"Writing Young Adult Fantasy" @ Sci Fi London, 2 May
Underground Reading: Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy

Star Trek Week #1: Classic Trek

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

The new Star Trek movie opens this Friday, and, frankly, it looks awesome.  To honor the coming awesomeness, Pornokitsch will devote a little time every day this week to that great arbiter of geek culture:  Star Trek.  4135-25

There's not much to say about the original series of Star Trek that hasn't been said a thousand times over, in Klingon.  What can I possibly tell you about William Shatner's corset, the cardboard sets, heavy-handed metaphors, the first interracial kiss that you don't already know?  And getting into a discussion about Star Trek's legacy would be even more laborious and even less rewarding.  We can merely gaze in awe, at this point, upon the three-season science fiction fantasia that spawned such mainstays in the geek cultural lexicon as "slash" and "red shirt"  and even "Mary-Sue" - words and phrases we might regularly find ourselves using in non-Trek situations, even non-fannish situations.  Words and phrases that non-geeks, certainly non-Trek-geeks, might even know and use.  The cultural impact of the original Star Trek is broad and very, very deep.


For many of us, Star Trek was our gateway drug to geekdom.  (The argument, I think, can be made convincingly for Americans; I suspect that Doctor Who served the same purpose in the UK.)  My mom has fond memories of clearing her schedule to watch the original broadcasts in the Sixties; I recall watching reruns when I was in elementary school, and borrowing video-taped episodes to watch from friends and relatives.  In the early Eighties we had the Star Trek movies to look forward to (and bootleg), and watch over and over again.  And then, of course, came Star Trek:  The Next Generation, which reinvigorated the entire franchise with updated plots and themes, and gave at least one group of high school-aged geek girls hours of conversational material - though I'm not sure we ever decided whether we preferred Picard or Mulder.

Jean-luc-picard   Mulder1


To return to the original Star Trek.  There is lots to love about the original series, from the fact that some episodes were penned by some of our greatest pulp writers (and authors featured elsewhere here on Pornokitsch):  Harlan Ellison wrote the acclaimed "The City on the Edge of Forever," "Amok Time" was written by Theodore Sturgeon, and Robert Bloch takes credit for "What are Little Girls Made of," "Catspaw," and "Wolf in the Fold."

Everything asSTNakedTimeide, however, my earliest and most enduring memory from the original series  comes from what the internet tells me is the episode "The Naked Time" from which I took only one image:  Sulu charging around the Enterprise like a madman, brandishing a foil.   With the perversity of the very young I took this to be an integral facet of his character, rather than a plot device, and was disappointed by any episode that didn't feature Sulu and his sword.  (You can watch the clip here.  Spock, hilariously, refers to Sulu as "d'Artangan" after taking him out with a Vulcan nerve pinch.)  Apparently, George Takei considers "The Naked Time" his favorite episode, and devoted an entire chapter of his autobiography to it.
Karl-eomer3
Spock was my favorite character when I was young; as I've gotten older, however, I find the passionate and frustrate Dr. McCoy more to my taste.  In the weird, wonderful geek super-collider that is the upcoming Star Trek movie, Bones will be played by Karl Urban, The Lord of the Rings' Eomer. 

The new Star Trek movie has a lot to live up to, and will not fail to disappoint some fraction of its automatic fanbase.  Trek fans are notoriously picky and notoriously weird, but can be equally gentle and accepting.  Here's hoping the franchise reboot lives up to the hype.

Upcoming:
  • The Wrath of Khan
  • Star Trek:  The Next Generation
  • First Contact
  • Wampeters, Foma and Granfaloons
N.B. - Yes, I know his name is spelled "Chekov."  Whoops!



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