Suddenly I’m feeling old.
My first memories of the series goes back to me fighting with my Dad to stay up late Fridays to watch Star Trek. My bedtime was 8pm, and Star Trek wasn’t on until 8:30. Needless to say it took me years to catch all of the episodes during reruns to finally see them all. Every so often I’d catch an episode I had missed or forgotten about, and then suddenly it would be new all over again.
My first model I ever built (truthfully watched it being built by my Dad) was the Enterprise. He patiently built the model step by step, and allowed me to place the sensor dish on the secondary hull. The stand for the model made an awkward handle so that I could fly her – gently – around my room. Dad was always on hand to provide engineering support when the nacelles would suffer catastrophic failures of the structural integrity fields, or be mauled by the evil space wiener dog Bingo.
My next memory comes a decade later while we were stationed in what was then West Germany, and watching Star Trek on German television. Dubbed in German. Kirk had a much deeper voice, and Mr. Spock sounded like anything but Leonard Nimoy – but it was still watchable. I searched high and low to find an example, but apparently those early dubs are not on YouTube. It was part of a block of programming book-ended by reruns of the Muppet Show. Also dubbed in German. Needless to say I still hear the Muppet Show theme in German.
So with the 50th anniversary 1 year away, and after a decade without new Star Trek on TV I have to wonder – when is HBO or Netflix going to grab this as a series? Cable is the perfect home for a high-brow science fiction series. CBS can keep JJ Trek going as long as you want, but what I really need is a new Star Trek TV series. I don’t care what timeline it’s in. As long as it’s written well, with only the occasional monster-of-the-week, I will be a happy man.
