Star Trek at 50

Can I talk about the 50^th anniversary of Star Trek?

I’m already in my 50^th year as I write, so the franchise has been part of my life for a long, long time. However there was a period, maybe in the last 10 years where my suspension of disbelief was completely absent.

I think it was while I was watching an old episode of ST: TNG I couldn’t see past the fact that these people on screen were actors on set delivering lines to camera. I got hung up on the ridiculousness and the earnestness of it all, so much so I had to stop watching.

More recently however, I’m back to viewing episodes in the correct frame of mind, pulling up favourite TNG episodes and catching the remastered Original Series episodes on CBS and enjoying them as intended.

Talking of the remastered OS, I think the updated visual effects worked well in context.

For example, the episode “The Doomsday Machine” is one I saw at an early age and probably made the most impression on me as a child. On the remaster, they show the scale of the machine versus the Enterprise as the crew try to disable it. This is pretty much how I imagine the writer of the episode imagined the encounter to be, hampered only by the limitations (and budget) of visual effects at the time.

Later series tried to capture this too in their own way; the Enterprise D swinging out of control, the Defiant manoeuvring like the Millennium Falcon.

I'm not alone in my anticipation for the new series Star Trek: Discovery airing next year. Trek has been absent from our screens for too long.