Bond: https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a34540639/sean-connery-eulogy-james-bond-action-hero/
Kirk: https://treknews.net/2017/05/06/star-trek-tng-type-i-phaser/captain-kirk-star-trek-phaser/
© June 26, 2023, the Griot Poet
James Bond,
And James T. Kirk:
The name James is the English translation of the Latin name
Iacomus, derived from the New Testament Greek form of the Hebrew name Ya’aqov (Jacob),
which means supplanter, substitute, or trickster.
Two creatures of Cold War literary fiction,
The 1960s were poised between utopian hope and mutually
assured destruction.
“Bond, James Bond,”
Was the literary child of Ian Fleming,
A writer for Reuters,
A correspondent assigned to Moscow,
He was a promiscuous Naval officer,
Working with MI6 during the “Great War,”
Later, finding itself WWII’s prequel,
He went on dangerous missions for the Queen and country,
He was helped with gadgets by his creative inventor friend,
Quincy (“Q” in literature).
We can assume that James Bond replaced the previous 007, as
the number is not special, just an assigned placeholder in Her Majesty’s Secret
Service.
James T. Kirk,
The “T” was for Tiberius.
Tiberius was the name of the second Roman emperor, Caesar
Augustus,
Gene Roddenberry pitched a “wagon train to the stars,”
To Lucille Ball and Desilu Productions,
Captain Pike was fine,
So was Science Officer Spock,
But his “Number One,” Umma, a woman,
As the second-in-command of a starship, a naval vessel, had to
be reworked,
It was the “age of Aquarius” sixties, and sexism still existed.
Pike was out,
Spock stayed.
Majel Barrett was demoted to Nurse Chapel,
To be second in a starship sickbay to the curmudgeon, Bones
McCoy,
And the big chair on the bridge inhabited by Captain James T.
Kirk.
This James supplanted Christopher.
They added Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (Swahili: “Freedom Star”)
without stating the Communications Officer was third in command.
Both James had swashbuckling swagger:
One had machine guns, the other had phasers,
Both were promiscuous with the ladies,
One had lovers on every continent, the other expanded to
parsecs,
Both were dedicated to the ideals of their respective
governments,
The British Empire was still a thing, and a United Earth
workshopped “Federation” to mask their ambitions and expansion in space.
In their fictional universes,
SPECTRE: Special Executive for Counter-intelligence,
Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion,
It was a metaphor for the KGB: Committee for State Security, the
foreign intelligence and domestic security agency of the Soviet Union,
It was a sleight-of-hand by screenwriters,
Commenting on the Cold War while not making it nuclear hot!
The Klingons were [clearly] the Russians,
Gruff, warlike, and unreasonable,
Twenty-four houses that were warring factions,
A metaphor for eleven time zones and Soviet satellites.
They would start a brawl over their equivalent of selecting
the wrong station with a television remote,
They found it better to drop their rocks and form a
government,
Colonizing and conquering other planets at sub-light,
Until they stole warp technology from the Romulans,
Upgrading from sleeper ships to birds of prey,
The Federation was us,
After WWIII, preambled by The Eugenics Wars in the 1990s by
Khan Noonian Singh,
And his mother’s augmented race of supermen,
Translated from the German Übermensch,
The illusion of perfection that the Nazis preferred.
Spock said, “Superior ability breeds superior ambition,”
Probably recalling the neutron bomb devastation on Vulcan.
The “supermen” devastated our planet.
They toppled our respective governments,
After creating a collective, radiated mess,
They fled on the Sleeper Ship, The SS Botany Bay,
Escaping summary judgment for their crimes against humanity.
After the Phoenix flight of Zephram Cochran,
After the Deus ex Machina discovery by the Vulcans,
The remainder of humanity discovered,
Boarders were bullshit,
So were the hierarchies and gaslighting that formed them.
Now, scientifically advanced and logical,
Only a unified humanity could survive, reverse climate change,
and build starships.
And we lived in these live-action, cartoon universes,
Poised between yet unimagined utopia and the real politick of mutually
assured destruction.
Cheering the swashbuckling supplanters:
Bond. James Bond.
And James T. Kirk.
And for our species’ continuance,
I am hoping that someone like them exists.
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