Beyond the Final Frontier February 23, 2007
Posted by jackal in : Films, TV , trackbackI just got through watching the “classic” Trek movies, something I do every 2 or 3 years, once I get to the stage where my desire to see the supremely entertaining sequels outweighs my dread at having to endure The Motion Picture again beforehand (although I must admit to actually quite enjoying it this time). I love re-watching the classic Trek films over a short period, no more than a few days, because they’re not just damn good stories, well told; they comprise - together with The Original Series – the complete story of these characters over the course of 30 years (in the Trek timeline). We see the young adventurers embark on their Starfleet careers, watch them mature, earn promotion, take on new challenges, fight new battles - but always stay together. That’s what I love most about the Trek films: the sense of family among the characters I grew up watching, maintained over the course of six (and a bit) movies.
It wasn’t there behind the scenes of course, a fact I was reminded of today upon rewatching William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in the fascinating Mind Meld. Shatner speaks of how he feels affection for their fellow castmates only in terms of the amount of their working lives they spent together, but claims he never understood where any rift between them originated. Nimoy is a little warmer: “I’m always happy to see them when I bump into them,” he says, but admits that the original Trek cast have never been the kind who “get together at barbecues all the time”. Shatner makes a convincing argument that there was never the basis for such a relationship in the first place: The Original Series was a 3-man show: Shatner, Nimoy and De Kelley. The rest of the cast were never “regulars”; the show was never an ensemble in the same way as The Next Generation. With the advent of the movie franchise, the supporting cast were able to
gain more recognition, but the resentments and ill-feeling were already entrenched by then. Shatner and Nimoy were, and remain, close friends, a relationship shared, at least in part, with Kelley until his death in 1999. Doohan, Nichols, Koenig and Takei meanwhile formed their own, somewhat independent unit, often making Star Trek convention appearances as a group in later years.
None of this really matters, though. I know that Shatner and Doohan couldn’t stand each other in real life, but does it make an ounce of difference when I’m watching them on-screen as Kirk and Scotty, best of friends? Does it hell. It’s nice that the Next Generation cast remain close friends after 20 years, but no matter how much I enjoy watching them on-screen (and I do, a lot), nothing compares to the sheer pleasure of seeing the original cast in action: whether’s it Kirk striking back at Khan in Star Trek II (”here it comes …”), Kirk and Spock’s priceless double act in Star Trek IV (”I love Italian - and so do you.”) the theft of the Enterprise in Star Trek III … I could go on all day. I once heard it argued (I can’t remember where) that one’s enjoyment of The Original Series is enhanced by the existence of the later films - knowing that you’re watching only the very beginning of the journey for the crew of the Enterprise, and that so much more is to come for each of them. It certainly works that way for me.
Captain Styles: ”Kirk … you do this, you’ll never sit in the captain’s chair again.”
Kirk: “Warp speed.”
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