There is no cool way to say this: I grew up with Star Trek in all its forms, and I love it. I have seen every episode of every series at least once, many of them more than once. Some of them MANY times more than once. Star Trek hasn't been on for a few years now, and good Star Trek hasn't been produced in almost a decade, but I still watch the reruns on SpikeTV and G4. I just can't help myself. It's things like this that keep me out of most social circles.
There have been over 600 hours of Star Trek produced since it was introduced in the mid-1960s. Whether it's Star Trek, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or Enterprise, I've been glued to the TV for all of them. These shows have their fair share of really lousy episodes. In fact, I'll get to those in a later post, but first, let me address why I love some of this stuff, and I'll turn my attention to the original series first.
This is the most consistenly entertaining of the series. Even when the episodes are bad, they're still laughably bad. William Shatner just throws himself into every damn scene. Whether his evil clone is yelling "GIVE ME THE BRANDY, THE BRANDY!" to Dr. McCoy or he's cursing KHAAAAAANNNN from an alien cave, William Shatner just grabs the scenery with his chompers and never stops chewing.
Then of course there's the rest of the crew. You've got the cross-cultural cornucopia occupying the original Enterprise. You've got Scotty, who is naturally from Scotland; Chekov, who thinks everything was inwented by a little old lady in Leningrad (gotta love the Sixties!); Sulu, who we now know was thrusting more than just the warp drive, and Uhura, the token black telephone operator.
I love some of the episode plots too. Jack the Ripper was really an alien. They go to an amusement park planet where there's a giant easter bunny. They were in battle with an Abe Lincoln from space. And then of course, I can't count the number of times Kirk outsmarted a super-computer/robot ruler with a simple paradox ("Everything I tell you is a lie.... I am lying." -- Not kidding, they actually did that one). Kirk would always go into some backwards planet, kick ass, take names, and then fly off as he joked with Bones and made racially-demeaning comments toward Spock. This guy was the original space cowboy, and Shatner just loved every minute of it. He only rivals Adam West in terms of loving his own celebrity status as a cult hero.
The original had some episodes that were genuinely good ("The City on the Edge of Forever," "Mirror Mirror," "The Doomsday Machine," and "The Enterprise Incident" come to mind), but if you're looking for some classic camp, I highly recommend a little gem called "I, Mudd." This is my favorite of the original series. Not only does it feature the original space pirate Harry Mudd, but it also has Chekov doing a Russian dance, Kirk outwitting a robot civilization, Scotty faking his own death, and of course, Kirk distracting robot women by attempting to seduce them. It's vintage Trek.
Star Trek: preventing nerds from breeding since 1966.
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