Harlan Ellison's Watching

by Harlan Ellison

  Then Alan looked thoughtful and seemed reluctant to speak, perhaps because he had just written the sequel to the Star Wars novelization that Lucas had sold to Ballantine Books, but in his reserved and gentlemanly fashion he told the audience of a day when he had seen a rough cut of the film and had remarked on just this scientific illiteracy to Lucas. He had even suggested a workable alternative . . . no, two workable alternatives . . . and Lucas had said words to the effect of (approximate quote), "There's a lot of money tied up in this film and people expect to hear a boom when something blows up, so I'll give them the boom."

  And at that moment, the cynicism showed through.

  If the masses want bread and circuses, we give them bread and circuses. If they want witch-hunts, bear-baitings, kinky sex, Inquisitions, burning crosses, scapegoats, trivia and persiflage—we give it to them. Keep them entertained and they'll never hear the whistle of the executioner's axe.

  As a writer who works in the medium of fantasy, both in print and in film, what Star Wars and its success portends is frightening to me. Already, Universal Studios is planning a Buck Rogers movie. Already, a major network that has bought one of my stories for a TV film and series, has asked me to alter realistic situations in a future society where absolute realism is the ground, to include "Star Wars kind of violence . . . you know . . . laser guns and all that."

  The dispensers of mass information have once again discovered science fiction. They do it every seven or eight years. The last time was with 2001. The only trouble is, they've discovered 1939 science fiction. Mindless shoot-'em-up and hardware. Paeans of praise to the grommet and spanner. And that means more of the same, just the way it happened in the wake of 2001. It means that thought-provoking sf, the kind written by Gene Wolfe and Kate Wilhelm and James Tiptree, Jr. and Michael Moorcock, has no value. It means that an entire genre of fiction for our time, material that informs and educates and entertains, will be bypassed in favor of more cops&robbers in outer space, more cowboys&indians on Tatooine.

  Goodbye science fiction, hello sci-fi. That's pronounced skiffy.

  If you like peanuts, you'll love skiffy.

  In the past month I have received calls from half a dozen film and television producers who are planning "sci-fi" projects. I won't even report on the call I received about a new Disney project-in-discussion called Star Skirmishes.

  I'll only tell you about the producer who called to ask me if I wanted to do a space war sorta film, and all he could say was, "This is gonna be a winner. We've got really terrific state of the art."

  I didn't know what that meant. So I asked him.

  He didn't understand why I didn't understand, but he started saying they had Magicam and new miniaturization techniques, and computer graphics, and ChromaKey, and videotape crossovers, and "all the very latest state of the art." I finally got hip. He was talking about special effects, pure and simple. No story, no terrific idea for a film that would illuminate the human condition, not even a plot. He had no plot. That's why he was calling me.

  To write something stupid around his stupid animation and special effects nonsense.

  And nomenclature had struck again. Now they were calling it "state of the art." And I submit that when filmmakers begin thinking that pyrotechnics can replace stories about people, then the ambience of the toilet has set in.

  So here we sit. Ben Bova and fantasy film director/animator Jim Danforth and cranky John Simon, and good old me; all alone grumbling about the most wonderful film ever made. Running our main squeeze of sour grapes over the heads of a multimillion person audience that goes back again and again to sit in awe as the Empire dreadnought Death Star roars overhead, making its big boom of passage through airless space. Specters at the Banquet. Loveless, lightless nuisances saying the Emperor has pimples on his bare butt.

  And all I can think about, in childlike wonder, is that amazing scene in the 1939 version of The Thief of Bagdad where Ahbhu, the little thief, uncorks the bottle and lets out the seventy-foot-tall genie. And I ask myself: If Star Wars is so goddamn good, howzacome all I can think about is a dumb fantasy made almost forty years ago, that taught me so much about fighting to stay free and individualism and love and the value of friendship and honor . . . ?

  And why do I remember that moment of characterization when the evil vizier, Jaffar, as evil as Darth Vader any day, shows how vulnerable his love for the Caliph's daughter has made him? Was that movie less "entertaining" because the evil villain had a touch of identifiable humanity?

  Yeah, I sit and think all that; and in my adolescent heart of hearts I know that Luke Skywalker is a nerd, Darth Vader sucks runny eggs, and I'm available for light saber duels any Wednesday between the hours of D2 and 3PO.

  Los Angeles / August 1977; Gallery / March 1978

  STAR TREK—THE MOTIONLESS PICTURE

  And Television begat Roddenberry, and Roddenberry begat Star Trek, and Star Trek begat Trekkies, and Trekkies begat Clamor, and Clamor begat a Star Trek animated cartoon, and the Cartoon begat More Clamor, and More Clamor begat Trek Conventions, and Trek Conventions begat Even More Clamor, and Even More Clamor begat T*H*E M*Y*T*H, and T*H*E M*Y*T*H begat Star Trek—The Motion Picture, and the behemoth labored mightily and begat . . . a mouse.

  Fired by a decade of devoted, dedicated, often fanatical hue and cry, Paramount and producer Gene Roddenberry have given fans of the long-syndicated series precisely and exactly what they have been asking for.

  And therein lies an awesome tragedy.

  It is not that Star Trek—The Motion Picture is a bad film; it isn't. Clearly, it is also not a good film. The saddening reality is simply that it is a dull film: an often boring film, a stultifyingly predictable film, a tragically average film. With a two-million-dollar production pricetag one could do no other than applaud it. Bearing a freightload cost of something in excess of forty-four million dollars (not counting how many millions will be spent on prints and sweep advertising) and the unbounded expectations held for it, the timid creation that crawled across premiere movie screens on December 7th, 1979—somehow appropriately on the thirty-eighth anniversary of another great tragedy—deserves little more than regrets and a weary shake of the head.

  Nothing more need be said to buttress that view than to point out that Star Trek—TMP bears a MPAA censorship code rating of G. General audiences, all ages admitted. The same code can be found on Mary Poppins, Bambi and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Our motto: We Take No Chances.

  Why should this have come to pass? Certainly no other film in the history of cinema has been looked forward to with such willing suspension of critical reservations. Few films receive the joyous elevation, prerelease, to the status of event. No, strike that: to the status of Second Coming. Even those of us who had their reservations about the series were predisposed to like this film, to greet it with positive attitude, to review it evenhandedly, faithfully, as allies. So: take risks, be bold!

  Yet after the Hollywood press screening I attended last night at the Motion Picture Academy's theater, I saw disappointment that slopped well over into animosity on the part of those who could only benefit from the film doing well. One young person was heard to say, "I waited ten years for this?" And on the late newscasts, when those who had seen the film were interviewed coming out of the theaters around Los Angeles, a most woebegone ambience could be perceived. These same sorts of filmgoers who had jumped up and down after Star Wars, who were confronted by a television camera on the sidewalk and who raved about Lucas's movie, who bounced off the walls exalting the first major sf flick of the decade, these same sorts of people stood quietly and said, "It's a swell film, very good." They were obviously rationalizing their disappointment. No insane delirium, no wild enthusiasm, just a subdued kind of polite, quiet, let's-not-do-the-movie-any-harm comment. It was obvious this was not the dream they'd expected.

  But that's just the point, and cuts directly to the heart of the tragedy. It is what they expected! They got no better and no worse than wha
t they deserved. For years the Trekkies have exerted an almost vampiric control over Roddenberry and the spirit of Star Trek. The benefits devolved from their support, that kept the idea alive; but the drawbacks now reveal themselves in all their invidious potency; because in Paramount's and Roddenberry's fealty to "maintaining the essence of the television series that fans adored," they have played it too safe.

  Star Trek—TMP is nothing more than a gussied-up two-hour television segment.

  It thereby retains most of the crippling flaws attendant on all television episodic series: the shallow, unchanging characterizations; the need to hammer home points already made; the banal dialogue; the illogical and sophomoric "messages"; the posturing of second-rate actors; the slavish subjugation of plot and humanity to special effects.

  They were afraid of losing that quality of familiarity generated by the TV series . . . and the tragedy is that they retained in fullest measure that which they should have dispensed with. A major film should be more than a predictable television episode; and no amount of special effects can dim that failure. There is simply no growth between the final segment of Star Trek and this hyperthyroid motion picture.

  The fans have had their way and Paramount may have to pay the terrible price. But one cannot really pillory the fans. It is no crime, however destructive, to care deeply. The blame for this film's mediocrity must be heavily laid on the shoulders of Gene Roddenberry and the imitative tiny minds of the Paramount hierarchy. The latter probably more than the former: one cannot condemn Roddenberry too much because this was his chance to revive the dream. But the studio heads, confronted with the opportunity to capitalize—without substantial risk—on the goodwill and affection of a ready audience, to bring forth a production that would have expanded and enriched the original Star Trek concept, to go where no studio has gone before, chose to play the game of close-to-the-vest, to mimic Star Wars and all its subsequent clone-children.

  But audiences have now seen Close Encounters and Buck Rogers and Battlestar Ponderosa and Alien and Starcrash and even lesser efforts. They are reaching their surface tension with films that offer nothing more than cunningly-cobbled starship models zooming through space. That cheap thrill is already a dead issue; and no matter how much they delude themselves that "latest state of the art" will bring in repeat business, audiences have come more and more to hunger for human emotion, involvement and identification with the problems of interesting people, not square-jawed cowboys in stretch pants and plastic booties.

  Yes, there is more machinery in this film per inch of footage than one could find in a True Value hardware commercial, but even the models look cheesy, lacking both the gritty naturalism of Alien's Nostromo or the boggling cyclopean presence of Close Encounters' mother ship. And when we are confronted by a close shot on the principals, standing near a bulkhead that is intended to be stainless steel, when it is obviously a painted flat, all verisimilitude vanishes for the viewer.

  Further, the direction in these scenes of great ships in space is slovenly. The point of view is frequently absent; we are left floating in a cinematic deep that confuses the eye and gives the attentive viewer no sense of correct spatial relationships. One would expect at least professional expertise in such a crucial area when a film has opted for machines over humans.

  But Robert Wise, at least in this venture, has seemingly turned a deaf ear to the morphology of filming science fiction. It is bewildering. Wise learned at the knee of Val Lewton, and his credentials prior to this film are unassailable: Curse of the Cat People, the 1945 Lugosi Body Snatcher, The Day the Earth Stood Still, I Want to Live, West Side Story, the brilliant adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel in The Haunting, The Sand Pebbles, The Andromeda Strain—not to mention that he was an editor on three undeniable classics, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and All That Money Can Buy.

  Perhaps having directed The Sound of Music has caught up with him, belatedly. Certainly nothing in the Wise canon but that saccharine perennial casts an ominous shadow that solidifies in his otiose handling of Star Trek—TMP.

  One has the niggling suspicion that Wise did not take this chore seriously, that he did it with his left hand, that it did not bulk large in his conception of "important" work. Static medium shots, persistent loss of p.o.v., a perplexing disregard for the overacting and mugging of almost everyone among the featured players, and a singular lack of freshness overall in selection of camera angles supports such a supposition.

  Even common attention to detail, de rigueur for the most amateurish B flicks, is missing here. In one scene, as Shatner moves through the turbolift doors exiting the bridge, the woman sitting to my right (a total stranger) said (audibly enough to generate laughter around us), "Look, his toupee doesn't fit right!" Fortunately the mother of ex-Paramount President Frank Yablans didn't notice it: four seats to my left she had fallen asleep. In another scene, when a plaited headband is placed over the cueball baldness of the highly-touted Ms. Persis Khambatta—about whom more in a moment—a dangling ornament hangs on the left side. Instants later, after a cutaway shot, the ornament is hanging over the right side. Editorial matchup, a first-year film-school necessity, was beyond a production crew so multitudinous they could have been deployed as relief team against Xerxes's ravening hordes.

  But this fumblefooted, hamhanded amateurishness is not confined to Wise or the editors. It appears throughout, as if the millions chalked off to studio overhead concealed the employment of a squad of gremlins, sent in to wreak havoc on the production.

  Even the special effects photography was slipshod. In the opening sequence we see three Klingon battle cruisers skimming through space. The matte lines are jarringly evident. So recurrent is this ineptitude that the editor of a prominent magazine said, "I was so busy looking for the matte fissures, I lost track of the plot. There was a plot, wasn't there?"

  Well, yes, there was. But I'll deal with that in a while because it contains the burning core of the film's ultimate mediocrity.

  But first, as I touched on it above, let me deal with the acting. What little there was.

  The first human being who speaks in the film (Klingons not being homo sapiens) is a female communications technician in a Starfleet outpost. She speaks her lines so stiltedly, so embarrassingly sophomorically, that I had the uncomfortable feeling I was looking at somebody's daughter, girlfriend or secretary who had been given a bit part. It was common practice on the TV series, but I could not believe that in a major studio production of this magnitude such nepotism could be countenanced. I have since learned that that was precisely the case. The "actress" in question was Michele Billy, production secretary to the scenarist, Harold Livingston.

  To have our first exposure to thespic technique in a film this big fall on the clearly nonexistent talent of an amateur is shocking. Further, it is symptomatic of the inbred Old Boys' Network thinking that permeates Star Trek—TMP.

  Pork-barrel jobs such as filling the rec room scene with fans and associates like Roddenberry's secretary Susan Sackett, novelist David Gerrold, Trekker Denny Arnold and the fannish loon who legally changed his name to James T. Kirk are acceptable, because they were only walk-ons. But putting such lames as Ms. Billy and Jon Rashad Kamal (Lt. Commander Sonak) in positions of even passing prominence speaks to a loss of rationality on the part of Wise and Roddenberry that beggars pejorative description.

  Yet these casting gaffes seem minuscule compared to the sins of the principals. With the exceptions of Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley, the cast is (why does this word keep springing to mind!?) embarrassing.

  Doohan's Scotty is no different from what we saw in the series, no smarter, no kinkier, no older, no more lovable. It is a standard television performance, competent but instantly forgettable. Barrett, Koenig, Takei and Nichols have such brief moments it is impossible to tell if they have the stuff to transcend their stale material. They are thrown scraps from the table: "Warp five, Captain," "Hailing frequency open, Captain," "Negative, Captain," "We're bein
g scanned, Captain." The kind of verbal make-work larded into the script to keep the series' regulars around as furniture, but wholly insufficient to let them practice the craft they have spent their adult lives developing. Uhura remains a glorified switchboard operator, Chekov is the same button-pusher with a raise in rank, Sulu flies the jalopy and is denied the space to exude even a scintilla of George Takei's enormous personal charm, Doctor Chapel carries bedpans. And if Transporter Chief Grace Lee Whitney had a line during the molecular dissolution sequence, it was drowned out by the embarrassed laughter provoked by Shatner's "Oh, my God!" condolence that stands out in a farrago of moments in which one covers one's face wishing one were elsewhere, as the Mt. Everest of inappropriate, awkward readings.