The Wait Is Over

Friday is my day off so I hope you all will indulge me as talk today about Star Trek.  The movie officially opens today.  (Although, they actually started showing the film last night.)  I’m going to go today to see it and I’m really excited about it.

I know that many of you folks are Star WARS fans.  I like Star Wars but THE science fiction show for me growing up was Star Trek.  I watched it all the time as a kid.  I watched the animated series.  I read the books.  I bought all sorts of stuff related to the show.  I had the action figures.  You name it.  Then, when the movies first started coming out I went to see those too.  In fact, I’ve seen every Star Trek movie on opening day.  It’s a bit of a tradition for me.  Of course, I also really got into the Next Generation series when it aired as well.  I watched Deep Space Nine for a while but honestly that’s when Star Trek started to lose it’s way.  I also watched Voyager and Enterprise.

To be clear, I’ve never owned or worn a starfleet outfit or any alien costume.  I can’t quote the stardates of the various episodes and I’ve never been to a Star Trek convention.  I understand that it’s just a TV show and not a way of life.  I also understand that some of the episodes weren’t that good while others were great.  The movies themselves weren’t all home runs either.  (As a rule, the odd numbered films were poor with the even number films being better.  Some will argue this point with me.)  Regardless, I say all this to say that I’m not some obsessed fan but the truth is that Star Trek played a huge role in my childhood and has been in and out of my life ever since.

Since the cancellation of Enterprise, Star Trek fans have been waiting for something new.  It seemed for a while that the franchise as a whole might be dead but them JJ Abrams stepped in and agreed to do an origins story.  I’ve been a fan of the work of Abrams since Alias so that was good news to me but I was only cautiously optimistic because you never know how something like this is going to work out.  When the first trailers started rolling out, however, I became even more hopeful that this might be Star Trek done right again.

Today, I get to go see my 11th Star Trek movie on opening day.  I hope it’s good.  More than that, I hope it’s entertaining and accessible  for people that are new to the whole thing.  I hope they get a chance to see what Star Trek is really all about.