Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 75

Myth and the Star Trek Franchise

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passing of his time on board the Enterprise both as an expression of nostalgia and
as a means of articulating his new role. “We were like warriors from the ancient
sagas,“ says Worf. “There was nothing we could not do [. . .]. The Enterprise I
knew is gone. Those were good years. But now it is time for me to move on.” In his
nosialgia for that which has only just finished. Worf has already begun to idealise
The
( n ncKition in terms of ancient legend and heroic deeds. Reference to
Star T r c k \ own past here serves both nostalgia and product differentiation, as
Worf e\ entually accepts his new role on the troubled space station (and actor Michael
Dorn accepts his role on a different series).
Jim Collins argues that in the case of Batman, another franchise that has been
retold over a number of decades, recent retellings have displayed an elevated level
of self-awareness. The new Batman texts display a heightened acknowledgment
of their own textual relations and past (Collins “Batman” 165, 167). In such a selfaware text, Collins argues, there can be no master narrative producing a myth, but
rather only “myth” presented in quotation marks, forming a multitude of quotations
of which audience members will have varying degrees of knowledge (Collins
“Batman” 179-180).
The Star Trek of the 1960s may quote non-Star Trek myths, but a popular
culture mythology based around the series itself had not yet begun. By contrast,
the S ta r Trek of the 1980s and beyond is aware of its own place within the history
of popular culture, an awareness activated whenever it quotes itself. Within such a
context, to retell a story appropriated from an outside source is to simultaneously
and necessarily retell the S ta r Trek story in a new guise. When the S ta r Trek of the
1980s and beyond quotes an external myth, it is automatically at the very least a
twofold endeavour, because it is aware not only of its source material, but also of
its own status as (and deliberate construction of) a form of popular mythology.
S ta r Trek not only contextualises outside myths within S ta r Trek's, fictional realm,
but also attempts to contextualise its own mythology through that quotation. The
Star Trek: Voyager episode “Favorite Son” (Rush 1997), which retells the encounter
of Odysseus with the Sirens, is an example of this form of mutual contextualising.
Sci-Fi Sirens: “Favorite Son” and the Odyssey
Star Trek: Voyager is the most recent of the Star Trek sequel series. Set in the
twenty-fourth century, it centers around the starship Voyager, which has been flung
into distant space by a now-dead alien. The crew of Voyager, led by Captain Kathryn
Janeway, embark on a seventy year journey home to Earth. The third season episode
“Favorite Son” revises Odysseus’ confrontation with the Sirens from Homer’s
Odyssey (c.750-700 BCE), a Greek epic that recounts individual heroic encounters
occurring within the overall structure of the return home by Odysseus, his crew and
his ship. In adapting the Sirens episode, “Favorite Son” situates Voyager'm the context
of Greek myth as well as situating Greek myth in the context of Star Trek.