I love Star Trek. Especially the original series. I also am very fond of The Next Generation and to a certain extent Deep Space Nine, but after that I lost interest!
You just can't beat the original though. I remember watching it at tea time as a boy. I think it used to be on before the news on BBC1 in the slot that Neighbours eventually filled.
It never bothered me that - even then in the early eighties - the sets, aliens, ships etc already looked less advanced than much of the technology available. I just loved the characters, and the adventures that they had.
We got our first video recorder in 1984. It was a Hitachi VHS Top Loader - much like the one in the pic below, and to this day very little has excited me to such an extent. Possibly only the iPhone comes close (which I can watch episodes of Star Trek on incidentally)! Anyway, I started recording the episodes until I had them all and (like the geek that I am) I would watch them over and over again.
There were 7 main characters, but it really focused around the "Big 3" of Captain Kirk, Mr Spock, and Doctor McCoy". I wanted to be Captain Kirk, in the same way that I wanted to be Batman or Luke Skywalker. I sure as hell didn't want to be one of those security blokes in the red shirts however. They never lasted very long did they!
Anyhow, I mentioned that I can watch episodes on the iPhone and I have downloaded a few from iTunes. I still enjoy them as much today as I did then, but I identify with the characters differently now. I realise that I am much more like Dr. McCoy than Captain Kirk. The ships Doctor was probably the most human of all the characters. He was also a bit grumpy and cynical at times which are traits I see in myself.
I also identify very much with Scotty. The ships Chief Engineer (who like me had a taste for whiskey) always had to find a way to make things work at short notice. He didn't always do things by the book, but he got the job done. If he could see the wiring of my server room at work, I think he would be proud. It is rigged in such a way that I think Scotty would approve of! Wires all over the place - but it works!
Like many popular and successful film/tv franchises - Star Trek has now been rebooted/reimagined (whatever you want to call it) with new actors playing those old familiar roles, and I must say I enjoyed the new film very much. I think Star Trek in it's many incarnations will continue to entertain me for years to come!
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