Strange new worlds

I don't watch that much TV but tonight for some reason I channel-surfed a bit and found Star Trek: Nemesis, the last movie based on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I never got around to seeing it in the theater, so I watched it, and it was okay.

In my mis-spent youth, I was something of a Trekkie. Until I was in my mid-20s, there was only one Star Trek, and that was the original series. I was too young to watch or remember seeing it when it was new, but re-runs of it were constantly on TV while I was growing up. Since the original series was only three seasons long, I saw every episode many, many times.

When I was in 9th grade, every movie we were shown in my science class started with a space motif, so I would always mutter to my friend:

Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Occasionally I would top that performance with some Ooo-OOOO-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo musical effects. And sometimes the teacher would send me out into the hall.



By the time I was in college I pretty much knew the series by heart. My senior year, Star Trek was on late Sunday night, and I would turn it on and watch the first line or two of dialogue, and then I would know which episode it was and decide whether to watch it.

When The Next Generation started, I don't think I watched it right away, but eventually I did watch it and liked it. I never got to know it by heart, like the first one. And when they had the series (serieses?) Deep Space Nine and Voyager, I only watched them occasionally, and I saw the most recent, "prequel" series, Enterprise, only once that I recall. So my Star Trek enthusiasm tapered off as the number of Star Trek storylines multiplied, but I still have a soft spot for Captain James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Scotty, and the rest of the original gang.