Secret Star Trek: Infinite Bellicosity in Infinite Conflagrations

I really don't know where to start.

I watched the two-part opener of the new Star Trek series and I'm still wondering if I didn't hallucinate it all. I'm still wondering if I didn't have some weird flashback and find myself in an alternate timeline where Star Trek was created by John McCain and Lindsey Graham instead of Gene Roddenberry.

Secret Star Trek: Programs and Predictions

I wanted to make note of this remarkable video, from the popular Film Theory YouTube channel. It took a while but the message I was trying to put across several years ago seems to have finally sunk in here.

And that is behind the disarming velvet glove of Star Trek's seductive techno-futurism and idealistic multiculturalism is the iron fist of militaristic totalitarianism and expansionist imperialism.

Secret Star Trek: The Nine & Trek's True Creators

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first episode of Star Trek to air, 'The Man Trap'. Not one of the more memorable episodes of the series, it still remains a cultural landmark, the launching point of a sci-fi franchise that continues to this day.

And notably it would prominently feature of number of people who'd previously worked on The Outer Limits, including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan, Grace Lee Whitney and Alfred Ryder.

Secret Star Trek: Wrinkles in Time (and Space)

There's been a marked change in my own country in the past 15 years, probably in yours too. It's been reflected in popular culture, which for the most part has grown small, cramped and dyspeptic, even if takes on the illusion of hugeness.

Secret Star Trek: "Demons of Air and Darkness"

It might be tempting to mock the Heaven's Gate and Solar Temple's ambitions to soul-travel to the stars without their bodies, despite the fact that such beliefs go back in human history many thousands of years. 

Secret Star Trek: Levels Above Human

PART ONE / PART TWO / PART THREE 

PART FOUR / PART FIVE / PART SIX 

PART SEVEN / PART EIGHT

If Star Trek is indeed inextricably linked to the human potential movement and a bizarre flying saucer cult, why is that so? What is the purpose of programming these strange themes into what is one of the most successful sci-fi franchises of our time?

Secret Star Trek: "An Outgrowth of The Outer Limits"

Daystar Trek: From Project Vulcan to a projecting Vulcan

This series has taken us from the connections between Star Trek, the flying saucer cult known as the Council of Nine and Esalen, the New Age resort in Big Sur to the dizzying array of connections between Star Trek and the short-lived sci-fi anthology series The Outer Limits. This is no detour. This cuts right to the core of what Star Trek is really all about.  

Secret Star Trek: Playground of the Elementals

Back row: Should've been played by Jasika Nicole,
James van der Kirk, Sylar. Front: Englebert Cabbagepatch

That the team that brought us Fringe also brought us the revised Star Trek is no accident. In fact it was inevitable. Fringe took huge chunks of storyline from The X-Files but it also drew inspiration from a bizarre period in American history when Cold War budgets were financing fringe scientists at Stanford Research Institute, Xerox PARC and other locales in north-central California. 

Secret Star Trek: The Godfather

The connections between the secretive flying saucer/channeling cult known variously as The Council of Nine, Lab-9 or simply The Nine with both Star Trek and the legendary Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California have been known for many years. 

Secret Star Trek: Meet Your New Gods

Just as we learned that something very much like the Council of Nine predates Andrija Puharich's contact with them, so may the presence of the Nine inside Trek prefigure Gene Roddenberry's involvement with Lab-9 in 1975. 

Secret Star Trek: "It Partook of the Occult."

It all started with such a trifling thing; the teaser in the new Star Trek into Darkness film has our heroes saving a primitive race on the planet Nibiru and by doing so creating a cargo cult.

This is exactly the kind of scenario we see when symbolism is injected into a fictional narrative intentionally and consciously; it draws attention to itself, awkwardly.*

Secret Star Trek: "Not Entirely Real"

"Somewhere out there," [Gene] starts off, his eyes widening as he continues, "there's this massive ... entity, this abstract, unknown life force that seems mechanical in nature, although it actually possesses its own highly advanced consciousness. It's a force thousands of times greater than anything intergalactic civilization has ever witnessed. It could be God, it could be Satan, and it's heading toward earth."

-- Star Trek Movie Memories

In the first part of this series we looked at the curious fact that an alien planet that acts as the battlefield in the ninth Star Trek film is virtually identical to the legendary New Age resort, Esalen. In the second part we looked at what connected both Star Trek and Esalen- the bizarre and secretive UFO cult known variously as The Nine, the Council of Nine and Lab-9.

In this chapter we will look at the almost unbelievable latticework of connections between Star Trek, Esalen and The Nine, as well as evidence that there may well be iconic tributes to the late Esalen co-founder Richard Price throughout the Star Trek franchise itself...

Roddenberry didn't really have much luck after Star Trek. Which, truth be told, was considered a failure in its original run. He later penned a feature film starring Rock Hudson, Pretty Maids All in a Row, which was a critical and box office failure. 

Secret Star Trek: The Unknown Nine

In part one of this series, we looked at a strange clue embedded in the now-obligatory ancient astronaut/cargo cult sequence in Star Trek into Darkness, a clue that led back to one of the lesser entries in the franchise's nearly 50 year history, that being the ninth feature film. 

That film takes place on a planet nearly identical to the legendary New Age resort in California, Esalen. 

Secret Star Trek: California Dreaming

You've probably heard (or seen) that the teaser for the new Dawson's Trek movie has James van der Kirk trying to save the primitive people of "Nibiru," whose planet is about to be destroyed by a supervolcano.

Secret Star Trek: The Ultimate Trekkies

 

For such a small and obscure group, Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate cult has had an outsized impact on the culture. Their mass suicide captured the public's imagination in ways that the more grisly horrors at Jonestown, Waco and the Solar Temple did not.

Secret Star Trek: The Oldest, Deadliest Myth

 

You might think being a geek should prime you for the Transhumanism Revolution, but in reality it should also prime you against it. 

For every Six Million Dollar Man there's a race of Cybermen or Borg or take your pick. William Gibson's Sprawl novels presented Transhuman modification as a ubiquitous consumer product, but what part of "dystopian" do you not understand? 

Secret Star Trek: A Really Bad 21st Century

One of the many alien "Gods" from Star Trek

 Summer is the time when my brain goes into standby mode. Actually, that's not true, it's actually the time when I delve back into a particular pop culture obsession and follow different themes in and out of paranormal lore and history.

Secret Star Trek: Susan Oliver, Sex on Wings

The Outer Limits would inspire - and lend creative personnel -- to two other landmark sci-fi series of the 1960s, series whose numinous power continues to overshadow any of the formulaic bilge that has passed itself off as science fiction in recent years. 

Both series were Gnostic to their cores; Astro-Gnostic, to be precise. Perhaps all good sci-fi must be.

Secret Star Trek: Charlie is 17

For a concept created by a self-confessed atheist, there are a hell of a lot of gods in Star Trek. I've been watching selected episodes of Deep Space Nine in a state of utter disbelief (the show is unvarnished religious drama of a very strange variety) but the very same themes we see in that show are abundant in the original series as well. 

Secret Star Trek: Alien Archons

As Star Trek makes its grand re-entry into the forefront of pop culture this year, it's a good time to take a look at the Gnostic themes in the franchise's long history, in particular the astro-Gnostic themes. It seems clear that this meme was hard-wired into the concept from the very beginning, and I'm certainly not the first to say so.