Life, Writing, Weirdness

I am a lifelong Star Trek fan. That will be no surprise to anyone who happens to be reading this.

Starting with the basic truism that I’m a science fiction fan, some might argue being a Star Trek fan is primarily due to the time I grew up in. I was a child in the 1970s and had to live with the limited amount of television science fiction available at the time. Most of which, although still nostalgic to me, was pretty cheesy, even at the time. And some of it, was frankly bad.

In the cheesy camp, we have things like the original Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Jason of Star Command (although that one was written specifically for a children’s audience on Saturday mornings), The Six Million Dollar Man, and so on.

On the bad side, we had things like Ark II (another Saturday morning show), the second season of both Buck Rogers, Galactica 1980, and Space: 1999. This last one should be best remembered for the first season theme music so we can try to forget the writing or most of the acting and direction. It had a fantastic and very complete aesthetic, but very nearly every episode depended on someone, and often more than one someone, really smart doing something really stupid. I’m actually trying to do a Space 1999: watch through it right now, and it’s taken me a really long time to be halfway through the second season, and the second season is very definitely worse than the mostly really bad first season, even with the addition of Catherine Schell.

But, through all the cheese and the junk, there was Star Trek.

The last episode of the original series was broadcast a year and a half before I was born but it went into syndication almost immediately. One of my earliest memories, sometime before my 3rd birthday, I think, is sitting in my father’s lap watching “The Immunity Syndrome”. You know, the one with the giant space amoeba. Not one of the best episodes, certainly. But it’s still among my favorites because of its location in my memory.

And through my childhood and into adolescence, through the 1970s and deep in the 1980s. Star Trek The Original Series didn’t need those last three words, because it was the only Star Trek. Even when it made the leap to the big screen. The first four movies happened without most of us, the younger fan base anyway, having any idea that it almost got a second chance on television or that there might be another show coming. It wasn’t Star Trek: The Original Series, it was just Star Trek.

And everywhere I lived, it was in syndication on some channel we could get. The best of these was when we moved back to Ontario. Settling in the Belleville area for my father’s last two Air Force postings in Trenton (he managed to secure two different jobs at one base, somehow). Star Trek happened five days a week not long after I got home from school, from the time we moved there until, I think, near the end of grade 11 for me. Five days a week, rotating through in production order, the day after the last episode played, the first episode would play. Even allowing for special events here and there, we got the entire series about 3 times a year.

And I loved it.

I can’t think of how many times I’ve seen every episode of the original series, and it doesn’t matter. I own all three seasons and all the original crew movies on Blu-ray, and it doesn’t matter. If I am flipping through channels and come across an episode or one of those first six movies, I stop and watch. And I’ll put an episode on sometimes when I’m working or doing something else.

I grew up in a time when it was tough to be a geek, when it was tough to be allowed to love the things that you loved just for the sake of loving them. But Star Trek was always there for me. And it always will be. The characters, the adventures, most of the dialogue is still burned into my memory. I can identify an episode within a few seconds, by title, and give you any level of detailed plot summary that you want before the teaser is finished playing. Wherever I was, wherever I moved, whatever my personal social situation was, I still had Star Trek.

I still have Star Trek.

If somehow you took away every other scrap of science fiction I’ve ever seen or read and only left me Star Trek, I would be okay.

It is the absolute definition of comfort viewing for me.

And yes, I’m kind of deliberately ignoring Star Trek the Animated Series here. I remembered watching it as a kid I but didn’t have access to it on a regular basis until I was an adult again. It’s fun, I love it, and you should watch it, but it does not occupy the same space in my heart. Neither does The Next Generation, which came at a great point in my teenage years when my geeky friends and I were starved for good science fiction.

I have enjoyed, on some level, every single iteration of Star Trek. Not every little piece of it, not every single episode, but every series as a whole. All of them.

That original crew, though, that’s my crew. That’s my childhood. That’s my adolescence. My introduction to the idea that things could get better, and we could all drive forward into a good future. My first television exposure to so many positive aspects of human nature, and how to deal with the negative ones. My first hints that it was okay to be who I was, as an individual, and to think for myself.

Everyone has something, something large or small, that occupies a fundamental place in their persona, that helped make them who they are. That helps them continue to build who they are and who they want to be. For me, that’s Star Trek.

Live long and prosper.

And be well, everyone.