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[NOTE: This is the first essay in Pete Tzinski's 7 part series leading up to the premiere of the new Star Trek film.]
In a little over a week, Star Trek comes back into our lives with a face-lift, courtesy of J.J. Abrams. It hasn't been away all that long, although it feels like a lifetime to us fans. I've been ruminating on Star Trek for reasons unrelated to the new movie for some time, but figured that this would be a good time to talk about Trek and me.
The first series, simply called Star Trek was the least-popular of any of the series. It was unpopular enough to be canceled. It was brief, but world-changing. You don't need me to tell you how big a deal Star Trek was, although after the show was canned, it did take a while for the world to take the hint and realize its importance. Star Trek went beyond a television series and became a phenomena, as ingrained into us, whether we like it or not, as Superman, or Bugs Bunny. It all started with this first series, and its 79 episodes.
However, the series wasn't that big a deal for me as I was growing up. It wasn't that exciting a show to a young child. The bright colors and clunky computers didn't excite me in the way that Star Wars, for example, was doing, and the idea that this Star Trek show had been around long before Star Wars didn't occur to me. The stories, too, didn't leave me with anything significant.
It wasn't merely my age that kept the series from appealing to me, though; it was also that my family moved a lot as I was growing up, in and out of the country. Combine that with sporadic television habits on my part, and the off-and-on periods in which we actually had television, and it meant that I didn't see the original series often enough for it to do anything. It didn't get my attention the way other things did, the way Star Wars, and I Love Lucy, and M*A*S*H, and the various eclectic pieces of television absorption did.
I was married and had already delighted in three of the other four Star Trek series before I really got around to paying attention to the Original Series. (And even though I had seen the movies many times and loved them, that Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the others, in my mind, bore little resemblance to the television show's characters).
Of all the Star Trek series, this is actually the one I have the least to say about, because of the reasons I mentioned above, and because of my age. I'm not that old. Star Trek was well into the world by the time I joined the party. Anything that exists in the world before you were born is not revolutionary or cool at first. It's just part of the natural order of things.
The thing that impressed me the most about the original Star Trek was the writing. And the writers, once I knew enough to recognize names. This is the series which had authors like D.C. Fontana and Harlan Ellison on its list of writing credits. That impresses me, the older I get.
The writing, though, had to do the work of everything in the show. There just wasn't the capability for huge and exhilarating special effects. What the show frequently had to consist of was just simple character conflicts, much in the same way that the Twilight Zone really didn't need an impressive budget. It had the writing and the atmosphere. It was a generation of TV shows (some of them) which did the thing that old radio dramas used to rely on: evoke drama and images in the viewer's imagination. Let the viewer's mind do all the heavy lifting.
Thus, the writing, when it clicked, was powerful. The older I got, the more of a working writer I became, the more and more that struck me when I'd watch old episodes. "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", for example, was an episode I used in an article on race, which sent me back to watch it again. And yes, it's pretty blatant, the racial statement being made there. One person is black on the left side, one person is white on the left side. Simplistic? Sure. But it accomplished its goal of making actual racial segregation seem a bit silly. Put into this new perspective, it was ridiculous. But once you went past that concept, you got a very simple story full of very powerful dialogue exchanges. Beautifully written stuff. And the story ended hauntingly. A fine tale.
Even a fairly problematic episode, like the one in which the Enterprise and a Romulan ship play cat-and-mouse, were brilliantly done. There were problems. The big one that always stuck out for me was, in the middle, why were they so desperately trying to run silent? To the point of freaking out when a console beeped? Sure, that makes sense in submarines, but....they're in the vacuum of space. It can be a whisper or a sing-song, it's not going to carry.
And yet, the writing was strong. The Romulan commander was an evocative, delightful character.
Finally, how can anyone talk about Star Trek without talking about "The City on the Edge of Forever", by the above-mentioned Harlan Ellison? When I was young, it meant nothing to me. But why would it have done?
But these days, it evokes emotion, like any good story should. If you ask me, it's the series' finest moment. And really it's the simplest. Nothing particularly space-science-fiction about it. Just a very, very minimal time-travel story in which, at the end, you only need ten seconds worth of footage to get to the reader. The quick-shot cuts between McCoy, and Kirk, and Edith, the car comes, there is a screech...and all we have to see is Kirk's face. Like quite a lot of Harlan Ellison's work, it reaches into your chest and tears out your heart without you realizing it's going to happen.
And there were two other fine, fine moments which I only need to say three words to tell you about: Harcourt Fenton Mudd. 'Nuff said.
I can't just rave about the series, though. I realize I'm not the right generation for it, but...there was some dumb stuff in there. Spock playing with weird space-hippies? The pilot episode? The weird-two-parter episode in which Spock defends himself from court martial by playing the pilot episode? Er. The fun-but-dumb episode in which Kirk fought the Gorn? You get the idea.
Still, even if every episode had been dumb...the importance of this series can't be denied, because of what it led to. In seventy-nine episodes, it created a cultural phenomenon. Without this original show, with its paper mache rockets and its strange Klingons, I very much doubt there would have been a Star Wars, or a Babylon 5, or a Farscape, or...well, pick your show that does anything in space. The odds would have been stacked much, much more against their existence without Star Trek.
If you don't watch any of the others, go watch "The City on the Edge of Forever" and see if that doesn't convince you into watching other episodes. I'm pretty sure it will.
Comments (15)
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Posted by Peter Damien at Friday May 01, 2009 at 12:25 AM
© 2009 SF Signal
I was born in the 70s, but even as a little girl I was immediately captivated by Star Trek the Original Series. Of course I was blown away by Star Wars, but the "clunkiness" of Star Trek was never a turn off for me. When I was kid, I found it scary and exciting. As an adult I could watch the Original series again and see all kinds of things to value. There were social messages sometimes, and I love the contrast between Spock's logic and McCoy's emotionalism. Other aspects of Star Trek that I like, and appear in the other incarnations, are its sexiness and sense of community. As for sexiness, I just liked its acknowledgment of human sexuality. Sometimes people are attracted to each and act on it. There was no stigma or shame. It was just part of life. Sometimes affairs were fun. Sometimes they broke your heart. Sometimes your fling turned out to be a robot. And the sense of community came from the group-oriented mindset of the crew. They always worked together. If you were captured, then your crew was coming for you. Star Trek is just full of positive messages that are so rare on TV, and that is a big part of its appeal for me, and, well, I'll give anything a chance if it's set in outerspace.
Posted by Tracy Falbe on Friday May 01, 2009 at 2:23 AM
Born in '63, so Star Trek has always been a part of my life. Watching as an adult, I get an entire new level of enjoyment from episodes that bored me as a kid, i.e. "Obsession", which now fascinates me as a study on "How do you define a lifeform?"
Of course, there were some great comedy moments, too!
One word: Fizzbin!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpGw6wbSb4g
Posted by Chris Johnston on Friday May 01, 2009 at 7:53 AM
Fizzbin was fantastic. Oh man, how could I forget "A PIece of the Action"? I didn't bring that up in the article. SHAME on me. Listening to Spock fail to act like a tough Mobster is hilarious. And listening to the Mob guys talk to poor baffled Scotty.
I didn't mention things like "The Trouble with Tribbles" either, because before you know it, I'd be going episode-by-episode and these articles would be eighty thousand pages long.
I really enjoy the original Star Trek. But suspect that those of you (old people) *ahem* who were born at the right time period probably get more out of it than I necessarily can. 
Posted by Pete on Friday May 01, 2009 at 8:05 AM
Born in '73, I too was introduced to Star Wars before Star Trek. My memories of Star Trek TOS, though, are some of the most special of my youth.
I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' home when I was old enough to bicycle the mile or so to their house. I would often go there after school and visit with my grandmother for a couple hours, until she started cooking dinner and which point I'd go home. I hate to admit it but part of the reason might have been that we either didn't have a TV or didn't have cable, and my grandmother did. So we watched reruns of Star Trek, or Hawaii Five-Oh, or Magnum PI on the big black and white console TV.
It was Star Trek that sticks with me the most, though. As a kid who was into math and science and had an overly emotional younger brother, I was hooked on Spock from the first time he appeared on that TV.
And of course, it's forever entwined with memories of some of the most pleasant times of my childhood.
Looking forward to reading the rest of the blog series!
Posted by Dave Spencer on Friday May 01, 2009 at 8:33 AM
You linked to two shows (Arena, City), but I think you ought to have put in the Hulu or NBC links to -
http://www.hulu.com/videos/search?query=star+trek
http://www.cbs.com/classics/star_trek/video/video.php
and you can probably find most, if not all of the episodes on Youtube.
Now there is no excuse for young whippersnappers not to have seen ALL of the episodes (multiple times, to the point of dialogue memorization...)
I was fortunate enough to be of an age to watch the show when it originally aired (tho that involved sneaking down the stairs and secretly watching over my father's shoulder - and he didn't watch it every week...) and to watch it regularly at dinner time for years during re-run.
I think that a little bit of historical perspective helps define the context of this show: City, for example, was one of a handful of times that the consequences of time travel was presented to a general audience.
And of course, one can't forget that the show was brought back through a pre-internet letter writing campaign.
Today, there are few episodes I can watch with any real interest. I've probably seen each and every one of them at least a dozen times and to a small degree, familiarity has bred contempt.
But I can still watch Mirror, Mirror (alternate Trek realities) and wish that someone with the wherewithal would focus on that for a new Trek franchise...
Posted by steve davidson on Friday May 01, 2009 at 8:56 AM
I was born in 1943. I was already a mother twice over and a college student that memorable night when the first episode aired on tv. None of my friends caught the show and my husband thought I was crazy for watching a space show. Unlike him, I grew up watching Space Patrol and Tim Corbett, Space Cadet on Saturday mornings and catching a small little program entitled Science Fiction Theater once a week. I was ripe for something that caught my imagination and had something to say. Star Trek did that and more. When the show was cancelled three seasons later I was heartbroken.
Since those glory days of original Trek science fiction on television has been rather disappointing with its emphasis on special effects rather than character and theme. The later and paler versions of Trek have seemed to concentrate on formulaic stories and stock characters. I look forward to the new movie even though original canon seems to have been ignored in order to be able to bring recognized characters together years earlier than fans have been told.
Posted by Engrady Pind on Friday May 01, 2009 at 10:03 AM
Engrady: You bring up a minor interesting point that, really, had no place in my articles (it's a different line of thought). But yeah, all of the Trek series have always had fairly stock characters, all the way through. And over the course of seven seasons, they accrete into interesting people as their backstories and personalities develop. By the end, they're interesting people.
I always thought that was interesting to note, when comparing to something like Whedon's Firefly, where they more or less came onto the screen as whole characters. Or even Babylon 5, where their histories were more prominently affecting them, and they turned into very different people as the story progressed.
Doctor Who is my biggest counter-example right now, in that the writing is such that just about anyone is an interesting and emotionally resonating person the moment they walk onto the screen.
It's not a point AGAINST Star Trek, though. It's apples and oranges. It's just something I've always noticed and ruminated on.
Posted by Pete on Friday May 01, 2009 at 10:29 AM
That "fun-but-dumb episode in which Kirk fought the Gorn" was a (poor) adaptation of Fredric Brown's classic short story "Arena." One of the things that set the original Star Trek apart from almost all other TV SF is that it employed professional SF authors. Sure there was Harlan Ellison and D.C. Fontana, but there was also Theodore Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad, Jerome Bixby, and Richard Matheson (who also wrote I Am Legend). It's a shame that their contributions are now all but forgotten.
Posted by chrome on Friday May 01, 2009 at 11:12 AM
Who you callin' "old" punk! I, too, was born in '63 and grew up with the original Trek. It was a part of my youth and became a big part of our culture. I'm constantly shocked and dismayed to hear people say "Oh, yeah, Star Trek is great, Picard and all. I don't remember Denny Crane ever being in it."
First, because it shows my age (prefer the word "experience") and second because I can't help thinking these people are missing SO much. They think they love Star Trek, they think they know the Star Trek phenom, but unless they've seen the original episodes - how can they?
Sure, some of you grew up with Star Wars as your pinnacle, but in the 60's, we didn't have flash and cgi and pretty pretty things. Our shows had washing machine parts and cardboard sets - so they had to rely on good writing to get by. And the original Star Trek episodes ARE good writing - cheesey sets aside, it was excellent writing and (at the time) forward thinking that solidified Star Trek in our hearts and in our culture.
God love the "Shat"
Posted by Kristine on Friday May 01, 2009 at 12:03 PM
"Back in mah day we didn't have nonna yer fancy cee-gees, boy! WE had washing machines AND WE LIKED IT BETTER THAT WAY!"
;)
Posted by Pete on Friday May 01, 2009 at 12:28 PM
I was 12 in 1967...12 is the golden age of science fiction. I'd never seen anything like it. I had minimal exposure to science fiction in any form...and because my dad didn't like it I had to watch it on the old black and white tv in the basement...the one that took 10 minutes to warm up. I even wrote Star Trek fan fic with my friend Crystal (of course we featured prominantly in the story.)
From the first episode I was blown away. I wanted to be there, "where no man had gone before." It was magic. Star Wars is wonderful and magic, too, but I was a senior in college when it premiered.
It was Star Trek that inspired some kids to grow up to be engineers and astronauts...and maybe even doctors. Me, I don't do math...so I am a librarian instead.
Posted by barbara on Friday May 01, 2009 at 3:27 PM
The special effects didn't have to be so great because the TV's back then sucked!
When you realize what the actors were working with on set, their talent is more impressive. They really sold some of that tech. I never got hung up on the auto opening sliding doors, the transporter, the helm, the tricorder that Spock was always staring into. It was all very easy to accept. The ship, the planets, the phasers, the aliens, well yeah that was pretty lame. But it was the best there was for outer space sfx -- stacks up pretty well to Forbidden Planet, and don't even mention Lost in Space.
Interesting that I Love Lucy got your attention before Star Trek, since Lucille Ball was the studio chief who gave the green light to producing the first season.
Posted by Matte Lozenge on Friday May 01, 2009 at 11:49 PM
I believe the beeping console in the episode "Balance of Terror" indicates that Spock has accidentally broken radio silence. Electromagnetic radiation definitely travels through the vacuum of space. (I just happen to have watched this episode for the first time a few days ago.)
Posted by Grant on Sunday May 03, 2009 at 12:37 AM
Pete,
An interesting bit of info from me regarding the 'popularity' of Trek. While true the original series was canned due to low ratings, did you know that it routinely pulled in 20+ million viewers? It did. The TNG guys, and everyone who followed for that matter, would sell their kids to the Ferengi for that kind of viewership. I find this 'relative popularity' thing to be rather interesting.
But an even more interesting question is this: If there had been no Trek, would Star Trek create such a cult following in today's market?
I'm guessing no, but that's just me.
Posted by jp on Sunday May 03, 2009 at 8:46 PM
Hey Pete,
Nice bit here. I'm glad you are tackling this, and not me.
One thing worth mentioning, probably, is that it was actually cancelled after the SECOND season, and due to the largest letter writing campaign in TV history, it returned for a third (and unfortunatly horrible) season.
Star Trek TOS has a place in my heart that NO other sci-fi can touch. It got me just at the right age, and helped define my desires.
P.S. Rocket Johnny is a blast!
http://www.midnightreading.com/rocket/
Posted by Lucien Spelman on Tuesday May 05, 2009 at 10:54 AM