Becoming A Trekkie At 65
Space: The final frontier. I have never been much of a science fiction person; just not my favorite genre of movies or shows. As a matter of fact, when the original Star Trek was on in the 60s I never watched. So one day I was browsing through my Netflix and came upon a documentary about Leonard Nimoy’s life For the Love of Spock and decided to watch it. Of course, Leonard Nimoy is a very likeable man and I enjoyed the documentary immensely and couldn’t help but be curious about some of things he talked about that happened during his acting career on the original Star Trek. So, my next stop on my Netflix browse was to binge watch the three seasons of the original Star Trek. It was amusing to see how “campy” the 1960’s costumes and scenery were. And it was a treat to see how their characters evolved and grew into the beloved characters – specifically Captain Kirk and Spock – that everyone loved. Some of the technology that they had was an eerie prediction of our future, i.e., their communicators looked like flip phones, their wall monitors resembled flat screen TVs.
When I finished watching the original series I felt that empty “what am I going to watch now” feeling that one usually feels after they have binge watched a series. I tried a few other shows but nothing grabbed my attention as much as Star Trek had. So, I finally wandered back to the Star Trek TV series. I am now on the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation which was telecast from 1987 to 1994. It has me as hooked as the original series did. I thought I would miss Captain Kirk and Spock, but I have come to love the new cast that includes two handsome captains, a Klingon and a female counselor who has telepathic gifts. The costumes are more sophisticated in this one, including their practice of medicine. They are able to talk to their computers and their communicators are now little buttons on their chest. Even though flip phones in real life did not make the scene until 1986, technology on Star Trek was moving forward at warp speed. The one thing we haven’t discovered is a way to “beam” our bodies through time and space and transport us somewhere else! But I’m still anxiously waiting for that one along with their advanced practice of medicine. Curiously, they still haven’t learned that the use of seat belts would be a very good thing to have to keep them in their seats!
Perhaps the reason I have become such a Trekkie at my age is that unlike many science fiction shows and movies which usually portray the future of the earth as a dark, desolate, dangerous place to live after humans have literally destroyed it with their greed, bombs and/or war. Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek series always portrays our future earth as a bright, wonderful place with advanced technologies where all countries have unified into a federation who now travel space spreading peace and goodwill wherever they journey meeting and accepting new species of life form, whatever it may look like. The only time they resort to violence is when they are met with violence and then it is handled with reluctance and integrity. They sorrow over death. Obviously, my kind of world. I am such a flower child. Kumbaya!
