Criticult.Com

I read an article recently about Star Trek that gave several pretty convincing reasons why the franchise has outlived its usefulness and should be left to wither in the entertainment purgatory where it has languished since the cancellation of the wretched Enterprise some years ago.

I got a chuckle out of it because it was clearly written by someone with some knowledge of the franchise who - like me - was probably once a fan. This got me thinking about a website I created back in 1996 when Star Trek was still alive and well, enjoying a great deal of undeserved popularity. It detailed my reasons why Star Trek should be destroyed, buried and forgotten about.

I said it not as a hater, but someone who at one time had just about everything memorized about all 79 original episodes of the Star Trek series. I can’t say I ever learned to speak Klingon or anything but I was a little obsessive about my devotion to Star Trek and would go to any lengths to obtain information on the show. But one day I realized that the fine line between simple geek and world class loser is a fine one indeed and I needed to get some perspective. My obsession with Star Trek needed to deflate to reasonable proportions.

And now, I had seen something I once loved become feeble, sick and infirm. It was suffering, I was suffering with it and for both our sakes it needed to be put out of it's misery.

That’s right, I was once an Orthodox Trekkie, but now I am Reformed. Praise be. I can still talk shop with the dorks, as you will see – but trust me kids, there’s a whole big wide world out there. Move out of Mom’s attic and go check it out.

Speaking of the aforementioned dorks, it is safe to say at the time my thoughts were not well received by the notoriously rabid Star Trek community. I found myself the target of endless email flaming as well as some not too thinly veiled threats. I also drew some positive attention from a guy who was somehow associated with Mystery Science Theater. I’ve long since misplaced the email so don’t ask me for a name. Believe me, I wish I could remember. So not only did I feel vindicated in my thinking, I also waved the endorsement in the face of each and every angry dork who suggested that I deserved to be torn limb by limb for all eternity in the Klingon hell of Gre'Thor.

That’s one thing that has never failed to amaze me about life in general and the Internet in particular. People get so very, very angry with you simply for having a different opinion than they do. They will argue in circles with you until at some point, unable to withstand the deluge of juvenile brickbats, exclamation points, random capitalizations and poor grammar you will just give up and agree with them. Luckily I just don’t live in the same world as most people so the benefits of this demented method of discourse are lost on me.

All I did was point out the fact that Star Trek had become nothing more than an ATM for Paramount and the quality of the product grew more suspect each year for one simple reason: Because as finicky as sci-fi and horror fan-boys like to believe they are, they generally will accept anything and everything that you give them because they have no lives.

It’s that simple. Despite the decades long friendly (and sometimes not so friendly) feud between them, the one thing that Star Trek and Star Wars fans have in common is that they’ll sit through absolutely anything, as long as it says Star Trek or Star Wars on it. Trek fans would gleefully pay to watch static for 79 minutes as long as it started with those eight musical notes of theme music and somehow worked in a Shakespeare quote. Star Wars fans would watch George Lucas take a shit for two hours as long as he had a light saber in one hand (no, the other hand), which was not terribly unlike the experience I had sitting through all three Star Wars prequels.

At least George Lucas Taking a Shit would have a logical beginning, middle and end. It also would have cost Lucas about $300 to make and he still would have earned four hundred thousand billion dollars at the box office as geeks around the world debated the hidden meaning of it all.

All they want is more, more, more and they don’t even care how good it is. And you know what you dorks - your wish has been granted. The overwhelming majority of science fiction and horror stinks because apparently all of us can’t get enough of it. Star Trek – the focus of this discussion – reached a creative nadir at least fifteen years ago because creative ideas to the world of Star Trek are a basic requirement of the system but the system is a closed loop, doomed to run out of them very quickly.

In other words there was a formula – one for the films and one for the television shows – and once fans became addicted to the formula they weren’t willing to wean off the teat even once it had gone dry. So, rather than provide you with any more reasons why Star Trek should stay dead, I will try – to the best of my recollection and in no particular order – to recall the reasons I gave in 1996 why its death was inevitable. Bear in mind that this really is little more than a list of clichés and contrivances that by and large once made Star Trek compelling viewing. However, long ago the franchise became a slave to these things the way the Bond movies became indistinguishable parodies of themselves.

What did I say? Well like I said I just remember the gist of it but as we approach the next unnecessary chapter in the Star Trek saga I relish the opportunity to once again rankle the loyal, dorky masses. I’ll elaborate in my next post. Stay tuned, loyal readers to subspace channel 445.32-Zeta and...shit...you know you dip your toe back in and next thing you know it all comes back to you.

Labels: Star Trek