Joseph's Space

 
Only Captain Picard can restore the Prime timeline now!!!

I wonder whether this piece of writing will make me sound like a puritanical canon imbibing maniac, but what I’ve read about J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek movie has got me raising shields and going to red alert. Oh yeah, I’ll still definitely go and watch it, and I’m sure the production values are great (except for this thing I keep reading about lens flares…). But I also resign myself to the fact that Star Trek is ultimately some studio’s cash cow, and as a means towards capitalistic gains, we the viewers are subject to any re-envisioning of the medium that stems from the whims of studio executives. Accepting this, however, doesn’t mean that I have to like it.

What irks me about the new Star Trek movie is how everything that has come before no longer holds true after the defining moment where Nero kills off George Kirk on the U.S.S. Kelvin. For those of you who still don’t know, this is the point where everything changes because James Kirk no longer has a father figure to guide him, which leads him to become the rebel without a cause that we see portrayed in the majority of trailers released thus far. Oh sure, we’ve had these epoch making moments before, such as when the Borg Queen went back in time to kill Zefram Cochrane in ST: Nemesis; this incident left a couple of Borg bodies for Archer to find in the third season Enterprise episode Regeneration, thereby completely resetting the previous date of first contact with the Borg established in TNG’s Q Who?. (Note: the Borg’s appearance in Generations was simply a mistake, and has nothing to do with alternate timeline universes). Nonetheless, there has never been a reboot of the timeline to the extent of the new Trek movie. As a case-in-point, there has been a lot of criticism online about how cadets and junior officers eventually end up becoming the standing crew of the Federation’s flagship. Yeah, this in itself sucks, but it’s worse for me because this causes a whole lot of history to disappear as well. Just think, Kirk no longer served on the U.S.S. Farragut, which in turn makes the Nebula Class ship’s appearance at the end of Generations totally meaningless, and zaps the TOS episode Obsession into multiverse oblivion to boot.

Indeed, it also pisses me off totally to know that I just wasted time reading the IDW Countdown prequel series because those events now officially belong to some other galaxy far far away. Under the new timeline, it is anyone’s guess who will now end up commanding the NCC-1701-D after all. This also means that anyone who plays the Star Trek Online game will be subject to all kinds of ret-conning if the guys upstairs decide that it’s time to bring the game universe in line with the movie one. Ha, good luck suckers!

Anyway, in Roland Kelts’ book Japanamerica, the author argues that the success behind Japanese animation and manga has been the range of merchandising and fan produced media that takes place beyond what is officially sanctioned. This, he argues, allows fans to continue being part of the adventure that they fell in love with when they first saw it, be it in computer games, toys, or comic books. My problem is that my nice little virtual Star Trek world keeps getting screwed up by the guys who decide to change everything. This harks back to the days when I was reading DC’s run of Star Trek comics during the motion picture days of the TOS crew; every time a new movie came out, the comic book storyline would become totally out-of-sync (Kirk and company in command of the Excelsior anyone?). It is frustrating to know that this makes waste to all that time I’ve spent rationalizing this make-believe universe into a fantasy I can delve into, and such an investment can be pretty substantial for a fan. As an analogy, imagine your WoW character suddenly having a whole bunch of useless mana points because in a rebooted world, your Orc can no longer be a mage. Even virtual worlds have rules, which also means that they can be upset by major overhauls. In retrospect, one has to applaud DC in this regards for at least trying to resolve the discrepancies between it’s Golden, Silver, and Modern ages without completely abandoning what has come before.

The final thing that many fans have mentioned, and that I also take issue with is the apparent low-tech state of the Enterprise’s engineering section. The problem with this is that it stands at odds with Gene Roddenberry’s vision of “technology unchained”. This term refers to an envisioning of technology as being in the service of humanity’s journey of self-discovery, and not as something which sits as a stumbling block to it. Granted this concept belonged to the TNG bible, but I think that it is the spirit of the law which needs to be adhered to here. Certainly, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to consider this ethos as being present in TOS (warp drive exists to “explore strange new worlds” after all). What’s more, it’s especially unnerving to think that such an ideal should be dropped in this day and age when technology is supposed to free us but doesn’t (think mobile phone and always being contactable for example). I’m afraid to think of what else of the original has been lost in this new reboot of “Star Trek”. I’ll just have to wait for May 7th to see.

“Red Alert? No kidding!”

Well, after 2 years working on this piece, I am glad to finally announce it’s publication as a peer-reviewed article in the Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies. The genesis of this article has a certain amount of history, although it no longer has any significance in my current context...in more ways than one. What is important now is to offer my heartfelt gratitude to my co-author Jenny, who was ever earnest and diligent in her role as my co-author.

Academically, I’ve always felt that this article would be of use to students of Japan since so many of them express opinions regarding Yasukuni Shrine while knowing so little about the history of the controversy. Indeed, my feeling is that the mass media, in Singapore at least, creates a very negative bias towards the shrine. While I’m not saying that the mass media’s point-of-view is right or wrong, I truly hate this kind of paternalism because most people absorb and absorb without critically analyzing what their being fed with. In this light, I do hope that the article can provide those who have an interest in the Yasukuni Shrine controversy with some researched factual information, as well as some insight into the effects that the mass media’s reporting can have on people. Provided below are the complete citation (and link) to the article, and the abstract:

Tan, Joseph and Ni Zhen (2009), “Chinese and Japanese Newspaper Reporting of the Yasukuni Shrine Controversy: A Comparative Analysis of Institutional Media Bias,” Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, 15 April. Available at http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2009/TanZhen.html.

“Studies looking at the dynamics of the state-media relationship usually focus on structural reasons, such as geopolitical or economic, to explain how the media frames the news. However, this paper argues that media organizations also have their own agendas independent of existing socio-political restraints, and that they are therefore important social actors in their own right. A news discourse analysis methodology was used to analyze Chinese and Japanese newspapers' reporting on former Japanese Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine to demonstrate empirically the existence of institutional media bias within these newsmaking organizations that is not necessarily consistent with the reconciliatory tone of both countries' state actions. A comparison of the results suggest that while institutional ideology may predict how Japanese newspapers shape their reporting, rhetoric is an important factor in the case of the Chinese press where state control is more stringent.”

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