Star Trek

I am 58 and never was a big fan of science fiction. Had seen episodes from Star Trek decades ago, but never was a huge fan.

Well...recently have been watching reruns on a free TV channel. And I am amazed at how good and unique this show was....and is...especially for a show from the 1960s. Much credit is due to William Shatner. He's a good, versatile actor and was able to "sell" the script with a sense of seriousness and reality that it made up for the low budget sets, costumes and sometimes silly plots. He should have won an emmy for his acting.

Also, loved the vibrant simple colors used on the sets and in wardrobe. The thinly adorned sets were visually enhanced by all these primary colors.

The topics, scientific lingo and gadgets were also far beyond what most people were thinking of before this period. Look at all those cell phones they used in the series. And the flat screen TV monitors. Just way ahead of their time.

Of course, Spock and the doc were great supporting cast members. But without Kirk, William Shatner, the show probably would not have worked.

I have loved Star Trek since I first watched it as a child. However, the series which followed - Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Enterprise - although generally still entertaining, seem to me to have left out the element which made the original series so special. Namely, the interaction between the characters, particularly Spock, Jim, and Bones.

So well written, and generally well acted.

With Bones (Dr Leonard H McCoy) being the opposite to Spock in terms of personality, so that the two of them always found something to argue about. Jim (Captain James T Kirk) in the middle, as a referee, displaying faults and strengths taken from both extremes. Extremes in the sense of McCoy being a very caring, compassionate, yet also highly emotional character. Representative of humanity, perhaps. Spock, the dry, cold, logical, emotionless Vulcan. Jim "a man of deep feelings", as Spock once said, yet also no stranger to thorough analysis of whatever situation the crew found themselves in. Bones seeking always to heal, to return everybody he met (whether friend or foe, human or otherwise) to as close to perfect health as possible. Frustrated by the fact that he (Bones) could not fully understand, for example, Spock's Vulcan anatomy. All three of them the closest friends. All three displaying unwavering loyalty toward each other - even though Spock would have found the suggestion of his displaying such a human quality to be insulting.

The dynamics involved, the interaction, led to brilliant moments of humour. A science fiction programme to be not only enjoyed for the imaginative stories and the themes, but also for the humour, for the humanity.

Which is not to suggest that the other characters were in any way second rate. Scotty's loyalty and his supreme confidence in his engineering abilities, Chekov's almost adolescent playfulness and humour, Sulu's loyalty, honour, and physical prowess, Uhura's dedication to duty and femininity in a masculine world, all added important and welcome elements to what I still consider to be the best science fiction television series ever.

The special effects were often laughable, the sets cheap and often reused, but the humanity, the character interaction, the stories, imagination, the brilliant writing... all added up to something very special indeed.

Does anyone need an introduction anymore to this great series? In the beginning Desilu said yes to the budget and schedule of Roddenberry only because there were many space stories being pitched and picked up in the mid-sixties, and this was going to be theirs. NBC used Star Trek to compete with Lost in Space, which was already on CBS the year before.

NBC being the all color network made the series very high key in lighting and primary-colored in the uniforms and the instrument displays, to better sell color TV at the time.

There were so many innovations shown on the screen from Dr.McCoy's diagnostic helpers to the auto door movements to hand communicators, transporters, phased light weapons, all of which impressed viewers. Added to that, they all seemed like they really worked!

People have said that Star Trek was the first to show an alien working harmoniously on a space crew and this is not fully true. You might laugh now, but in 1950 there was a very popular, well written, well acted radio and TV series called "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" that had that very element working for it. Nothing much was very ground breaking on that show except that the acting was a cut above other shows. Roddenberry did go a few steps farther with Star Trek, adding a multi-racial crew and women having real authority as crew members or aliens.

Prior to Star Trek, the "alien" or "other" was a concept meant to inspire fear and justify violence. However it seemed that the series delighted in reversing this. Repeatedly the aliens are shown to be less dangerous than thought: the Talosians want the best for Capt. Pike, Balok isn't so bad, the Salt Creature is meant to be pitied, and so on. However if the villain was inanimate or a Frankenstein composed of man's ignorance, say NOMAD or the Planet Killer, then all violence the Federation can muster could be justified.

For my money Roddenberry, who appeared to be a casting couch throwback producer from an "Ed Wood" era, accomplished nothing so amazingly wonderful prior to Star Trek, and certainly nothing afterward that ever surpassed this singular achievement. He fought to keep Mr. Spock in the show and oversaw all the writing for a stable consistency,(I'm not a Harlan Ellison fan), so from this perspective, you could say he was born to create Star Trek then step off the stage. His whole life after Trek seemed warped by the show's gravity, and often he was pulled back into it for the 1987 follow on series and the first round of feature films.

Some audience members may prefer TNG, or the feature films. They may look back at the 1966 debut of Star Trek as merely "the future looked a lot like the Sixties". But why is it that the pure human emotions in those 79 episodes still attracts new converts? There must be something there that's communicating beyond the show's original five year mission. Star Trek still works as an adventure; one that considers human drama primary. That is unusual for any science fiction based story, wouldn't you say?

This has to be one of the greatest series in history. I really enjoy watching a lot of the episodes especially those from the second and third seasons when Chekov was on and the supporting cast really became complete. I especially loved the episodes that dealt with what happens when someone upsets the natural course that a planet goes on (eg. "A Piece of the Action"). In the case of those episodes, usually someone wants to help a planet achieve its destiny at a faster rate or leaves a form of literature or technology behind leading to disastrous results as was the case with the Ekosians who followed the Nazi model or the world that used the model of 1920's Chicago to base their societies on. This pretty much is a moral for any world including our own and how we should leave not only people follow their own path but let nature take it's own path.

This show changed the way we looked at science fiction forever. Before there was The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and the prequel Enterprise. There was Captain James T. Kirk and crew on the Starship Enterprise. Exploring new worlds and new life. Traveling through time and space. Leonard Nimoy is great has Mr. Spock, the half human/half alien science officer and second in command. Deforest Kelly is also great Has Dr. Leonard Bones Mccoy, our favorite whiney Doctor, who came out with favorite sayings like "He's dead Jim" and "I'm a Doctor not a brick layer". The special effects may have seemed hoaky at times. But the show was still great in it's day. Gene Roddenberry was a genuis when he created this show. The show was well acted by everyone . So Star Trek fans live long and prosper.