Holodorks or Visor Envy
By Sean Margaret Wagner
Televisions were much smaller long ago
in the bygone era of 1993. Reception was much spottier, too, and the sound
quality was not nearly so … Dolby surround. You might have to fiddle with your
antennae to get the picture to stand still in 1993. Some of you might say, “That was the year I was born,” and I
will scoff, because surely there can be no creatures as young as you. But I
digress. Our technologies may have been a shadow of your current, twenty years
sleeker and more intuitive devices, but we knew touch-screens and Google Glass-ware
were in our future. They were there already, inhabiting our fuzzy screens as
all of us tuned into Star Trek: The Next Generation. Well, maybe not all of us,
but at least three eleven-year-old girls, drawn together by our lack of
athleticism, scholarliness and ability to read social cues. Glued to the
television each week: I, with the thick glasses and mouth-crank speech
impediment, Sarah the heavyset and asthmatic, and Deena, tiny, black and soft
spoken. We founded our own Starfleet against the specter of advancing algebra
and well-dressed children who seemed to sniff out our thrift store clothes.
I crafted our little communicator
buttons out of cardboard and the backs of clip on earrings I’d found in a
Tupperware box full of them in my grandmother’s craft closet. They clipped nicely
onto a t-shirt neck. ‘She’ll never miss these’, I thought as I pocketed them
and a number of doll eyes. We’d stake out a ridge in the parking lot snow mound
just off the playground at recess. We may have had the idea of enacting out own
space adventures, but in all honesty we never made it past bartering who got to
be whom. Deena would swiftly call dibs on the empathic mind-reading abilities
of part human-part psychically endowed alien ship’s counselor Troi. Of all of
us, she was the peacekeeper; it made sense. However, Sarah and I would narrow
our gaze and haggle over our favorites:
“I want Geordi’s souped-up visor
vision.”
“You got the visor last time, you
should get Android strength this time.”
“I was the one who brought my dad’s
wrap-around sunglasses, I get to wear them. You could be Wesley Crusher, he’s
the smartest.”
“No fair!”
At no point in our arguing did it ever
occur to us that we were in battle for anything other than the finest super-powers.
The heroic attributes of futuristic well-adjusted teammates. In the future it
seemed, ailments, challenges and potentially debilitating neuroses were distilled
into that individual’s best quality. A blind character, Geordi LaForge, who
pilots a vessel and is given the ability to see the entire human spectrum and
beyond. A machine, Data, performing complex operations free of any trace of human
fear or doubt. How about alien with distinctive face ridges, Worf, embraced
without question by the very community of people who might’ve once been his
enemies, several short franchise films ago? The biggest bad guy in this
universe was homogeny; join and be one with the Borg (you really have no
choice)!
These characters were wholly accepted,
beyond their battles, and esteemed in a way many of us are not. While we argued
for the benefits of that pair of wrap-around sunglasses- I mean, visor, I don’t
imagine any of us would have found ourselves demanding the role of Geordi sans
his visor. Nor would we have probably found emotionless banter as endearing had
it not come from android programming, but as it usually does: a product of
brain chemistry. And even thousands of years of advancement couldn’t deter
heavily made-up extras from pointing to the motley crew invading their planet
via shimmery beams and demanding to know “What is that?”
The impression we absorbed
unconsciously back in 1993 was that forming an enviable squad was the result of
tireless effort, not just the dumb luck of holding a scratched pair of
wrap-arounds. If we three eleven-year-olds could have taken our own shortcomings
and traded them up, I’m sure we would have jumped at the chance. But think of
any episode of Star Trek where the guest player is handed some magical device
to make them younger, powerful or more fun at parties. They are made mighty for
fleeting moments, then brought low by their own ill-preparedness. Meanwhile,
our favorite spandex officers would take every temporal loop in stride, and
immediately return to work on that malfunctioning warp drive. You never know
when the captain’s going to give you a warm pat on the shoulder and ask you to
‘engage’.
Sean Margaret is a Chicago playwright,
musical bookwriter/lyricist and storyteller. You can find her on Twitter: @SMargaretWagner
Read more at Sporkability.org
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