I really enjoyed the original
Star Trek. In many ways, it's still the best
Trek, in my opinion. Sure, it was produced on a shoestring budget, the special effects were pathetic by today's standards, and the acting wasn't always very impressive, but it's so easy to forget just how very far ahead of its time it was.
The original
Trek was a show that had something to say, and wasn't afraid to say it. At a time when taking a stand against U.S. interventionism was considered practically treasonous (the early days of the Viet-Nam War),
Star Trek had many episodes which stated outright that the Federation (an obvious stand-in for the U.S.) had no business interfering in the affairs of other cultures.
In a time when you could still see "Coloreds Only" and "Whites Only" signs on water fountains and whatnot in much of the country,
Star Trek featured an integrated crew and had several episodes flatly condemning prejudice and racial bigotry. No less a person than Martin Luther King, Jr. praised the show for daring to portray a future in which a person's race (and sex too, for the most part) were considered unimportant to how (s)he did his/her job. And this was at a time when portraying people of different sexes and races as equals who could and did work together harmoniously was
not "politically correct."
Someone once said that the original
Star Trek was written by people who had lived through the Great Depression and World War II.
Star Trek recruited well-established authors such as Robert Bloch to write episodes. By contrast, all of the later
Trek series were written by people who had grown up watching television. And it shows. Whereas the original
Trek was a gutsy, ground-breaking show that took many a risk and wasn't at all afraid to take potentially-controversial stands, the most characteristic trait of all the succeeding series was their almost complete
unwillingness to take any sort of risk or to say anything that might be considered remotely controversial by their viewers. Where the original
Trek was, by necessity, written for a broad audience, all succeeding
Trek series were rather obviously written to appeal to a narrower demographic -- namely,
Star Trek fans.
To my mind,
Star Trek reached its acme with
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. While
Star Trek VI was also quite good, nothing before or since has equaled the mangificence of
STII, in my opinion.
One thing about the original
Trek that continues to amaze me, though, is how badly-mistaken -- almost
willfully so, it seems to me -- most people are about Kirk and how he was portrayed. Now, Captain Kirk was never my favorite character, but I'm still surprised at how
completely mistaken most interpretations of the character have been.
Kirk is typically seen as a serial womanizer, for instance, yet nothing in the original
Trek or in the movies suggests this to be the case. In fact, if anything, just the opposite seems to be the case. I think that Kirk's reputation as a womanizer comes from the fact that he was clearly confident in his own sexuality and that he clearly liked women -- and perhaps most importantly, he was perfectly willing to use his charms to get what he wanted. Yet if you pay attention to the episodes, far from being willing to jump into the sack at any opportunity, Kirk is practically celibate. Indeed, in the episode "Wink of an Eye," the very attractive Deela
literally had to threaten to kill him before Kirk would agree to sleep with her.
Nor was Kirk some sort of rogue officer who disregarded orders whenever it suited him. If that had been the case, he'd never have risen so far and so fast, nor would he have been given so many critical assignments. More to the point, nothing in the television series or movies ever suggested that Kirk was regarded by his superiors as anything other than a highly respected and trustworthy officer. There were several episodes in which it was made quite clear that Kirk disagreed with Starfleet orders from time to time, but even when he did so under official protest, he virtually always follwed his orders to the letter.
I can think of only two cases in which Kirk outright defied his orders. Both times, interestingly, were to save Spock's life. (The television episode "Amok Time" and the movie
Star Trek III.)
I'm guessing that the mistaken notion that Kirk was regarded as some sort of "rogue officer" who frequently took Starfleet law into his own hands came from the fact that three of the movies (STIII and STIV, and to some degree, STV) dealt with one of the very few times in which he
did defy orders, and the consequences of that defiance.
Oddly, that "Kirk as rogue officer" meme seems to have become incorporated into official
Star Trek canon, despite its utter lack of support. It was suggested in at least one episode of
The Next Generation, plus episodes of
Deep Space Nine and
Voyager that this is how Kirk was remembered. (Sisko seemed to revere Kirk, whereas Captain Janeway seemed to think rather poorly of him, from what I can recall.)
Another thing that has bugged me about every
Trek since the original is how Vulcans are portrayed. Vulcans were always my favorite
Trek race, but whereas the original series managed to depict Vulcans as being diverse in temperament and beliefs
without destroying their basic devotion to "logic" (don't get me started on how badly all of the
Trek series mangle the concept of logic), that has not been the case in any of the succeeding series --
at all.
Almost without exception, Vulcans seen in
The Next Generation,
Deep Space Nine,
Voyager, or, so far as I can tell,
Enterprise, were arrogant and hypocritical idiots.
For that matter, the treatment of Klingons wasn't much better. In the original
Star Trek, the Klingons had a wide range of personalities, and were clearly depicted as having a very diverse culture. In all succeeding versions of
Trek, the Klingons are depicted as testosterone-addled, battle-hungry idiots. Oh, sure, they might be
interesting testosterone-addled, battle-hungry idiots from time to time, but it doesn't change the fact that they're testosterone-addled, battle-hungry idiots with absolutely no cultural diversity or individual personalities.
It was in an episode of
Deep Space Nine that Dax finally pointed out the most glaringly-obvious truth about how the Klingons are depicted in all of the Next-Gen-era series: they prattle on and on and
on about "honor" and yet don't display even the
slightest understanding of what the word actually
means. The only one who
does is Worf, and he was raised by humans.
***
Don't get me wrong, I liked
The Next Generation, but I don't think it has aged anywhere near as well as has the original. The first two seasons were embarrassingly bad, but it got really excellent during the third season. For awhile, it had superb stories, anchored by Patrick Stewart's terrific acting. But it eventually became so bogged down in sentimentality and an absolute unwillingness to ever tackle any subject that might possibly offend any viewers that it became rather boring.
I could never get into
Deep Space Nine. I lost interest quickly, then started watching it again during the Dominion War for awhile (when it was blatantly copying
Babylon 5's storyline).
Deep Space Nine improved during its later seasons, as best I could tell, but it never held my interest the way that the original had, or even
The Next Generation.
I could never get into
Voyager at all. I watched several episodes of the first season, was seriously annoyed at how idiotic were the plots, and gave up on it. I've only seen a couple of episodes of
Enterprise: hated the stupid, arrogant and hypocritical Vulcans and the even stupider humans.
Cheers,
Michael