Depresso-Trek

So, I got in touch with some friends today to see if they were interested in going to see Star Trek: Nemesis this weekend, and for the most part the reaction was decidedly lukewarm. (Towards the movie that is, not towards the idea of going to the movies with me. I hope!) And I have to say, I can understand this. It's really kind of sad, though. When I was young, there was very little that was more exciting than a new Trek movie. I'd wait with quivering enthusiasm for the movie to come out, rush out to see it on opening night, and then most likely go back three or four times to see it again. And for pretty much everyone I knew (being as I always have run with an exceedingly geeky crowd), it wasn't a question of if you were going to see the new Star Trek movie, but only of when. And now my friends are like, "eh," and I don't really blame them, because, even though the previews look pretty cool, my own reaction is mostly something along the lines of, "Gee, I really hope it doesn't suck."

I fear the time of Star Trek is past.

The thing is, I remember when Trek was it. The first week I was in college, an upperclassman cheerfully told me, "Star Trek is the closest thing we have to an organized religion around here." (Well, it was a tech school.) And it was true. Everything on campus would come to a complete standstill on Saturday afternoons when Star Trek: The Next Generation was on, and everyone would be talking about the episode the next day. And I, I was the Trekkie Queen. Which, given that this was a tech school, was actually an extremely cool thing to be. Complete strangers would walk up to me and ask me Trek trivia questions. Large groups of people would show up in my dorm room to watch TNG, because they absolutely knew that I'd be there and that it would be on. I had a rep. Star Trek was cool. I was cool (again, for the tech school defenition of "cool"). Life was good.

But eventually something happened. I'm not sure if it's that Star Trek got lamer or just that we got older -- probably a combination of both -- but either way, it's really pretty depressing. Today, Star Trek is passe. It's old hat. Something it's mildly embarrassing to still be into. And I, the former Trekkie Queen... find it difficult to disagree. For one thing, there's just nothing exciting about new Star Trek any more. There's too damned much of it on TV already, and very little of it is worth paying much attention to. That's been the case since Deep Space 9 went off the air, and, face it, comparatively few people watched Deep Space 9 anyway. Casual viewers found it hard to get into, and the geeks were busy deserting Star Trek for Babylon 5.

The franchise has become watered-down and over-extended, a pale shadow of its former self. Part of me -- a rather large part -- wishes they'd just stopped making it years ago, so I could at least remember it with fond, happy nostalgia. As it is, it's far too much like watching someone you love descending into senility. Oh, Enterprise does show occasional moments of lucidity, but somehow those just make it all the more painful when it once again starts repeating the same rambling, pointless stories we've already heard a million times and which it will have forgotten all about telling us again by next week.

I'd like to console myself with the thought that the reason Star Trek no longer enraptures me as it once did is that the quality of science fiction TV has increased greatly in the meantime, thus raising my expectations and standards. And that is true. Many great shows have come along in the last few years and done new things, innovative things, things that bring a freshness the over-mined Trek universe can no longer provide. But I look at the high-quality, standards-elevating shows that are on the air right now, and I can't help but notice a trend. Farscape: cancelled. Firefly: teetering on the edge of cancellation after a bare handful of episodes. Buffy: highly successful, but unlikely to last another season. Gee, somehow, that all just completely fails to comfort.

I'm really hoping that Nemesis doesn't suck. It looks to be the last Next Gen movie, and, unlike the Trek franchise in general, I'd really like to see them go out with a bang, rather than a whimper.

Please?