Live Long and Paramount Will Prosper

Confession time. I'm not a Trekkie.

Oh, I watched the original series on NBC when I was a kid. I liked it. After it was cancelled, I probably never watched another episode ever again. My life was tribble-free.

When the original cast of Shatner and Company started churning out theatrical movies, I went to see them. The first one sucked. The second one with Ricardo Montalban wearing a Joan Van Ark wig was great. The rest were mediocre.

But still not a Trekkie. I didn't remember every line of dialogue. I didn't consider the Enterprise crew as members of my immediate family. I didn't go to the conventions where everybody shows up in those pajamas that look like the spacesuits they wore.

I was still not a Trekkie.

There were about five dozen other iterations of the Star Trek TV show with different casts and different titles and always the same plots. By 1995, I think every single actor in Hollywood had made at least one appearance in something Star Trek or another. Life ends eventually for everybody except Star Trek.

Now, even though the creator Gene Roddenberry has been dead longer than Abraham Lincoln, the galactic journey begins again. In theaters. The powers that be at Paramount have their hands out again. And the willing public now forks over another fifteen bucks to see how it all began for Captain Kirk and Mister Spock.

I saw it. I liked it. But still not a Trekkie.

In 2009, the Star Trek backstory can now be told with oodles of technology. tons of CGI, and little logic. Remembering the original NBC series which barely got off the corner of Melrose and Gower, there is something very strange seeing these characters perform with lots of production coin behind them. Hell, the original producer of the show was Desilu and they barely sprung for leather-upholstered seats at the control console of the Enterprise. For Pete's sake, it was Lucille Ball who originally greenlit the series. I can hear and see her now watching the pilot. Dragging on her favorite Chesterfield and croaking, "I don't know what the fuck is going on, but the kids will like it."

The new movie shows you how it all began for the crew of Enterprise when they were kids. The dude playing Kirk is a better actor as a youngster than Shatner was as an adult, but who isn't? Watching Zachary Quinto as Spock quickly reminded me how much the character of Sheldon on TV's "Big Bang Theory" mirrors the mysterious Vulcan if the latter happened to be living in a Pasadena apartment building with a broken elevator.

I was captivated by the portrayals and realized that there is still some life in their stories. They drag out Leonard Nimoy to play future Spock or old Spock or Dr. Benjamin Spock. By the last third of the movie, I started getting confused but I don't think it made a difference. As soon as the filmmakers consider that you might be thinking too much about the holes in the plot, they blow up something and divert your attention. I've since learned that there was one action sequence that was actually filmed in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, noteworthy because they don't even allow tailgating there.

Some weird stuff happens that I don't remember from the series. For instance, Spock starts making out with Uhura and I can only think this is the producers' way of saluting President Obama and all the great strides he has made in race relations. But, even if something bothered me, it wasn't long before something else exploded and my mind was forced to wander some more.

It's an action film and perfect for a late Spring/early Summer night's cinematic entertainment. You're amazed one more time that these characters will probably last longer than some of Shakespeare's best. For that, you've got to hand it to the original creators. Star Trek, which ran only three seasons when it first ran on NBC, is going to live forever.

Despite the fact that I'm still not a Trekkie.

Dinner last night: German salami sandwich.