Quote of the Day

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Mccoy: Maybe he could be retrained, reeducated.

Kirk: Now you’re sounding like Spock.

Mccoy: If you’re going to get nasty, I’m going to leave.

Star Trek – Season 1: Episode 21 – “Tomorrow is Yesterday”

7 thoughts on “Quote of the Day”

    • That is such a difficult and complex question, and it depends greatly on what you’re hoping to get out of Star Trek. If you just want fun sci-fi with aliens and spaceships and action and adventure, you’re probably better off doing a highlights version of the Original Series and then hitting the movies. Lots of people love Kirk/Spock/McCoy, and the fun adventure aspect of their stories. I’m a Next Generation guy myself, so I recommend most people start there (or perhaps with the first 6 movies featuring the original cast) and then proceed on to Deep Space Nine and Voyager. The Next Generation era is deeper, richer, and more dramatic, with more well-developed and fleshed out characters and uses science fiction as a metaphor for the issues we face in the real world. The original series did that too, but it was pretty sporadic and you have to wade through a lot of crap to get to the good stuff. There’s a lot of nostalgia about the original series that makes people a little blind to some of its faults. It hasn’t aged nearly as well as The Next Generation (which definitely shows its age), and it can not only look but feel dated and make you cringe. But the Original Series has a great cast of characters and was of course the first. So it’s really up to you. You can’t go wrong starting with the movies and going on to The Next Generation and returning to the Original Series if you decide you really like it. TNG took a couple season to really get up to speed, but once it does it’s simply brilliant. Deep Space Nine is a lot darker and filled with shades of grey, but it has a diverse and interesting cast of characters, while it and Voyager are far more serialized than TNG and TOS. And then there’s Enterprise, which was the final series to air but which is a prequel to all that we’d seen before, which is kind of the black sheep of the Star Trek universe, but I love it. If you have something specific you’re looking to get out of it, I can direct you to certain episodes or movies that can give you a better taste of what it has to offer. (You can always email me if you’d rather.) Just whatever you do, avoid the reboot/alternate universe movies that have come out recently with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto like the plague. Those movies are awful and definitely not Star Trek, despite having a solid cast and their general popularity. They’ve got the Star Trek trappings on the surface, but with no interest in staying faithful to the meaning behind the universe Gene Roddenberry created. So yeah, that’s the long answer to your question. With 6 different shows and 10 movies, there’s a lot to cover, but there’s a lot to love too!

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      • That’s really amazing information! I actually did see the first reboot movie and thought it was a fine action movie but that’s coming from someone who hasn’t seen anything else Star Trek. What movie do you think is the best? Series are so overwhelming to start.

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        • The best movie to start with is probably Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which gives you everything there is to love about the original cast in just a genuinely excellent movie. That’s a good place to start and you can continue on from there through the rest of the original crew movies (their last one is 6: The Undiscovered Country). And then from there I’d progress to The Next Generation. The movies tend to be a lot more action oriented than the tv shows, which are more cerebral and thematic and deal with issues and society (and are more serious sci-fi rather than just space battles and aliens).

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    • I’ve loved Star Trek since I started watching the re-runs as a little kid in the 70’s. I would call it some of the most important work network TV has ever done, considering it’s hopeful and inspirational view of the future and the lasting influence it’s had on multiple generations who keep that vision in mind as we continue to develop. It’s the antidote to the sadness of the dystopian view.

      But, if you are looking to get into it for the first time, keep in mind that it’s been around and active for a really, really long time by our cultural standards. I personally like the old stuff the best, but if you start in 1967, just expect some seriously clunky stuff. You’’l have to look hard to see past the costumes, the special effects (which have all been re-done btw, but still look weird by today’s standards), and the sexism. I know Trek’s reputation was for being racially and culturally ahead of it’s time, and it was, but not so far ahead that female crew members weren’t there for the most part to make coffee. There was seriously a lot of coffee making on that first ship.

      If you think you can see past all that or maybe use it to learn something about 1960’s culture and how far we’ve come… the original series is still my favorite.

      But if you want a taste of what people liked about the first crew in under 2 hours, I’d start with Wrath of Khan. They got the feel of it right in that movie – the Kirk, Spock, McCoy relationship, and the sense of big myth storytelling. 1982 was a long time ago too, but it’s easier to watch without making excuses for it that the TV show. Plus,the female characters came a long way in those 15 years. Kirk’s love interest in is a doctor!

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      • Cool. Thank you for that insight. I would definitely expect that kind of clunkiness in the old shows. I have heard that about Wrath of Khan and maybe will start there.

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