I have missed the actual birthday of Star Trek- September 8- by a good week. I have a good excuse as I was away visiting friends and touring around Radium Hot Springs at the time. I could have posted something I suppose, and I definitely felt the urge to do so when I saw Wilhelm (TAGN), Roger (Contains Moderate Peril), and Bhagpuss (Inventory Full) post their thoughts. But here I am, delayed but still adding my two cents worth of thought to the topic of Star Trek with my own experiences.
My history with Trek
The first time I watched Star Trek I would have been around six or seven years old- around 1970 would be my best guess. I recall very little of the experience other than the fact that we had a colour console TV which places the event in time and also gives me a good idea of where I was at the time. We likely would have still been in Avonmore at the time, and I would have been in either kindergarten or grade one.
I was young enough when I watched the show that it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I did, however, get rather scared by this guy in the credits at the end of each episode.
I started getting more seriously into Star Trek in my adolescence around the age of 12 which would put the year at about 1976. I watched the episodes I could catch on our three channels plus a couple of American networks from the cable service we had. I bought the Star Trek “Making Of” book and a bunch of James Blish novels based on the show, delving fairly deeply into the lore of the series.
I never really watched the episodes in order, however, until I was on a vacation with my brother Ron to Disneyland. I got sick early in the trip and stayed in the hotel room while Ron toured around. I found a channel on the TV that was playing a Star Trek marathon: every episode in order 24 hours a day. I watched for the better part of two days before I was starting to feel a bit better, and felt like I had gotten my money’s worth out of the trip despite missing out on most of the Disneyland exploration.
When the movies first came out I was quick to go see them. But at the time there was another series that had sucked all the air out of the room: Star Wars. Star Trek movies did well enough but never captured the same kind of emotional attraction that Star Wars did- I don’t recall lining up overnight to be first in line for Star Trek for example.
The first of the Star Trek movies, “Star Trek: the Motion Picture” was a bit too cerebral for most people to get into. It is better on rewatch today, but at the time after Star Wars was kind of disappointing. Wrath of Khan was a brilliant action adventure and felt true to form for Star Trek history. From there I watched every one of the original movies pretty much as they came out within a few days of release.
After the Original Series
For the later series, I started with Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987 when it came out. It was a regular day and date viewing situation for most of its seven year run, even through some rough times during its first two seasons. I also watched Deep Space Nine fairly religiously for its first couple of seasons. I then started to get less interested in the show as the whole plotline with Sisko being the emissary began to take precedence over other elements of the story.
I had difficulty getting into Voyager due to the irritating perfection of Janeway. She was the best science officer, the best engineer, the best medical officer, the best pilot… there never seemed to be a thing for anyone else in the crew to excel beyond her at. But I did watch most of the episodes as I recall, at least up to the last two seasons.
Star Trek: Enterprise was a great series for the first season then it went off into the expanse and time travel plot lines to die. Star Trek seems to do best for me when it remains truly episodic with a minimum of serial plot lines. The character development should be serial: the stories should be self contained within one or two episodes. I also really wish we could get back to season runs of something approaching twenty episodes. Ten episode seasons mean that the to-be-expected ‘misstep’ episodes dominate the narrative for much longer than they used to.
I enjoyed the first couple of seasons of Star Trek: Discovery for the most part but struggled a bit with the excess emphasis on Michael Burnham, particularly the whole “she is Spock’s secret sister that we never heard of before” aspect of the story. I found it difficult from the start to accept that Spock had an adopted sister kicking around who had never been mentioned despite decades of exposition about Spock’s character. It felt unnecessary, a form of Mary Sue-ism that really aggravated me from the start.
I think Star Trek: Picard really did an excellent job bringing the TNG series regulars back together along with a few surprises. The inclusion of Seven of Nine connected Picard to the Voyager series and opened the door to some new adventures there. I really enjoyed seeing the crew of the 1701-D Enterprise back together again, despite some hokeyness here and there.
Commander Pike and the crew of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds have a built in “end date” in the well-known plotline regarding Pike’s critical injuries that are recounted in the Original series. This in my opinion has perhaps fed into a good outcome for the show: up until the current season it has been pure episodic Star Trek in the best of forms. There have been a few over the top misses: a musical episode, and one where the main characters were transformed into muppets springs to mind. I still enjoyed these episodes but, with the short ten episode seasons, they tend to dominate the story line inappropriately.
Star Trek: Academy is/was a fun diversion from the usual plot lines of Trek. I liked the diversity of characters in the show and would have liked to see the series get a year or two more to find its footing. However, it has been cancelled with just a second ten episode season to develop story lines. I’m going to miss some of these characters.
Revisiting the shows
Irene and I have recently been re-watching Star Trek in somewhat “in continuity” timeline chronological order. So we started with Star Trek: Enterprise which is set before Star Trek (The original Series) which is before Star Trek: The Next Generation. We aren’t re-watching Strange New Worlds before TOS as we are in the midst of watching that series in “real time.”
We enjoyed Star Trek: Enterprise more than I expected to. The Expanse and time travel plotlines were made more palatable by our rapid fire watching of episodes. But it still suffered as a series by being more serialized than episodic, and I really wish they had gotten out of the Expanse more quickly than they did.
I’ve previously recounted here some of our experiences watching the Original Series. We finished that a month or so ago and started on The Next Generation, and it is a series with a slow burn start. I’d forgotten how early Q appeared on the show: he was there in the very first episode, Encounter at Farpoint. But despite John de Lancie’s excellent work in that episode the first season struggled to find its footing. Another early appearance I forgot was the Borg showing up in season 2 of the series.
Also in Season 2 we had a switch in doctors: Doctor Pulaski replaced Doctor Crusher. I had recalled the second doctor, but had forgotten that the switch lasted for an entire season. It was apparently not a plot driven choice but rather based on friction between Beverly Crusher’s actor (Gates McFadden) and the head writer, Maurice Hurley. Interesting how these things completely unrelated to the fiction itself can have such an effect on the storyline.
I should add that Wesley Crusher is far less irritating than I remember him being. There are some plot lines like the Traveller episode that definitely make it clear that he is a self insert for either the writers or Gene Roddenberry himself. But for the most part he plays acting ensign starting in season two as well as anyone on the bridge. He stops being “that whiney kid” by the end of the first season for the most part.
Irene tells me that she is enjoying The Next Generation quite a lot and I have to admit that I am as well. I know the Borg serialization is coming and my recollection is that that became rather frustrating to watch back in the day. I can’t quite recall why, however, and it may be that seeing it again in our binge-watching mode will soften the edges like the conversion of a Borg cube to a Borg sphere.