Tonight marks a special, less than pleasant night for the aging geek, it’s the end of Star Trek. Tonight is the final episode of the last series in the franchise, Star Trek: Enterprise with their final episode, “These Are The Voyages”
What meaning those words have for those of us who grew up with the various versions of the show. I can remember getting up on Sunday mornings and trying to get away with not going to church in order to watch the original Trek at 11 on channel 3. I was enamored with the infinite coolness of Spock, the tough guy Kirk, and feisty Bones. The cool special effects and the odd species like the “The Devil in the Dark” or Klingons and Romulans.
To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before
Star Trek debuted in 1966 and last 79 episodes or about 2 seasons. There were essentially 3 stars to the show, William Shatner as Capt. Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and DeForrest Kelley as Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy. Other cast members surrounded them and are just as endearing. Jimmy Doohan as Mr. Scott, Nichelle Nichols and Lt. Uhura, George Takei as Mr. Sulu and Walter Koenig as Chekov. A man with a pioneering vision of the future, Gene Roddenberry, created all of this. It’s easy for me to remember all this stuff, as I’ve been a fan for so many years.
Done on a shoestring budge in the aging Desilu studios, the show was popular in the 60s even though it got cancelled. A letter writing campaign led by science fiction giant Harlan Ellison kept the show alive after the first season. Studies done after the fact show that if the ratings had been done then like they are now, the show never would’ve been cancelled.
The show tackled a lot of social issues like bigotry and war. It had the first interracial kiss on television. It was working very much toward a utopian world. It also implanted a lot of ideas in young minds. Roddenberry did a little research on some of his ideas before hand. Little computers on desktops? Who’d a thunk it? Impossible! What I’m writing on again? There’s lots more but one thing says the most. When the U.S. started their space shuttle program back in the early 70s, they completed a prototype. The official designation was OV-101. The ship’s name however, was Enterprise. It wasn’t by chance that the cast members and creator Roddenberry were at the Air Force base when they rolled out the giant space vehicle.
In the meantime, conventions started popping up. People would trade the toys and comic books and other merchandise they’d acquired. They also developed this peculiar habit of dressing up like various cast members and critters from the series. This underground movement surprised a few people, especially Roddenberry.
The Movies
After the surprising popularity of the upstart Star Wars movie by George Lucas, Roddenberry took another shot at Star Trek. He’d been trying for years to get another show going and while there was an excellent but short lived animated series; a primetime show had never taken off. Roddenberry reassembled the original cast for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. As trekkers go, it wasn’t as good as others but it started things going again. And really, Roddenberry did just to see if the franchise would still fly. It did.
Then came the Wrath of Khan. For the Trekker, it was perhaps the penultimate Star Trek movie. It featured Ricardo Montalban reprising a character he had in the original show as a genetically engineered conqueror. It cost Kirk much and Spock died saving the ship and crew. The movies continued on for 4 more movies with the original cast.
The Needs of the Many
Then Roddenberry came up with the bright idea of a new show set in the future of the original. Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG). It was loaded with a much bigger budget and a whole new look. It offered the fanatics (yes, they were fanatics) a new fix. It had a lot of celebrities float in and out of the show. DeForrest Kelley reprised his role as Dr. McCoy in the opening episode. Bones was well past 100 at that point. One interesting new point was Data, modeled heavily from Asimov’s I: Robot. He even had the positronic brain.
If you look through the series over the 7-year run, you see people like Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac), Famke Jansen (Jean Grey in the X-Men movies), and a young Ashley Judd. Ashley was the real find, she was gorgeous, she was in Star Trek AND she was from Ky and went to the University of Kentucky. For a Ky. geek like myself, it just didn’t get any better. Oscar winner James Cromwell made some appearances and there were others peppered through out the show. Stephen Hawking for example. Why? Trek was cool.
Then came Deep Space Nine with Avery Brooks and Rene Auberjenois. Voyager was next. All 3 of those shows completed very successful 7-years runs. There were also several ST:TNG but none of them really scored big hits at the box office, certainly not like the original movies had done. Then came Enterprise.
The Beginning of the End
I was optimistic as were all fans but it also did something that hadn’t been done since the original and that was to air during primetime and this time it was on the relatively weak UPN network. It starred Scott Bakula of Quantum Leap fame. He knew what popular science fiction shows are capable of. Ratings started out OK but by the third season they had dropped and the show was on its way out. The only reason it survived to season 4 was for syndication and DVD purposes. Tonight that series comes to an end. It was set in the time before Kirk, before the United Federation of Planets (modeled after our own U.N.) was founded. It offered new experiences with Vulcans, Andorrians, Tellurites and others.
The end of an era comes tonight. For those of us who’ve watched the show in all its incarnations we say goodbye. After almost 40 years of adventure and hope in the future, it ends. What does the future hold? No one knows for sure. We trekkers can only hope there will be more offerings in the future. Maybe Rick Berman will figure out what it takes to make the show great again or perhaps he will retire and someone else can breathe life into the franchise. I do know that I personally will miss the show. It’s been a part of my regular TV line up in one form or another for many years now. I wish the cast and crew the best of luck in their new endeavors. We only hope their mission will continue. Live Long and Prosper!
Nowas quoted by Captain Kirk: “Second star to the right and straight on till morning.”
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
