I remember September 1966, when I watched my first Star Trek episode, "The Man Trap." I thought Star Trek was a dumb name for a TV show — hey, I was 13, what did I know? — but I immediately realized that I'd love the show.
When the show died in 1969, I was devastated, empty. I "survived" on novelizations or novels until 1979 when the very slow and boring "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" came out. In lots of ways, I hated it; but it was great to see the Enterprise and its crew again.
Fast forward. We've gone through Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Enterprise. There have been great individual episodes, and some of them are as good or better than anything in ST: TOS.
It's been a while since I got my Star Trek fix, although I've bought a movie or two and several Next Generation episodes. Within a few days, I watched Nemesis, the movie with F. Murray Abraham having stretched skin, and the Next Generation episode in which Picard visits his brother Robert (French pronunciation, ro-bear) and his family.
On Friday, I got another fix, as I watched the new movie. They played fast and loose with the Star Trek mythos — hell, they imploded Vulcan and killed the Lady Amanda. Kirk was a wild child and Spock's mortal enemy (until the ending).
The movie itself is almost non-stop action, although it slowed down enough for Kirk to have an interlude with a green woman with red hair.
Leonard Nimoy dominated the movie in his short moments onscreen — no big surprise. The Romulans looked like biker punks with tattoos and elfin ears. I loved the guy who played Scotty, and Bones McCoy was dead on. The crowd laughed when McCoy said something like "I love this guy," meaning Spock. DeForest Kelley's Bones wouldn't have said that for love or Federation credits.
It's funny, but the new Kirk didn't remind me of William Shatner until the end of the movie, when he walked onto the Enterprise bridge as the new captain. His manner, and the uniform, finally reminded me of the original James Tiberius Kirk. Instead of being a frenetic cadet, he was finally and truly in command.
Will I watch it again? Yes. Will I embrace the "new timeline" as gospel? No.
But, every once in a while, it's great to boldly go where no one has gone recently.
One other thing: There's no way in hell that Starfleet would give THAT Kirk his own starship. They wouldn't let him command a wheelbarrow.
Years ago, I had a bunch of Star Trek books in my apartment, and visitors would tell me that I ought to keep them. "They'll be worth something someday," they'd say.
Turns out they were wrong. You can buy Trek books for almost nothing at the local Edward McKay book store.
I just listened to an audio book of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics." It's the one in which they find Captain Montgomery Scott in the pattern buffer of a ship crashed on the surface of a Dyson sphere.
James Doohan did all of the voices, and Levar Burton talked at the beginning and end of the book.
It was great to hear Doohan's voice again, particularly when he spoke as Scotty and Miles O'Brien. He was OK doing Picard, Riker, Troi and most of the others, but he was terrible as Data and Worf. His Data was too mechanical, and his Worf didn't boom when he spoke; he growled.
Otherwise, it was an enjoyable experience.
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