiming on a topic, and he never shuts up! And I say that with great affection. Picard is the only character on my list who gets two speeches. Unfair, some might say, but they’re not me. This speech really gets at the deepest of metaphysical questions. What does it mean that we exist? As we continue developing artificial intelligence systems and as robotics advances, we may come up against this question in reference to our technology:  does it have rights? When we do finally come up against that question, someone will want to pull this episode out of media storage. Meanwhile, we already debate that question on biological terms whenever we talk about abortion or the ethics of stem cell research:  when does a human being become a human being, and when, therefore, can it be said that they should be accorded the rights of one? In Voyager’s seventh season, the same question of rights comes up regarding the Doctor, and what’s astounding to me is that nobody mentioned the case of Data, a case they had to have known about. Still, that episode is just not of the same quality as “The Measure of a Man.”” The philosopher in me loves Maddox’s criteria for sentience, because the definitions and parameters of every one of them, intelligence, self-awareness and consciousness, are infinitely contestable. Though, I should add that in general terms, I’m hard pressed to disagree with him. Picard’s closing argument, which is what this speech is, really focuses us on the issue and the implications of the coming decision in a clear and forceful manner. I have to say, if I were ever in the prisoner’s dock, I’d want Picard as my lawyer.

Number 2. (100 Words)

Speaker:  James Kirk.

Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Kahn.

By Harve Bennett.

We are assembled here today to pay final respects to our honored dead. And yet it should be noted that in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world. A world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect and nourish. He did not feel this sacrifice a vain or empty one, and we will not debate his profound wisdom at these proceedings. Of my friend I can only say this. Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most, human.

Comments:  Star trek doesn’t have very many eulogies. I suppose that’s good. I hate it when characters die. You know, it’s funny. I know this movie inside and out. I know all the movies inside and out, and I know how this storyline ends. It’s a happy end. But that doesn’t change a thing when I watch this scene. It’s terribly heartbreaking. I can’t be the only one who can still occasionally be moved near to tears when watching it, even knowing everything there is to know about how the story actually ends. It’s some of William Shatner’s finest acting as Kirk, and the speech itself, or the last part of it anyway, is well-known even to people who don’t know star trek. It can’t be more obvious that the ever logical, ever buttoned down Spock has left an indelible mark on all us star trek fans, and it seems right that this speech be moving, even to the point of tears for many people. Self-sacrifice is a theme that comes up in many lives, someone giving up their life for the good of all. It’s the central event of history where Christians are concerned. No, the speech doesn’t have Christian overtones. However, Christian viewers who believe in the death on the cross will be poised to very fully appreciate the worthiness of the self-sacrificial act. That aside, Kirk’s eulogy is simply a fine moment, one of the finest moments of star trek.

Number 1. (97 Words)

Speaker:  Martok.

Deep Space Nine:  “You Are Cordially Invited.”

By Ronald D. Moore.

We are not accorded the luxury of choosing the women we fall in love with. Do you think Sirella is anything like the woman I "thought" that I'd marry? She is a prideful, arrogant, mercurial woman who shares my bed far too infrequently for my taste. And yet, I love her deeply. We Klingons often tout our prowess in battle, our desire for glory and honor above all else. But how hollow is the sound of victory without someone to share it with. Honor gives little comfort to a man alone in his home, and in his heart.

Comments:  It’s very hard to know just where to begin with this speech. I suppose I’ll begin with Martok himself. He is a captivating character, and it takes a lot for a Klingon to have that said of them. The Klingons are, after all, not my favorite race of all time in star trek. They’re up there, in my top three, but not number one as a race. Still, this particular Klingon is something else. Martok is quintessentially Klingon. That is, he’s more Klingon than most of the other Klingons we see throughout all of star trek. The Klingons of the Original Series are your stereotypical bad guys, no character development at all. Worf is the first Klingon who is developed as a character. Kern is respectably developed given the limited air time he got, while Gowron is very developed as a character. Martok too is highly developed. So, when I describe him as more Klingon than the rest, it’s our other developed Klingons I’m thinking of. He’s more of a Klingon than Worf can ever be. Worf is constantly torn between two worlds, his adopted one and the world of his heritage. And while that makes him truly complex in his own right, he can never be as Klingon as Martok. On the other hand, Gowron has no excuse. Yet Gowron isn’t one tenth the Klingon Martok is, and the reason is found in politics. Gowron is a political creature to whom honor is important but easily subordinated to the political necessities of the moment.

            Martok is someone who doesn’t have to think about what is honorable or dishonorable. He knows these things instinctually. He is Klingon in his loves and his hatreds. His hatred of Kor, for example, and his love for his wife. Though honestly, unless you read J.G. Hertzler’s novels, The Left Hand of Destiny, just what Martok sees in his wife is something of an open question to us outsiders. Now, this speech has always been special to me. Here’s Martok, the battle-hardened soldier, admitting to Worf and to us that even for a Klingon, there should be things more important than victorious battle and the honor that attends to it. This speech functions as one of the most eloquently phrased justifications for and defenses of marriage.

            In my profession, there are a lot of unmarried professors. Being an academic is time-consuming and potentially life-consuming. Many people who do what I want to do for a living have no family because they don’t make time for one. They’re subsumed by their research, the next article, the next book, the next committee meeting and the next course to teach. And yet, I’ve often been tempted to ask, what does all that business mean at the end of the day? Or as a Klingon might put it, “How hollow is the sound of applause without someone to share it with? Tenure gives little comfort to a professor alone in his home, and in his heart.”

            I had the pleasure of meeting J.G. Hertzler at the Nashville star trek convention this summer, where I got the chance to tell him just how meaningful this speech had become to me and, to a slightly lesser extent, to my fiancé, bless her. There are those who would dispute this speech’s position as number one in all of star trek. And that’s fine. Anyone who wishes to do so is free to make their own list. But when I think of all that this speech says about marriage and, by extension, family and their importance in the grand scheme of things, I have to put it at the top of the list. So now you have my list of the ten best speeches star trek ever produced. If you’re a fan, I’d be curious to see yours.