Meta: Star Trek

[sanalith]

I decided to start with Star Trek because, quite frankly, no other show or book has ever had such a huge impact on my life. Pretty much everyone who knows me knows that I am a Trekkie. At the same time, it’s not something I talk about a whole lot, in the way that I don’t often discuss that I’m female, or that I have ten fingers. It’s something that simply is, rather like the air we breathe.

Before we continue, keep in mind some distinctions. I come from a generation where there was a huge difference between a Trekkie and a Trekker. I consider myself the former, meaning I am a die-hard fan of The Original Series (TOS). I have NOT seen every single solitary episode of every Star Trek ever aired. In fact, I tend not to like Voyager or Enteprise much at all. I HAVE seen every single episode of TOS, and that is where my true love lies. I am NOT a techno Trekkie. I cannot tell you how to build a starship or explain how a phaser works. I did go to several conventions, but I never did any cosplaying. The closest I ever got was buying a replica of a Bajoran earring. I did, however, meet William Shatner (Kirk), John de Lancie (Q), Michael Dorn (Worf), and I hugged James Doohan (Scotty).

And yes, I can speak a few words in Klingon. I own the official dictionary.
 

My father is a huge science-fiction buff, and when I was growing up, he worked nights so he could be home with me during the day, and then he and my mom would switch off. He had the television on almost constantly while we were home, even if it was just as background noise. As such, I can’t really remember my first encounter with Star Trek. It was just kind of there, along with Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones, Star Wars and Sesame Street.

 
I only have a few really clear memories of early encounters with Star Trek, all of which took places around 1990 and 1991, just before I made the mental conversion from casual fan to hardcore Trekkie. The first was the very tale end of The Next Generation (TNG) episode “Deja Q,” and all I remember is some strange man disappearing in a flash of light, then coming back because he forgot his hat. I obviously knew nothing about the plot or the characters, but I was very much into fantasy and magic at the time, and I was more than a little intrigued. I also have a vague recollection of watching “Unification,” a TNG episode that featured Spock, and having my father try to explain that the man with the pointy ears was actually from a different series, and it was incredibly important and exciting to have him in this series. I don’t know why, but this pointy-eared guy…well…fascinated my 10-year-old self. In fact, I found him interesting enough that when my parents happily sat down to watch the sixth movie, The Undiscovered Country, when it came out on VHS, I cuddled on the couch with them.

 
I also fell asleep half-way through. Apparently the Cold War analogies were too much for my poor little brain to handle.

 
I think my father might have given up trying to actively convert me at this point. I remember him calling me out to watch a re-run of “Imaginary Friend,” a TNG episode featuring a child and her invisible pal who turned out to be an evil alien, because he thought the focus on children would interest me. By this point, however, I think I was pretty much done.

 
Star Trek, however, was clearly not done with me.

 
The basic problem, I was later to discover, was that I was rather born in the wrong decade. The early 1990’s – when I was old enough to start understanding Star Trek – was the era of TNG. I was not, nor am I now, technologically or scientifically inclined. What Trekkies fondly refer to as “techno-babble,” which was basically created during the run of TNG, was way out of my league, and my lack of understanding would lead me to be bored with the show before I had a chance to get the know the characters and try to follow the plot. But for some reason, I was destined to get another shot.

 
During the summer between my sixth and seventh grade years, when I was about eleven, 

caithion and I were having one of our many sleepovers. I have no recollection of how or why, but after one of our famous, “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” conversations, we somehow ended up watching Star Trek movies.

 
She must have suggested it, and I must have agreed and raided my father’s video collection. I think the way she got me interested was by saying her favorite of all the movies focused on the Vulcans, and my mind probably flashed back to that “pointy-eared guy” my dad had told me was from “another series.”

 
For those of you who can’t guess, this means that my first true, honest-to-goodness movie experience with Star Trek was movie five, The Final Frontier, often hailed as one of the worst Star Trek movies ever made.

 
I loved it. I loved it more than I can possibly express. I loved the fact that Kirk, Spock and McCoy were camping out and toasting “marshmelons.” I loved that the two humans were trying to teach Spock the meaning of “Row Row Row Your Boat.” I loved the “Russian” and the “Asian” guys getting lost and not admitting it. I loved Sybok (Spock’s half-brother) because he was another Vulcan. I loved the jokes and the tears and the fighting. I loved not hugging in front of the “guys with the big, ridged foreheads.” I loved how the captain couldn’t die, because he was never alone. I bonded with men and woman whose names I didn’t even know.

 
I didn’t know any names. I hardly knew any faces. I had no clue what was going on and only a vague idea of who the characters were, and I was hooked.

 
That night, when we finished movie five, we watched movies four and two. The next morning before she left, we watched movie three. In one weekend, I’d managed to go past the point of no return, though the fragmented viewing order still left me rather confused. Within the next week or two, I watched movies one and six (though I seem to recall falling asleep yet again during Undiscovered Country). Once my movie education was complete, I began what was, for me at least, the next logical step – books! I began with the most obvious novels, those being the movies. I could at least read them in order, after all.

 
Being an eleven-year-old dependent on an allowance every two weeks made it quite obvious when I was spending money and what I was spending it on, and my father quickly caught on to the fact that, young as I was, I’d found an obsession. So he took me aside one day with my books and said something I’ll never forget:

 
“If you want to do this, you’ve got twenty-five years of catch-up learning to do.”

 
And for whatever reason, I took him literally.

 

I continued my reading, of course, but now I had an even more ambitious plan. Fox was currently airing re-runs of TOS at midnight every night, and on my instruction, the VCR was faithfully programmed each evening before my father went to sleep. Over the course of the next few years, we taped all 79 episodes of TOS, except for the rare few that I simply went out and bought because I couldn’t wait. I still have every single on of those old tapes in my apartment.

 
I watched and I read and I learned. When my grandmother gave me a special check for my birthday, I bought the Star Trek Encyclopedia, a compendium I still dig out to this day even before I Google a fact or date, and I read it cover to cover.

 
My obsession grew as I got older and began to understand the nuances behind the stories. James Kirk, Leonard McCoy and Spock of Vulcan became as real and dear to me as any friends in real life, and I still see them as the best example of on-screen friendship and brotherhood. The more and more I watched, the more my devotion grew.
 

What made me latch on to Star Trek so quickly and so strongly? Looking back, I realize it was because, at that point in my life, I desperately needed a future to believe in.

.

My sixth grade year was the worst I’d experienced up to that point in my life. I did NOT adjust well to having multiple teachers, to storing my belongings in a locker instead of one desk. I hated having more than one classroom, and I was terrified of being late. Those class bells became the bane of my existence. That was the year my test anxiety first flared up as well. I would literally make myself sick with fear the morning of an exam. It did eventually get better, but my school-related anxiety never ceased until I finished my master’s degree. My grandfather had also just recently passed away, and this was my first real experience with death.  

 
In short, I was rather miserable, and I saw years and years of horrible schooling and testing ahead of me. Middle school was also the point in which I was teased the most, and I felt like I didn’t have a whole ton of friends. I wanted a bright future to look forward to. Star Trek gave me that.

 
When Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, he created exactly the type of future that I wish for to this very day. A future where the entire world is united, which allows us to focus all our efforts on peacefully expanding our civilization. I’ve always believed that it’s sheer egoism to think that our planet is the only one in the universe capable of supporting life, and Star Trek showed us how to go about seeking those life forms peacefully. Sure, there will always be enemies, but Roddenberry proved that even the worst ones could turn into friends! Klingons were our arch-enemies in TOS, but by TNG, a Klingon served on the bridge of the Federation Flagship. That’s a pretty amazing message.

 
Being a Trekkie hasn’t always been an easy thing, especially for us fans of TOS. The sets were cheap. The costumes consisted of strategically-placed shiny fabric. The make-up was cheesy. The plots were often fantastically stupid. (“Spock’s Brain” anyone?) But then you have episodes that resonate with fans 40 years after the fact. For those of us who’ve seen them, can you honestly say you didn’t get choked up with Kirk let Edith Keeler die? When Spock erased Kirk’s memory of Rayna? And later, in the movies, when Spock lay dying in the radiation chamber, his last words a promise of undying friendship? It’s a surreal experience, when you let yourself fall in love with a legend.

 
Star Trek is an odd fandom for me. I don’t write or read fiction. I basically despise any and all pairings that are not canon. I never cosplayed. But in every room I’ve ever owned, there has been a poster hanging on the wall that declares “All I Need to Know About Life I Learned From Star Trek.”

 
And it’s true.

 
I can trace anything back to Star Trek. Anything. No matter how random, no matter how much you think it doesn’t have anything to do with Star Trek, it does. Whenever I have to deal with really tough questions and I can’t find answers anywhere else, I turn back to Star Trek and I find it. As stupid and hokey as it sounds, I stand by it. Star Trek is my forty-two – my answer to life, the universe and everything.

 
At its heart, Star Trek is a message of hope and of peace. It reminds us that we’re not alone in the galaxy, and how wonderful that is. It preaches tolerance and understanding. It revolutionized the TV industry. It portrayed a friendly Russian character during the Cold War. It had a black woman on the bridge of a Starship, and it showed the very first interracial kiss on television. Martin Luther King himself encouraged Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Uhura, to continue on the show, because of how important her role was to all black women. It dealt with themes no other show could at the time, simply because of its nature.

 
Star Trek literally changed my life. I chose to write about this fandom first because it blows all of my following ones out of the water. It taught me how to hope and dream for the future. It introduced me to science-fiction and made me a fan. It taught me how to separate the characters from the techo-centered plots that were incomprehensible to me. Nothing else mattered but the people, because they were more unique and more amazing than any other characters I’d ever known.
 

I could ramble on and on about my favorite scenes and characters, but my fellow fans will already know what I would say, and I wouldn’t want to spoil things for the rest of you any more than I already have. I realize that Star Trek isn’t for everything, but I would encourage you to try it if you haven’t, especially if your hesitation stems from your lack of interest in sci-fi or technology. Star Trek is in a genre all by itself, and you’ll very quickly discover how easy it is to separate the characters from the technical elements. There’s something for everyone between all of these shows, and I can promise you a ride you won’t ever forget.

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The Original Series

 
“The City on the Edge of Forever” – Generally hailed as the best episode ever. McCoy accidentally goes back in time to the 1930s and changes history, allowing the Nazis to win WWII. Kirk and Spock go back to fix things.

 
“The Trouble With Tribbles” – A wonderfully hysterical episodes featuring the most famous Star Trek animals ever. You also get to see pre-ridged-forehead Klingons!

 
“Mirror Mirror” – A transporter accident sends Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and Uhura to an alternate universe where their counterparts are evil members of a tyrannical Empire. Also, Spock has a beard.

 
“Space Seed” – Introduces Khan. ‘Nuff said.

 
“Amok Time” – Spock must return to Vulcan to take a wife, or die trying. Extremely wonderful look at traditional Vulcan rituals.

 
“The Squire of Gothos” – A personal favorite that introduces the character of Trelayne, an omnipotent being who likes to “study” other races.

 
“All Our Yesterdays” – Another personal favorite. The entire population of a planet has escaped into their past when their sun is about to go nova. Kirk, Spock and McCoy end up trapped as well. Chaos ensues.
 

 

The Next Generation

 
“Darmok” – In my opinion, the best TNG episode ever aired. The crew must attempt to communicate with a race of aliens who speak only in metaphors, referencing their own history and mythology.

 
“Elementary, Dear Data” and “Ship in a Bottle” – Two episodes that deal with a malfunction in the holodeck and brings Professor Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes to life.

 
“The High Ground” – A terrorist group is threatening a planet, but who is really terrorizing whom? Extremely apt for the current political environment.

 
“The Best of Both Worlds, pts. 1 and 2” – Picard is turned into a Borg. Two very poignant episodes that teach us about our own humanity.

 
“The Measure of a Man” – Is an android a sentient being with its own rights, or is it just a machine, and therefore the property of its creators? This episode contains some nice courtroom drama as Picard fights to defend Data’s rights.

 
“Unification, pts. 1 and 2” – The very first Star Trek episode I can remember seeing. Picard and Data travel to Romulus to find Ambassador Spock, who may have defected.

 
And last but not least, ANY episode with the character Q!!!!

 

Books

For my fellow fans, I assume you’ve watched everything that interests you, so I will leave you with a few book recommendations. I have an entire shelf full of them, and while I look back and shudder at many, there are some which have stood the test of time.

 
Q-Squared, by Peter David – A book that (clearly) centers on Q, and also Trelayne from TOS. This is extremely complex and spans three different parallel universes, but it is one of the most remarkable books I’ve ever read. This one is truly for the fans.
(p.s. Everything Peter David writes is awesome. This is my personal favorite, but you can pick up any of his books and fall in love.)

 
Sarek, by A.C. Crispin – Set in the “present” but deals mainly with the courtship and early marriage of Sarek and Amanda, and Spock’s childhood. Set against a backdrop of heavy racism on Earth toward off-worlders, and telepathic manipulation by a mysterious species.

 
Yesterday’s Son and Time for Yesterday, by A.C. Crispin – Examines some possible repercussions of the events on Sarpeidon during the episode “All Our Yesterdays.” What if Spock had a son? This duology is one of my favorites, and the original character of Zar stands the test of time without question.

 
The Eugenics Wars, Vols. 1 and 2, by Greg Cox – Chronicles the life of Khan Noonien Singh from his very early childhood in India to the conclusion of his near-world domination. The historian in me loves this duology if for no other reason that the care clearly taken by Cox to insinuate his narration amidst actual historical events. Also, his characterization of Khan is stunning.

I am Not Spock and I am Spock, by Leonard Nimoy – My personal favorites out of all of the autobiographies I’ve read. Nimoy is a stunningly beautiful writer with the soul of a poet, and he conveys his hardships, heartaches and triumphs in a perfectly believable manner. His inner dialogue between Nimoy and Spock is definitely not to be missed as he embarks along a journey based on the question of, “If I am not Spock, then who is?”


EDIT: Recs by caithion:

"Trials and Tribble-ations" - A Deep Space Nine episode where the crew goes back to Kirk's era to prevent sabotage from the future. Absolutely hysterical, like the original. Also, the editors did a fabulous job splicing the DS9 characters in with the original episode.


Dreadnaught! and Battlestations!, by Diane Carey - A wonderful duology focusing on an OFC, Lt. Piper. Terrorists, stolen ships, traitors, and Vulcans abound! Brilliant characterizations.

To this day, Star Trek comforts me when nothing else can. When I'm sad or depressed or unhappy, I know I've got a home to go back to, so to speak. I can't ever watch Star Trek and not come out on the other end smiling, and feeling a million times better. I love this show, and I can pretty much promise you that nothing else in the world will ever impact me in the same way.

Qapla'!