Future Perfect: How Star Trek Conquered Planet Earth by Greenwald Jeff

Author:Greenwald, Jeff [Greenwald, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2016-08-06T16:00:00+00:00

ISLANDS IN THE SKY

“Way, way up in the sky there’s a strange sound... and a bright light com­ing through the haze. What the hell is it? It gets closer, and closer.... You can’t help yourself, you have to see what it is. You’re scared, but curious...”

The date is April 5, 2063. Rocket scientist Zefram Cochrane has suc­cessfully completed the world’s first warp-speed flight, an event that has commanded the attention of a passing Vulcan starship. Earth, long a planet of Snapple-guzzling savages, is suddenly a force to be reckoned with—and our neighbors have put us on their planner.

“Okay, bring up the interactive lights, please. . . . Bring up the Ritter fans...”

Jonathan Frakes directs through a megaphone, barking the extras through the title scene of First Contact. He’s shooting a “reaction shot”: The ragged denizens of Sheepshit, Montana, awakened by what sounds like an immense blow-dryer, stagger from their shacks and Quonset huts to see what’s happening. In the script, they’re staring up in won­der, watching the Vulcans touch down. In reality they look like imbe­ciles, staring at a row of blindingly bright spotlights as giant fans blast dust into their faces.

“... and down. And... Cut! Break!”

The spotlights fade. Frakes drops the megaphone, hops off his chair and stretches like a Rottweiler. It’s two in the morning, and his breath steams in the frigid air. A mile below, the L.A. suburbs sparkle like neb­ulae. Our bright, busy knoll of Angeles National Forest feels surreal, an island in the sky.

The extras melt away, hands in their pockets, heading for the coffee and cookies in the commissary tent. A wired, weary tension hangs over the group; they’ll be shooting until dawn.

I grab a cheeseburger and wander back onto the darkened set, com­ing to rest against a massive fiberglass base (all the audience will see of the alien starship). The whole first contact scene, Vulcan hand greeting and all, already seems a cliché. What is it with exterrestrials? As the millennium approaches, Hollywood can’t sponsor enough alien visita­tions: Independence Day, Mars Attacks, Men in Black, Alien Resur­rection, The Fifth Element, Contact. Aliens sell Hostess Ding Dongs on television commercials, and gaze at us like guppies from the cover of weekly newsmagazines. They inspire citywide celebrations, and tailgate passing comets. People are literally dying to meet them: Thomas Nichols, the fifty-nine-year-old brother of Nichelle Nichols (Lieu­tenant Uhura on the original Star Trek) was among the Heaven’s Gate suicides.

This rash of alien-infused activity is vaguely disturbing. It’s as if our collective unconscious was preparing us for something. My thoughts again turn to poor Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, knee-deep in dirt on his living room floor: This means something.

Okay. But what! The signals we’re channeling are ambiguous. Who do we set the table for? Will our visitors be the face-sucking, brain- blasting baddies of Alien, Independence Day, and Mars Attacks? The Raid-bait stars of Men in Black and Starship Troopers? The ineffable and mysterious overlords of Contact and The Fifth Element?

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.