Finally, someone has decided that it’s time to capitalize on Star Trek again. (J.J. Abrams is pushing out a new Star Trek movie, which the movie posters look fabulous, and hopefully, Abrams can follow up with a suitable plot ending for it.)
Despite the rampant cult following, Star Trek has failed to gain a new audience in the past years with the infamous what-was-that Enterprise. Some argue that the Utopian ways of the Roddenberry-created franchise doesn’t fit a post-9/11 War on Terror world. I tend to agree that the new Battlestar Galactica fits the energy and mood of this decade much better than Star Trek ever would. Heck, even the Star Trek: Experience in Vegas is closing.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still fandorks out there who wear their red Uhura uniform almost every Halloween. (It looks way naughtier with fishnets and knee-high Doc Martens. Trust me.) They still come in droves to conventions and attend Reading Rainbow readings at local libraries just to see LeVar Burton. (Seriously, Burton is the nicest celebrity ever, even if we did kind of scare him.)
And finally, someone has decided to capitalize on the die-hard fans by combining Star Trek role-playing into a World of Warcraft-like simulator with Star Trek Online. I won’t be joining it as role-playing, either online or live action, has never been my form of geekery, and I still haven’t moved beyond my original Nintendo when it comes to video games. I’m just really surprised that no one has done this before.
Little off topic but did you ever catch Firefly? That was a very good show and a much different type of sci-fi that I think we need more of. Same goes for Farscape.
I loved Firefly. I do think it was very good. However, don’t trust Whedon to carry it on and wasn’t a fan of Serenity.
I could never get into Farscape. Something with puppets and Ben Browder. But I do love Claudia Black, so some day I’ll probably watch it.
I could never get into Farscape either. I really tried to give it a chance, but it never grabbed me.
Trek, Trek, Trek… I could probably write a pretty long blog entry about Trek and me. TOS is just so closely entangled with happy childhood memories. I remember watching “A Piece of the Action” over and over again on VHS with my dad; I remember watching Wrath of Khan at every family reunion with all my uncles. I remember loving all the characters, and wanting to be best friends with them. Heck, wanting to be them. I did dress up one time for Halloween as Riker, which was sad for me because I had only watched one episode of Next Gen at that point, and I didn’t like it at all (it was “Conspiracy” – the worm-eating freaked me out.) But we couldn’t find any TOS costumes. So the next year my grandmother made me a blue TOS costume, which I LOVED. My godfather (who was possibly the most hard-core of everyone in my dad’s family) bought me Star Trek: The Game, which is a combination of the hardest TOS trivia game ever and Risk. (Like, you’d have to answer questions to win territories, and the questions were “What’s the number on Janice Rand’s quarters?”)
I was still too young to fully appreciate DS9 when it first came on the air. I loved some aspects of it (the fun holodeck episodes, the Miles episodes), but I hated all the Prophets stuff. But I was the perfect age for Voyager. I had just turned 11, and I was SO EXCITED for a new Star Trek. I watched Voyager for years and years.
I didn’t even notice Enterprise when it came on the air, and when I did notice Enterprise, all I could notice was how stupid and boring it was. Except for that Mirror Universe episode, which was pretty awesome.
I really want this movie to be amazing. I want to recapture my childhood. I want to see this movie with my dad and his brothers, and I want us to love it. I wanted the same thing with Indiana Jones (except that was with me and my friends), and I was disappointed on that front. I hope that Star Trek doesn’t disappoint me, but with JJ Adams at the helm, I fear it will.
I’m sorry, JJ Abrams, not Adams. Listening to too much 1776 lately.