Print this page
Twenty-third in a series of posts, each one analyzing a single Captain Kirk scene from the Star Trek canon.
Kirk’s ghost | “The Tholian Web” | Star Trek: The Original Series | Season 3, Episode 9 | November 1968
Around twelve minutes into “The Tholian Web,” there is a moment of introspection and quiet helplessness that grips James T. Kirk. The camera slowly pans and zooms out as he stands almost motionless on the bridge of a spectral ship he was meant to rescue, several bodies tangled up with one another on the deck around him. His glittered spacesuit evokes memories of textbook circulatory system diagrams. He is alone.
Framed by a wider shot now, Kirk shifts a furrowed gaze to look at nothing in particular — a deceased crewmember at his feet, something off-camera to the left. The ship around him is fading away, but he says nothing into his communicator as the Enterprise crew struggles vainly to beam him back to safety. The soundtrack during these moments goes perfectly and purposefully silent, and we are silent ourselves for a moment, barely breathing, left to draw our own bleak conclusions as the captain dissolves into some new infinity.
The Enterprise crew falls victim to a gathering madness, and at random they attack each other with psychotic rage. Kirk’s ghost appears thrice, visibly attempting to speak but making no sound on this plane of reality, drawing religious reactions from his crew but ultimately written off as febrile hallucinations caused by some unseen contagion. It is a weakness in the fabric of space, reports a glum Dr. McCoy. Our minds are being torn apart by the weakness that surrounds us.
Perhaps this is the state of things as we know it: a collective faith in ourselves cast aside by a space made of weak stuff, a universe bereft of real leadership.
But I think we know better, here in Star Trek’s distant past. Our universe never had a Kirk (he hasn’t been born yet), and as we watch the dissolution of order and logic onboard the now Kirk-less Enterprise we are reminded of just how powerful the absence of the man is; even Spock seems a bit worried. A leader in his mold is hard to come by, but the harsh reality is that a universe with nary a Kirk is in serious trouble.
It is a hopeless thing to stare at the ghosts of great men, as we so often do, and expect them to lead. Perhaps it is better to admit that it is not the fault of the space surrounding us, but our own weakness that drives us mad.
POSTS IN THIS SERIES: Justice or vengeance? by DAFNA PLEBAN | Kirk teaches his drill thrall to kiss by MARK KINGWELL | “KHAAAAAN!” by NICK ABADZIS | “No kill I” by STEPHEN BURT | Kirk browbeats NOMAD by GREG ROWLAND | Kirk’s eulogy for Spock by ZACK HANDLEN | The joke is on Kirk by PEGGY NELSON | Kirk vs. Decker by KEVIN CHURCH | Good Kirk vs. Evil Kirk by ENRIQUE RAMIREZ | Captain Camelot by ADAM MCGOVERN | Koon-ut-kal-if-fee by FLOURISH KLINK | Federation exceptionalism by DAVID SMAY | Wizard fight by AMANDA LAPERGOLA | A million things you can’t have by STEVE SCHNEIDER | Debating in a vacuum by JOSHUA GLENN | Klingon diplomacy by KELLY JEAN FITZSIMMONS | “We… the PEOPLE” by TRAV S.D. | Brinksmanship on the brink by MATTHEW BATTLES | Captain Smirk by ANNIE NOCENTI | Sisko meets Kirk by IAN W. HILL | Noninterference policy by GABBY NICASIO | Kirk’s countdown by PETER BEBERGAL | Kirk’s ghost by MATT GLASER | Watching Kirk vs. Gorn by JOE ALTERIO | How Spock wins by ANNALEE NEWITZ
SCIENCE FICTION ON HILOBROW Peggy Nelson on William Shatner as HiLo Hero | Greg Rowland on Leonard Nimoy as HiLo Hero | Peggy Nelson on William Shatner in Incubus | Matthew Battles on enlarging the Trek fanfic canon | Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague, serialized | Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail, serialized | Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt, serialized | H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook, serialized | Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins, serialized | William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, serialized | Radium Age Supermen | Radium Age Robots | Radium Age Apocalypses | Radium Age Telepaths | Radium Age Eco-Catastrophes | Radium Age Cover Art (1) | SF’s Best Year Ever: 1912 | Radium Age Science Fiction Poetry | Enter Highbrowism | Bathybius! Primordial ooze in Radium Age sf | War and Peace Games (H.G. Wells’s training manuals for supermen) | J.D. Beresford | Algernon Blackwood | Edgar Rice Burroughs | Karel Čapek | Buster Crabbe | August Derleth | Arthur Conan Doyle | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | Hermann Hesse | Aldous Huxley | Inez Haynes Irwin | Alfred Jarry | Jack Kirby (Radium Age sf’s influence on) | Gaston Leroux | David Lindsay | Jack London | H.P. Lovecraft | A. Merritt | Maureen O’Sullivan | Sax Rohmer | Paul Scheerbart | Upton Sinclair | Clark Ashton Smith | E.E. “Doc” Smith | Olaf Stapledon | John Taine | H.G. Wells | Jack Williamson | Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz | S. Fowler Wright | Philip Gordon Wylie | Yevgeny Zamyatin | AND LOTS MORE
CHECK OUT HILOBOOKS: In 2012-13, HiLobrow is serializing ten overlooked works of science fiction from the genre’s (1904-33) Radium Age; and HiLoBooks is publishing them in paperback! Here are the first six titles: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague (in May, Introduction by Matthew Battles; PURCHASE NOW), Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail and “As Easy as A.B.C.” (in June, Introduction by Matthew De Abaitua and Afterword by Bruce Sterling; PURCHASE NOW), Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt (in August, Introduction by Joshua Glenn and Afterword by Gordon Dahlquist; PURCHASE NOW), H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook (in October, Introduction by James Parker; PURCHASE NOW), Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins (in November, Introduction by Tom Hodgkinson; PURCHASE NOW), and William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land (in April 2013, Afterword by Erik Davis; PURCHASE NOW).
The fault lies in our spaces and ourselves, eh? True; silence is the strongest expression in Shatner’s vocabulary, after all, and in Kirk’s — urging you to fill in and follow along as he deliberately utters and gives meaningful pause. The truly good fathers want you to leap the void.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is Kirk?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying Kirk? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Kirks, too, decompose. Kirk is dead. Kirk remains dead. And we have killed him.”
So it’s possible to revise Nietzsche with *wonderful* results; I did not see that coming :-).
Great essay. The trick is (perhaps) to try to maintain collective faith in ourselves *despite any weaknesses of outer or inner space? We must believe in our inner James T. Kirk! He may be a ghost, or lost in transporter limbo between broadcast and reality, he may be weirdly encased in ancient suits of metaphor – but he is trying to speak. We. need. to just. Listen!
Poetry, Peggy. Symbol-slam. Preamble to a three-century resurrection note. State of the Universe speech. It’s non-regulation, but it makes me happy.
It makes me happy too.
The ghosts of great men. . . . This series is certainly hitting the highlights. Is to envision a Trekian universe, without a Kirk, to approach the brink of madness and despair, as Matt suggests? I recall the claustrophobic feel of the remorselessly spooling-out Tholian web, the horror of suffocation in the aparational Kirk, and the utter alien-ness of the Tholian Commander.
But not even the silence of interspace/interphase could stop Kirk’s quirky emoting (“He beckons!”). The sense of loss is palpable among the crew (and viewer) and Kirk himself seems trapped in a silent scream, a Marley’s lamentation, having lost the power to interfere for good in human matters.
At the close, Spock’s and McCoy’s sheepish fib about not viewing “Kirk’s Last Tape” begs the question, why were ye fearful, o ye of little faith? Little faith in themselves, in the absence of Kirk. Called to their better selves through Kirk’s message, they ultimately do him proud (as he expected) and indeed rescue him. But even there, Kirk is the unifying field, his faith in Spock and in McCoy as individuals, his choosing of them as his friends and confidants are all the recommendation either finally needs for the other.
Kirk knows that his duties as an archetype require him to be a composite, and Spock and McCoy are the best components a guy could ask for. Kirk as “unifying field” counter to the Tholians’ simple binding grid, brilliant, Esoth. The contrast of watching vigilantly in “Arena” (essay’d today elsewhere) and standing by helplessly (or maybe with a different kind of power) in this ep is instructive…
So, so good, Matt.