Star Trek: the Original Series

Star Trek - Then

Star Trek first aired on network television almost forty years ago. While today, television series can start any time in the calendar year the network chooses, practically, in those days, the 'new season' began religiously in the fall. A 'season' was 26 episodes long. An hour show had 52 minutes of actual show content. This was before the lunar landing, before VCRs, before instant messaging, before computers.

Grandma, tell us about the Good Old Days

In the eighties, my nephews thought I was such a sage elder – I, who had seen Star Trek: the Original Series when it first aired! Tell us, old wise one, what it was like in the olden days. Three channels, my children, and no cable. You had to hope that NBC had a clear signal in your town that night, because when the show aired, it was your only chance to see it. There was a possibility that an episode might be rerun over the summer, but with specials and so on, not every single episode was actually re-run in the summer.

So when Star Trek aired a two-part episode and your evil older sister wanted to watch a holiday special on another network instead of part two, what did you do? This called for open warfare. There is no compromise in a one-television household in the days before VCRs.

The Rehash

One's social life depended on catching the weekly episode of Star Trek, because it would be continually rehashed in school the next day. It was even rehashed immediately after the credits rolled, on the phone. (The DIAL phone!) No chatrooms – we had to call our cronies individually then. Where you were on the list of people to call or be called was a significant indicator of your status.

All the girls in my Junior High (which was what they called Middle School in those days) were in love with Mr. Spock. Why? Because they couldn't have him. Kirk, it was thought, wouldn't be much of a conquest – he was too 'easy'. A bit of a boy-slut, if you will. Give us a cerebral man, we insisted. Who knows how many geek careers were launched then?

We were uncritical viewers. We didn't notice the cheesy construction of the sets, the 'sound-stage' look of the various planets' surfaces, the bad dialog. It was a whole new world and we ate it up.

Newbies!

The second generation of Star Trek fans, those who discovered the original series through its almost continual airing in afternoon syndication, actually viewed a much inferior product. The 4 PM time slot had significantly more commercial minutes, so all hour-long shows that taped at 52 minutes were cut to 44 minutes and sometimes less, to make room for advertising. The tapes that were aired were old, and in some cases actually damaged, so that you saw the same fly-speck in the same episode every time it ran. Often the story was chopped up so badly that if you hadn't already seen it fifty times, you would have trouble understanding the plot.

O Tempora! O Mores!

While I can appreciate what the Original Star Trek series meant to me when I was a kid, I can't go home again. The old episodes are lodged firmly in the sixties, and many of them show their cultural age. It's impossible to watch them again as uncritically as we did then.