I’m fresh off of not watching the finale of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” which has been running on Paramount, I think.
This, of course, is because I have been adamantly not binge-watching the latest, and quite possibly last, entry into a series that I’ve been a fan of since dust was new. (OK, not that long, but you get the point.)
There was absolutely no way that I would miss an episode of the original series, regardless of how many times I had seen it before. Watching Kirk, Spock and the rest swashbuckle their way throughout the galaxy was transportive. It was described, so I've heard, as "Wagon Train" in space, but that never made any sense to me.
Then, after I found out that many of my favorite writers — Harlan Ellison and David Gerrold to name a couple — and some real heavyweights in the realm of science fiction, contributed episodes to the first series. I seriously enjoyed their work on the page (and for more than a few, other shows like “Twilight Zone” and “Outer Limits”) and found that the nuance and depth they instilled into an hour of television to be amazing.
(To those who are fans of these writers like me, Ellison wrote “City on the Edge of Forever” and Gerrold wrote “The Trouble with Tribbles,” both of which won Hugo awards for writing. There were lawsuits by Ellison regarding his script, but that’s for another day.)
It’s the stuff that fuels the imagination of kids of all stripes.
The subsequent series, “The Next Generation,” “Voyager,” “Deep Space 9,” and even “Enterprise” were still cut from that same cloth. I accept that no series will be 100 percent homers for each episode, and all of those series had some stinkers, but they still spurred the imagination and still served the story, which is what episodic television should do.
Then came the new Trek series, put out in what can only be described as the Woke Generation, and a treasure that has excited fans, kicked off writing careers, and generally showed their viewers what society could be like, was supplanted by writers and producers who, in the name of drawing in new and younger viewers, began churning out “stories” that glorified individual feelings over societal norms; that claimed that anything you felt was more important that entire planets; that untrained and unqualified kids could turn the tide of any conflict by disregarding training, authority and procedure with precociousness and a plucky can-do attitude.
(There are numerous examples of this lately. “Star Wars” has been written into oblivion. “Doctor Who,” the longest-running show in the sci-fi realm ever, has been stomped to death as well. These two shows, along with “Starfleet Academy,” all have been canceled.)
Self-worth is important, to be sure, but when it takes a group of people to perform a task, like, say, a starship, everybody having to stop and make sure that the odd-thing-out feels seen and included means boom goes the dynamite.
To promote inclusivity while maintaining a fractious society is an oxymoronic approach to creating a utopia. And while that sounds neat to all the people who like that kind of neat, there’s no story there. No entertainment. No piqued imagination. Simply audiences being preached at, told that the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the few, or the many.
Exactly the opposite of what Star Trek started out trying to say.
Tony Farkas is editor of the San Jacinto News-Times and the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at tony@polkcountypublishing.com.
