We are reminded that evil endures, but so does hope.
We are reminded that evil endures, but so does hope.
T wo anniversaries were this week, and both have personal meaning for me. Twenty years ago, I was across the street from the World Trade Center when it collapsed. I wrote about that day in the Wall Street Journal.
As a crowd from the Journal’s building watched the first tower burn, an architect I was standing next to suddenly remarked that he didn’t think the steel girders of the towers would stand up to a jet-fuel fire. We looked at each other and walked away with anyone who wanted to join us. Less than five minutes later, the first tower collapsed. He may have saved my life — and those of others.
I was never haunted by 9/11, but it gave me a real appreciation of the fragility of life and the enduring existence of evil.
The second anniversary I noted this week was more hopeful. This past week marked the 55th anniversary of Star Trek’s first episode on NBC. Although it could be campy and preachy, it was a show that provided an optimistic view of the future in the middle of the Vietnam War, race riots, the youth rebellion, and the start of stagflation. As a child, the series gave me a real appreciation of how popular culture can inspire people and bring out what is the best within them.
Yes, I have scratched my head over how the show’s characters and actors have been canonized and credited with ushering in advances from technological wonders to civil rights. Some rabid and eccentric fans do need to follow Star Trek actor William Shatner’s advice on a famous Saturday Night Live skit and “Get a life.”
But the show did break new ground. It showed the first interracial kiss on TV and had a diverse cast of professionals solving problems in a way not seen on TV before. The Star Trek: Enterprise’s “communicator” device did inspire a Motorola engineer to develop the flip cell phone, and its tablet computers sure do resemble an iPad. Many engineers, doctors, astrophysicists, set designers, and novelists have noted that the show inspired their choice of career.
As I noted when writing about the death of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock, “the show has become a pop-culture phenomenon unequaled in the history of television.” And at that time the New York Times observed, “The baby boom generation came of age under the twin pillars of Spock — Doctor and Mister — but it’s the Mister from Star Trek that has more resonance now.”
Mr. Spock and the show also resonated with me as a child. I lived in Europe from a young age, and when I came back to this country, I felt a little like an alien. I didn’t always fit in at school in California, and I was shy. Spock proved that you could be cerebral and cool at the same time. The crew solved problems, rather than stoke petty grievances.
One of the cast members of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Armin “Quark” Shimerman, once summed up the appeal of the Star Trek franchise. “Starships do not make Star Trek. Hope makes Star Trek.”
As we mark the sad and sobering anniversary of 9/11, we should also remember how much people need hope to continue with their lives and how it can sometimes appear in the most unlikely of places: a canceled 1960s television series whose sets were often made out of papier-mâché — but the dreams it inspired were real.
PHOTO GALLERY: Remembering 9/11