Posted on 05/02/2005 9:34:33 AM PDT by quidnunc
Forty-one years after they filmed the pilot, "Star Trek" went off the air for good this spring. Five series. Hundreds of episodes. Ten movies. Pulpy novels, video games, fan fiction that had Spock falling madly in love with Kirk. Model kits, barware, conventions packed with eager geeks. Done. Over. I have a friend who has the insignia of the Klingon Empire tattooed on his substantial bicep. How will these people deal with the end of sci-fi's most successful franchise?
Reruns, of course. But they've already adjusted. True fans already know the last shot of the last episode: The ship slowly sails into the inky beyond, engines thrumming, ending the show as it began: by violating the laws of science. Spacecraft don't make noise in a vacuum.
But we've granted that point since the show was born in the LBJ years. Fans have cut "Trek" so much slack the shears are dull. They accept that the communicators of the future are larger than modern cell phones. They accept that most species in the galaxy speak English and look like us, aside from odd nasal prostheses. They accept almost anything — even the decision to let William Shatner direct the fifth movie.
And most accept the end. Perhaps it's time to set it aside for a while. "Star Trek" has always mirrored the era in which it was made, and perhaps we live in times whose stark fears don't really translate well to metaphor. But before the Enterprise charges up its dilithium crystals and warps off for good, let's recap four decades of space-opera TV, and see what each series says about the zeitgeist that produced it.
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(Excerpt) Read more at taemag.com ...
Too bad I can't enjoy anything, I would have liked it.
I'm still partial to II ("Khan"). ST the M IV ("Journey Home") was easily the most relaxed and funny one of the bunch, although it was a little too preachy for my taste.
I think the best eps have been made and are available for purchase so it doesn't matter, let it rest for a while and when they have something good to write bring it back. When they write an ep about the male engineer getting pregnant, you know it's time to give it a rest..
I've been a science fiction fan all my life. I've never had much time for Star Trek, because it's such crummy science fiction. Plus, it has basically run the same two or three plots over and over again, about 500 times each. I confess that last is just my impression, since I can't claim to have watched more than a few episodes and one movie.
Yes, it's a classic, I know. Part of our national consciousness. But I'll still pass on it.
My team isn't quite in suckland yet...(Go PACKERS!) but I will plead guilty to your accusation. Three hours (minimum) every Sunday for about 20 weeks, and I'm not counting Fox NFL Sunday, which I watch every week.
Thank God my church moved services to 8:30...:-)
I loved Galaxy Quest! From an ST:TOS point of view, it was dead on!
Indistinguishable here in Utah!
Confucius Say: Only even-numbered Trek movies are worth watching
"The Next Generation." The post-Reagan years. The Enterprise was no longer a lone vanguard making its way through realms unknown; now it was like a grand Hilton in space, complete with spa, psychiatric counselor, accommodations for kids, and a French captain who could sometimes be mistaken for a cranky sommelier. Whoopi Goldberg was the ship's bartender, which, in retrospect, really tells you all you need to know. Patrick Stewart's Captain Jean-Luc Picard was much-beloved, and for good reason: His stentorian acting style gave the show a dramatic heft it otherwise didn't always deserve.
The Federation, in this iteration, was like a liberal dream of the U.N.: diplomacy first, multicultural understanding above all, but if need be, a gigantic armada could be summoned to fight off whatever evil leather-clad empire had decided to mess with the goodfolk of Earth. Zeitgeist giveaway: The Klingons became allies, sort of, after the Berlin Wall fell. Grade: B+, not so much for overall quality, but because it relaunched the franchise with a broad-based appeal no subsequent version would match.
"Deep Space Nine." This is where the casual fans peeled away. "DS9," as it's called, was set in a space station on the edge of a defeated empire (cough...The Balkans...cough) and concerned the affairs of the Federation and the Bajorans, a spunky-but-spiritual people recently liberated from the yoke of the Cardassian Empire. (The Bajorans had been set up as a Palestinian analogy in "The Next Generation," but this didn't really work once they got an entire planet of their own.)
The show started slowly, as they all do, partly because the hero--Avery Brooks, as Captain Benjamin Sisco--seemed determined not to act at all. He crawled inside the character and shut the door. The obligatory doctor was whiny and annoying, the requisite alien-who-comments-on-these-strange-humans was a shapeshifting policeman with a sequoia up his fundament, and the station didn't go anywhere.
In the end, however, "DS9" was the best "Trek" to date. Best battles, best characters, best story arcs, best Klingons. TV sci-fi at its best, really. Zeitgeist giveaway: The gravest foes were goo-based aliens from the other side of the galaxy who used a race of drug-addicted warriors to conquer the universe. In other words, it was the '90s, and we didn't have any more enemies--so let's make some up for fun! Grade: A-.
"Voyager." A ship is stranded halfway across the galaxy; the crew is half Federation, half anti-Federation rebels. They must set aside their partisan differences to get home, a journey expected to take 80 years, or until the Nielsen ratings tank. This was the pure '90s "Trek": Instead of boldly going, the entire point was to retreat and get home. The premise crippled the show, since everyone knew they'd never get back until the last episode of the seventh season.
The characters were thin soup, aside from Tim Russ, who played a Black Vulcan who out-Spocked Leonard Nimoy, and Jeri Ryan's "Seven of Nine," a tall blonde Nordic actress/model/cyborg who provided the fanboy base with cheesecake photos to swap in AOL chat rooms. Some exceptional episodes, yes. But few "Trek" fans got a flutter in the guts over the show, and most suspected the franchise was running on fumes.
Zeitgiest giveaway: a female captain and a Native American First Officer. Grade: C+, which is probably too harsh. Except when you consider that the show's sole Klingon had PMS 24/7.
Well, you have to remember it's TV science fiction, so...
But I do remember that Larry Niven, though he was an original Trek fan (and wrote an episode for the animated series) used the third season of Star Trek as an example of really bad science fiction.
I'm with you! B-5 Rules!
Me too!
Cyber, OTOH, had never seen a Seinfeld episode. I had seen them all.
The captains log.
Hit the Next Generation pretty hard, too. Kid driving the ship, etc. Galaxy Quest is one of the best comedies ever made. And the lines..."Can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?"
Patrick Stewart says Galaxy Quest made him laugh harder than any other film. And it was Jonathan Frakes who told him he had to go see it...they have a good sense of humor at least. Stewart said the funniest parts were when the Brit would rant about "the craft" and such...he saw more than a little of himself in it.
Credit Nicholas Meyer -- director on II, writer on IV and both on VI.
'The Motion Picture' was dreadful... interminable shots of the cloud in space with weird chords playing in the background. When the video came out, I remember seeing on the box that it had so-and-so minutes of extra bonus footage not seen in the theatrical version; I was struck with the thought that someone, somewhere sat down and watched this movie and their reaction was that it needed to be longer?!
B5 was good. The new Battlestar Galactica is outstanding. And hopefully after the Serenity movie this fall they will bring back the Firefly series which kicked serious ass.
I don't think it was truly communistic or even socialistic. I think of it as a political/economic system that doesn't exist today. Replicators made this possible. You can go up to machine and have anything you want synthesized. A machine that can give you, materialisticly, your heart's desire. You want a big screen TV, push a button and you have it. You want a fancy set of clothes, push a button and it pops out. Want lobtser and caviar, push a button and your dinner is ready. It would be a like a consumer communist state. But if you dare show a lightbulb to a stone age culture, you are in serious trouble. Make that politically correct consumer socialism.
but no klingons?
Are you off your meds again??? LOL!
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