今天紐約時報 Ronald D. Moore: My Universe, My Captain - 科幻

曾寫過startrek劇本與正在寫BSG劇本的Ronald Moore談他的startrek精神仍在BSG。


Mr. Universe
By RONALD D. MOORE
FOUR decades ago, when the starship Enterprise first settled into orbit
around Planet M-113 on Sept. 8, 1966, I was 2 years old. I could not have
known it at the time, but “Star Trek” would literally change my life.

To say that any television show has changed one’s life is to invite both
mockery and pity for a poor, shuttered geek who must surely have been denied
direct sunlight and the attention of women for the better part of his days.
But in lieu of offering documentary proof that I do not, in fact, still
reside in my parents’ basement, let me simply tell you how “Star Trek”
informed the way I look at the world.

“Star Trek” is often reduced to kitsch: Kirk’s paunch, Spock’s pointy
ears, green-skinned alien girls. But it was more than escapism and
rubber-suited aliens. It was a morality play, with Capt. James T. Kirk as a
futuristic John F. Kennedy piloting a warp-driven PT-109 through the far
reaches of the galaxy.

Kirk, for me, embodied an American idea: His mission was to explore the final
frontier, not to conquer it. He was moral without moralizing. Week after
week, he confronted the specters of intolerance and injustice, and week after
week found a way to defeat them without ever becoming them. Jim Kirk may have
beat up his share of bad guys, but you could never imagine him torturing them.

A favorite quote: “We’re human beings, with the blood of a million savage
years on our hands. But we can stop it. We can admit that we’re killers, but
we won’t kill today.” Kirk clearly understood humanity’s many flaws, yet
never lost faith in our ability to rise above the muck and reach for the
stars.

“Star Trek” painted a noble, heroic vision of the future, and that vision
became my lodestar.

As I grew into adolescence, the show provided a handy reference against which
to judge the questions that my young mind began to ask: What is the
obligation of a free society toward the less fortunate? Does an “advanced”
culture have the right to spread its ideas among more “primitive” ones?
What does it mean to be human, and at what point do we lose our humanity to
our technology?

And as I grew into an adult, and my political views took shape, I treasured “
Star Trek” as a dream of what my country could one day become — a liberal
and tolerant society, unafraid to live by its ideals in a dangerous universe,
and secure in the knowledge that its greatness derived from the strength of
its ideas rather than the power of its phasers.

In my 20’s, through a combination of luck and determination, I fulfilled my
childhood dream — I became a writer for “Star Trek.”

For 10 years, I helped propel the latter-day incarnations of “Trek” into
new territory while keeping alive the set of moral principles I’d taken to
heart. As I plotted the adventures of the Enterprise-D and the travails of
the space station Deep Space 9, I gradually became interested in pushing the
boundaries of “Star Trek,” and began to let Captains Picard and Sisko find
the shades of gray in a universe Kirk sometimes saw only in black and white.

Science fiction on film and television has, over the past four decades, moved
decisively away from the optimism of “Star Trek.” “Blade Runner,” “Alien
” and “The Matrix” posit much darker, dystopian futures; even the “Star
Wars” movies posit the rise of a galactic empire founded on “the dark side.
” Social and commercial explanations abound for this shift, but my theory is
that “Star Trek” set the gold standard for the idealistic vision of
tomorrow and no one has successfully challenged it.

Nowadays, it may appear that I’ve turned a blind eye to my lodestar as the
crew of the battlestar Galactica behave in ways that would’ve been
unthinkable in the “Star Trek” universe that Gene Roddenberry created. But
“Battlestar Galactica” remains very much informed by the lessons I learned
from that slightly paunchy man in the gold pajama top on the good ship
Enterprise.

My characters may not have all the answers (sometimes they’re not even aware
of the questions) but they contain kernels of both good and evil in their
hearts and continue to struggle for salvation and redemption against the
darker angels of their natures. Their defeats are many, their victories few,
but somehow, some way, they never give up the dream of finding a better
tomorrow.

And, thanks to a 40-year-old television show, neither do I.

Ronald D. Moore is the writer of “Battlestar Galactica.”

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