Welcome to Star Trekking, my attempt to share points of interest and random intersections in the final frontier.
A few weeks ago, Joni Mitchell’s performance of her song Both Sides Now caused tears all across the internet.
I confess I have still not watched that performance (I am trying to shield myself from your human emotions) but for whatever reason, I fell down a rabbit hole that led me to this story, from Joni Mitchell’s website.
While playing the song in Ambler, PA on August 22, 1974, Joni spoke this dialog mid-song while the band continued to play:
Did you ever used to watch that show called Star Trek? (cheers from crowd) Oh... I just had a flash of this show, that I saw while I was singing this tune. It was the only show where Dr. Spock ever got any emotion, right? You remember that one? It was really great because... well, for those of you who never saw it, anyway, the premise is this: they're supposed to go and rescue an agricultural colony that's on some planet. They've been there for a while, they took some horses and they took some grain, they took a lot of that stuff, and they were going to experiment up there, maybe as an alternative planet, you know? When we mess this planet up too bad we'll have to go some place, right?
So they were up there working kind of scientifically and all of a sudden, a message comes to Dr. Spock and the Star Trekkers that this planet is being bombarded by some kind of rays which are, uh, not very good for any kind of animal, vegetable... they're okay for mineral that's it--mineral life can live. So, it's getting bombarded so they all go down to check it out. First thing they notice is that there are no insects around, then they notice there are no animals around. And just when they're about ready to say that there are no people around, they discover this colony of people in the euphoric state, and not only that, when the doctor checks them out, every uh... history of any kind of disease that they've had, including things like appendectomies, has all disappeared, right? And they're in perfect health. Well, what happens is, the reason Dr. Spock suddenly becomes a compassionate-feeling creature is 'cause one day with the youngest and the prettiest member of the scientific team, of course, he's walking through a field and he comes upon a whole kind of row of sunflower-looking creatures. And as he's walking through these sunflower-looking creatures, one of them explodes and shoots things all over him and then you see Dr. Spock lying down on the ground and looking up at the clouds--that's what made me think of this. He said to her, "Wow! I never looked at clouds like that before." (cheers from the crowd) He said, "There's a dinosaur up there, there's..." Then he turned to this girl and he said, "I love you." Meantime, his little radio is going "bleep bleep bleep" and he's supposed to get back to the ship and you know what he does? He shuts it off.
I love that story.
My next band will be called Dr. Spock and the Star Trekkers.
Of course, Leonard Nimoy gave us his own rendition of the song.
While trying to find a video pairing Nimoy’s version of the song with Star Trek images, I learned about vidding, and what was likely the very first “mash up.”
Vidding is a well-established remix practice where fans edit an existing film, music video, TV show, or other performance and set it to music of their choosing. Vids emerged forty years ago as a complicated technological feat involving capturing footage from TV with a VCR and syncing with music—and their makers and consumers were almost exclusively women, many of them queer women.
Possibly the first “vidding” artist was Kandy Fong.
Historians of vidding (both from within vidding and within academia) locate its origins in the form of Kandy Fong’s slide shows made of unaired Star Trek (1966-69) frames repurposed into 35 mm slides.[4] Fong’s slide shows recontexualized stills from Star Trek, setting them to music in particular order to elicit emotion and meaning. Unlike vids of today, these performances were initially only experienced by those in attendance at Star Trek fan conventions and gatherings, and were in some ways more performance art than vid. Like a DJ’s set, they depended on the physical actions of Fong to progress the slides in time to the music. Sometimes Fong using two slide projectors at once to achieve quicker and more controlled editing. Fong recorded her performances; the slide show Both Sides Now is thus now preserved as a video from 1980.
Gene Roddenberry saw the slide presentation and was so enamored of it that he requested a video. And it really is clever - please watch it here: https://criticalcommons.org/view?m=JlGrIe9Aa
You can read more details about the creation of the video at fanlore.org, where Kandy Fong is quoted:
I created it originally about different lifestyles. Starfleet vs Layla...accepted love (which Spock trying to be the perfect Vulcan can't even admit) vs love outside the norm (Kirk). To my mind, Spock had 3 types of love offered to him: romantic love from a female, Love from Mom, and Being in Love (Kirk). He feels something but rejects it, so insists he doesn't know love at all.
Of course we’ve always known there were Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy.
When I put together my new band, Dr. Spock and the Star Trekkers, we will of course cover this tune from that classic album.
And you can bet your sweet bippy that we’ll also cover this.
Rock on, Herbert!
Now who wants to be in my band?
DIRECTIVES
Next week we’ll have a new interview with the author of a brand new Star Trek Cookbook.
Shatner (to my knowledge) has not recorded Both Sides Now. But he did record Spirit in the Sky.
Captain Janeway has seen clouds from both sides - here’s the science.
Data undoubtedly noticed clouds.
You should probably go listen to Joni sing the original now. I am listening as I write this and I am in control of my emotions! I am in control…
Until next time, remember -
The human adventure is just beginning.