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Why I Stopped Watching Star Trek: Confessions of an Original Trekker
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By Dave Barrett | Author Bio | Publish This Article
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Paramount is canceling Enterprise after only four seasons. What a surprise. I stopped watching it a year ago.
Let me be clear up front; I love Star Trek. Passionately. I always have. From the very first moment I saw it, something just... clicked. I am extremely proud of the fact that I'm part of the generation that made Star Trek the phenomenon it became.
I was too young to have seen the show in its original first run on NBC. It wasn't until a few years later, while visiting my brother in college, that I discovered this amazing show in syndication. I was eleven at the time.
I remember it vividly; my family was in a hotel in Indiana and I was bored out of my mind. This was in 1972 B.C. (before cable), and there was all of three television channels to choose from. Fortunately, Star Trek was on one of them.
The episode was Arena, and I'd missed the first half. I was already into science fiction & fantasy, so the second I saw a lizard-man fighting hand-to-hand with a guy in a green shirt, I was glued to the screen. I learned how to make a cannon that day, using stuff lying around on a deserted planet.
After that, everything changed for me. I watched it every day after school. I made a checklist of episodes, and kept track of how many times I'd seen each one (I called it my "Trek-list"). I made models of the Enterprise and a Klingon Battle Cruiser and hung them from my ceiling. I read the books; went to the conventions; bought the merchandise... I was hardcore.
But it wasn't enough. We (the fans) wanted more. Oh sure, they tried to placate us with the Saturday morning cartoon version, but let's face it, that was pretty lame. No, we wanted Kirk and Spock in the flesh.
And then came Star Wars.
All of the sudden, sci-fi was cool. Rip-off space movies and short-lived TV shows were cropping up everywhere. For Paramount, it was a no-brainer. They were going to revive the TV show anyway (Star Trek: Phase Two); why not just up the ante and turn it into a big-budget theatrical movie instead?
And so they did. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was the most expensive movie ever produced in Hollywood's history (at that time), clocking in at over $40 million.
Too bad it sucked.
Ok, maybe that's a bit too harsh. The director's cut is most definitely an improvement. Thank you Paramount, for allowing Robert Wise to finally finish his film the way he originally envisioned it. And since this is a confession, I admit to seeing it twice on opening night; once at the 8 o'clock show, and then again at midnight.
Even though it wasn't exactly what we had hoped for, it was Star Trek, and fans flocked to it. The film ultimately grossed over $120 million at the box office. That's 1979 dollars, when movie tickets were averaging a third of what they sell for today. The future of Star Trek looked very promising.
The following year, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was released, further fueling the publics appetite for quality science fiction. When Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was released in 1982, it was an instant blockbuster.
This was Star Trek! This is what we were waiting for! Kirk battling an old nemesis from the TV show! Fans lined up around the block to watch Kirk defeat Khan, and witness the death of Spock, one of the most beloved characters in sci-fi history.
But you can't keep a good character down, especially in science fiction, and so Spock was reborn, in the highly under-rated sequel Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, followed by Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, neatly wrapping up the trilogy started by Khan.
In 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation, set one hundred years after the original series, premiered on television. After a some- what shaky start, it ended up far surpassing the original, in both storytelling and popularity (personally, I never missed a new episode in its entire run).
And then, in 1991, Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the series, died.
After that, things changed. Now that the old man was dead, Rick Berman, Roddenberry's hand-picked successor, decided to take the series in a new direction. The direction he took it was into deep space.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered to one of the largest television audiences in history, but to mixed reviews. For the first time, Star Trek didn't... trek anywhere. Still, fans were willing to give it a chance to get its "space legs."
Eventually it did, and proved to be an excellent show, especially after adding Michael Dorn to the cast as Worf. It not only added new vigor to the show, it gave it that crucial link it needed to tie-in with Next Generation. When Worf turned up in the film First Contact commanding Deep Space Nine's ship, Defiant, the circle was complete.
But my interest was starting to wane. For the first time I missed episodes. Sometimes whole blocks of them. It just wasn't the same.
And then came Voyager.
Gene Roddenberry's golden rule was "No conflict among Starfleet officers." Humans of the future will have overcome any such petty differences. This posed a conundrum for the writers, for without conflict, there is no drama. All conflict would have to come from outside.
The way around this problem? Put a crew of half-Starfleet and half-pirates on the same ship and throw them into another quadrant of the galaxy, so far away it'll take them seventy years to get home. Yeah baby, now that's what I call CONFLICT!
I watched the premier. Let's just say I was under whelmed. But, it was Star Trek, so I gave it a chance, and I watched the entire first two seasons religiously. But somehow, it just wasn't Star Trek. Oh sure, it was on a starship, and they went places, but there was always too much underlying tension everywhere.
There was a reason the original Star Trek and Next Generation worked so well. That reason was Gene Roddenberry. By circumventing his Prime Directive of no conflict among the crew members, Rick Berman and company put Star Trek on a path towards self-destruction.
To make matters worse, it started to get boring. Same plot, different show. Tweak a storyline here, give the alien a new forehead there, maybe throw in the Borg... been there done that. Once in a while a really creative and original episode would crop up, but mostly it was the same old rehashed stuff.
By this time, even the movies were slowing down. Insurrection, while well written and satisfying, was little more than a glorified episode with a big movie star as the guest villain (an unrecognizable F. Murray Abraham under layers of prosthetic makeup). What is it about odd numbered Star Trek movies?
I intermittently watched Voyager when I remembered it was on, but it wasn't like the old days when I would arrange my schedule around Star Trek. I think I missed an entire half season towards the end. Then, after seven years, Voyager found her way back home, just as we always knew she would. Yawn.
On to Enterprise. It could have been something really, really special, but instead they opted for more of the same. To be completely honest, they lost me from day one.
First of all, they completely screwed up the ship design. What is a 24th century design doing in the 22nd century? They got it right in First Contact with the Phoenix; they got it right for the Deep Space Nine episode, Trials and Tribbleations, when they recreated the original Enterprise; why couldn't they get this right too?
The blue glow on the sides of the nacelles were never on Kirk's Enterprise in any of the films, ergo it was a 24th century innovation. I once heard Rick Berman make the excuse that audiences were used to the ships of the movies and series, so they designed it in a familiar way. I call that a cop-out. Just admit that you screwed up.
I also would have really liked to have heard the old chirps and whistles from the bridge of Kirk's Enterprise, on this Enterprise. It would have been a great homage to the old series, and added so much more to the feel of Star Trek.
Speaking of sound effects, would it have been so terrible to use some other sound effects from the original series? Phasers maybe? Or the transporter? How about the turbo-lift? It just strikes me as very odd that the 22nd century is more advanced than the 23rd century.
Even so, I gave it the old Star Trek try. I watched the first two seasons, pretty consistently. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. There were a few stand-outs. It almost seemed like it wanted to be like the old series, but didn't want to give up all its new toys.
And then at the end of the second season, they threw away over three decades of established Star Trek lore, and completely re- wrote the timeline of events, when an alien force destroyed a good chunk of North America, just for the sake of ratings. I thought that was in poor taste after 9/11.
But that's not why I stopped watching. I stopped watching Enterprise because, where I live, they moved the third season to the same day and time as Smallville. I'm sorry, but I don't have TiVo. When they forced me to make a choice, I chose the better show.
If they had aired it one hour later, instead of putting it up against a rival show, I'd have tuned in. I will never understand why networks put similar shows (in this case science fiction) up against each other in competition. To me, it makes much more sense to let the same audience enjoy both shows. Why make us choose?
I guess they realized they were losing fans to Smallville, because this year they moved it to Friday night. But it was too little too late. If other fans were like me, who had completely missed the entire third season, we had pretty much forgotten about it, or felt lost in the storyline if we did tune in.
Ironically, it was a move to Friday night that killed the original series. Who stays home to watch television on Friday night? Don't these guys ever learn?
Now I hear there is a letter writing campaign under way to save Enterprise. Will it work? Who knows. It worked once, maybe it will again. Maybe not. Either way, I don't think it matters much. Star Trek has pretty much run its course. Paramount has milked their cash-cow dry. Too bad. It was truly great once.
And so it is, that I say goodbye to Star Trek with a heavy heart.
Live long and prosper.
About the author:
Copyright (c), 2005 Dave Barrett
Dave Barrett is a Hollywood Makeup FX Artist and Screenwriter. Please visit his website: http://AssimilatedSmiley.com
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