Just kidding about the title...I've always wanted to contribute more to this blog, but I'm not exactly sure what's stopped me...lack of anything worth reading to say? lack of time? fear?
Probably a healthy dose of all of the above.
So, finally, I have a night off, something I felt worthy of sharing, and I suppose two out of three is reason enough to start.
So, as you might have gathered, I've been thinking about Star Trek a lot lately; not necessarily the new JJ Abrams geek-fest which is likely to entice and please all of us--although those men and women who proudly grew up loving ol' Bill T. and the gang can happily cyber-flog me if the movie is terrible--but the whole universe in general.
I have always been fascinated by Sci-Fi, have watched essentially every series that even remotely, vaguely, somehow involved space, whether it was great (BSG circa 2000s; Star Trek: DS9 [the later seasons]) or terrible (Mission Genesis--remember that?), and even fancied myself an amateur star gazer in my later years--when I still lived in an environment where you could see more than just the most highly visible stars in the heaven on any given, cloudless evening.
But now, I begin to wonder what exactly attracted me to the entire concept in the first place?
Gene Roddenberry, may he continue to rest in peace, originally created the concept of Star Trek to showcase his ideal view of a future of harmony and peace...I mean, its not that difficult to see exactly what he was trying to accomplish--I mean the show was hugely diverse for its time, and featured lead characters of Japanese and Russian heritage (Cold War much?); not to mention Mr. Roddenberry took it a step further and introduced the ultimate 'other' concept by having poor half-little-green-man Mr. Spock as one of the central characters.
Yet lately, every scrap of Star Trek seems to be focused on one thing: war, war, war.
Enterprise, the most recent series to fly the Star Trek banner (although, technically they conveniently left that moniker out), featured a way between a species those of us in fandom had never heard of before, and likely will never hear of again. At the end of both Voyager and DS9, we saw Federation star ships pitted against foes the likes of which Roddenberry in the 60s probably conceived of, but never really felt necessary to bring into the living rooms of Americans every week.
Then there's Nemesis, Insurrection, and of course First Contact...and then the impetus for this inaugural post, the Star Trek book franchise, which is currently dominated by the greatest foe the Federation has ever seen: THE BORG.
So, what exactly is my point in all of this?
Not reallllllly sure. I just wonder if Star Trek is living up to the dream, when suddenly it seems as if the whole concept has been turned into some nightmare.
I'm rambling...this isn't the last of this...stay tuned.
0 comments:
Post a Comment