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seldneiI joke that I was born a Star Trek fan like a lot of people are born Catholic. There was no choice involved: my mother was a Star Trek fan, loved the original series (that was all there was at the time), read all the books, watched the re-runs, could tell you what episode was on within three minutes even when she was in another room and just heard the dialogue ... Kirk and Spock and McCoy were basically part of my life from the start.
So I watched all the re-runs, read some of the books (Spock's World was a good one, and there was this collection of essays that I remember because it had one, written at the time of the show, discussing Spock's "surprising" sex appeal), saw the movies when they came out (the first one? Boring. Second one? Awesome. Particularly when Mom, on the way out of the theater, informed Dad and me that it was based on an epsiode), watched Next Generation (Picard converted my father to the Star Trek fandom, and got him to shave his comb-over, so well done Gene Roddenberry), watched DS9 (my husband's favorite), watched Voyager ... and, well, I fell away from the faith.
There's actually other things there--like my little punk rock high school friends who'd come to my house and pile into our living room to watch Next Generation, or how I stopped watching DS9 for while until the Cardassian war got going--but that's the basic timeline.
Anyway, that's a long way of getting to the point of: Mom and I went to see the new Star Trek movie, and we both really, really liked it. A lot.
I had one quibble, and that was that I'd have written the Kobayashi Maru scene a bit differently. The scene where they tell that story to David is, seriously, one of my favorite scenes ever, so I've been imagining that whole thing for years. And, in my head, that isn't how it happened. Of course, the Romulans have changed the timeline, so maybe it happened my way originally ....
I also found out something about myself that I did not know before. Apparently the one character in Star Trek that I cannot stand to see played by someone new is ... Sulu.
Sulu. Seriously? Sulu.
I totally expected to find Chris Pine or Zachary Quinto feeling wrong. I was prepared for personal issues with the new casting of my two favorite characters (Scotty and McCoy), but Karl Urban and Simon Pegg actually managed to be my favorites in the film, too. But nope, it was Sulu I couldn't get past. He's George Takei, and that's it. I think it's the voice. The man has a gorgeous voice. Well, and he was totally hot when he went all shirtless in the hall with his saber ... but I digress.
So, yeah, I loved it. Mom and I spent the ride home discussing every little homage moment, every weird little reference (she got the Enterprise shout-out, but we missed the rumored tribble cameo). It was cool. Dad can have his Next Generation, Scott can have his DS9, somebody out there can probably have Voyager and Enterprise ... but my mother and I remain old-school Trek fans. Not fundamentalist, mind you, but old-school. :)
And then we watched the season finale of Lost, which I missed due to work. We bought it off iTunes and watched it on Scott's MacBook, so we saw it in HD. I kept getting distracted by the picture quality, which was annoying me--oh my god the beach looked good!--but the episode was really really good!
I kept doing my call-it-two-seconds-before-the-reveal thing, and now I'm trying to figure out who's working for who, and is Jack's crazy-ass plan actually going to work? because if it does, I am not sure how I feel about that.
AAAND ... Scott watched the finale of Fringe yesterday, too (on Hulu), so it was one giant JJ Abrams day, with extra bonus Spock. Really, one of the two guys on the beach should have been Leonard Nimoy.
Winona Ryder?
So I watched all the re-runs, read some of the books (Spock's World was a good one, and there was this collection of essays that I remember because it had one, written at the time of the show, discussing Spock's "surprising" sex appeal), saw the movies when they came out (the first one? Boring. Second one? Awesome. Particularly when Mom, on the way out of the theater, informed Dad and me that it was based on an epsiode), watched Next Generation (Picard converted my father to the Star Trek fandom, and got him to shave his comb-over, so well done Gene Roddenberry), watched DS9 (my husband's favorite), watched Voyager ... and, well, I fell away from the faith.
There's actually other things there--like my little punk rock high school friends who'd come to my house and pile into our living room to watch Next Generation, or how I stopped watching DS9 for while until the Cardassian war got going--but that's the basic timeline.
Anyway, that's a long way of getting to the point of: Mom and I went to see the new Star Trek movie, and we both really, really liked it. A lot.
I had one quibble, and that was that I'd have written the Kobayashi Maru scene a bit differently. The scene where they tell that story to David is, seriously, one of my favorite scenes ever, so I've been imagining that whole thing for years. And, in my head, that isn't how it happened. Of course, the Romulans have changed the timeline, so maybe it happened my way originally ....
I also found out something about myself that I did not know before. Apparently the one character in Star Trek that I cannot stand to see played by someone new is ... Sulu.
Sulu. Seriously? Sulu.
I totally expected to find Chris Pine or Zachary Quinto feeling wrong. I was prepared for personal issues with the new casting of my two favorite characters (Scotty and McCoy), but Karl Urban and Simon Pegg actually managed to be my favorites in the film, too. But nope, it was Sulu I couldn't get past. He's George Takei, and that's it. I think it's the voice. The man has a gorgeous voice. Well, and he was totally hot when he went all shirtless in the hall with his saber ... but I digress.
So, yeah, I loved it. Mom and I spent the ride home discussing every little homage moment, every weird little reference (she got the Enterprise shout-out, but we missed the rumored tribble cameo). It was cool. Dad can have his Next Generation, Scott can have his DS9, somebody out there can probably have Voyager and Enterprise ... but my mother and I remain old-school Trek fans. Not fundamentalist, mind you, but old-school. :)
And then we watched the season finale of Lost, which I missed due to work. We bought it off iTunes and watched it on Scott's MacBook, so we saw it in HD. I kept getting distracted by the picture quality, which was annoying me--oh my god the beach looked good!--but the episode was really really good!
I kept doing my call-it-two-seconds-before-the-reveal thing, and now I'm trying to figure out who's working for who, and is Jack's crazy-ass plan actually going to work? because if it does, I am not sure how I feel about that.
AAAND ... Scott watched the finale of Fringe yesterday, too (on Hulu), so it was one giant JJ Abrams day, with extra bonus Spock. Really, one of the two guys on the beach should have been Leonard Nimoy.
Winona Ryder?
Re: oh, here I go, sorry ... :)
Date: 2009-05-20 12:29 am (UTC)Well, really, I found myself a little disturbed by Scotty's amorality about the beagle. Though I think he said "living thing" specifically, so my theory may be screwed. *My* thought was more "How old was the dog?" No way it's the same beagle as in the series. :)
I admit, watching Spock and Uhura making out on the transporter pad made me think, "Dude, your dad said to go with the anger/revenge thing, not the lust. Save it for the Ponn-Faar!" Teenagers. :)
God, there were so many eps where they were under the influence of something--but the one I'm thinking of, the bug or whatever reduced inhibitions to a crazy degree.
I'm still unconvinced about the alternate reality thing. It makes me grumpy. :)
You have always been much more idealistic than I am. It's okay. One of us needs to demand excellence from pop culture. :)