Posts tagged Star Trek

Star Trek Opening Sequence

With all the hype surrounding the new Star Trek movie when it was scheduled for Christmas 2008 way back in 2007, I set myself a target to watch every bit of Star Trek history ever created and see what the phenomenon was all about.

I’m by no means a ‘Trekkie’ or ‘Trekker’, however they like to refer to themselves these days, but I wanted to do things properly. My initial instinct was to buy the ‘Enterprise’ complete set and start off completely chronologically. However, £160 quid later and after hanging around on a few forums, I was quickly deterred from this way of thinking and was convinced to start with ‘The Original Series’, then some movies, ‘The Next Generation’, some more movies, ‘Deep Space 9’, ‘Voyager’ and finish off with ‘Enterprise’ which many of you may or may not know is story of how it all began, but I can’t be totally sure because I’ve not watched it yet – even though I have the box set sitting in my room unwatched and very tempting!

Anyway, needless to say after forking out £160 on the Enterprise box set, (this seems expensive but if you’ve ever looked into purchasing a ‘complete’ set of any of the Star Trek series, you will know that this is quite cheap in comparison), I was penniless and luckily my girlfriend kindly bought me ‘The Next Generation’ and ‘Animated Series’ box sets before they too went up in price. I couldn’t afford a TOS set so I was convinced by a workmate to join up with Lovefilm (an online rental service) and I starting renting each of TOS disks in order – starting with The Cage (TOS Pilot episode – U.K. Series 3 – Disk 7).

Out of curiosity, I also rented the re-mastered disks (the ones with the HD DVD side and DVD on the other). The episodes look incredible and the work the studio has done on restoring the already beautiful originals is incredibly and worth it if only to see the special CGI work and reworked sound. Unfortunately, only season 1 was available to watch when I went through them but I believe that season 2 is imminent and I’m looking forward to a possible Blu-ray release which will no doubt tempt me into purchasing the complete set of re-mastered TOS.

Spock, Kirk and Scotty

As for the series itself I have mixed feelings. I started watching Star Trek: TOS as a child, it used to be on BBC2, slotted in between Neighbours and whatever was on BBC1 after the news, as a kid I could never understand the news so I always waited patiently for whatever came next by watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Star Trek! I don’t really have fond memories of TOS from my childhood because it always bored me a little and could never quite understand it, it was a little too old for my comprehension, however, like any other kid, I could appreciate the coolness of the gadgets and the space theme. The same can’t be said for the Fresh Prince, Will Smith was right m=on my level with that one!

So it has to be said that I really wasn’t going into this with the highest of expectations and many people advised against me trying such a feat, quoting that I have hundreds of hours of Star Trek ahead of me and is it something I wish to waste my life on? Well my answer was simple; I really wanted to try it out, to see if I could understand it for once. Since those days of being quite bored watching TOS as a child, I had since visited the theatre to watch ‘First Contact’ and had watched a number of awe inspiring TNG episodes that made me want to watch the whole thing from scratch and witness the growing of such a huge phenomenon. With the growing success of Battlestar and the recent reconditioning of Star Wars theatrical films, it felt like a good time to revisit an ongoing fascination of mine – space.

‘The Cage’ is a classic episode and one that I’d advise everyone watch as it really fits chronologically. Coupled with the later re-imagining of it in ‘The Menagerie’ they are considered the best of the TOS stories. Season 1 was the best of the lot for me, with the introductions of the Klingon’s and Khan, it really invites you into the world of Star Trek. It’s funny seeing the characters and races in their original glory, from their inception, knowing that all along you’ve been familiar with their characterisations from later incarnations, whether it be through the latter ST spin-off’s or through movies solely focussed on them some 20 years after the TOS episodes were made.

Seasons 2 and 3 faded into a bit of a blur to me really, I felt that as I tried to concentrate, I fell asleep! This is by no means a fault of the show itself but rather a fault of mine that I have not got the attention span to deal with dated effects and with what seemed to me as dull storylines. Cinema and television has moved on so much in the last 40 years that it seems that Hollywood has set bigger and bigger standards for itself, thus making some things of old, almost unwatchable because they do not keep the pace like so many films and shows do in this day and age. For example, if the stories of TOS are compared to some of the stories that they’ve dealt with in latter series’ and movies, it would be fair to say that a film with a storyline like First Contact, is a lot more impressive and fascinating than the majority of the second and third season of TOS.

This of course is going to infuriate a few readers and let me categorically say that I’m not calling The Original Series bad, nor am I calling it boring, I’m just saying that it wasn’t for me and I find far more enjoyment in the more modern incarnations of the Star Trek world.

This said, there were many of the 79 episodes that I found very good. The mobsters, where Kirk makes fun of the gangsters, very funny indeed and the aforementioned episodes which involve Khan, the Romulan and Klingon based episodes are also very good.

After completing TOS, I moved on to the Animated Series, which in a word is simply spectacular. I loved the animation and although it is still not considered cannon in the Star Trek universe, I loved the stories. Many of the ground rules set out by Gene Roddenbery were cemented into the animated Series and many of the ground rules set out in the world of the Animated Series were cemented into Star Trek lore and followed in later instalments, which leaves us baffled as to why it is not considered cannon. It should be, it is by far a worthy addition to the Star Trek world, with captivating stories that last no longer than 22 minutes each with good commentaries not to mention superb characterisation in both the crew and the numerous enemies. It keeps your attention and deserves to be part of any collection.

Since, I have moved onto the first four movies and am now embarking on The Next Generation, watching the 5th and 6th movies in amongst them in order of the date the episodes were aired and movies released. I will then move onto Deep Space 9 in full and Voyager later on.

In the mean time, please feel free to download the PDF which gives the order in which I am following the Star Trek universe. Hopefully it will help you in any endeavours you may have of following the series too.

Star Trek Chronological Timeline (PDF Document)

This is by no means a strictly chronological document, if it were, the episodes of TNG, DS9 and VOY would crossover and by mixed in together as they were aired alongside each other at some points in time. However, as I have not been able to find any documentation on the exact crossovers, I have not been able to incorporate it into this document. If anyone can help me identify and find the crossovers, I will be more than happy to amend the PDF document to make it completely chronological.