The Hēathernet 20oz. to Geekdom

Mood: Beamed Up

I've had the time to watch Star Trek (2009) twice over the weekend but for the life of me I haven't figured out how make time to put together a response to it, only knowing that I really, really want to.

The movie had two very strong connections to my entertainment network.

Star Trek: The Next Generation was a huge part of my childhood. As a series it was just finishing up it's seventh season right around that time I was beginning wrap my mind around just what episodic television was. I didn't know how to tune into a specific time but thanks to syndication I knew that if I kept my TV tuned to TNT in the evenings I could follow the lives of my new heroes reasonably well. Early in my childhood the first season episode "Conspiracy" was one of the first things to give me nightmares when I caught the episode running on my parents' late night television surfing. That was a regretful glass of water. By the time the series was over I had grown up alongside the program, and "All Good Things..." became the first time I watched a television series finale.

Today both Lost and Fringe are on my "must catch" list much like TNG once was. Fringe is a bit of a TV rookie... so we'll set it aside. Lost on the other hand is the ultimate in ensemble cast programming. Just as Lost has Hurley episodes and Sawyer episodes that delight the fans who have anointed them their personal favorites, so too did the Star Treks. Trek also moved slow and stately through the show's chosen themes being quite preachy most of the time, earning it high marks under the columns of "cheesy" and "boring." Lost is far more manic ("We've got a problem," "Grab a gun!"), but aren't we still wondering why way back in season one Locke held up a black piece and a white piece to the camera sure to promise a series riddled with faith verse science explorations? Lost and Fringe also feature top notch production values, well, that makes them quite different from Star Trek which eternally strained against its budget in the age before computers. That just made me even more excited.

I had a lot riding on this reboot. 

And it all came out. Through my eyes mostly and a little bit out of my nose. Yes, I cried during the open. Before the title even rolled. While Michelle (my willing victim for the first viewing... my second, I, uh... I went by myself) laughed at me.

First, emotional things were happening on screen. That got me started. Second, my expectations for the new pacing, the new care and polish, and the new imagining of the universe were being met, already. Third, this was my childhood. Also, my parents' childhood. Something I had put in a plastic bin with the Matchbox cars and Legos and everything else that was only as good as I remembered. Something that I definitely watched grow up with me post Star Trek: TNG (a fine show known as Star Trek: DS9), veer too far off course (a mostly digestible show Star Trek: Voyager), and then finally lose its luster all together (I never watched Enterprise and for the longest time pretended that the last Star Trek movie before this one, a bleak thing known as Star Trek: Nemesis wasn't so bad.) 

I was so ready for this movie. I live in my childhood room now but everything that once was a part of that remains boxed and sad. My dreams are taking a little break right now and so were all the tools that made so much of my original imaginings possible. Over the weekend I got to see a part of my past "rebooted," maybe you've seen that word kicked around describing the new movie. It couldn't be more true. To say any further would spoil a story I want you to go see for yourself.

As soon as I leave the theater after this movie I think to myself, "More!" and "Do my Star Trek next!" 

Why do I have that feeling? Amongst all the explosions, the jumping, the falling, and the punching (oh, the punching) there's something else. It's hope. Hope that we're going to have the honor to live this imaginary universe all over again. Hope that it will continue to freaking rock. Hope that maybe one day we're going to shuttle about on gleaming starships and glorious planets. And maybe... hope that either that world, or imagining that world, would be something I get to be a part of.

Make it so!