For days, I thought about my 9-11 tribute post and what it would be. My initial thoughts were to repost a column I wrote for my newspaper on the fifth anniversary – a column I titled the “Black Ghost.” In it I shared my own detached witness to the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. How, in the midst of fighting with an ancient TV antenna to get reception, the whole room of employees at my warehouse witnessed a black shadow glance across the screen into a puff of smoke – it was the second plane hitting. Collectively, our nation hasn’t been the same since that moment.
But I can’t find it, and to be honest, my tale wasn’t so much different from anyone else’s. What I can do is give a salute to Star Trek, of all things.
Prior to 9-11, I never watched most of the movies. I caught glimpses here and there, but never the whole thing and never in a bunch. I was not what you would call a “Trekkie” or a “Trekker” and I didn’t get the whole hub-bub. That changed when 9-11 happened. TNN, now known as Spike TV, began running the films in daily marathons during the following days of the attacks. While the rest of my family was glued to cable news and whatever small morsels of news they could chew on, I tried to escape to my TV upstairs in my bedroom at my parents’ house with Captain Kirk. It was the only relief I had from, what James Lileks so eloquently put today, as the “incessant imperatives of the crawl.”
What I discovered was a fun little series of movies, with more than a little Western heart and more importantly, enough of an escape to help this sleepless punk in his mid 20s forget for a few minutes what had happened on that awful day.
For that, the movies always have a special place in my heart. Here’s my list, reposted from earlier this summer, of my favorite Star Trek movies, which for a brief time a few autumns ago, did for this poor soul what movies do best.
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Star Trek’s voyage to “boldly go” would have came to an abrupt halt if not for Nicholas Meyer and Harve Bennett.
The two rescued the franchise from the depths of space socialism and mediocrity. Gene Roddenberry’s human experiment, one he created for TV to much cultish fanfare, would have never cut the mustard at the theater if not for Meyer, who brought the franchise back to its “western-in-space” roots with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. From there a new canon was born, and a platform to launch 10 more movies and endless numbers of syndicated TV series.
Roddenberry had his claws all over Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the series’ first film, an ominous and dull movie with no villain, no real plot and a voluminous budget. Meyer took the reins, dug up a compelling character with a familiar backstory (and a more compelling actor in Ricardo Montalban), made it all the more Naval and found magic. What resulted is a solid set of films that were fun, with timeless characters that espoused the spirit of Horatio Hornblower.
Which is what I’ve learned to this point, researching a bit on the net in the wake of the official “Star FN Trek Movie Marathon.” Never one for Star Trek, until a movie marathon eight years ago allowed me some brief respite of footage of collapsed buildings. Haven’t watched one since, but with the Star Trek remake hitting this summer, I’ve taken in the six originals (and a couple of the forgettable “The Next Generation” versions) out of curiosity. I’m still not sure what makes a Trekkie tick, but the characters are memorable and the series has held up reasonably well. Here’s how I see it.
1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: The true start of the series, captivating with Shatner at his best going against Montalban, though the two never stood on the same set. It had all the traits of the OK Corral, Moby Dick and Cape Fear rolled up into one giant space-western. One of the best sci-fi films ever made, because it separated itself from sci-fi as much as possible and was about the characters.
2. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: The last with the original cast, this film showed how the Trek universe had a penchant for various genres. Political intrigue, suspense, assassinations – much different than previous Star Trek offerings but just as effective. The Cold War allegory fit well with the narrative of age and death that engulfed the series from the second movie.
3. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: Meyer, writer-producer Bennett and Leonard Nimoy deserve most credit with the franchise salvaging itself. Bennett put together many of the factors that worked in Khan with Meyer. Nimoy also proved an effective director and making the fourth installment a surprise after the heavy subject matter of the second and third movies. As much a comedy as a space adventure, following the Trek crew through 1986 San Francisco was a treat, leading up to Dr. McCoy set loose in a contemporary hospital with unsurprising results. The cast makes up for the heavy-handed environmental message that’s relentlessly beaten about the head.
4. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: Maybe the most hated film in the franchise. Shatner got his chance to direct after following Nimoy, with varying results. Much more action oriented than previous installments and focused on the three central characters. Though, it does say much about Shatner’s ego that he directs a movie where he has a fist fight with God.
5. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Nimoy was content with killing off Spock, until he saw how well received the movie was and used the groundswell of support as reason to reprise the role and to take the director’s seat. Odd enough that Christopher Lloyd would become perhaps the baddest Trek villain ever. A hard position to be in, doing a movie where no one is particularly interested until the last five minutes.
6. Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Roddenberry’s constant rewrites and changes drove the budget near $50 million, which was astronomical in 1979. It also did nothing to revive the franchise or the characters, the real heart and soul of the series – not the technobabble or the overt and not-so-subtle message of universal hand-holding. Watching The Motion Picture followed by any early installment of the wretched The Next Generation shows an intricate link between the two. Ironically enough, if not for Roddenberry being booted from control of the second film, he would never had the chance to relive his grand galactic utopia in the late 1980s.
7. Star Trek: First Contact: Patrick Stewart rivals Montalban and Shatner in the hammy hand-wringing department. James Cromwell’s hard-drinking space pioneer with an addiction to Steppenwolf was a welcome element to a series and cast that lacked in personality. No surprise, the character with the most depth is the unfeeling android. By now, Star Trek characters were built based on Roddenberry’s vision of the ultimate future, where people didn’t have bias, act over emotional or act particularly human. It resulted in some rather unremarkable movies, only two of which I cared to watch, this and the other being …
8. Star Trek: Generations: The inevitable meeting of the Star Treks, a grand disappointment in terms of story. According to IMDB, Captain Kirk’s original death sequence (he was shot in the back by Malcolm McDowell) so upset Paramount executives, they forced a re-shoot which cost $5 million, or a sixth of the film’s entire budget. Another film where one is waiting to get to the end, killing Kirk didn’t seem to make much sense, the story was drivel and the new cast quickly showed it was not up to the charisma of the first cast.
One thing about Trek, is its optimism- that we can survive and thrive beyond our current circumstances. (Let’s forget Roddenberry’s neo-maoist tendencies for a moment)
This is why I believe that we as conservatives NEED to be involved in producing new science fiction- we have a vision of the future where freedom and responsibility, liberty and justice allow the human race to excel; we have to get what OUR vision looks like out to people.
I’ll get off my soapbox now…
Roddenberry and Lucas have some similarities, both of whom were lacking as writers and had their respective franchises saves by others -who never got credit. (Actually, other people get credit for helping Lucas with ESB and ROTJ)
The best STAR TREK series was DEEP SPACE NINE, and Gene was dead by the time that came on.
Gene would’ve hated DS9— all that conflict! And they used money! (gasp)
I myself gave up on Trek around the time of the one-two-three punch of Generations, DS9, and Voyager. It became too insipid for me to follow or care about anymore, so my comments are undoubtedly rather out of date, but I find it interesting that the more the franchise focused in on what the fans wanted, the less success they had. By the time of “Enterprise” – a show I’ve never seen – they were evidently spending three and four episodes at a time just doing continuity porn for the mouthbreathing trek fanatics, and non-culty people stayed away in droves.
A lot has been said about Roddenberry’s vision, his optomism, his faith in humanity, but I’ve come to conclude that’s all kind of crap. He made an action/adventure show that differed from other action/adventure shows only in its pretention and its aggressive sexism. Its purpose – AFAICT – was strictly to further the cult of Roddenberry, and his self-proclaimed brilliance. He was quick to drop it when he thought he had a screenwriting career starting, and quick to come back when the word got out that he couldn’t write for sour apples.
I’m not dissing Trek as a whole – there’s a lot of fun hours of entertainment in there, and the occasional thought-provoking issue, mostly in the first series – but as time wore on, it became entirely self-serving, no longer about the story, or the ideas, or really anything beyond “Keep the franchise alive.” You know what I mean, the same exact thing happened to Saturday Night Live.
Which, I suppose, is why the reboot was so successful: They went out of their way to take it away from the mouthbreathing fans (Who’ll watch anything, anyway, long as it has that damn Arrowhead logo involved somewhere), and essentially *Distanced* themselves from Roddenberrys (myopic) “Vision,” once again turning it in to something normal people would give a damn about.
Sorry to be vitriolic, but as a guy who loves SF, and thinks it’s important, I’m just sick to death of the Cult ‘o Trek pretending they alone represent the entire genre, that nothing apart from their silly-assed show is important, and that every other vision, idea, and set design is somehow wrong and must be destroyed. That’s just repellent to me. SF is aobut ideas and possibilities, and in the last 30 years, Trek has turned in to a thing that, by it’s very nature, opposes ideas.