Trek Talk
Next Monday I will walk across a stage in the aptly named Wang Theater and receive a blank piece of paper signifying my Master of Fine Arts, a degree for which I uprooted my New York City based life, moved to Boston, and accrued enough student loans to make my previous balance look like a crying baby boy. This post is not to celebrate that accomplishment. I learned a fair amount, found a life trajectory I'm comfortable with, and discovered that I'm never going to be a famous writer and how to be okay with that. During the same three years though, I received another education, one with many more tangible results and information tidbits at my fingertips: Star Trek.
Perhaps it was because we didn't get cable when we moved to Boston, but during my first year of graduate school, my ladyfriend decided to pursue a long held ambition of her own. She decided to become a Trekkie. Michelle borrowed Season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) from a mutual friend and to be honest, I was skeptical. My memories of TNG involved seeing snippets on WPIX, and those memories were drenched in beige. Yes, my favorite documentary of all time is Trekkies, but I just wasn't sure if I was willing to go the distance. Also, don't forget the aforementioned graduate school; i didn't have the time to embark on a television dynasty, I was supposed to be writing. Michelle watched the first few borrowed discs on the 12" television in our bedroom. I walked in on a weird holodeck episode, where Data is learning humor, and could not for the life of me figure out why Brett Spiner, the guy from Trekkies who staves off outpourings of fan gifts with the ever-so-dry, "We do okay," was putting on what looked like a bad George Burns impersonation in an eighties looking lounge.
I don't remember getting hooked, I just remember being hooked.
I have since watched every single episode of TNG at least once, been that girl at parties who corners people and says things like, "I can confidently say that Deep Space 9's Season 6 arc, rivals, nay, is better, than the Battlestar Galactica pilot/miniseries." The lady and I are about three discs away from the end of Voyager, and I know that if Harry Kim goes on shore leave, there's gonna be trouble, Janeway has a fucked up relationship with the Prime Directive, that the Temporal Prime Directive is the awesomest thing on earth, Pon Farr!, and WTF with the holodeck Irish lover. Moving forward, the lady and I plan to finish Voyager, watch the original series, finish the movies, and as an act of last resort and true committment to the fandom, we're going to do Enterprise.
I taught three classes during the fall semester. All of my course evaluations contained multiple references to Star Trek. Ahem.
Enter, the newest Star Trek movie. The opening credits yet rolled, but I was already crying. Action! Adventure! Pretty boys! Time travel! Old Spock! Young Spock! Vulcan feelings! "As my customary farewell will seem oddly self-serving...!" "Simon Pegg!" Bad-ass new Romulens! Fencing Sulu!
All good. All great.
But then I started to think about the ending, and the ramifications thereof. Nero the Romulen had catapaulted back in time 129 years and reset the entire timeline. Whilst rolling around in the diegisis' of all of the series, it occurred to me that none of them ever happened. That Tuvak, the ever-irratable security chief was more than likely annhilated in the Vulcan genocide. if being a time travel nerd has taught me one thing, it is that chains of events are precarious things and I can't help by being unsettled about the connotations of JJ Abrams unwritng forty-three years of amazing media. There is something overwhelmingly arrogant about that. It seems to say, "Yeah, I can make Trek into an awesome fucking movie, but my movie has to supercede all that predated it."
Am I overreacting? Is the series just being given a shot of fresh life? I can't help but thinking of my imaginary friends from the Trekkies/Galaxy Quest crossover in my mind who could pick a plot hole out of a police line-up and sight series/season/episode specifiics to overcome said discrepancy. The more I think about it, the more I think that the fans are being silenced in exchange for a blockbuster weekend. In the words of the Iowa fans featured in Trekkies because they make fan films and have a barbeque every year: "This year we even had some girls." (Follow my metaphor, girls are non-fans, which is not to say that women aren't fans, rather I am referencing the idea of cool people coming to a party.) My ladyfriend tells me that other movies have been unsummarily rejected from the canon, but I can't help but wonder, have other movies rejected the canon?
This is a cultural moment, people. World War Nerd, perhaps? Geek is chic, and I've seen flutterings on the internet of non-nerds showing up at cons and gawking in what should be a safe place. But, I'm new to the 'verse, so what if I'm just another bandwagoner looking for a fight?
Evidence, presented to the last few members of the Vulcan High Command, my thoughts last night:
Huh, so everything from the original series was knocked out. That means the other shows are out of line too. Oh god, the worm hole! Cisco. Picard. Will Picard still get The Enterprise. What about First Contact? I think The Enterprise crew was there all along. A time paradox or whatever it's called. Thus, shouldn't space travel disappear. Q! Q is omnipotent. He loves Picard, Star Fleet, everything. He'll fix it all. Thank god for Q, huh, how 'bout that?
A desperate attempt to restore canon, validate my status as a Trekkie, and put off dealing with life, or my subtle suggestion that Vulcan wasn't the only thing lost in the new version of the pretend future?
Perhaps it was because we didn't get cable when we moved to Boston, but during my first year of graduate school, my ladyfriend decided to pursue a long held ambition of her own. She decided to become a Trekkie. Michelle borrowed Season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) from a mutual friend and to be honest, I was skeptical. My memories of TNG involved seeing snippets on WPIX, and those memories were drenched in beige. Yes, my favorite documentary of all time is Trekkies, but I just wasn't sure if I was willing to go the distance. Also, don't forget the aforementioned graduate school; i didn't have the time to embark on a television dynasty, I was supposed to be writing. Michelle watched the first few borrowed discs on the 12" television in our bedroom. I walked in on a weird holodeck episode, where Data is learning humor, and could not for the life of me figure out why Brett Spiner, the guy from Trekkies who staves off outpourings of fan gifts with the ever-so-dry, "We do okay," was putting on what looked like a bad George Burns impersonation in an eighties looking lounge.
I don't remember getting hooked, I just remember being hooked.
I have since watched every single episode of TNG at least once, been that girl at parties who corners people and says things like, "I can confidently say that Deep Space 9's Season 6 arc, rivals, nay, is better, than the Battlestar Galactica pilot/miniseries." The lady and I are about three discs away from the end of Voyager, and I know that if Harry Kim goes on shore leave, there's gonna be trouble, Janeway has a fucked up relationship with the Prime Directive, that the Temporal Prime Directive is the awesomest thing on earth, Pon Farr!, and WTF with the holodeck Irish lover. Moving forward, the lady and I plan to finish Voyager, watch the original series, finish the movies, and as an act of last resort and true committment to the fandom, we're going to do Enterprise.
I taught three classes during the fall semester. All of my course evaluations contained multiple references to Star Trek. Ahem.
Enter, the newest Star Trek movie. The opening credits yet rolled, but I was already crying. Action! Adventure! Pretty boys! Time travel! Old Spock! Young Spock! Vulcan feelings! "As my customary farewell will seem oddly self-serving...!" "Simon Pegg!" Bad-ass new Romulens! Fencing Sulu!
All good. All great.
But then I started to think about the ending, and the ramifications thereof. Nero the Romulen had catapaulted back in time 129 years and reset the entire timeline. Whilst rolling around in the diegisis' of all of the series, it occurred to me that none of them ever happened. That Tuvak, the ever-irratable security chief was more than likely annhilated in the Vulcan genocide. if being a time travel nerd has taught me one thing, it is that chains of events are precarious things and I can't help by being unsettled about the connotations of JJ Abrams unwritng forty-three years of amazing media. There is something overwhelmingly arrogant about that. It seems to say, "Yeah, I can make Trek into an awesome fucking movie, but my movie has to supercede all that predated it."
Am I overreacting? Is the series just being given a shot of fresh life? I can't help but thinking of my imaginary friends from the Trekkies/Galaxy Quest crossover in my mind who could pick a plot hole out of a police line-up and sight series/season/episode specifiics to overcome said discrepancy. The more I think about it, the more I think that the fans are being silenced in exchange for a blockbuster weekend. In the words of the Iowa fans featured in Trekkies because they make fan films and have a barbeque every year: "This year we even had some girls." (Follow my metaphor, girls are non-fans, which is not to say that women aren't fans, rather I am referencing the idea of cool people coming to a party.) My ladyfriend tells me that other movies have been unsummarily rejected from the canon, but I can't help but wonder, have other movies rejected the canon?
This is a cultural moment, people. World War Nerd, perhaps? Geek is chic, and I've seen flutterings on the internet of non-nerds showing up at cons and gawking in what should be a safe place. But, I'm new to the 'verse, so what if I'm just another bandwagoner looking for a fight?
Evidence, presented to the last few members of the Vulcan High Command, my thoughts last night:
Huh, so everything from the original series was knocked out. That means the other shows are out of line too. Oh god, the worm hole! Cisco. Picard. Will Picard still get The Enterprise. What about First Contact? I think The Enterprise crew was there all along. A time paradox or whatever it's called. Thus, shouldn't space travel disappear. Q! Q is omnipotent. He loves Picard, Star Fleet, everything. He'll fix it all. Thank god for Q, huh, how 'bout that?
A desperate attempt to restore canon, validate my status as a Trekkie, and put off dealing with life, or my subtle suggestion that Vulcan wasn't the only thing lost in the new version of the pretend future?