{"id":871,"date":"2016-07-17T22:31:20","date_gmt":"2016-07-17T22:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/?p=871"},"modified":"2016-07-18T00:46:19","modified_gmt":"2016-07-18T00:46:19","slug":"why-i-love-star-trek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/2016\/07\/why-i-love-star-trek\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Love Star Trek: My Short Reviews of the First Six Films"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was six, maybe seven years old, and turning the knob on the old Panasonic 12-channel TV, when I saw a field of stars, and a curiously-shaped spacecraft passing among them. A \u201cre-run\u201d (a word I just learned) of a show called \u201cStar Trek\u201d. Well, I had been playing with a telescope in my back yard for years already, and building a whole universe of spacecraft out of Lego bricks. So, of course I sat down and watched. The crew of that ship \u201cbeamed\u201d down to a planet, where they met three witches, towering in the skies above them. And I turned the TV off and ran up to my room. It was too scary.<\/p>\n

Eight years old. Still scared of Star Trek. My dad took me to the cinema to see The Wrath of Khan anyway. That film, along with Roy Gallant\u2019s book Our Universe, and (I must admit), two of the three Star Wars films released to that date, produced in me a lifelong love of science fiction, which I still enjoy to this day. <\/p>\n

Over the last few days, in honour of the 50th anniversary of the franchise, I watched all six films made by the original cast. Here\u2019s what I like about each of them.<\/p>\n

By the way: spoilers. <\/p>\n

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am very well aware that most scifi fans, and indeed most Trek fans, regard this film as the runt of the litter. To me, it\u2019s one of the top ten scifi films ever made. I can\u2019t recall exactly when I first saw it; I have a vague memory of seeing the transporter accident scene on TV in the late 70s or early 80s. In the 1990s a friend gave me the film on VHS tape and I watched it daily for a month. <\/p>\n

\"vgr1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of all the films featuring the original cast, this one seems to me the most philosophical. It is a film about knowledge: it\u2019s a film about the philosophical question \u201cIs this all that I am? Is there nothing more?\u201d <\/strong>And that\u2019s a very difficult theme around which to tell a story. It explores this theme in two ways: one on a \u201cbig picture\u201d, represented by the existential threat posed by the V\u2019Ger probe, and the other on the \u201csmall picture\u201d, represented by Spock when he gives up his Kohlinar discipline; and by Kirk when he effectively commandeers the Enterprise from Decker, its new captain. V\u2019Ger is introduced with a long and visually trippy descent into the cloud, to establish the weirdness and alienness and wonder of space exploration. V\u2019Ger itself is the product of an alien society that loves knowledge so much it took an ordinary exploration probe and gave it godlike powers for the sole purpose of learning \u201call that is learnable, and transmit its knowledge to its creator\u201d. The film ends with very possibly the best reveal in scifi: V\u2019Ger is one of ours. Then, as if to place a quasi-religious glamour on the search for knowledge, V\u2019Ger and Decker fuse with each other and become a new, maybe supernatural being. The message is: knowledge is transformation and enlightenment.<\/p>\n

If you are a fan of Trek who doesn\u2019t much like TMP, consider at least this much: the music<\/strong>. Glorious. Evocative. Bold. Inspirational. The overture, Ilia\u2019s theme, played to a blank screen (in the cinematic release) or a receding starfield (in the remastered DVD) tells you from the beginning that this is going to be an introspective and personal film. Then the brass rise for the main theme, played over the opening credits, tells you that this is a film about courage and triumph. You know that theme: it was used for the opening credits for The Next Generation. I listened to the soundtrack for TMP while writing my own novels. The long exposition scenes that some critics hate are actually essential: they give you time to think about the big themes that Star Trek has always been about. The scene when we arrive at the Enterprise in its refitting dock was the first time anyone saw their beloved starship in over ten years. Fans needed that long, loving look. They deserved Goldsmith\u2019s beautiful music score to pay homage to it. <\/p>\n