But again, that feeling of losing something I've been really fond of for so many years, keeps creeping into my thoughts...
What are you losing?
I probably couldn't explain it to you so you'd understand, it's a just gut feeling I have.
I know all about the fact that I won't be losing what has come already, (DVD's and such) but I find
some of the changes that We have seen so for to be unnecessary and I believe that changing things
just because one can changes things, isn't always a good thing.
I think it's going to do more of a disservice to those of Us that have been loyal for so long.
I quoted this posting because it brought back a lot of memories for me. Before I get to my memories I just wanted to post a disclaimer that what I'm going to admit to is by no means a slam on daveyny. I'm going to take a few shots at myself for at some point in my life having feelings similar to his. It is not a backhanded way of slamming him or his post. Do we not agree that if I want to slam daveny that I am asshole enough to do it in an upfront way? Yes I think we all agree that I'm an asshole.
Now on with the show.
I was born in 1975. I started watching Classic Trek sometime in 1977. The first Trek movie I ever saw was TWOK during it's first airing on ABC sometime in... 1985 maybe? My first
big screen Trek was TVH and it was the first movie I saw more than twenty times on the big screen.
You'd think that a man of my age would be a die-hard
Next Generation fan because I was twelve years old when it air. By all rights it should be
my Trek.
It's not. I am now and forever a
Star Trek man. No bloody TNG, DS9, VOY or ENT for this kid. I needs my Kirk, Spock and McCoy. I need my Constitution Class Enterprise. I need my Klingons to be bad guys and my women to be green. I need my
Star Trek to be retro. Not 80s cheese retro but
60s retro.
It was late at night when I heard the first announcement for a series called
Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was
very late. I was listening to the radio and not sleeping for whatever reason. It musta been around two or three a.m. when I got hit with the news. Needles to say I was excited.
Damn excited.
A brand new
Star Trek series with Kirk, Spock and McCoy all aboard the Enterprise A! Kirk said: "
Let's see what she's got".
New we were gonna see...
Or so I thought...
You see the implications of
The Next Generation were completely and utterly lost on me. All I hard was
Star Trek and the faces and voices I saw and heard in my head were all I could imagine on a new
Star Trek show.
A few months later I got my wakeup call.
I was in the local comic book store shopping for shoes and a raincoat when I came upon a fairly new article from our local newsrag. It was about TNG. My pulse quickened with excitement and I read the article from start to finish. It was as indepth as an article about a series in the early stage of production could get.
It acted as a real kick in the nuts to me.
This new series was
not going to be the continuing adventures of Kirk, Spock and McCoy on the Enterprise A. It was going to be set 79 years in the future on a
new Enterprise with a... with a...
With a new crew...
I stood there for twenty minutes reading and rereading that article hoping that the words were going to change to reflect the reality that I wanted to exist in. I wanted the words Kirk, Spock and McCoy as well as Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley to magically appear on the paper. I wanted to know that the characters... the...
the friends that I so cherished were going to return to me on a weekly basic...
It didn't happen.
No matter how much I wished it those words stubbornly refused to change to accomodate my dreams.
I felt a lump in my throat and my tongue tasted like Ivory soap... My breathing was becoming labored and I felt a tad dizzy... I left my raincoat and shoes unpurchased in the center of the aisle.
I had to leave before...
I rushed home. Avoided my mother and my father and locked myself in the bathroom where I proceeded...
...
proceeded to cry like a little pussy baby.
Yes. At the age of 11 I cried like a little bitch over nothing more important than a stupid tv show but...
It was important to me.
At that age I had damned few friends but the crew of the Enterprise more than made up for them. They and their adventures were inspiring. Helped me to dream. Helped develop my imagination. Kirk, Spock and McCoy taught me so much. Much of my early morality was based on their teachings.
Christ I belong in Galaxy Quest. Really I do!
The news I read on that wall was like reading an obit for my friends and family members.
No more Star Trek. No more Star Trek movies. No more Kirk, Spock and McCoy. No Enterprise A. They were gone. Gone forever and I would never ever see them again. Even though it had been announced that Shatner was to direct Star Trek 5 it was clear that Star Trek was dead and buried by this announcement. It was The Next Generation from there on out.
I spent months taking every opportunity I had to take the piss out on TNG. When the names for the actors were announced I took the opportunity to watch movies they had done and
slam the shit out of those movies.
The National Enquirer had described Levar Burton as:
The new Spock.
I was livid.
The new Spock? What was wrong with the old one? I looked into one of Burton's movies.
Levar Burton starring in Dummy.
Apt description if you asked me.
Ooh I was petty. Patrick Stewart? He's a bald old fart. He'll keel over and have a heart attack the first time he fights a Klingon bare fisted. And who'll have sex with him? He's bald. And old. They shoulda got that handsome young Frakes guy to be the captain. He's young and kinda Shatnerry but...
Who the fuck was this Frakes? The first officer of the Enterprise who had a closer relationship with Picard than Kirk and Spock had?
Who the fuck did these people think they were? They murdered my friends and replaced them with these... these... amatuers!
My dad finally sat down with me to get to the bottom of why I launched into hyperbole fueld tirades each and every time the subject of TNG came up.
I spilled. The months of rage and heartache. Of friends lost to me forever. Of my eternal hatred towards the usurpers and assassins of my heroes.
"
Get your head out of you ass," he shouted at me. "Kirk and Spock aren't going anywhere. Don't you remember they're making Star Trek 5? Just because there are new people on tv doesn't mean they're going to not make movies with the original characters anymore. Don't you know how much many Star Trek IV made? Don't you think Paramount knows how much Star Trek IV made? They know how much the original characters are worth. You've been pissing and moaning about nothing for six months now. GET. OVER. IT!"
My father and I never got on well. Most of his advice went unheeded because usually it was stupid.This advice was not stupid it was in fact...
Logical.
I felt my heart swell.
Kirk, Spock and McCoy. My friends. They weren't going anywhere. I would see them on the big screen come Thanksgiving weekend of 1988 (which become summer of 89 thanks to the writer's strike) and I would have an exciting new series to pass the time with.
And maybe. Just maybe I would make new friends along the way.
It's been more than two decades and a lot has happened in the world of Trek.
I did enjoy TNG just as I enjoyed DS9. On the other hand I hated Voyager and Enterprise. I hated Voyager and Enterprise so much that it's tainted TNG and DS9 for me. I no longer enjoy those shows as I once did. Maybe it was a
guilt by association kind of thing. Or maybe I've just outgrown TNG and DS9. Then again maybe I was just settling for TNG and DS9 because they were the only game in town because... because....
My worst childhood fears had come to pass. TNG had indeed killed Star Trek.
The Star Trek movies were ended to make way for TNG movies and Kirk was killed of in a weak but serviceable (for TNG anyway) way. At the time I didn't despair as I once would have because I was in my late teens by that time and I had other things going on but...
I got a little older and with age comes nostalgia and... The God Thing.
The God Thing is the fundamentalist Trek fan.. He hews to the text as written by ROD(enberry) and makes it clear to all assembeled what the
ONE TRUE CANON OF TREK truly is. Seasons One and Two of Classic Trek, TMP and season one of TNG if I'm not mistaken.
Though I'm not as extreme in my Trekkian beliefs as TGT I admit that he influenced my thinking and helped bring me back to Star Trek basics. I realized that for me the one true Trek has and always will be
Star Trek. Not Classic Trek. Not TOS.
Star Trek. I no longer cared for the spinoffs but I truly loved the original 79 episodes, TAS and the first six movies though I'm proud to admit that when it came to Generations I used it as the starting point for a short story that I cashed in on just so I could undo the ill conceived death of Kirk.
Nothing wrong with taking the money and running especially if you get to say fuck you to a movie that you have little respect for and getting Paramount's official sanction to do so. 
I felt that I had reached the point where I would no longer mourn the lack of new Star Trek with Kirk, Spock and McCoy and that I would look back and forever cherish their adventures and the lessons that they taught me and the companionship they provided a lonely kid.
Then I found out about this movie and...
No Shatner. No Nimoy and unless they somehow figured out how to restore life to dead flesh probably no Kelley.
Still... Kirk, Spock and McCoy together again
for the first time. It's a provacative idea. A fun idea. A chance that damn few people ever get.
To meet your friends again and learn something new about them.
In short I've finally learned the lesson my father taught my over twenty years ago.
I finally got my head out of my ass and boy...
The air smells so sweet.
It was the "reprinting the complete description" part that was the snag.
