Star Trek: A Debate by Robert Griffith

Ever heard the titles ‘Inside Star Trek: The Real Story’, ‘Get A Life’, ‘Star Trek Memories’, ‘Great Birds of the Galaxy’, ‘To The Stars’, or ‘Trek Navigator’? Those books, among others, are ones that I own and have read over the years that I have been collecting such memorabilia. Each one tells a different side to how ‘Star Trek’ was created some 35 plus years ago.

We all know that Gene Roddenberry had some tall ideas of how things could turn out to be in the future. His thought and imagination spawned one of the longest-lived, most profitable ventures in history. Since it went off the air in 1969, ‘Star Trek’, now known simply as The Original Series or TOS, has been shown somewhere, sometime, every day on syndication.

79 hours of cheesy special effects, bright psychedelic uniforms and sets, groovy women we’ve heard referred to as “Space Hookers”, and plastic props has transformed an entire Hollywood industry of cowboys and Indians into the Science Fiction plethora it is today. The ‘X-Files’, ‘Battlestar Galactica’, ‘Red Dwarf’, or ‘Star Wars’ wouldn’t have ever occurred if it weren’t for Gene Roddenberry.

Step back for a second and think on something real quick. Gene was a man of vision, a man of dreams, but he wasn’t the only one. People like Harlan Ellison, Gene L. Coon, Theodore Sturgeon, and Isaac Asimov helped to write and create the universe we have read about in Michael & Denise Okuda’s ‘Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide To The Future’. Robert Justman, Herbert Solow, Dorothy Fontana, John D. F. Black, Wah Chang, Douglas S. Cramer, and others, helped to nurture and support the show.

‘Star Trek’ wasn’t created in order to change a culture; it was created to make money for men and women who needed a steady paycheck. Did Gene Roddenberry, going into his creation, know how long it would live?

Today, the fourth incarnation “spin-off” from the original, the first ‘Star Trek’ is going strong. There are people in the world who are enraged at the creators for doing what they have done in creating a prequel. In the world, there are also those that find the series worthwhile, compelling, and adventurous.

Personally, I have some questions on a few details of the series. If I were one of the creators, I would have preferred to have a series based upon the early adventures of the Daedalus-Class starships mentioned throughout the original and subsequent series. Seeing the USS Archon, USS Essex, or USS Horizon in action with those seemingly archaic technological pieces of machinery would have taken my breath away -- the dawn of a legend, the birth of an infinite beauty.

It happened, though. ‘Enterprise’ is what it is, and no one can change that except the guys upstairs at Paramount. You can’t have that theme song taken away, you can’t throw Russell Watson off of a bridge into some street below, and you can’t have T’Pol thrown out an airlock. Nothing you can say or do will change that show.

Once again I offer my opinion by saying, “I like the show.” So far the stories have been fresh, inventive, and endearing to me. The characters are people of wondrous curiosity, and from my vantage point, I have to ponder if they are a precursor to what our own grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be. Each episode has taken its place beside the other 500 or so that are drifting in and out of video stores across the world. You can’t simply delete one from memory or throw it out into oblivion.

Why don’t people like the show?

I have little idea of why people dislike the show, but I offer up a hypothesis. People typically find fault where they want to find it. If they expect to see something wrong with the show, then they’ll find something wrong, even if it isn’t there. This statement mirrors something that Guinan told Picard in ‘The Next Generation’ episode, ‘Best of Both Worlds - Part I’. She said, “When a man is convinced he’s going to die tomorrow, he’ll probably find a way to make it happen.”

Before the series debuted, I was an avid reader of the gossip around the rumor mill. I knew ahead of time that the Klingons’ ridges would be around, despite the fact that back in the 1960s they weren’t there. In fact, I prefer the ridges to the ‘Dirty Mexican’ look that we were accustomed with before. I also saw a picture of the ship. At first, I was outraged. “Dammit, that thing is an Akira-Class ship with the stupid,” was what I offered up. I read an interview that the model-maker who created the Enterprise gave a few months ago. He said something that stuck with me; “I know that some dissidents out there are angry because they think the ship look so ‘sophisticated’. I believe that the Enterprise we created looks more ancient than Kirk’s ship. Those sleek lines and discreet hull lines make it seem as though the ship is one giant object instead of the millions of pieces it really is.”

I know that a few months ago I submitted an article for the Tribune. Hopefully you read it as well and can think of this one as a continuation of my efforts to explore and understand why there is such an avid hatred of the series on the Internet in general. From what I have seen, the press, the producers, and the average fan have jumped on board as the fans they are.

Once, a long time ago, I thought of myself as a hard-core fan. Oh yes, I enjoy playing trivia. I know my stuff right and left, and I could guarantee you that I can answer 9 out of 10 questions you put to me in a minute or less. I’ve read countless biographical books on this one series that has spawned generations of stories and an infinite amount of joy. I could hate ‘Enterprise’ as easily as I could hate ‘Voyager’, ‘Deep Space Nine’, ‘The Next Generation’, or hell, even the first one. You can hate any series if you want to, but you don’t usually do that. In the case of ‘Enterprise’, it seems many people, and correct me if I’m wrong, decided before the show even started that it was going to be bad, it was politically incorrect, and that the entire thing was a flop.

I can argue for years about it; could write books about it, but I won’t. In the end, it’s your loss if you don’t like it. The same can be said about any other series, but in the case of a true ‘Star Trek’ series, it really is your loss if you don’t like it. Where I have liked series, others have hated it. Where I have seen nothing but bored writings, some have seen epics.

It’s all a matter of opinion, but sometimes an opinion needs to come from the heart instead of someone else’s ramblings.