Where did “The Full Body Project” come from?

I was doing a seminar with some earlier work, and a lady in the audience came up and said, “I’m a model, and I’m a different body type than what you’ve been working with. Would you be interested in working with me?” I discussed it with my wife, who is very much involved in what I do and very much involved in contemporary art — she’s a trustee at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. She encouraged me to go ahead and do it. I was concerned with how to photograph this kind of figure because I simply was not used to it. I shot her in black-and-white. I was quite satisfied with what I got, because I thought she looked like a marble sculpture in black-and-white.

I began to become conscious of this question of body size and body image in our culture. I became more aware of what we’re bombarded with in magazines, newspapers and television commercials — “Lose 10 pounds in three weeks! Eat and be thin!” It’s incredible if you stop and think about it. I found this burlesque group in San Francisco called the Fat-Bottom Review. I made arrangements to photograph them in San Francisco and then again in Los Angeles.

Did the fact that you were photographing burlesque performers, who probably have strong personalities and a great deal of confidence, influence the project?

It made it very easy for them to be photographed. They’re comfortable with their bodies and they are performers, so once I gave them some direction, they were able to get to it very comfortably. We had a terrific time. There was music playing, there was dancing. They were joyous, and they were comfortable. They’re a terrific bunch of people.

Should we see your models as erotic or sexual subjects?

No matter who my models are, I don’t work sexually. I’m not thinking sexually. I’m thinking about concept, lighting and composition. If it comes off sexually, so be it. That’s up to the viewer. But I believe I’m not objectifying these women. Objectifying [occurs] when you put forth a figure of a woman that’s intended to titillate and be seductive. I don’t do that.

As you mentioned, in some way these portraits were uncharted waters for you –

And uncharted waters for the viewer.

Yes, but despite the unusual subject and form, the work seems very referential.

Yes, definitely referential. I use classic images and contemporary iconic images as a starting-off point. There’s a very famous photograph by Herb Ritts of five famous fashion models sitting nude on the floor. I sent that photograph to the group in San Francisco and said I wanted to replicate it with them. I also sent a Helmut Newton diptych of four models walking toward the camera — one side in high-fashion clothes and the other totally nude. I started with those as jumping-off points. The second time I photographed [the burlesque performers], I sent them images of Matisse’s “Dance,” Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase” and “The Three Graces,” which was done by many artists, including Raphael about 500 years ago. These became iconic references for us. [It was] intriguing to find out what a different contemporary approach to those images might look like.

Which other artists were reference points for you?

The development of ideas came from the project itself, not from inspiration from other photographers or artists. I thought, “OK I’ve got these women to shoot. Now what would be interesting to do?” I think the first impulse I had was the Herb Ritts photographs, because that was so much about fashion models of a body size and shape that is sold as the ideal. Once I latched on to that, then the rest of it came –the Helmut Newton, Matisse, Duchamp and the Raphael.

And what did you end up learning about the ideals of female beauty?

The great thing for me about working in the arts, whatever the endeavor is and especially in this work I’ve been doing with photography for the past 15 years, is the educational process. As soon as I get in touch with a concept that intrigues me, I suddenly find information exploding all around me. You pick up messages like vibes in the air. I could have gone my whole life without paying much attention to the question of body image and what women are experiencing. This particular project has put me richly and intensely in touch with this cultural question of beauty. Women are being sold a concept of beauty. In other countries and at other times, and even in this country at other times, a robust woman was considered beautiful. In other countries, these women would be considered affluent.

My grandmother grew up with that idea, that larger weight signaled affluence. We’re only a few generations removed from those standards of beauty. But, in light of medical concerns about obesity, how do you respond to those who would say your subjects are unhealthy because of their weight?

I’m concerned about the health issues, but there are mixed messages right now. It’s clear obesity has its dangers. Diabetes is a possibility. Heart trouble is a possibility. Knee problems from carrying the weight. But then again, there was a medical report that came out just a couple weeks ago saying people with additional poundage are less likely to get certain diseases. Then there’s the alternative question about anorexia and bulimia. Look, the fact is that young girls 12 and 13 are already becoming disenchanted with their bodies. They’re looking in the mirror and struggling to achieve something that, for many of them, is unattainable. You’re born with the body that you’re born with, and you can work and diet all you want, and for many women, it’s still unlikely you’ll attain the look that advertisers say you should.

What do you expect the average art audience will learn or take away from this project?

I didn’t set out to teach anybody anything with this work. I set out to explore a cultural phenomenon. If it creates conversation, if it creates discussion, that’s fine. Some women have told me they feel liberated by these photographs. I’m very happy to hear that. Joy Behar, from “The View,” held this book up and said, “These pictures make me feel svelte.” I love that. I think it’s wonderful.

Most people are just now learning about your photography. When did you become interested?

I became enchanted with photography when I was about 13 years old. I still have the family camera that I used in the early 1940s. I still have a photograph I took of my grandfather that I printed myself in 1943 or 1944. So that photograph is over 60 years old. In the early ’70s I went back to school to study photography seriously at UCLA. I had finished “Star Trek” and a couple years on “Mission: Impossible.” I was looking at the possibility of changing careers. I decided that I didn’t want to do commercial photography, I wanted to do fine art photography. I had a very interesting teacher, Robert Heineken, who’s legendary in photography circles. He taught me about conceptual photography: “Why are you taking these pictures?”

“The Full Body Project” isn’t your first go at fine art photography.

The previous book that I did, “Shekhina,” was about the feminine aspect of God and was based on Jewish mythology. Both books, interestingly enough, are about the empowerment of women.

You’ve transitioned between so many artistic media. Do you have a consistent audience?

The audience for my acting and directing is quite different from the audience for my artwork. For the millions of people who are aware of my acting and directing work, you can’t just say, “Now come on over here into the art world.” It doesn’t work that way.

I can see how having iconic status in one area could be both blessing and a curse.

I have work in several museums now, and it’s not because I’m an actor. There are people now who are collecting my photography who don’t know me as an actor and director. [Laughs.] There are people who don’t know “Star Trek”!

It’s been more than 30 years since that photo was taken. And just as long since I’ve been to a “Star Trek” convention. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the series this fall, I wanted to go with my mother, who now earns an income from signing TV stills of herself at these events.

The gala convention of the year was at the Las Vegas Hilton. It’s an appropriate venue considering the hotel already offers “Star Trek: The Experience,” where guests battle the Borg and play slots while getting drunk at Quark’s Bar & Grill. The Vegas convention attracts people from 38 countries and every state in the union.

I’ve never truly understood why my mother’s character tugs so viscerally on her fans. I’m also curious where this type of fame sits for Mom, who still yearns for greater glories. For me, her role has been a conversation ice-breaker, a kitschy factoid and a nuclear option for when I’m in trouble.

My mother, Arlene Martel, began her career at 18 on Broadway where she starred in “Uncle Willie” with Norman Fell (who later played Mr. Roeper on “Three’s Company”). An affair with James Dean ensued, a marriage to an actor, a few thrown plates, another marriage to another actor, and in 1969, my birth and the role that would change her life: T’Pring in “Star Trek’s” “Amok Time.”

In “Amok Time,” Captain Kirk discovers that Spock’s on a mating cycle and is basically suffering from Vulcan PMS (he flings a bowl of Vulcan soup at a nurse). The USS Enterprise lands on Vulcan to assuage Spock and they discover their senior officer has an arranged bride. My mom. And she doesn’t really dig Spock. She digs another Vulcan named Stonn. To avoid having to marry Spock, she chooses Captain Kirk as Spock’s opponent in the combat ritual for the right to her hand. Knowing that win or lose she’d get to be with Stonn, Mom displays a shrewd logic. Spock has apparently killed Captain Kirk and everyone’s solemn and sad. However, it turns out that the wily Dr. McCoy just shot Kirk up with a neuroparalyzer halfway through the battle. In the end, Mom reveals to Spock why she chose Kirk instead of Stonn. She elicits a humbling “that’s flawlessly logical” compliment from the famous Vulcan, who, in a rare display of emotion, is happy to discover that Kirk is still alive upon his return to the Enterprise.

Why this episode has remained one of the most popular is perhaps due to the high drama of Kirk’s assumed death, Spock’s uncharacteristic behavior and perhaps my mom for being both hot and flawlessly logical. Indeed, it gets a bit awkward when the droves of nerds I’ve met throughout my life confess that my mother was (or still is) a source of inspired masturbation. I imagine the high school outcast creating motherboards in his garage while harboring fantasies of a woman who could beat him at chess.

At the convention, I make my way past flocks of Borgs, a few gothic introverts and a slew of Kirk look-alikes in varying degrees of obesity. I find the “celebrity” signing room. For the most part, the room has pockets of hardcore fans, including a high density of paraplegics clutching memorabilia. Some of the actors wait at their table full of photos like whores on display in a red light district. There’s Felix Silla, a midget who played Twiki on “Buck Rogers,” his feet dangling whimsically from the chair. There’s Celeste Yarnall, a former “Star Trek” babe who once dated Elvis and now writes books about holistic pet care. There’s Grace Lee Whitney, a woman who published a libidinous memoir about whom she shagged and the spiritual aftermath. It seems that anyone who has even remote ties to the show has a table full of photos and a cash box. But mostly these are actors who would be working if they could get a job.

My mother is in the corner reading Deepak Chopra. I overhear two Captain Picards debate whether my mom was the Denise Richards of her day as they flip through old photos of her in a bikini. While I vacillate between discomfort and pride, I notice her table is teeming with eccentricity. There’s a Stephen Hawking look-alike at her side mumbling something about priapism. On her other side sits Pandora, a former Air Force intelligence officer, now a 6-foot transgendered blond with real breasts and a phaser. She’s in a mauve sateen dress and is flanked by two blue wings.

“Is that your phaser?” I ask.

“Sure is,” she says with a husky baritone and moves it so I can sit.

My mother reaches over and hugs me.

“This is my son Jod, everyone. Jod is a fantastic poet.”

Her table of minions all smile.

“I was just talking to Pandora about writing a book because she’s had such an incredible life — and still does. I thought it would be very important to write a book about her. You could collaborate with her, Jod. Don’t you think?”

My mother has a unique way of making everything seem incandescent. When this happens, I’m often put on the spot to join the endeavor or risk being labeled “resistant.” If I say no, she will express her despair at another of my lost opportunities to change the world.

A redheaded women walks over to me and rubs highly concentrated peppermint oil on my clavicle. “It has the equivalent of 36 cups of peppermint tea,” she says.

“Thanks.”

“Peppermint oil is a wonderful tonic. It helps with elimination. Your mother tells me you have trouble with your bowels?”

“No more than the next guy.”

“You know, elimination issues often have a lot to do with holding on to unprocessed emotions.”

The graying paraplegic by her side introduces himself to me as the man who conceived of the mathematical formula behind Excel spreadsheets. “You have a huge aura,” he says.

“I do?”

“Yes, I read auras. Most people have a thin cord of energy; yours is thick and red, almost superfluous.”

“Thanks.”

My girlfriend, who’d never been to a convention, now joins us after finding refuge in a hot dog. He tells her, “You are very lucky to be with a man who has an aura of this type.”

“Thanks,” she says.

If you’re a “Star Trek” agnostic, like I am, all you can say in these situations is “thanks”; the true agnostic just thanks people for their input, then privately envies their absolutism.

After a few moments of calm, a middle-aged man waddles up to the table in cargo shorts and a shabby T-shirt. He says he’s a psychic from Chicago. My mother greets him as if she’s known him for decades, but of course they just met. After some pleasantries he declares, “I’m one of the foremost speakers in America right now.” My girlfriend and I wait in vain for him to elaborate. My mom asks him to perform a “love test” on my girlfriend and me. Before he can respond, she leans over to us and whispers, “He usually charges $500 for this.” Not being sure what a “love test” might involve, I visually frisk him to ensure this doesn’t involve a catheter and/or the wanton loss of semen. Because we are hung over and put on the spot, we relent. After a series of questions such as “Are you cold and selfish or sensuous and romantic?” he then tells us to pick various numbers. The results are that we both have very low self-esteem because we “keep looking at each other,” that I’m humorless, and that my girlfriend is not really in love with me. It was the saddest psychic reading I’ve never asked for (except for the one in which I die abroad from gout).

While this advice is being dispensed, he continues to hard sell us his book on numerology and the soul. I ask him what he thinks of “Star Trek” conventions. “I think it’s sad,” he says. “You see these actors hanging on to their celebrity when they should just pack it up.” I realize the cult of personality my mother wields may not have anything to do with playing T’Pring, as she has always intrinsically drawn in the eccentric. Her fame is not what makes her interesting; it makes me interesting.

With my breathing clipped by the power of the peppermint oil we decide to walk around a bit and take in the sights. We make our way past phaser replicas, dolls of Uhura and an entire family of tribbles to the International Federation of Trekkers, the only official fan club of the show. The federation devotes all its activities to charity and claims the creator’s son, Gene Roddenberry Jr., as one of its members. The members are called cadets and they operate within a “chain of command.”

I ask a friendly cadet named Juanita about the difference between a “Trekkie” and a “Trekker.” She explains, “A Trekkie is someone who just watches the show. A Trekker is someone who lives the dream.”

“What’s the dream?”

She thinks about this long and hard. “The dream is to meet new beings, make nice and try to make some friends.”

In the end, a Trekker believes in the basic goodwill of the universe. In a world of mixed messages and hyper-contradictions, most people are searching for an ideology that simply tells them to be kind to others. When you consider the Byzantine rules of the world’s major religions, the Trekkers may be on to something. Though in some sense, it seems sad that there’s such a dearth of inspiration for how to be kind that people have to turn to “Star Trek” reruns.

I find my mom back at her table full of photos. The crowds have thinned out. The midget is sleeping at his table. My mother is despondent after a tussle with a fellow actor about the splitting of profits. She calls her a “schmata.” I wonder how long she can do this. She always spoke of her vision of accepting an Academy Award. I ask her if she still dreams of getting one.

“Absolutely. And I believe it will happen,” she says.

And I know it’s her faith I admire a thousand times more than her TV fame. But I worry about her the way any son worries about a mother without a secure livelihood. She doesn’t seem worried. An actor has to have something different about them to survive. Is it delusional self-entitlement? Or just inexorable human will?

A woman approaches the table with her folksy father. He’s blushing and quiet.

“Go ahead, Dad,” she says.

“Well, I just want to tell you that you sure are pretty.”

My mother smiles and says, “Thanks. I feel pretty.”

The SciFi Channel emits space operas faster than Tom Cruise gets engaged. Some of these series use the “rag-tag band of misfits” premise so beloved of American pop culture; others more or less mimic “Star Trek” by sending off a team of earnest multicultural middlemen from some indistinctly virtuous intergalactic federation on weekly missions that amount to a string of pat civics lessons. All feature stock figures, including but not limited to, the wisecracking maverick who always comes through in the end, the barely pacified (and usually quite hairy) noble savage, the goddess/nature-worshipping telepath, the pseudohuman troubled by the rumblings of genuine emotion, the tech guy, and of course freakish aliens, who, however bizarre their reproductive processes and skin textures, will, if female, be endowed with sizable breasts and skin-tight costumes.

These shows have ranged from the passable (“Farscape”) to the appalling (“Lexx,” a sort of R-rated “H.R. Pufnstuf”), and without a doubt each of them has its own cadre of fire-breathing hardcore fans, just as the hokey original “Battlestar Galactica” does. For someone never that thrilled by original “Star Trek” (or any of its permutations), they hold little charm. So what put the new “Battlestar Galactica” at the top of my Season Pass queue? Let me count the ways.

It began with Starbuck, the best pilot among the marines on the battlestar, which is the last remaining warship belonging to the remnants of the human race. In the series’ back story, humanity has been at war with the cylons, robots that have rebelled against their makers. The cylons went into hiding, then returned with a devastating sneak attack facilitated by their recently developed ability to simulate the appearance of human beings. Only 50,000 people have survived from 12 planetary colonies, and most of them are on an assortment of civilian ships, now on the run from the cylons, with only Galactica to protect them. The battlestar’s fighter pilots are crucial to the future of the species.

Starbuck is blond, cocky, insubordinate, a cigar-chomping, card-playing showoff; another stock figure, really, with roots as far back as Shakespeare’s Hotspur — if not for a clever twist. In the original series, Starbuck was played by Dirk Benedict; in the new version, it’s Katee Sackhoff, a gender switch that knocks the character well out of type. Starbuck’s no kick-boxing babe in stiletto heels, either. Like all the other pilots — in fact, like all the soldiers aboard Galactica — she wears a uniform, a flight suit over a tank top-T-shirt combo, a distinctive Galactica military outfit that makes everyone who wears it look buff; Starbuck is a tomboy.

She’s also the only TV character who’s ever sent me back to a fascinating book, “Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety,” by Harvard professor and Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber, in search of the key to her appeal. Technically, Starbuck isn’t a cross-dresser, or even a tomboy, because the society she lives in doesn’t seem to subscribe to our own gender roles. Civilian women sometimes wear skirts and pumps, it’s true, but the military appears to be seamlessly integrated. No one ever accuses Starbuck of being insufficiently feminine, although her friend and immediate superior, Capt. Lee “Apollo” Adama, has complained that she doesn’t bathe often enough.

Still, Starbuck (whose real name is Kara Thrace; Starbuck and Apollo are pilot call names), is a tomboy by the standards of our world, and we all know what happens to a tomboy in pop culture. She tries to be one of the guys while harboring a secret, unrequited crush on her best guy friend, but the guy doesn’t even see her as a girl until she has the sense to put on a dress, lipstick and a suitably demure manner at the big dance, whereupon he is wowed. Well, you can scratch that scenario. Late in the first season, Starbuck did put on a dress for a party, and Apollo was duly wowed, but he was already in love with her before that, and she wound up in bed with another man anyway, and then that guy fell for her, too. This is one tomboy who never has trouble getting laid.

What makes Starbuck so hot? Sometimes a girl dressed like a boy is sexier than any boy or girl in the “proper” outfit can be. According to Garber, this type of figure — she calls it “the changeling boy,” a theatrical staple from the Renaissance to “Peter Pan” — is like a mirage, someone who hovers impossibly between genders. No one can possess Cesario, the boy that Shakespeare’s Viola disguises herself as in “Twelfth Night,” because Cesario doesn’t really exist. Considering how most people feel about what they can’t have, it’s no surprise that Cesario is irresistible. Sackhoff’s Starbuck has some of the same allure, which is why she looks so much better swaggering around in her T-shirt than she does in a dress.

The show’s creators like to fool around with Starbuck’s androgynous glamour. Last season, when she crash-landed on a barren planet and had to hot-wire a cylon raider to get back to Galactica, it turned out that the enemy’s ships are as much animal as they are machine. Starbuck crawled inside to find a gooey cavity lined with weird tissues, sinews and organs, all of which she was able to sort out and operate, Boy Scout-style, by keeping in mind the principle that “every flying machine has four basic controls: power, pitch, yaw and roll.” When she got the raider back to Galactica, she told Apollo that the plane was a “she”; then in the next episode, she starting calling it a “he.” At any rate, she’s the only one who can fly it.

Starbuck does have her problems, but so does everyone else on this show, which brings us to another strength of the new “Battlestar Galactica,” the sort of thing that makes viewers want to stick around after being drawn in by the flashy and new. This is a character-based drama, not something you often see on a spaceship. In a way, once you get past the trappings (which aren’t very high-tech to begin with — Galactica is an outdated model that escaped the cylon’s crippling computer virus because it wasn’t networked), the series has more in common with “The West Wing” than it does with “Star Trek.” Granted, trying to lead a small group of fugitive survivors on a flight across the universe differs a bit from running a stable terrestrial superpower, but as Machiavelli would probably point out if he were still around, the dilemmas of power are surprisingly consistent.

The remnants of humanity are led by two individuals: Cmdr. William Adama, captain of the Galactica (and father of Apollo) and President Laura Roslin, the former secretary of education and 30-somethingth in line for the presidency before the cylons attacked and killed everyone ahead of her. Edward James Olmos’ Adama is in most ways your basic fictional military hero, what we imagine we want our leaders to be in the dream world of American popular entertainment: a tough, decisive straight-shooter, the proverbial man who does what has to be done. But, as tradition dictates, Adama’s emotions are never entirely submerged and are sometimes allowed to overwhelm his judgment (“This time it’s personal!”) because, as in our real lives, we want to be shown that our leaders are both better than us and the same as us.

Roslin is something else, something you rarely see on television, a consummate politician who is nevertheless treated sympathetically. As played by Mary McDonnell (the performance is similar to another great McDonnell role, the mother in “Donnie Darko”), she is a woman whose composure almost never ruffles, whose strength lies her ability to dissemble expertly and act expediently when necessary. In the first season, when a vice presidential election was forced by a dangerous political opponent, she switched her backing from the more qualified candidate (who was also a good friend) to the weak and inexperienced but more popular Dr. Gaius Baltar. She knew this was one battle she couldn’t afford to lose.

Both Adama and Roslin are “good,” but they aren’t always right, and “Battlestar Galactica” is exceptionally comfortable with allowing some of their decisions rest in the gray regions between the right and wrong. When Apollo was ordered to destroy a civilian ship that had probably been infiltrated by cylons, he was haunted by the possibility that he’d killed innocent human beings. He tried to talk to his father about it, but Adama told him to suck it up and stop dwelling on it: “A man takes responsibility for his actions, right or wrong.” Roslin, detecting Apollo’s distress, told him that, on the contrary, a good leader should remember and learn from his mistakes, even if he must show perfect confidence about his past decisions in public. She keeps the name of the destroyed ship written on a piece of paper in her pocket.

Apollo, the Prince Hal of “Battlestar Galactica,” wavers between these two models of leadership, civilian and military, and in general he’s veered toward Roslin. But late last season, after Roslin’s credibility had been carefully built up, the president suddenly seemed to go off the rails. She’s dying of breast cancer, taking a strange, hallucinogenic herbal remedy and now believes in an ancient prophecy supposedly foretelling that a leader like herself will guide the people to a fabled promised land: Earth. (Yes, these folks are meant to be our ancestors, not our descendants.) Roslin defied the skeptical Adama by sending Starbuck off on a risky prophecy-related mission. This precipitated a military coup.

Roslin’s visions have been so prescient it’s hard not to think there might be something to the prophecy after all, but Adama’s rebellion is perfectly understandable, too. Faith in “Battlestar Galactica” is as fraught as it is in real life. The cylons are monotheists who talk about “God’s love” and the salvation that awaits those who repent of their sins, even as they proceed to brutally exterminate those they consider to be “corrupt.” The human beings are pagans who worship a pantheon of gods with the names of ancient Greek deities. The prophecy Roslin believes she’s fulfilling, of a leader who takes her people to the promised land but doesn’t make it there herself, echoes the Old Testament, while the prophecy’s emphasis on an eternal cycle in which “all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again,” has intimations of Eastern religions.

It’s so easy for a series dabbling in such matters to go even further overboard than Roslin and get lost in the byways of metaphysics and mythology. It’s also easy for a drama so interested in realpolitik dilemmas to degenerate into too much talk. “Battlestar Galactica” is exquisitely balanced. The woo-woo philosophizing is evened out by the gritty, workaday sets and the documentary feeling of the hand-held camera work. The palace intriguing gets a regular jolt, courtesy of action and suspense sequences that are believably immediate and intense.

The season 2 premiere has Adama in critical condition after an assassination attempt by sleeper agent (another interesting character, fatally conflicted in her loyalties). His second-in-command, Col. Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan), has to take over — a scary prospect since Tigh, although not untalented as a tactician, tends to wobble in a pinch and furthermore has a drinking problem. While in charge of Galactica, Tigh attempts a risky maneuver Adama would never condone. Meanwhile the occasional flashback shows us why Tigh is so dependent on Adama and fears nothing more than having to go on without him. It’s just another example of how “Battlestar Galactica” proves itself a little braver and more grown-up than the standard genre fare; in this case, the faithful sidekick could be more liability than asset.

There are deft citations of real-world events in the series: Roslin’s swearing-in ceremony harks back to the presidential oath taken by LBJ after the Kennedy assassination; the unfathomable loss suffered by Galactica’s crew is represented by a wall of loved-one photos reminiscent of the ones that sprang up after Sept. 11; the camaraderie of the pilots, who have made a ritual, before flying out, of pressing their palms to a photo of a soldier taken on one of their blasted home planets, recalls the solidarity of the firefighters of New York. None of this is belabored; all of it strikes home.

Season 2 should tell us more about what’s left on the 12 colonies, explore the ever-widening rift between the military and civilian leaders in the fleet, and perhaps most intriguing, shed a little light on what, exactly, the cylons are up to. They have a plan, the shows opening credits keep telling us. Or, rather, their god has a plan, as Number 6, the seductive, praying-mantis of a cylon whose voice and image have been implanted in Dr. Baltar’s brain keeps telling him. These androids are true believers possessed of superior technology, something you don’t have to be a beleaguered Galactica passenger to fear. I’m guessing we’ll discover the cylons and the human beings aren’t as different as the colonists would like to believe, but only a summer of Friday night appointment viewing will tell.

“Enterprise” doesn’t have a gimmick. It has a premise, an interesting question to answer: How did humanity go from the bottom to the top of the galactic totem pole? What happened between the era of “Enterprise,” in the 22nd century, and the time of the original 1960s “Star Trek” series, featuring Kirk and Spock, some 115 years later? Why and how did humans rise to equal status with other spacefaring species?

“Enterprise” follows the best Trek tradition in making the era seem fresh and undetermined and arresting, even though we know how things will turn out. Or do we? The uncertainty of these eager and fragile characters matches the uncertainty of our times here on 21st-century Earth, and the writers play with time to enhance that uncertainty. “Enterprise’s” setting both in the “Star Trek” chronology and in our real time forces it to meditate on what might be, and on the dirty tricks people of all species will play to affect that future.

To recap: The Vulcans, a frowning and logical race (think Spock, only more tight-assed), made the first alien contact with Earth in 2063. Ever since, they’ve been holding Earth’s hand and keeping the training wheels on humanity’s ventures into deep space. Capt. Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and his crew explore, are nearly destroyed by forces they don’t understand, meet new races, and generally try to prove the Vulcans wrong. As in other “Star Trek” series, the ideas are the meat of the thing, with a salad of special effects … and a dessert of cheesecake.

Yes, I would be remiss in not mentioning the babe factor in “Enterprise.” The creators seem to believe that the flesh of Jolene Blalock (who plays Vulcan science officer T’Pol) is as hot as the stars that the Enterprise passes, and should show up as often. In every other episode she bares various parts of her body in plot twists that would hardly please the logical Vulcan mind. In the T&A tradition of modern Trek, she is the skin equivalent of Jeri Ryan from “Voyager” and Marina Sirtis on “Next Generation.” The season premiere goes so far as to show her in a cleavage-revealing uniform. Linguist Hoshi Sato (Linda Park) has only removed her shirt once that I can recall, and that was by accident. Yes, they are the only females on the bridge of the Enterprise. To be fair, we see some of the males partially disrobed as well, but they don’t make it into the trailers.

The other structural flaw: the theme music. Against all Trek tradition, the theme music to “Enterprise” contains lyrics. Lyrics about the unbreakability of the singer’s soul, and about faith of the heart. I would prefer “I’ll Be There for You” from “Friends” to this. Welcome rumors are afloat that the third season will see a change in the opening score, and my screener copy of the season premiere strengthened those rumors by omitting audio over the lovely opening montage of naval and aeronautical history.

My other complaints are of the “This episode wasn’t as great as it could have been” variety. The first two seasons of “Enterprise” have seen fewer ghastly missteps than we saw in the first two seasons of “Next Generation” or “Deep Space Nine.” Sure, the captain and doctor withheld a cure from a disease-ravaged race and committed passive genocide for wholly spurious reasons, and T’Pol embarrassed herself and us while in pon farr, the Vulcan mating cycle. But these isolated low points can’t mar this show’s accomplishment: After hundreds of hours of Trek movies and TV episodes, “Enterprise” is making the franchise new again, creating fresh stories and possibilities.

The young crew of “Enterprise” is trying to make sense of when and how to intervene in other societies. There is no pat-and-easy Prime Directive of noninterference yet; these episodes will form the basis cases for later policies. Like a relatively young United States, the human race sticks its collective nose into forces and peoples it doesn’t understand, while the Vulcans are the cautioning mentors who have been around the block a few times, calling to mind Old Europe. Several episodes have developed this theme in different directions, and only some episodes feature direct references to the present day. But almost all of them tacitly reference 21st-century political problems.

The Cabal, a faction of the Suliban race, is attacking humans (among others) because its future-seeing master tells them to. Among other ramifications, we see peaceful Suliban citizens rounded up and placed in internment camps, oppressing and radicalizing them, yet perhaps protecting them from the bigoted populace. The Enterprise liberates one such camp, but it can’t liberate them all, and we end the episode musing over the escapees’ fate.

The Xindi, another mysterious alien race, has sent a weapon to Earth and massacred millions of humans, because they have heard (from the same future-seeing master, or someone like him) that humans will destroy the Xindi home world in 400 years. We are shocked, we are heartbroken, we want revenge. But we don’t even know where the Xindi live, much less how powerful they are.

This latter episode, the second season finale, strongly referred to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Enterprise” premiered just a few weeks after those attacks, and the story acknowledged, and responded to, that involuntary setting. The Trek framework is well adapted to telling this story of an allegorical war on terror; one episode can cover a day or many months, as developments hasten and slow.

Like “Deep Space Nine,” “Enterprise” entices us into caring about its characters, then forces you to watch them doing the dirty work of the state-security apparatus. In the season premiere, we see Archer bribing a sleazy mining official for an interview with his Xindi employee. Far from home and out of its depth, the crew is bound to experience some blowback, as it indeed does here. I want to see more of this. I want to see “Enterprise” compensate for drawing the analogy between 9/11 and this ahistorical, unpreventable alien massacre. “Enterprise” can redeem itself by emphasizing that our incidents and relationships with other races have ramifications, that there are other fish in the pond.

When chief engineer Tucker finds out that his sister has been killed in the Xindi attack, he refuses to hold a special service for her, arguing that the size of the slaughter takes precedence over one person’s memory. And then he begs the captain for the chance to take revenge on the mass murderers: “And tell me we won’t be tiptoeing around — none of that noninterference crap T’Pol’s always shoving down our throats.”

This is why the moral dilemmas of “Enterprise,” from now forward, will feel real and messy and moving: Earth has an interest. Capt. Picard of “Next Generation” sometimes struggled over playing God, sure, but usually human lives weren’t at stake. Are torture scenarios next, as in Fox’s contemporary terrorism drama “24″? How far will Archer go to avenge and protect human lives? “Enterprise’s” new, darker and denser story arc holds a promise even more alluring than Jolene Blalock’s bum.

Indubitably, as his first officer might have said, raising one angled eyebrow: This was the crucial difference between the sweaty, highly Freudian original “Star Trek” series and the sexless, sweatless, p.c. “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Can you imagine Jean-Luc Picard not wearing spotless knickers with a built-in containment field, changed twice a day and incinerated after use?

Alas, I’m not actually in the humbling presence of the godlike genius of William Shatner himself. Rather, I’m gazing up at a monitor playing a clip from “The Trouble With Tribbles” in a medley of “classic ‘Star Trek’ moments,” at an exhibition dedicated to a genre and a universe that have, so to speak, sprung from his loins. “Star Trek: The Adventure,” held in a “climate-controlled” “hi-tech” 7,000-square-foot tent in London’s Hyde Park, showcases the “Trek” universe, from the original series more than 35 years ago to the newest feature film, “Star Trek: Nemesis.” Sets, costumes, props and models from “Star Trek,” “The Next Generation,” “Deep Space Nine,” “Voyager” and the current “Trek” series, the low-tech “Enterprise” prequel, are all here. Billed as the biggest “Star Trek” exhibition ever, the London show has been a great success. This is only the first stop on a world tour, taking in Europe, Australia and the U.S., on a “five-year mission to boldly go where ‘Star Trek’ has never been before” — although where that would be is something of a mystery.

In addition to six successful “Trek” TV series, each of them being rerun somewhere in the world right now, there have been 10 “Trek” movies, grossing well over $1 billion. Amazon lists 1,238 “Trek” books, 1,832 “Trek” auctions, 515 videos, 73 music items, 61 PC and video games. I simply refuse to enter “Star Trek” into a Web search engine, as I fear it will cause some kind of terrible e-feedback loop and global net overheating of the kind that happened whenever Kirk asked some upstart out-of-control alien computer to compute “love.”

The whole phenomenon is, to use another Spockism, fascinating. The “Trek” series is not only the most frighteningly successful and profitable TV series of our “timeline” but also one that has helped to make television what it is — and us what we are. “Star Trek” really did turn out to be the future — not of faster-than-light space travel, but of couch-potato entertainment. We have been, to use yet another Trekkian phrase, assimilated. Resistance was futile.

If the original “Star Trek” series was an exercise in the power of human imagination — and frustrated aspiration — the massive “Trek” exhibition can only be called an exercise in hubris. Perhaps that is why the monitor on which I glimpsed Kirk’s package is swaying a little, as is everything else suspended from the ceiling — the vast “hi-tech” tent is moving in the wind, making slightly distracting and very nonfuturistic clanking noises. Close up, imprisoned behind glass cases, the props and costumes look rather disappointing and forlorn, like deeply discounted items in a theatrical supply store. The disrupters and phasers are bits of badly painted wood; the scale models of the various Enterprises are the discarded toys of rich kids. The recreated bar from “Deep Space Nine” looks like the sort of place you wouldn’t hang out in unless you wanted to pick up a low-rent transvestite (mind you, if that had been true of the infantile series itself it might have been worth watching).

The armory from the “Enterprise” series, complete with photon torpedo launchers, is more impressive but something of an elaborate tease. Like the other control-panel-based exhibits here, much of the instrumentation is covered with glass screens and large signs warning “DO NOT TOUCH.” What other reason would you have to come to a “Star Trek” exhibition except to press, in Stimpy-esque tongue-lolling abandon, all those buttons you’ve seen winking at you on TV over the years?

The Scimitar brig restraint cage from the “Nemesis” film, in which Picard is all too briefly imprisoned, is here, but has, like the film itself, the rather tired, S/M-catalog feel that dominated the later, Borg-rich episodes of “Next Generation” — the nearest that series ever got to sex. The Borg were, after all, everyone’s nightmare fetish-party people — sadomasochists who tried to accessorize themselves a personality and considered themselves irresistible.

My pulse begins to quicken near the exit, however, when I spot, like a beacon, Capt. Kirk’s cocky chartreuse green velour shirt with gold braided cuffs and also his  black trousers. They are, in a display of costumes from the original series, wrapped around a headless dummy instead of around Kirk’s corseted, bewigged torso. No doubt I’m a terminal nostalgic — as a boy I watched “Star Trek” on ’70s TV in a state of arousal bordering on psychosis which, obviously, has yet to subside — but the original “Trek” uniforms, like the series itself, seem much more exciting than anything that followed. These are not clothes so much as archetypes. Like “Trek” technology, they embody an idea of function rather than a practical elaboration of it. Here is the cool, intellectual blue of Spock’s tunic, with his trusty tricorder handbag slung over the shoulder; here the feisty red of Lt. Uhura’s costume, breasts surging forward like rockets, with streamlined waist, miniskirt tailfins spouting a plume of long, long tights, and knee-length pointy black boots.

Ahem. Anyway, “Star Trek” was very … pointy. In addition to the boots, and Kirk’s package, there were pointy sideburns, pointy breasts, pointy ears, pointy Federation logos, pointy lettering in the credits, and also the pointedly pointy mission statement: “To boldly go where no man has gone before,” which of course was bluntly de-sexed by “Next Generation” to “…where no one has been before.” Perhaps this is why the “Next Generation” crew were dressed like flight attendants on a particularly dull 1980s airline — one that went bust because the synthetic fibers and padding produced so much static electricity that insurers refused to cover them. “Voyager” became much pointier, and more watchable, when in later years declining ratings beamed aboard the streamlined and coolly logical Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), promptly massaging up the Nielsen points. (Perhaps that is why “Enterprise” features the similarly spaceworthy female Vulcan first officer T’Pol, her uniform snugly inhabited by Jolene Blalock.)

“Star Trek” uniforms remain timeless classics, ones that seem to have directly inspired ’70s glam rock — Ziggy Stardust, for instance, looked as though he would have fit in on the Enterprise. Certainly Kirk would have shagged him.

It seems ironic, given the kind of people who are Trekkies — bed-wetting idealists for the most part — that the post-’60s incarnation of the series has become perhaps the symbol of corporate culture, globalization and “American imperialism” — though generally dressed in the drabbest kind of political correctness. The spinoffs have produced an empire of nerdiness. Give me a stripped-to-the-waist Republican Kirk in full-body makeup, trying to remember to suck in his waist while battling a rubber lizard-head alien with half-learned karate and pro-wrestling moves, any day of the week.

And then I spy it, like a mirage: the bridge of the original USS Enterprise. It’s roped off so I can’t ride the turbo lift, fire Sulu’s phasers, mess with Spock’s science station, or put my butt where Kirk’s has gone before and take “the con.” I suspect that in this instance I wouldn’t even if I could. You can get too close to something that has been so important to you for so long. In fact, there is something so venerable about this silly wooden set that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This is, after all, the holiest shrine of TV culture, of much more importance to the contemporary world than, say, the Church of the Nativity, Shakespeare’s Globe or even Lucille Ball’s living room.

They really knew about the future in the ’60s. They really cared about it. It was, of course, a time when people still believed in it, a time when “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow” was not necessarily a self-consciously retro slogan. Perhaps that is why the original series, with its female crew members (albeit in submissive jobs) and racial harmony (ditto — except for Spock, the Jewish Vulcan), was rather more adventurous and progressive for its time than its spayed spinoffs.

More important, in the ’60s they also knew how to make buttons and dials that, 35 years on, are much more “futuristic” than anything seen since. Not only that, they made them for next to nothing. (“Star Trek” cost about $100,000 an episode; Enterprise costs $6 million.) From where I’m standing, those buttons and dials look like the most precious and promising jewels in the universe. By comparison, the “Next Generation” bridge displayed next door looks like the foyer of an expense-account motel.

Naturally, true Trekkies prefer the more recent series, precisely because they have much bigger budgets, more special effects — and no William Shatner. Apparently Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (and much of the original cast) despised Shatner and the way he played Kirk. He was too aggressive, too violent, too sexist, too vain. The anal-retentive goody-goody Jean-Luc Picard, played fastidiously by Patrick Stewart, was much closer to what Roddenberry had in mind.

It was Shatner’s Kirk, with all his magnificent flaws and vanities, however, who made “Star Trek” more than just another canceled ’60s sci-fi series. He saved the show from its own appalling virtuousness — or, to put it more pretentiously, he was the Dionysian bass line to Roddenberry’s Apollonian synth music. (By the same token, Cmdr. Data’s quest to become human on “Next Generation” is comic, since his colleagues seem to aspire to be androids.) Shatner was rock ‘n’ roll — his post-Trek album-cum-aural breakdown, “The Transformed Man,” notwithstanding. It was his perversity, his Napoleonic ego, that made “Star Trek” an epic for our times. Not for nothing was his pre-”Trek” project a canceled series called “Alexander the Great,” starring Shatner as the lovable Macedonian psychopath himself. Shatner has earned his place in the pantheon of postwar virile degeneracy: What Brando did for the cinema and Elvis did for music, Shatner did for the small screen.

In fact — and I think I can say this with no fear of insulting Jim Carrey, himself a helpless Shatner fanatic — Bill is simply the greatest actor that Canada has ever produced. Although he was (and is) an outrageous ham, applying the “skills” he developed performing in Canada’s Shakespearean theater (“I combine English technique with American virility”) as indiscriminately to “Star Trek” scripts as LBJ did Agent Orange to the jungles of Southeast Asia, bafflingly stressing words and syllables that mere mortals might think had no importance, pausing painfully in the middle of sentences while rushing headlong over their conclusions, there is something oddly powerful about many of his performances. Even something believable and human, especially in the slightly camp context of a series like “Star Trek.” Even Shatner’s vanity is sympathetic. The tasteful, restrained, mannered — and, let’s face it, bourgeois — seriousness of Picard and “Voyager’s” Capt. Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) seems faintly ridiculous by comparison.

Jim Kirk, as I say, was clearly a Republican, while the Federation itself was clearly Democratic. The arrangement appeared to reflect that of a Republican White House and a Democratic Congress, the favored mechanism of Cold War consensus. Fortunately for the story lines, this meant that Kirk was constantly breaking the Federation’s Prime Directive, which forbade interference in alien cultures. Currently, we see Adm. George W. Bush, with his apparent disdain for the Prime Directive and also the Federation (United Nations) itself, in orbit around planet Iraq, preparing to beam down a heavily armed away team. Bush probably thinks himself more Kirk than Picard, but he’s mistaken: He simply doesn’t have the same pathos. Or the twinkly eyes.

Spock, half alien and half human, was another example of the inherent drama of “Star Trek.” He was supposed to be coldly logical but was clearly a borderline hysteric, as evidenced by those occasions when he was called on to show emotion, such as the proto-environmentalist episode “Devil in the Dark,” when he mind-melds with the Horta, a silicone-based life form whose eggs are being destroyed by Federation miners. ‘Pain! PAIN!’ he shrieks, his usually impassive face distorting horrifically. “Oh, PA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-IN!”

Moreover, Spock was obviously passionately in love with his rug-wearing bisexual WASP jock captain, something not lost on the bitchy, swishy and rather jealous ship’s doctor, Bones McCoy, who wasted no opportunity to tease his green-blooded colleague. (For some reason all the male “Trek” medical staffers have been queeny, even the holograms). Interestingly, the stellar love affair between Spock and Kirk, which has its roots in Greek mythology and American literature (e.g., Alexander and Hephaestion, Huck and Jim, Ishmael and Queequeg) seems to have grown out of the clash of Shatner’s and Nimoy’s planet-size thespian egos: Roddenberry, driven frantic by their on-set competitiveness, was advised by Isaac Asimov, no less, to channel it by strengthening their on-screen relationship. In addition, a “favored nation” clause was introduced into their contracts, stipulating that any benefits accorded to one must apply to the other. In other words, gay campaigners still calling for gay characters in the next “Trek” series are missing the point. “Star Trek” featured the world’s first on-screen same-sex marriage back in the ’60s. (Little wonder then that a whole genre of female-authored “slash” fan fictions built around the Spock/Kirk love affair has flourished, making explicit what was always implicit.)

There was a kind of innocent intensity to many of those shows that is impossible to replicate today, an intensity that somehow manages to coexist with a campy tone, even down to the marvelous episode titles: “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky,” “City on the Edge of Forever,” or “Is There No Truth in Beauty?” — the one where the Enterprise gives a lift to the Medusan ambassador and his earthling assistant, a female in a glittery dress played by Diana Muldaur). Apparently the Medusans have miraculous navigational abilities in which the Federation is interested. Like a gimp magician, the Medusan is kept in a shiny box — Medusans are so ugly that no human may gaze upon one without going mad (in this respect, apparently, they resemble David Copperfield). It transpires that his glamorous female assistant is actually blind and “sees” through “a sensor array hidden in her dress.” The Enterprise gets lost and Spock has to mind-meld (wearing natty pink goggles) with the Medusan so that the ambassador can use his body to navigate the ship back to familiar space.

All goes well. Unfortunately, however, while restoring the Medusan to his box, Spock forgets to put his pink goggles back on and goes mad (cue truly frightening hysterical overacting by Nimoy, in wide-angle extreme close-up). Diana has to mind-meld with Spock to draw him back to sanity. Then, having been made insanely jealous by Spock’s melding with the Medusan, she mind-melds with her boss permanently.

If I had used more cocaine I could have founded an entirely new school of psychoanalysis on that one episode. “Oedipus Rex,” eat your eyes out. That was the greatness of “Star Trek” — at its best it was like an updated Greek drama for the TV generation. At its worst, well, it was still entertaining. Take “Spock’s Brain,” in which the science officer’s gray matter is stolen by some intergalactic sex kittens and a triumphant Bones uses an implant and a TV remote control to pilot a zombie Spock around.

The true measure of the original series’ brilliance is that it’s so immense and timeless that it almost makes up for the “Trek”-dreck spinoff series that have followed. Mercifully however, it seems that the Trek universe, which has been rapidly cooling since 1969, may finally be imploding. The new series, “Enterprise,” desperately escapes the p.c. present-future by returning to a low-tech, pre-Kirk past-future (with, appropriately enough, Scott “Quantum Leap” Bakula at the com) in which men are men and are still permitted to captain spaceships by the seat of their pants. It’s something of a “Home Improvement” in space, though rather less popular. Diminishing ratings for the first season of the new series, and protests by devout Trekkies at the cynical rewriting of “Trek” history to include opportunistic enemies such as the Suliban may finally mean the end of that five-year mission that has lasted 35 years.

In this instance, I doubt that even cutting the jib of Bakula’s baggy trousers and persuading him to go commando will work. Let’s hope they don’t try.

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“Star Trek: The Adventure” is at London’s Hyde Park every day through March 30. William Shatner will accept a Pop TV award for the original “Star Trek” television series at the TV Land Awards ceremony at the Hollywood Palladium on March 12.