My first memory of Star Trek goes back to when my mother checked out a projector and film reel of “The City On The Edge Of Tomorrow” from our local library when I was a little boy. She drew the curtains, turned off the lights, and projected one of the best episodes of The Original Series upon the wall of the little house in which we lived. We later watched the weekly reruns on our little black and white television, and the movies on VHS, and I fell in love with the idea of a future wherein humanity has found a modicum of perfection. Well, back then I remember liking how cool the Enterprise looked (it used to be the only thing I drew), and thinking how awesome it would be to have a transporter room.

For the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, my best friend’s parents set up the living room in his grandparents’ house like the bridge of the NCC-1701 (No Bloody A,B, C or D). It was an event worth the expenditure of effort. And sure, even at that age, I could recognize that the first couple of seasons of TNG had some growing pains. But our patience was rewarded with a handful of good episodes in the second season and the show hitting an actual stride in its third. Finally the cast of the television show was giving the movie cast a run for their money (it didn’t help that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was so painfully awkward that the juxtaposition clearly favored the men and women of the 24th Century). Once more Star Trek was a cultural talking point. Almost everyone I knew, sci-fi fan or not, was tuning in on Saturday evenings to catch the latest adventures of the Starship Enterprise.

Toward the end of its run, the franchise running at full force, the Saturday night block increased to include Deep Space Nine. Again, there were growing pains, but this time the comparisons were harsher, as TNG was fresher, and almost universally loved. I remember tuning out DS9 right as the Dominion War arc was beginning, growing disillusioned by the seemingly desperate casting patch of Michael Dorn in 1995. Of course, I was well into my teen years, and disillusionment was kind of my thing. Of the Star Trek related shows in which he starred that year, I preferred Gargoyles, as it was almost a perfect TNG reunion, and a pretty great series to boot.

That was also the year that Star Trek: Voyager became the flagship program on the fledgling network, UPN (R.I.P. 1995-2006). We were back to traversing the galaxy in a brand new ship, being led by plot device from the “freedom fighters” of DS9 to the middle of nowhere due to Deus Ex Machina. The signature difficulties of the Next Generation era were again on display, as the show seemed to be a reaction against the season-long stories being showcased on DS9, returning to a series of stand-alone episodes held together loosely by a theme of Gilligan’s Island in space. Eventually, the show would find a balance between the weekly adventures of TNG and the season-spanning narrative arcs of DS9, but by then I’d stopped watching. Of course, I didn’t own a T.V. for its final couple seasons, but the addition of a “sexy” Borg drone didn’t really inspire me to find a way to watch. I did tune in for the finale, as I’d done for DS9, and found myself thankful that I’d gotten out when I did.

It had been a rough time for the Trek I’d known and loved. The Next Gen movies just didn’t have the pop that the Original Cast films possessed, and Star Trek: Nemesis taught us all that one should never attempt to remake The Wrath Of Khan (even as an homage) a lesson that was heeded for all of 11 years. Of course, Nemesis came out the following year. Our first glimpse of the future of Trek arrived just a few months after the end of Voyager. I speak, of course, of Enterprise.

It was a gritty reboot before we fell in love with gritty reboots. It was an almost universally hated prequel in the era of universally hated prequels. I wanted so badly to love it, and found myself rooting for it until they completely botched and then discarded the novel notion of a “temporal cold war.” Then it was a build-up to militarization in response to our Middle East engagements, and the show, while finally finding the elusive balance of stand-alone and season arc that Voyager always aspired to, sold its soul for a last-ditch grab to salvage fading ratings. I tuned back in to watch the final season, feeling, rightly, that the world had been oversaturated with mediocre Star Trek, and this was likely to be the last new content I would see. And something happened that I hadn’t expected. Finally freed from the shackles of the recent tradition of stretching out the show to seven seasons, the writers and producers realized that they had an immense backlog of mythology to pay off, and they decided to use their final season to tie it all up for the fans. It was no longer about searching for a safely neutral (at best) or patriotic tone, but about recognizing and honoring the very best that Star Trek had been. It was a science fiction space opera, a character-driven show that could be used to discuss the issues of the day (as opposed to taking on the party line). Full disclosure: compared to the best Swiftian examples of the Trek which had come before, this final season was noticeably barren, with barely two stories addressing anything of value. But they made the effort to tie the era of Jonathan Archer to the glory days of James Tiberius Kirk, and for me, at least, the effort was enough. I could have lived without the ending, however, taking place within the confines of the Enterprise D’s holodeck during the events of “The Pegasus”, rendering the lives of the crew of the NX-01 as mere object lessons for an ethically conflicted William Riker.

And so, on May 13, 2005,  Star Trek gasped its final breath and died.

And there was never any attempt to try and bring it back, merely for profit, utilizing time travel to undo decades of continuity just so they could retell the same stories, but at a lower quality and higher budget, cashing in on our emotional attachments to peddle a shoddy product. Nope. Never happened.

THE END

That’s it for the Continuing Adventures of Tex Batmart today. I’ll be back again tomorrow at noon!

-Tex