We got a VCR fairly early, and my sister taped all the reruns of the original and at that time only Star Trek, until we had a whole cabinet full of Kirk. I rewatched these tapes constantly. Kirk and Uhura were between the two of them my first crushes. (Also that one kid Esteban from The Mysterious Cities of Gold.) This summer my Netflix queue, which circles the earth like the Midgard Serpent, finally wound its way to the first season of ST:TOS, so Iâve been revisiting my old love. Does it hold up?
You guys. It is even better than I remembered. Some notes on the first few discs of Season Oneâand yes, I suspect there will be more of these posts, so brace yourselves.
* Star Trek is gorgeous. The colors shimmer and melt. I especially noticed all the use of lilac; if you were doing a ST:TOS drinking game and picked âDo a shot whenever somethingâs colored lilac,â youâd be wrecked by the end of the first disc. Lilac, gold, violet, scarlet.
* Itâs slower-paced than I remembered. The delightful Galaxy Quest made fun of how the communications officerâs only job was to repeat what the computer said, but actually in S1 all of these characters repeat the computer a lot. Thereâs a lot of time spent on the fake technical details of space. Fun in its way and very retro, but definitely a modernist tech-worship aesthetic that slowed down the plot.
* Uhura has relatively little to do in these first discs. She does sing twice!âIâd forgotten that she sings in âConscience of the Kingâ as well as, of course, her teasing love song to Spock in âCharlie X.â But overall this is the Kirk and Spock show, with McCoy and, surprisingly, Sulu as the second-tier characters. Sulu does a ton here and George Takei makes it all ridiculously fun.
* Kirk has this reputation for punching his way through space, but he really does use his words in most of these episodes. (He just also punches stuff.) Kirk is a negotiator and a canny psychologist, and someone who strongly prefers to reconcile with enemies rather than just blow them up.
Also I will never not love William Shatner in this role so take that everybody who makes fun of him. Heâs perfect and yâall need to respect.
* Iâd never noticed just how many of these episodes deal with the clash of generations. You get âCharlie Xâ and âMiriâ right off the bat, and later weâll get the space hippies in âReturn to Eden,â and isnât âSquire of Gothosâ also a child? I guess listing it like that there arenât that many, but the consistent message of âYou need a responsible adultâ is fairly noticeable. I think ânegotiation > combatâ and âchildren need rulesâ are the only themes to receive more than one episodeâs worth of attention in these first few discs. âŚThere are also a lot of episodes about madness, and about living in illusion, now that I think about it.
* Speaking of themes⌠âThe Cageâ is the only episode in which Gene Roddenberryâs technoatheism really parades itself. I wasnât surprised to see that he wrote it. Itâs a bluntly gnostic rejection of the physical body and its attendant suffering. Youâll notice, too, that in order to make his anti-suffering point Roddenberry has to make humans much less intelligent and creative than we really are: How can Capt. Pike blink for âyesâ and ânoâ but not spell out words with his eyes like that guy in The Count of Monte Cristo, or the man who wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? OTOH I think this is the episode with the spaceships going past the window, just stunning, all cocktail-colored like a hallucination of â80s LA.
* Man the music is great. All of the music is great.