Nerd Therapy
From the archives (2017)
I’m a sci-fi nerd. I dutifully watch every Marvel and DC movie that appears in theaters. I follow all the TV shows, known and lesser known: Flash, the Expanse, Dark Matter, Continuum, Supergirl, Doctor Who, Preacher, Legends of Tomorrow (though this one is especially terrible, save that it has an actual queer character and Rory from Doctor Who). Past loves are always on repeat: Star Trek, Buffy, the X-Files, and the 2004 reboot of Battlestar Galactica.1 I often remark that the protagonists of these shows, who are put through weekly disasters, violations, and violence, must all suffer from PTSD.
I've started paying closer attention these representations of trauma, and how they resolve. In an episode of Flash, for example, Dr. Caitlin Snow is abducted by The Bad Guy (who turns out to be her former boyfriend) and witnesses several murders2. She’s returned physically unharmed to her motley gang of heroes, but through the course of the episode she is clearly unsettled. Snow has flashbacks to her captivity; she is jittery and fearful. Instead of hiding her suffering, Snow confides in another character, Cisco, who is kind and understanding: Caitlin receives a hug. Being with the gang and catching bad guys makes her feel better — therapy if you will. It’s not an ideal treatment, but it is better than the absence of one, and I imagine there were many viewers who, like me, were relieved to see it addressed at all.
Despite my best efforts to move on from my own experience with trauma, it continues—in fact, it follows me both in the form of the abuser who stalks and harasses me, and in the nightmares that haunt me. Were I not the target, I’d be impressed. Strike that — I am impressed, in the way that the author Jon Ronson, famously of The Psychopath Test, says that he is in awe when he meets an individual who is an actual psychopath. To witness true cruelty is vastly different than, say, to marvel at the rise of Donald Trump (who for the record I believe has no soul). It's no coincidence that most villains in film and television are psychopaths—they're just enough outside common reality to be spooky while safely other. You probably won’t run into Hannibal Lecter at the grocery store.
This intersection of fantasy, villains, and victims absolutely transfixes me. And soothes me. I stay up too late watching my nerd TV, blowing through entire shows in record time, which is something I didn’t previously do—I remember having all of Buffy in my Netflix DVD queue, re-watching the series in what now seems like bite-sized portions of three episodes at a time.
The episodes where the characters must battle literal demons are comforting because of their metaphorical parallels and typically swift resolutions.3 I see the way the Enterprise crew rallies around Counselor Deanna Troi, who in “Violations”4 is subjected to “psychic rape.” Troi’s rapist is brought to justice, she is treated gently by her peers, and then the episode ends. The trauma is over, and the slate washed clean. The next episode will feature an asteroid, a genetically engineered colony, and a budding romance between Troi and a handsome alien. It’s the story every survivor seeks: the easy transition from walking wounded to healthy, high-functioning individual, capable of rescue and new love. If only reality functioned in this way! But that’s what my Netflix queue is for: I am addicted to the nice, neat bows wrapped reliably, reassuringly, around each 50-minute episode.
Science fiction is safe precisely because it encompasses things that have not yet come to pass — warp drives, flying superheroes — and the universally quotidian: human fallibility and struggle and fear. Bitter truths alongside the purely speculative, a sweet science-fiction-y lozenge of emotional realism. The space between these things is the space in which I desire to live. Among the stars, out of the fray, 50 blissful minutes at a time. Start, middle, finish. Moving on at Warp 9.
Until that’s a reality, I'll queue up Deep Space Nine.
This essay was originally penned in 2017. I’ve moved on from many of the series mentioned but Buffy, Star Trek (TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Picard, Discovery, Strange New Worlds), Doctor Who, and the X-Files are forever [insert heart emoji].
I am too lazy to find the exact episode. But this explains who the bad guy is.
Buffy is often an exception to the swift resolution rule. While it adheres to the X-Files MOTW format, mega character arcs and deep cuts stretch the form.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, S5 E12