Time Trek

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Writing for The Establishment, The Hooded Utilitarian’s own Noah Berlatsky recently penned a devastating critique of one of the special snowflakes of science fiction: Star Trek’s “The City on the Edge of Forever” (1967). Even if you’re not a trekkie, or didn’t watch The Original Series (TOS), you’re familiar with the trope that the plot relies on. Berlatsky tersely characterize the episode as “an elaborate exercise in justifying violence and would-you-kill-baby-Hitler ethics.” That is, in order to save the present, someone who did something evil must die in the past. To the extent that Trek offers a twist on that trope, it’s that the person who must die, Edith Keeler, is actually good.

That amplifies the emotional stakes, sure, though at the cost of the plot and drama, since we know this story can only have one possible ending. And that ambivalence – in Kirk, in the audience – does nothing to undermine the self-evident logic of the trope: the ends of time-travel will justify even the most otherwise unconscionable means.

It doesn’t have to be this way, of course. The “kill baby Hitler” trope, also known here on the interwebs as the “Set Right What Once Went Wrong” trope (SRWOWW), is ubiquitous among science fiction serials. (So much so that the 80s saw both a TV series and film franchise about this exact plot-device: Quantum Leap and Back to the Future, respectively.) So, too, are variations on it, most of which fall into one of the following categories – exercises in hubris where the results actually make things worse, fixed time loop universes where change is either impossible or semi-fixed, ironic iterations where the would-be assassins actually cause the event they’re trying to stop,and scenarios where the effects of any changes remain unknown or unknowable. To touch just the tip of the iceberg.

What allows Kirk and Spock to act with moral certainty, despite the seeming immorality of the individual act itself, is a feature that’s unique to science fiction and time-travel stories more generally: perfect knowledge of the past and its relationship to the future, of cause and effect.

[I write “unique” because this is not the same as the claim that we have access to perfect foresight and knowledge of what will happen in the future. Even when the Bush administration claimed to know that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that he would use against his enemies – which he didn’t and thus wouldn’t, as it turned out – they could never be absolutely certain. And this is why the trope is particularly insidious and the distinction between the fictional and the real is particularly important: when we invoke the logic of SRWOWW – we know this thing will happen and so we must do this other thing to prevent it – in real life, we erase that difference. We start to believe that we, like Spock, have access to perfect knowledge and awareness of the future. Spoiler: we don’t.]

This perfect knowledge? It’s artistically and politically irresponsible. It also saps the story of a great deal of tension. It’s just pain lazy. But it should be remarkably easy to fix.

Imagine if, rather than perfect knowledge of 1) the event that would change history, and 2) its effects in the future, Kirk and Spock only knew one of these things? Or perhaps neither? If Kirk and Spock know that Keeler should – from their perspective, anyway – have died but can’t know whether the world will be better or worse for it, their decision becomes considerably harder. In fact, it problematizes the kneejerk use of the modal “should”. Even if she died in their past, why does it follow that must die in this one? And could the world, in fact, be a better place for her presence?

Likewise, if they know that the future has changed in some significant way but can only guess at the cause of that change, their mission becomes a detective story that possibly reaches no concrete conclusions, only descending into a far more ambiguous morality tale if and when they figure it out. If and when they think they’ve figured it out, that is. Knowing that they can’t be certain, how confident must they be in order to justify the murder of an innocent person? And for that matter, must she die?

This got me thinking: given the love for this episode, we might assume that Star Trek would follow its formula and logic in the future. But did they? And if they didn’t, did they manage to improve on it? What follows are some reflections on what I deem to be the most creative and thoughtful exercises in time-travel logic and ethics from each of The Next Generation (TNG), Deep Space Nine (DS9), and Voyager (VOY). And the first post-TOS time-travel story, for what will be some obvious reasons.

TNG – Yesterday’s Enterprise (3×15)

The Next Generation’s first time-travel episode, originally pitched with “The City on the Edge of Forever” in mind as its inspiration, is probably the series’ – if not all of post-TOS Trek’s – most infamous and best-loved time-travel story. It’s been cited by Roberto Orci as an inspiration for the rebooted Star Trek and repeatedly voted one of, if not the best, episodes of TNG. People like it, is what I’m saying.

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“Yesterday’s Enterprise” has a pretty simple premise, but one that’s surprisingly hard to explain. The previous iteration of the Enterprise, from 22 years in the past, ends up in the present when it passes through a rift in space-time. As a result, the present immediately changes – the Federation is at war with the Klingons, and they’re losing. Only Guinan knows that something has changed, and even though she can’t explain why, she must convince Picard to send the Enterprise of the past to their deaths in the past.

Our first example of SRWOWW in TNG, and it provides a small twist on the model provided by “Edge of Forever.” Do we know of both the specific event that will “fix” the timeline and the effect that it’ll produce? We do, yes, because we’ve been watching the show for 3 years and we know this isn’t right. That much is pretty straightforward.

But the characters? They don’t. Sure, Guinan has some awareness that something is wrong, and that skirts uncomfortably close to a reading of the regular timeline as a timeline of destiny. But Guinan can’t explain why and the decision becomes simply a calculated risk. Maybe the Enterprise C can make a bigger difference in the past than the present. Maybe the C will survive the battle in the past. Maybe it’s even worth sacrificing the Enterprise D, given the way the war with the Klingons is going. Maybe.

I’m stretching, though. We know what Picard needs to do, and we know what’ll happen if he does it. That’s a sort of dramatic irony, I suppose, but not as different from “Edge of Forever” as it first seemed.

TNG – Tapestry (6×15)

There were plenty of episodes with time-travellers, time-loops, and temporal anomalies between “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and “Tapestry”, but none where the crew was forced into any serious ethical dilemmas. “Tapestry” begins with Picard’s ostensible death, the captain having been shot in the chest and, as a result, his artificial heart exploded. Q gives Picard the chance to re-live and change the past, thus avoiding the bar-fight that damages his fight and saving his life in the present.
 

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Things don’t work out the way Picard hopes, though. It turns out that the fight was a defining moment of his life – the loose thread that unravels the tapestry of the episode’s title – and so the pacifist Picard leads a totally undistinguished life. Dejected and disgusted with himself, Picard tells Q that he would prefer to die as the man he was, rather than live out his life as a timid and unremarkable astrophysicist.

Like “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, “Tapestry” offers a small twist on the SRWOWW model – Picard knows what must be done, but he doesn’t know what it will change. That the alternative life is unbearably dull is a surprise, but Picard doesn’t hesitate to reverse his decision. As it turns out, of course, he didn’t actually die.

It’s an easy choice, from a story-telling and audience perspective, for Picard to restore the universe as we know it. We know this to be the correct timeline, the real one. The one where Picard doesn’t fight? Simply put, it’s wrong. And given how Picard stipulated to Q that nothing could change except for his own life, it doesn’t just feel wrong – it feels artificial.

But should it have been an easy decision? The resolution leaves me with an uneasy feeling. Picard decides that living an average life is, essentially, not worth living. He chooses death and a short but exceptional life over, well, something more like our own lives. Is being unexceptional really so bad? It would seem so, yes.

DS9 – Visionary (3×17)

This isn’t DS9’s first time-travel story – that title belongs to “Past Tense” (3×11/12), a social justice story where the time-travel element is set-dressing, rather than central to the conceit. But “Visionary” is probably Star Trek’s most fascinating and thoughtful time-travel episode, though the actual time-travel that’s involved is rather modest by comparison to the other stories in this list.

Radiation poisoning keeps sending Chief O’Brien several hours into the future. While at first just peculiar, this turns out to be very fortuitous, since it allows him to prevent both his own death and the destruction of the station. The plot is an elaborate detective story, with the crew of DS9 trying to figure out why O’Brien is shifting in time and how to stop it (and then restart it) even as they use his knowledge of the future to change it. In an added wrinkle, their actions to change the past also shifts the goalposts, as O’Brien’s time jumps reveal an altered but no less problematic future.
 

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In a unique twist on SRWOWW, given that every other iteration to this point saw reality restored to what it once was, the iteration of O’Brien that we’ve been following this whole time dies from radiation poisoning in his final jump to the future. Knowing that he won’t survive the return trip to the past, this O’Brien sends his alternate-future-self – who is likely to otherwise die in a Romulan attack on the station – back to prevent his own timeline from being formed. In doing so, he’ll both replace and erase the “original” O’Brien, who remains in the about-to-be-erased future. It’s a mouthful to explain, but trust me: this is mad, disconcerting, and moving stuff.

In the final act, after Doctor Bashir alone has realized that the wrong O’Brien came back, this “new” O’Brien confesses that he feels like he’s living another man’s life. Bashir disagrees, arguing that he’s the same man but with just a few extra memories. It’s a subtly unsettling resolution. But why should it be? Bashir’s technically right, but doesn’t O’Brien’s point simply feel somehow more valid? It’s ultimately a very small detail, but it’s one that lingers.
 
VOY – Relativity (5×24)
 
The Voyager crew dabbled in time-travel almost immediately, considering a trip 20 years into the past in the entirely unconvincing “Eye of the Needle” (1×07). It didn’t get much better from there, unfortunately, though it would get much, much more confusing.

Relativity is a mess, both with respect to plot and time-travel logic. It seems to be using DS9’s “Visionary” as a model – Seven is being moved in and out of the timestream in order to save Voyager from a sort of time-bomb of unknown origin. These same travels are gradually killing her, somehow, but this is really the least confusing detail in the story. The surprise reveal of the villain, a future version of the same 29th Century timeship captain, Braxton, that sends Seven on this mission in the first place, is more baffling than it is alarming.
 

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The episode does do something brand new, by adding the bizarre new concept to “reintegration” to the Star Trek universe. Rather than wiping a timeline completely so that, for instance, Braxton or Seven don’t simply forget certain events but have literally never lived them, we’re told that these versions who have now never existed and exist only outside the timestream will be reintegrated with their current selves. They’ll be combined with the person who properly belongs to the new/restored timeline. This other version of the character, once blissfully unaware, will be combined with and/or remember what the out-of-timeline character has done. Why? How? Huh? It’s an unnecessary and silly detail, and it also cheapens earlier episodes like “Visionary”, which discomfort our assumptions of belonging to a place and time, and even our own sense of uniqueness, without completing obliterating them.

“Relativity” is also a bit too self-conscious and precious. The villainous future future captain is making his second appearance on VOY, which also happens to be the second episode where he’s gone mad and declares Janeway his mortal enemy. There are also numerous, half-joking references to Janeway and the ship’s repeated travels through time and changes to the timestream. Time-travel, like encounters with the Borg, is getting awfully familiar and gimmicky at this point in VOY’s tenure, and the creators know it.

By the time the finale of VOY, “Endgame” (7×25), rolled around, time-travel in this series had become both ubiquitous and virtually meaningless. The finale appeared to follow no coherent set of time-travel rules, and knowledge of the future was seemingly employed entirely as a vehicle to tie-up every loose end and make Voyager’s win over a previously unbeatable enemy seem somehow possible. Fittingly, I suppose, in VOY’s finale a future Admiral Janeway traveled back in that episode to kill her own Baby Hitler – the Borg Queen. No questions or ethical dilemmas, here. And not even the over-rated gravitas of “Edge of Forever”. If Star Trek did learn anything from that episode, they also soon forgot it.

What It Really Takes to Get from Here to There (Analyzing Comics 101: Closure)

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Reading a comic book is easy–even when there are no words to be read. You just look at a picture, and then at the next picture, and so on. But why do any of them make sense side-by-side? What is your brain doing as it leaps from image to image?

In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud defines the Gestalt psychology principle of “closure” as the “phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole” (though it more specifically indicates a viewer filling in visual gaps between disconnected parts) and applies it to comics gutters: “Nothing is seen between panels, but experience tells you something must be there!” He goes on to explain: “Comics panels fracture both time and space, offering a jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected moments. But closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally construct a continuous, unified reality.”

McCloud focuses his analysis on gutters and therefore types of transitions possible between panels (though closure is independent of panels and gutters, since insets and interpenetrating images work the same ways). He comes up with six types:

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They work reasonably well, but his focus on panel transition has always struck me as slightly off. When I use it in class, students often don’t come to a clear consensus when analyzing any particular panel sequence. Moment-to-moment and action-and-action, for instance, are often ambiguous, sometimes combining identical leaps in time. And since actions do occur in McCloud’s moment-to-moment examples (a women blinks!), it’s not exactly clear what constitutes an “action.” Aspect-to-aspect can also be indistinguishable from subject-to-subject, both of which may or may not involve a movement in time, and so may or may not also be moment-to-moment or even action-to-action. And scene-to-scene might be a location leap and so also a kind of aspect-to-aspect at the big picture level, or a scene-to-scene can be in the same location but at a different time–so then how much time has to pass for an old scene to become a new scene?

These are annoying questions, but they really do come up when you try to breakdown a panel sequence with a roomful of students. So instead of categorizing transitions, my colleague Nathaniel Goldberg and I categorized types of closure while drafting our essay “Caped Communicators: Conversational Depiction and Superhero Comics.” Instead one all-purpose “perceiving the whole” process, we see four very different kinds of closure, each of which can occur by itself or in combinations.

Spatial:  Subject matter drawn in separate images is depicted as existing in physical relationship to each other, typically as a result of panel framing. (What McCloud identifies as aspect-to-aspect, subject-to-subject, and some scene-to-scene transitions require spatial closure.)

Temporal:  Undrawn events are depicted to take place outside of events drawn in separate images, typically as a result of panel transitions and so occurring as if in gutters. (What McCloud identifies as moment-to-moment, action-to-action, and some subject-to-subject and scene-to-scene transitions require temporal closure.)

Causal: Drawn action is understood to have been caused by an element absent from a current image but drawn in a preceding image. (None of McCloud’s transitions, not even action-to-action, accounts for this type of closure.)

Associative: A metaphorical relationship is depicted between two images in which one image is understood to represent some idea about the other image. (Though McCloud does not identify this type of closure, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden in Drawing Words Writing Pictures add “symbolic” to McCloud’s list of transition types. Such symbolic transitions require associative closure.)

It always helps to look at specific examples, so consider this three-panel sequence at the top of page 28 in Watchmen #8:

In the first image, artist Dave Gibbons draws the shadow of a statuette cast over the face of a frightened man lying on the floor. The second image shows the statuette in the fist of an attacker. Taken together, spatial closure is required to understand that the two images occur within a few feet of each other, each image drawn from one of the two men’s points of view. The second image also requires temporal closure because the statuette is behind the attacker’s head at an angle that would not cast the shadow seen on the victim’s face in the first image. Gibbons therefore also depicts a movement forward in time during which the attacker has cocked his arm back to strike.

The third image depicts a jack-o-lantern crashing to the floor with some falling books. It uses all four forms of closure. The pumpkin exists in the same space as the two now undrawn men (spatial closure). The pumpkin is crushed at a moment immediately following the second image (temporal closure). The falling books have been knocked down by the now undrawn attacker of the previous image (causal). And, because it resembles a human head and breaks open at the moment a reader anticipates the statuette striking the man’s head, Gibbons implies that the man’s head has been similarly damaged (associative).

A close reading of the sequence also reveals some confusion. Regarding causal closure, it is unclear how the attacker overturned the books at this moment since the act of swinging the statuette at the victim on the ground does not clearly involve his intentionally or unintentionally knocking over the bookcase in the same gesture. Instead, Gibbons may have attempted to suggest that the attacker struck his victim and then afterwards overturned the bookcase—an ambiguous two-step action otherwise absent.

I’m guessing Gibbons was fulfilling a directive in Alan Moore’s famously meticulously detailed script, producing this unintended gap in its execution. To address panel transitions that cause only confusion, McCloud includes “non-sequitur” as a type of transition that “offers no logical relationship between panels whatsoever!” So then a non-sequitur produces no closure at all–and so isn’t really type of closure, but is the absence of closure. Which is why we don’t include it as our fifth category.

So our closure types are deeply indebted to McCloud, but I think they also improve on his. I’ll be testing these out in my classroom soon, so hopefully my students will agree. More on that later.

Not Being Able to Sew on Project Runway

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Well, here’s something different. I finally figured out how to use storify, and I’m interested in archiving my babbling about project runway…so what the hey, thought I’d put it here in case anyone’s interested. This is one of my recent project runway rants. Enjoy! (or not.)
 

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The Best Albums of 2015

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I got a couple of best of lists published this year, but I thought I’d do a definitive one here, because why not? I tried to listen to more new music this year, for reasons which are unclear, except for the usual random neurotic obsession explanation. So here are my 25 best, from least best to most best. (If there seems inconsistency with other lists I’ve posted, I invoke hobgoblins and general wishy-washy indecision.) In many cases I’ve written about the albums elsewhere, so I’ve embedded links where that’s the case.

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25. Jason Isbell—Something More Than Free
 

 
 
24. False—Untitled
 

 
 
23. Novella—Land
 

 
 
22. Rhiannon Giddens—Tomorrow Is My Turn
 

 
 
21.Death Grips—The Powers That B
 

 
 
20.Eartheater—RIP Chrysalis
 

 
 
19.Insect Ark—Portal/Well
 

 
 
18. Nozinja —Nozinja Lodge
 

 
 
17. Elfmilk—Relocation
 
 

 
 
16. Nicki Bluhm—Loved Wild Lost
 

 
 
15. Ballake Sissoko & Vincent Segal—Musique de Nuit
 

 
 
14. Negro Leo—Niños Heroes
 

 
 
13. Jordannah Elizabeth—A Rush
 

 
 
12. Jonny Faith—Sundial
 

 
 
11.Mugen Hoso—North Carolina Shepherd Dog
 

 
 
10.Kelela—Hallucinogen
 

 
 
9.Mbongwana Star—From Kinshasha to the Moon
 

 
 
8. Father—Who’s Gonna Get Fucked First?
 

 
 
7. Suuns and Jerusalem in My Heart
 

 
 
6.Melt Banana— Return of 13 Hedgehogs
 

 
 
5. Mastery—V.A.L.I.S.
 

 
 
4. Brandi Carlile—The Firewatcher’s Daughter
 

 
 
3. Dawn Richard—Blackheart
 

 
 
2. Sewer Goddess—Painlust
 

 
 
1. RP Boo—Fingers, Bank Pads, and Shoe Prints
 

 
 
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I try not to get stuck in a rut on these lists, and I think this one is pretty varied. There’s metal, hip hop, indie rock, country, folk, electronica, R&B, rock, punk, funk, various kinds of world music, psychedlia, and at least one sort-of jazz thing. The lack of classical music is the big gaping genre hole, though I’m sure there are others.

It is quite US centric; I think 14 out of 25 are from the states; after that Japan is most represented with 2, and then you’ve got Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, UK, Nigeria, Canada, Australia, Mali and France. Nearly equal gender balance: 12 out of 25 are all women or female-led. Ten black performers/groups, and another four led by people of color. It still leans towards white folks, men, and the U.S., but it’s varied enough that there aren’t that many white guys from the U.S. on it. (I think the only two bands/acts entirely made up of white US guys are Mastery and Jason Isbell.)

The last few I put on here were Father and Eartheater, which I only listened to in the last week or so—and Kelela and Elfmilk I relistened to and got more into. The last one I took off the list was Lonesome Wyatt and Rachel Brooks’ album, which I decided I didn’t like quite as well as Jason Isbell’s.

I guess that’s enough nattering. If you’d like to do a music best of on HU, let me know and maybe we can do a little roundtable. And/or tell us what your favorite albums of the year are in comments.

Utilitarian Review 1/2/16

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News

I’m going to list my favorite albums of the year on Monday; if anyone wants to write about their favorite music of the year, let me know, and we could set up a mini-roundtable. (Or not, if no one cares.)

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Samantha Meir on Tits and Clits.

Philip Smith on Donald Barthelme’s Paul Klee.

Chris Gavaler on visual sentences vs. page layout.

Robert Stanley Martin with on sale dates for comics in May/June 1951.

I list some of the favorite things I wrote this year.

A look back at the year at the Hooded Utilitarian.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Guardian I wrote about the new Grant Morrison Wonder Woman and how its true to WW’s BDSM roots.

At the Establishment I wrote about rape/revenge films and shuffling gender roles.

At Splice Today I wrote about Jon Ronson, King of the online morals police.
 
Other Links

Todd Nickerson writes about being attracted to children and why talking about that is important in combatting child rape and molestation.

Mary Emily O’Hara on the year in sex worker activism.

Angelica Jade Bastien with the case against colorblind casting.

The Year At HU

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This has been a strange year at HU. We’ve had by far our most traffic ever, with more than twice as many unique hits as last year, our previous high. That’s because Jacob Canfield’s post on Charlie Hebdo became a huge viral read/hate read, dwarfing even our Victorian Wire post from a while back.

Beyond that though, this year, especially the second half, has been rather quiet. I think that’s in part because I’ve been getting more writing work, and haven’t had as much time to tend to things here as I have in the past. I’m not sure what that will or won’t mean for the blog in the future, but for the moment at least we’re still rolling along. Here are some of the notable posts, roundtables, and events from our last year.

Oh, and hey, I released my book on Wonder Woman this year. We had a roundtable to celebrate. Also, you can see all reviews/interviews/other goodies from around the web here.

Chris Gavaler writes here every week on protosuperheroes…and more recently on analyzing comics layout.

Isaac Butler on Joe Sacco and dystopia.

Our roundtable on Satire and Charlie Hebdo.

Michael Carson on American Sniper as kitsch.

Em Liu on Hollywood’s real problem with the Asian male.

Osvaldo Oyola on romance comics and weird heteronormativity.

I and others have an ongoing series on the question of Can There Be a Black Superhero?

Kim O’Connor on Chris Sims and the failings of progressive comics.

Katherine Wirick on why you shouldn’t name your makeup line after OCD.

Eric Berlatsky on how continuity undermines progress in comics.

James Lamb on the impossibility of superhero diversity.

Robert Stanley Martin with an ongoing weekly series showing on sale dates of comics from the primordial ooze to the present.

We did a big Joss Whedon roundtable.

Nix 66 on the bravery (so brave!) of Laura Kipnis.

Julian Chambliss on his art project of burning the Confederate flag.

Philip Smith on 1998 and anti-Chinese violence in Indonesian comics.

Kristian Williams on apocalypse and dystopia in Fury Road.

RM Rhodes insists Heavy Metal magazine is not punk.

Kate Polak on Hannibal, Rihanna,and sexual harassment.

I wrote a bunch of posts about Quentin Tarantino.

I wrote a bunch of posts about the rape/revenge genre.

Jimmy Johnson on Narcos and imperialism.

Petar Duric on class in the Sly Cooper games.

mouse on furries and smut.

I’ve started a Patreon to support some of my writing here.

Kim O’Connor on Adrian Tomine’s weak portrayal of women.

Ng Suat Tong on Frazetta’s racism.

My Year In Writing

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Every year about this time I do a roundup of the best things I’ve written over the last 365 days or so. I usually write somewhere in the neighborhood of a post a day during the year, give or take, so I probably published in the neighborhood of 350-400 pieces in 2015 (not counting writing for HU and/or work for hire.) I never remember everything I’ve done, but below are some of the pieces I was proudest of. They’re not in any particular order.

On Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home and why utopias can’t tell a story.

On The Man in the High Castle and making America safe for Nazis.

On radical feminists and the effort to shame Laverne Cox.

A ranking of every character in every Tarantino movie (before Hateful Eight.)

On Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me as a work of hope.

My interview with activist Mariame Kaba about Black Lives Matter and reimagining justice.

On the documentary Hot Girls Wanted and the sadism of anti-sex work documentaries.

On how neo-Nazis try to leverage American anti-black racism against Jews.

On why we need to abandon electronic fetal monitoring.

On why indie music is so white.

On Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left.

On slave Leia as a confused vision of sexual awakening.

On soap opera tropes in Orphan Black.

How Indiana’s public policy sparked an HIV crisis.

On the boondoggle that is quality television in the golden age.

Skimming online articles rather than reading books makes you smarter.

On conservative political correctness.

Are cozies morally reprehensible?

On Rolling Stone, Eden, and how the media loves sensational stories about sex work.

How Daredevil treats torture as a virtue.

On the prejuice against male Syrian refugees.

On how I want to write for Buzzfeed.

Everybody wants to kill baby hitler.
 
So that’s the year that was. If you’ve got a favorite piece of mine that you think I missed, let me know in comments. And/or, if you have something you wrote this year, you’d like to share, please put that in comments too. Have a good new year, all!