For many, today will be only vaguely memorable.
For me, and for a few others like me, today marks the end of a happy part of my life.
Today is the end of the phenomenon known 'round the world as Star Trek.
To be fair, the general audience's knowledge (let's say that's anyone who isn't a "Trekker"), Star Trek disappeared long ago. Most young people today don't know who Captain Kirk or Spock is, much less Captain Picard or the captains that followed him. To say nothing of having EVER seen the episodes that featured those characters. I'll be realistic and honest here. Star Trek, at least in the sense of the zeitgeist or general consciousness, has been out of sight and thus, out of mind, for some time.
But to those like myself, who know our Datas from our Odos and Archers from our Picards, today is a hard day. A sad day. Hello, I'm Christopher Meaux. I'm a Star Trek fan. A Trekker, or Trekkie. Whatever you want to call me. Sounds like a support group meeting, eh? The fact is, I am a fan of--a lover of, even--of Star Trek.
William Shatner, who many of you "regular folk" know from TJ Hooker, Rescue 911, Boston Legal, and yes, maybe even his little role as Captain James T. Kirk, once said in a Saturday Night Live skit: "It's just a TV show. Get a life." That skit was poking good-natured fun at me, and those like me. The really hardcore, intense Trekkers. The people who maybe aren't so sure sometimes that Trek isn't real. Or that it couldn't or shouldn't maybe become real. Honestly, as those who know me will attest, I'm not that zealous a Trek fan. I have some DVDs, a lot of books, some action figures, and a few model starships. And I've even written my own Star Trek adventures for my amusement.
But make no mistake, I love Star Trek.
Why, you ask? I guess the armchair psychologist, fresh from a viewing of Dr. Phil or Oprah, would say it's because my big brother used to watch Star Trek with me when I was a kid. As any younger sibling knows, what the older sibling does or likes is extremely cool. And to become cool, all that younger kid has to do is like what the older kid does. It's simple kid economics. My brother Jarrod, who's currently serving our country in Iraq, introduced me to the wonderful and at the time, somewhat frightening, Star Trek universe. We'd watch the reruns of the original Star Trek, with Captain Kirk and Spock. "Beam me up, Scotty!" and all that. And we watched the Star Trek movies. Many of you at least remember the one with Khan, played by Ricardo Montalban. You know, Mr. Roarke from "Fantasy Island." Yeah, that one.
My brother was seven years older than me, and quickly grew into more adolescent interests, though he still watched Trek when he wasn't out on dates or working. But for me, the journey had just begun. I was ten years old when "Star Trek: The Next Generation" debuted in 1987. I'd been excited for months about this show, which I'd read about in newspapers and magazines. (In the dark times, before the Internet...) I thought this new show was going to have Kirk and the gang in it, and I was thrilled. But then I learned it was going to be completely new, taking place eighty years after Kirk's Enterprise sailed the spaceways. I was a little disappointed, but still excited. New Star Trek was going to be on every week! Oh boy! When the show debuted, I was floored. It was beyond anything I could've imagined. TNG, as it's called in Trekker shorthand, coupled with new feature film adventures of the original crew, sealed the deal for me. I was a bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool Star Trek fan.
For the next seven years, I watched not only TNG, but the spin-off set on an alien space station called "Deep Space Nine" DS9, as we Trekkers call it, was also great to me, so I added it to my list of must-see Trek. As the nineties began, I watched the original cast of Star Trek say their goodbyes in the sixth and final Star Trek film to feature them all together. I also watched as TNG and DS9 developed and boldly went where none had gone before. When I began college, another Star Trek series, Voyager, debuted on a channel I couldn't catch in my dorm. So for three years, I only read about Voyager. But I watched the TNG films and continued to watch DS9, and was reading as many Trek books as I could.
To make a long story short, let me bring you up to today. To the end. Four years ago, a fifth Star Trek series, simply titled "Enterprise," premiered on UPN, a channel I'm sure many of you don't watch. I was excited about this new series for a number of reasons: it starred Scott Bakula, who I always liked on "Quantum Leap" (you know, the guy who jumped from person to person trying to get back to the future?), it was going to be set during a simpler time, one hundred years before Kirk and one hundred and fifty years from our time, and finally, because it was filled with potential. Talented, youthful actors. Some of the most expensive special effects in television. Good orchestral scores. And best of all, it was Star Trek. Sadly, "Enterprise" never caught on with the general populace, nor with many die-hard Trekkers. Sagging ratings and competition from other forms of entertainment and types of television programming, along with poor management on the part of the production staff behind the show, led to its untimely demise. Enterprise was cancelled. Two years ago, the last TNG film flopped at the box office. So here we are now. Star Trek is dead both on television and on film.
Why does this matter? To some of you, it may not at all. After all, it is "just a television show." To me, though, Star Trek was an escape from the struggles of life as an overweight kid in a small town. It was exciting and entertaining storytelling. It was fun. But above all of these, it was one man's dream that one day, despite ourselves, we will overcome war, disease, poverty, racism, and hatred. A vision of how we could be better in spite of our brokenness and flaws. That man was Gene Roddenberry. I won't go into details about Gene's life or who he was or wasn't. I'll let some of his words speak for him:
"I have nothing but admiration for this silly race of ours. Even with the Hitlers in it and so on. Sometimes it goes into ugliness, but, in all though, it is a beauty. It's like a rose, which also has thorns. We're something."
Let that sink in for a bit. It's an amazing, maybe even ludicrous kind of statement. But it's a beautiful dream nonetheless. Star Trek resonated with me because it told me that "yes, Chris Meaux, even though you're ridiculed or disliked based on appearance or other foolish reasons, there are those who will appreciate you based on the content of your character. There is a hope, Star Trek taught me, that you can be accepted and appreciated, even celebrated, because of your differences. Because you are a unique and irreplaceable human being." How many other TV shows can boast this kind of lesson, this kind of deep and abiding moral? A dream that only fools would say they don't share.
And Star Trek also taught me the value, the inestimable gift, of the journey. Of boldly going. Going where, you might ask? Going anywhere. Anywhere but where you've been, going beyond yourself and your limitations. Going into the "undiscovered country" as Shakespeare said, the unknown and mysterious land that is the human experience. As my friends and family can attest to, I have always loved the journey. The boldly going. As soon as I was old enough to drive and received a car, I went wherever I could, whenever I could. I wanted to experience everything that I'd never known before, even if that was a town or a city that other people knew about and took for granted. Star Trek taught me to boldly go where I had never gone before.
I've been on a lot of journeys, inward and outward. I've learned a lot about myself and the world around me, and the God responsible for all of it. And through all of that, through the years of struggle and self-discovery and, dare I say it, enterprise, Star Trek has been with me. It has been a comforting place to go when life has been unfamiliar and difficult. It has emboldened me to push on, to press on, to keep dreaming and hoping. I am a Catholic Christian, and I've struggled hard and long for the faith I daily treasure. So I know the difference between a television show and a religion, between fiction and faith.
That said, I'm reminded of a line in the Eucharistic Prayer of the Catholic Mass: "From God, through whom all good things come." Essentially, all good has as its source God. And God is the source of all things. Thus, all good comes from God and is sustained by God. As crazy as it may sound, the good that a crazy little television show named Star Trek has to offer is from God. That would seem, to quote Mr. Spock, "quite logical." So tonight, as Star Trek Enterprise goes off the air for good, I mourn the loss of something that has been with me since my childhood. I have watched Star Trek all my life, and for the last eighteen years of my life, there has been a new Star Trek episode every week, whether it was Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager, or Star Trek Enterprise.
After tonight, there will be no more Star Trek. Paramount, the company that produces Star Trek, cancelled Enterprise. They've made it clear that there will be no more Star Trek for a long time, if ever again. Let it be known that, though many said Enterprise was no good, it was a fantastic and enjoyable addition to the Star Trek mythology. In fact, Star Trek and Star Trek Enterprise are my favorite Trek series. Scott Bakula and the wonderful cast of Jolene Blalock, Connor Trineer, Linda Park, Anthony Montgomery, Dominic Keating, and John Billingsley, did an amazing job in their roles. They are extremely talented actors and I wish them the very best in the bright futures I know they have ahead of them.
Tonight marks the end of Star Trek for those of us for whom Star Trek was more than just a goofy television show with funky aliens and cool spaceships. For us, a mythology ends tonight, one that has taught us much about morality, goodness, virtue, equality, honor, justice, peace, and goodness. A show that even taught a lot of us about science, art, music, literature, and culture. A show that was based on Gene Roddenberry's dream of a future better than our present, a dream we Trekkers all shared with Gene. Though the mythology that grew out of that dream dies tonight, I know that the dream still lives. And it will continue to live, no matter what kind of new and different Star Trek is created in the future. Gene's dream has shaped lives, inspiring astronauts, scientists, pilots, doctors, teachers, lawyers, and countless others. That dream will continue to shape those who allow themselves to dream it, who dare to boldly go where they have never gone before.
"Second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning."
