Master and Commander Data?
About a week ago, Eric Albert and I decided to check out Russell Crowe’s new swashbuckling flick, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. It’s a beautifully filmed movie, and an interesting historical portrait of the British Navy at the time of the Napoleonic Wars (man, oh man, did those people idolize Lord Nelson!), but I walked out of it with an odd feeling of déjà vu. The whole thing had seemed strangely familiar, and I couldn’t figure out why.
It wasn’t until later that I finally hit on what the movie had reminded me of: the original Star Trek series! Consider the similarities:
- Both have as their main character an impetuous (some would say reckless) captain who overcomes more powerful foes through a combination of guts, guile, and “outside-of-the-box” thinking.
- Both use the ship’s doctor as the captain’s best friend and confidant.
- Both portray a constant tension between the higher calling of scientific exploration and the more immediate demands of war.
I suppose similarities like these are the inevitable result of the fact that both Star Trek and Master and Commander are very much genre fiction, but I still can’t help but wonder if Patrick O’Brien had some latent Trek memories in his mind when he began writing his series (in 1970).