I don't clearly remember which iteration of Star Trek I caught on television first (an early movie or a repeat of the '60s show), but I'm fairly certain it must have been the latter. Even in the '80s, Star Trek was a noticeably "old-fashioned" show in terms of production design and effects, but none of that ever got in the way of a good story. However, as a kid I was primarily drawn to the vibrant colours of the uniforms and the sound-effects (hissing phasers, twinkling teleporters), the stern Spock and his pointy ears, and playing "guess where the Enterprise is going to appear from next?" during the opening credits (where the spaceship would whoosh across the screen from an indeterminate point on a starfield.) You know you played that, too...
I'm not sure why, but I have early memories of finding it oddly cool whenever William Shatner had to rip off his golden top and reveal his bare-chest to fight a rubber monster (please, no latent homosexuality gags, I'm comfortably heterosexual), and the angel-voiced theme tune was almost hypnotic. Essentially, the first Star Trek series was a wonderful, quirky piece of sci-fi that laid a lot of ground for a franchise now into its fourth decade.
I don't think I ever saw The Motion Picture until very late in the '80s, having first devoured The Wrath Of Khan on VHS tape multiple times (where I was always freaked out by the villain putting mind-controlling "ear-worms" into Chekov's helmet) and I believe Spock's death was the first on-screen demise I'd ever seen –- unless you count Peter Davison regenerating in an early-'80s Doctor Who. How can you not cry when Spock intones "you are, and always shall be... my friend"? Beautiful. My memories of Star Trek III are very hazy, but I certainly remember going to see Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home very well, because it was the first Trek film I saw at the cinema.
Shortly after, I remember my dad bringing home a video of a brand new Star Trek series called The Next Generation, which we watched together. Again, childhood clouds my memory, and I'm not sure I really understood what "Encounter At Farpoint" was all about, but I do remember being very unimpressed and a little bored. It felt very awkward and clinical compared to the fun of '60s Trek. My abiding memory is feeling disappointed the new Captain was a bald granddad type, and that it was incredibly weird that the saucer-section of the new Enterprise could detach.
Of course, Star Trek: The Next Generation went on to become a phenomenon and is arguably more popular than the original now. Arguably. I wasn't convinced by the first or second season, but it was certainly more appealing to watch TNG than the execrable Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Yuk. By TNG's third year, the characters of TNG had become a great deal more interesting to me -- particularly Data, as every kid loves a childlike robot. It wasn't until 1990 that I really began to adore TNG, though -– perhaps entirely because of "The Best Of Both Worlds" which introduced The Borg as near-unbeatable cybernetic bogeymen. I remember buying a few issues of the Official Magazine on the rare occasion I had enough pocket money, too. These days, Trek-related publications are everywhere, but it was a lot rarer back then!
The Deep Space Nine spin-off in 1993 passed me by to begin with. That was purely because it was only showing on Sky (and not many people had satellite TV back in '93/'94.) Plus the fact my dad claimed it was terrible, for some reason. He would later go back on that premature assessment. However, I was converted by a friend who went ape-shit over DS9's season 2 finale (which introduced the Dominion as an enemy), and found it spoke to a teenage urge for darkness and war-like action. TNG was always pretty spineless and stories reset themselves to the status quo after 45-minutes. Not so DS9.
I ate up season 3 and... well, then things got a bit geeky. Not to the degree that I ever went to a convention, learned Klingon, turned my bedroom into a replica of the bridge, and had my ears surgically pointed, but... well, I'll confess to getting a kick out of making models for about two years. Is that so bad? I had all the Enterprise's, a Klingon Bird of Prey, Deep Space Nine, a (grossly oversized) Runabout, a Romulan Warbird, a Ferenghi Marauder, etc. It was a hobby, I guess. Just not one you'd put on your CV. I was always a terrible model painter, though – so most of the models just stayed white/grey. It was always preferable to ballsing up the Enterprise-D with "duck egg blue".
I also started to collect the VHS videos of DS9, which were released about three months before Sky aired them, I believe. Only two per tape, for around £15 -- quite a rip-off in retrospect! But yeah, from season 3 onwards I eventually got every DS9 on VHS -- all stacked together on a shelf. I loved how the spines were segments of a landscape picture, too. I still have a few tapes even now, despite offloading most of them on Ebay when DVD began to takeover. Anyone want them?
Back to the story. Well, the mid-'90s was a busy time for Star Trek. TNG came to an end in '94, but you couldn't grieve because the cast moved straight into Star Trek: Generations –- which was a total must-see for me. Kirk meets Picard, what's not to like? I still have a fondness for that movie. Of course, DS9's season 4 revamp was excellent (Worf! DS9 has guns! Kira in a spray-on dress!), and that show really came to dominate my attention.
But, then we also had Star Trek: Voyager to contend with; a show I initially embraced, but quickly felt was... well, a half-hearted mess of a potentially brilliant, fresh twist. The crew were meant to be a fusion of straight-laced Federation types and "terrorist" Maquis rebels, but that never felt like part of the tapestry. Imagine if it had been! It was such a missed opportunity for tension and drama. They even set it in new territory (a new, unexplored area of the galaxy), but forgot to populate the Delta Quadrant with interesting aliens races. The Kazon? Crinkle-cut Klingons. And, sorry, I know she has her fans, by husky Captain Janeway was pretty awful. As was Neelix. And Kes (they got rid of her). Chakotay was poor, too. And Kim. Oh, and Paris wasn't much better. Tuvok was okay, though. And The Doctor? Well, Robert Picardo was the main reason to even watch the show.
And anyway, DS9 was in at full stride around that time -- darker, deeper, pushing the frontier of what people considered Trek to be, with morally-conflicted characters, a serialized war story, played out with the best supporting cast of any Trek. Even TNG jumped on the DS9 bandwagon in some respects, as Star Trek: First Contact was an altogether more exciting, darker Trek movie than we'd had in years. You couldn't go wrong with bringing The Borg to the big-screen, though, let's be honest.
Then, around 1998 well... Trek started to slowly die a little. DS9 began to wrap up its story, culminating in a weak last season and a poor finale (truly, a slap in the face for me back then), and TNG's films started to go down the pan with Insurrection, leading to only mild improvement in Star Trek II redux (er, I mean Nemesis.) What was irritating was how Nemesis was billed as the last TNG movie, but they didn't really give us any satisfying end for the characters.
By 1999 Voyager had actually improved a fair bit, but only by grabbing the coattails of First Contact –- by making The Borg into regular villains (slowly devaluing and castrating them, naturally), and injecting some sex appeal with Jeri Ryan's buxom Seven of Nine character. It worked. I still didn't value Voyager that much, but it was certainly a lot more entertaining after its mini-revamp. Shame its finale was also a dud -– although it's oddly popular amongst fans, judging from a few polls I stumble upon. Weird.
This takes us into the millennial transition, where sci-fi began to "mature" for mainstream audiences -- seemingly after The Matrix came out in 1999. A new attitude began to bubble up in pop-culture, leading to the remake of Battlestar Galactica – with TNG/DS9 veteran Ronald D. Moore as its developer (and recycling quite a few DS9 ideas, if you think about it1) With the dud of Nemesis still stinging in the eyes, Trek unwisely tried to launch another spin-off: Enterprise. It was designed to surf the Star Wars vogue for prequels and it sounded like a good idea to set a show before the time of Kirk with limited technology...
Alas, it quickly became apparent just how outdated Star Trek felt in a post-Matrix world. On TV, BSG was the new space opera behemoth, and Trek felt quite childish, simplistic and preachy in comparison. I stopped watching early into season 2. I hear it got better, and that season 4 was actually pretty decent, but aesthetically and creatively it was behind the curve. It was axed after four years. Even Voyager managed to avoid and reach the TNG/DS9 goal of seven seasons! But at least we didn't have to put up with that awful theme song for any longer. Russell Watson! Singing! Dear me.
And that just about leads us to the present-day of summer 2009, where Star Trek is about to be reborn as a rebooted film franchise with a young cast playing iterations of the '60s crew. It's gone back-to-basics spiritually, but with the verve and vitality of Star Wars aesthetically. The reviews have all been fantastic (seriously, is there a bad one I've yet to see?), and I'm excited to see Trek feel cool again. As great as TNG and DS9 were, Trek has been stuck under a geeks-only umbrella for decades, and even the fans began to lose interest in the past 15 years, with the arrival of fresher sci-fi ideas like Lost. Even now, BSG excepted, space-based sci-fi has an unfortunate stigma attached to its because of Trek...
In some ways JJ Abrams' Star Trek do-over feels influenced by Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who revival, in how it's been tackled; you honour the history, broadly please the fans, but make it to draw new audiences into the fold. You do that by treating the premise with respect, but delivering things non-fans never expected from the title's reputation –- i.e, fun, excitement, epic scale, characters you care about, sexiness and pace.
On the streets of Britain, people think: remember when Doctor Who was all about rubber monsters and Tom Baker in a scarf? Will Trekkies soon be asking: remember when Star Trek was all about boring technobabble and William Shatner's bare chest?2
Prepare to beam up...
1. DS9's the Prophets = BSG's The Lords Of Kobol? President Roslin as a spiritual leader = Captain Sisko as a spiritual emissary? BSG's Cylons infiltrating mankind because they appear humanoid = DS9's Changelings infiltrating mankind as shapechangers, etc.
2. No, seriously. I always had my eye on the Orion Slave Girl, trust me. And Uhura's mini-skirt.
