Star Trek’s ‘Starship Porn’: More Than Pretty Pictures
A fan favorite, beauty shots of the vessels of the franchise are also integral to storytelling
If there’s one thing that Star Trek fans can’t seem to get enough of, it’s “starship porn.”
Despite its name, starship porn isn’t about explicit, XXX adventures aboard the starship Enterprise.
Rather, its a colloquial term for beauty shots of the Enterprise and the other vessels in the franchise flying through space.
The allure of starship porn is readily evident in those sort of images forming the basis of the opening credits sequences for so many of the series over the years.
“Since that original Enterprise, Star Trek has an immediately recognisable aesthetic, one that is unique to the franchise. However, it's crossed over into pop-culture — one would be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't recognise the starship Enterprise,” Sean Ferrick, the popular host of the TrekCulture YouTube channel, said in a recent interview via email. “That’s created something of a loop — Trek creates ship beauty, and gives it to the fans. This in turn makes the fans expect more of it, which then inspires more designs — and on we go.”
Rob Betz, who produces his own online starship porn on his YouTube channel, put it this way: “I think the majority of fans, while their fandom may be fueled by the stories and characters from Star Trek, their truest and deepest love lies with the ships themselves. This is definitely true for me.
“The shows and movies give us great examples of this, as noted below, but any devoted Trekkie wants more and would be content with a video that was nothing more than starship porn,” he added.
Starship porn is more than pretty pictures, however.
It becomes integral in the stories that Star Trek is trying to tell.
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“In a visual medium like a movie or tv show (versus a novel), starship porn is definitely a part of storytelling in that it keeps the fans engaged in the story,” Rob said. “Characters and the plot tell the story but the visuals; beauty shots, battle scenes, and any shot that shows the outside of the vessel, are what serves as the glue that binds the pages all together.
“Contrast that with a Star Trek novel where the character dialogue and inner monologues are what have to move the story along,” he added. “Unless you're [JRR] Tolkien and spend four to five pages describing a tree, you can only spend so much time describing a starship visually in a novel before you lose your reader to an extent.
“But in a movie or show, fans would be very disappointed without a satisfying ratio of starship porn to character dialogue. Too little and they'll feel cheated. Too much and you may lose the flow of the plot.”
Such exterior, beauty shots help develop a starship as character in and of itself, Sean said.
“I would say it can help add to the mythos and importance of the ship — sometimes it's hard to really warm to something you only get the briefest glimpses of,” he added.
A good example of that are the shots of the USS Excelsior, first in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and later in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
“Sure, it wasn't the hero ship — but we got a real sense of it when the Enterprise arrived in Spacedock, it was imposing when it tried to follow,” Sean said. “And so, when Sulu [George Takei] took command, it *meant* something when the Praxis wave hit, or later when Chang [Christopher Plummer] fired on it.”
The GOAT Of Star Trek Starship Porn
Rob and Sean agree with me that the best example of starship porn in the history of Star Trek — the greatest Star Trek starship porn of all time, if you will — has to be the long flyby scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
This is the scene in which Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) and Scotty (James Doohan) lovingly survey the newly refit Enterprise as they travel on a shuttlepod for Kirk to take command.
Watch the scene here:
Some fans — particularly younger ones — complain that when they watch the movie today, the lengthy scene seems gratuitous, and even contributes to the perception of the film’s slow pacing.
What they might not realize is that, as the movie lingers over — and Kirk and Scotty marvel at — the beauty and grandeur of the new Enterprise, that the characters in this scene actually are intended to represent the fans.
You have to put yourself in the shoes of fans at the time of The Motion Picture’s release in 1979, who had been subsisting on nothing but very little but endless reruns since the original series went off the air a decade earlier.
This scene was a tribute for — and to — all these fans who not long before never thought that they’d ever see the Enterprise fly again.
Looked at from this perspective, this scene reveals itself not as a burden to the movie — but as one of its greatest moments.
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