Star Trek XI

Friday, May 22nd, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

If your’re a child of the 60s, there’s a good chance you’ll have grown up watching Star Trek when it originally aired. In fact, “The Devil in the Dark” episode was the very first program on TV I saw in color!

The Star Trek series you like the most seems to be the one you grew up with. It was Next Gen or DS9 for those born in the 70s and early 80s. Those born a few years later favour Voyager. And Enterprise was favored by those born in the mid 80s and after.

Most people who were there for the original run of The Original Series (TOS) remember it fondly and feel that even in today’s world, some of its morality tales still have resonance. Those growing up on Next Generation and later series have a less favorable impresssion. On a side note, the original series was shot on film, an inherently high definition medium, and Star Trek can be released on Blu-Ray whereas Next Gen was shot on video and so no high-def copies will ever become available.

Enterprise is the only other Trek series incarnation that’s likely to appear in high definition on Blu-Ray. This series received a lot of criticism from Star Trek fans for palaying around with Trek history. Historically, Spock was the first Vulcan to serve in Starfleet, yet T’Pol served as First Officer 150 years earlier in Enterprise. since she wasn’t a Starfleet officer, that resolved the apparent dichotomy. Enterprise contained other Trek history rewrites also. Actually, this didn’t bother me that much as Enterprise was much closer to the spirit of TOS than the intervening efforts.

The first Star Trek movie appeared 30 years ago. The last movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, out in 2002, was a dismal effort and put paid to any future Next Gen movies being developed. So here we are, seven years later, awaiting a reboot of the series that started it all. Star Trek XI lands on May 8th, 2009.

I’ve watched the trailers and hmmm…I’m ambivalent about the movie. But that’s down to me growing up with the old crew and I don’t think it’s a good idea to tinker with Star Trek history (despite not being put out by what the show’s producers did in Enterprise). My problen is that the new movie messes with the histories of the characters, alters their relationships and will fundamentally change how those characters will be perceived.

I know that this is a reboot for a new, younger audience, but (not having seen the movie), maybe it would have been better to use a different crew and ship, even if still set in the years leading up to the original 5-year mission. I’m not enamoured with some of the casting choices either. Okay, I agree I’m something of an old fart on this.

Time will tell. There’s only a couple of weeks more to wait till Star Trek XI hits the theaters. Naturally, I’ll go along to it. I really hope that I’ll be applauding at the end of the movie and wanting more instead of holding my head in my hands disappointed with the “vision” of a director who wasn’t even a Star Trek fan.

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