IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU LAUGH

Oct. 12, 1990

Humor in Star Trek.

Having a character get raped in Atlantis Chronicles drew little response. But every single month one of the most hotly debated issues in the comics I write is whether I should be allowed to be funny in the Star Trek comic book that DC publishes.

How much humor is too much humor? Where should I be allowed to use shtick and where not? I’m not taking Star Trek seriously, I’m told. I’m not being true to the spirit of the original series.

Anyone watch the original series lately? Funny stuff. Genuinely funny stuff.

This was back in the days when Star Trek was, well, a TV show. When they went to planets populated by Roman gladiators or gangsters. When Spock and McCoy would engage in verbal byplay, insulting each other in order to cover the fact that they liked each other and hated to admit it. When Spock would quote statistics to the fifth decimal point, analyze confrontations with unknown beings by declaring that they had recited “Very bad poetry, Captain,” or sanguinely inform Kirk– in the process of disguising himself as an SS trooper– “I have always thought you would make a most convincing Nazi. “

This was back when every reading was off their scale, back when it was like nothing they had encountered before, back when We Were Right. “We” being the United States, of course.

Vietnam killed Star Trek. Killed the humor. Killed the fun, as it did for so many other things.

Kirk, Spock, et al. supposedly obeyed a Prime Directive that told them not to interfere. You remember. It was the thing they always quoted just before Kirk ignored it. That’s because, at that time, Star Trek was the 20th-century American in the 23rd century. Noble. Proud. Right. Americanism was so right that they had the Constitution on other worlds, for heaven’s sake. We Were Always Right.

Then Trek ended, and Vietnam wound down, and when, years later, Next Generation appeared, well, it reflected the new America. Tentative. Cautious. Don’t get involved if you can at all avoid it, because we might screw up, just as we did in Vietnam. We Americans, as a people, still aren’t comfortable with ourselves. We like the British much better than we do ourselves. That’s why we lionize their comics, and put a British guy in charge of the Enterprise.

We are so paranoid as a nation that we actually discuss whether people should be prohibited from burning the flag. We’re so insecure that we can’t take the criticism that that act implies.

And boy, we can’t take a joke.

At least, not when it comes to Trek. When Shatner told fans to “Get a life” on Saturday Night Live, it struck too close to home for too many people.

Star Trek V was brutalized by the majority of fans and by the critics. Now, was it “that bad”?

Well– No. Not that bad. I mean, Darkman was much worse, and a number of critics embraced it. The main thing that people seemed to attack Trek V for– and the same thing that many attack the comic book for– is that it seemed as if those involved didn’t take Star Trek seriously.

I can’t speak for Shatner, of course, because he’s not here, but I can take a guess about him and I know about myself, and that philosophy is this– sure, I take Trek seriously, but only to a degree. I don’t take it that seriously. I take it as seriously as I do The Hulk. It’s entertainment. It’s fun. I like to have fun with Star Trek. Call me crazy, call me a fool, but I happen to think that something that was designed for entertainment should be entertaining.

And I try to be true to the spirit of Star Trek as I see it. I try to produce stories that are in the style of the original series. Not in the style of the new series, because the styles are very different. Next Gen is very much the post-Vietnam style and, for that matter, it also carries with it the trauma of being an icon. An institution. Next Gen carries the weight of all the fans’ expectations on its back and considers that to be a very serious responsibility. Next Gen is a very serious program.

How do we know this? There’s one major clue. Music.

In the original series, practically every scene was scored from beginning to end. Not Next Gen. When you’re watching Serious Drama, there’s rarely incidental music. That’s too trivial.

Think about it. Trek fans can hum the music of the approaching Doomsday Machine; that haunting string music (Vulcan harp?) when Amanda pleaded with Spock to save Sarek; that zippy jig when Kirk pursued Finnegan; that musical sting when Kirk stopped McCoy from saving Edith Keeler– on and on.

There are many things to remember from the original series. For that matter, there are many things to remember from Next Gen, as well, because both shows have so many things that they can do, so many elements they can hook you with. Acting. Music. Sound effects. Special effects and visual effects. “Time Squared” made no sense? Didn’t matter. Great visual effects. “Sarek” was a rehash of “Journey to Babel?” (Vulcan ambassador comes aboard Enterprise, falls ill, and crew member risks own life to save him.) Doesn’t matter. We have the great acting of Mark Lenard and Patrick Stewart.

What’ve we got in the comics? Music? No.

Visual effects? Not that pack the same punch as TV, no. Besides, when people read the comics, they spend most of the time trying to determine whether the likenesses are consistent. You think anyone tunes in Next Gen saying, “Let’s hope that Riker looks like Jonathan Frakes this week?” “Let’s hope they got the bridge right”?

Acting? Only what the readers can conjure in their minds upon reading the words. Sound effects? Silent medium. Again, lacks that TV punch.

Make up? Come on. We have an audience which is used to seeing Nightcrawler or The Hulk every month. If Ensign Fouton, the tall, skinny blue alien, appeared on the TV show, fans would be singing praises about the makeup required to give him life. In the comic book, the most response we’ve had to something visual was R.J. Blaise, and she was human! Exotic aliens and civilizations don’t have the same effect on comics fans as it does when they see the same thing on the series.

Face it, the comics can’t possibly work as well, on all levels, as the TV series– both old and new– do.

Except for one thing: humor.

We can be as funny as the original series. All we have to do is keep Kirk, Spock and McCoy– and their knack for banter– in character. Or, if we’re going for situational gags, put them in potentially fun environments such as the gangster planet in “Piece of the Action.” (Hmmm. Maybe we’ll send them to a planet that holds a Star Trek convention. That’s a thought.)

I have all the elements of the original series in the comic book. Space battles. Character interaction. New worlds and new civilizations. And humor.

But the humor stands out, in comparison to the new series, because it doesn’t need special effects or music to carry it off. The humor works as well in the comic book as it does on TV and in the movies. Because it does, that’s what people remember, above and beyond every other element in the comic book. And because it’s what people remember, they tend to forget everything else.

If you study what is generally considered to be the best of the original series episodes, “City on the Edge of Forever,” you’ll be amazed at the dazzling number of jokes and humorous situations. But that’s considered to be one of the most dramatic. Yet if “City” had never been written, and I (through some burst of inspiration) had tried to write it for the comic book, I’d be criticized for throwing in stupid bits about Spock catching his head in a mechanical rice picker.

Or if I wrote a comic book where Spock and Kirk are trying to break out of a prison cell, and Spock is stepping on Kirk’s back during these endeavors, calmly chatting while Kirk is in agony (because his back is covered with whip scars)– why, I would be accused of making light of a serious situation.

Or if I tried to dump 1,771,561 tribbles on Kirk, well– forget it.

The comic book is attacked because of the one thing it does as well as anybody. Because that one thing is no longer in style. Star Trek V took Star Trek with the same degree of seriousness and, well, fun, that the original series took. But Trek V didn’t know that Vietnam, 25 years of analysis, and the generally serious tone of Next Gen would cause humor to fall out of style.

I will admit that things have gotten a bit better in the humor department for Next Gen. Like the episode when Howling Mad Murdock became Holodeck-Mad Murdock, anything with Q or Mrs. Troi, and a handful of others. But there’s no steady interplay or repartee to continually provide a smile, a chuckle, or a leavening of an otherwise deadly situation. That sort of interplay lives only in the Trek movies and the comic books, where it continues to catch all sorts of flak. And it lives on in the reruns, of course.

Perhaps some people would be well served to review those episodes and pretend that 25 years of back-breaking pretention hadn’t gone down. Remember what it was like when it was fun. And realize that that’s the spirit of what I’m trying to capture in the comic book. The fun.

I thought that’s what it was all about.

• And now a public service announcement. In an earlier column I mentioned that the Beat Brothers, producers of the “Seduction of the Innocent” CD, were looking for musically or performanced-inclined comics professionals to contribute to a new record project entitled Notes from the Comic World.

Since then, I’ve gotten a number of calls asking for specifics. If you are a comics professional (don’t try this at home, kids) contact John Christensen at the Beat Brothers, 4067 Hardwick St., Suite 279, Lakewood, Calif. 90712. Phone number is (213) 664-9436.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, welcomes comments c/o CBG.)