40th Anniversary The Last 20 years

Yes, the failure/resurgence of the original Trek series was an amazing success story, one that has never been equaled.
Yes, the first United States space shuttle was named after the ship on the show.
Yes, the 70s and early 80s were a memorable time for fans of the series.

But nothing - Nothing - prepared the world for The Voyage Home.

It's not the best Trek movie. You will find very few hardcore fans who think it's even the second best. But as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Star Trek IV was the true Trek crossover.

Everyone saw this movie. Everyone. Didn't matter if you were a Trek fan or not. Everything Paramount always says when there's a new Trek movie coming out, that PR bullsh!t about how "This movie will appeal to you even if you don't know the difference between a Borg and a tribble?!" Well, this is the only one of the 10 Trek movies that lived up to that.

And Star Trek IV remains, 20 years later, an absolute joy to watch. It's a great story, it celebrates what's great about each of the main seven original Trek characters, and the laughs are uncountable. In the vein of classic shows like "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "A Piece of the Action," the humor is never forced, it seems natural and grows out of the story and characters. It returned Spock to us - though the previous film had been the physical search for the character, "Voyage Home" was the character's search to rediscover himself, and it was both hysterical and moving. And the movie contains perhaps the best Chekov story ever - and maybe his best of many screams.
The syndication renaissance in the 70s had turned Kirk, Spock & co. into pop culture icons. The early movies turned them into commodities. But Voyage Home was what turned them into STARS.

So it was no surprise that shortly after that movie hit, Paramount announced big plans for Trek. Really big. Not just another movie - that was inevitable. Another TV show. The biggest gamble in Trek history That's what The Next Generation was. A new Trek show, with no characters from the first series? With Klingons as good guys? With a bald British guy playing a French captain? Roddenberry was taking a big chance here---messing with the very core of what he'd created, and he was risking alienating his legions of fans. Would anyone accept this new show? There was no way to know. Of course, we all know the answer to that question now, and it seems obvious in hindsight. TNG was the best thing on TV, and when looked at now, a dozen years after it went off the air, it's lost none of its power. Why the stupendous success of TNG? Why did it surpass Paramount's wildest expectations? First of all, it was constructed in the same spirit that the first series had been: it was powerful allegorical drama disguised as sci-fi. But even with the purest of intentions, the best that could remotely have been hoped for was to come close to equaling the original show in popularity, right? The best they could do was not lose the current fans, right? Not so, it turned out; TNG did the impossible: it became its own animal. It carved out its own niche. It had its own fans. It brought new devotees to Trek. Think about it: Would it ever have occurred to you in a million years, when you were watching that TNG pilot in 1987, that in the not-too-distant future, there would be serious debates about whether Patrick Stewart, who at that time seemed crusty and unheroic, was actually a BETTER captain than Jim Kirk?! Which leads us to 1989----what I call the turning point in Trek history. The year that the new generation truly took the Trek mantle from our original characters. That year, the original series stumbled for the first time in many many years, by depositing the disappointing "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" (an overblown and conceptually flawed film that sobered us all up to the fact that Trek was indeed fallible) in theaters. That was the same year that TNG's third season began. And despite the success of the first two seasons, 1989-90 was the true breakthrough year in terms of defining the show; it was TNG's "Goldfinger," and it cemented the style, quality and insane popularity of Jean-Luc Picard and his crew which remains to this day. So TNG was no longer in Kirk & Company's shadow. It was now, in fact, the flagship of the franchise. That year saw such modern Trek classics as "Yesterday's Enterprise," "The Offspring," and of course, "The Best of Both Worlds" cliffhanger. Its cast became beloved. Its writers took what were novelty ideas deposited into the show in season 1 and took them to their highest potential: You give us an unemotional android? We'll turn him into one of the most intriguing characters in history, who makes us laugh and cry at the same time. You give us a Klingon on the bridge who starts off with lots of makeup and barely any personality? We'll give you a full-blown Shakespearean storyline exploring Worf's family and his entire heritage. By the time the fourth season began, Picard may have been De-Borgified, but the entire Trek fan base had been assimilated. TNG was a juggernaut that could not be stopped.There was sadness on the horizon, though---Gene Roddenberry's health was failing. He died in the midst of what was perhaps Trek's biggest year to that date---its 25th anniversary. TNG was stronger than ever, with Leonard Nimoy making a seminal appearance as Spock. The final original series film- "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" - would amend for the debacle of the previous movie and end the Kirk-era stories on a high note. And plans were gestating for a second spin-off series (more on that in a moment). Roddenberry's passing signaled the official beginning of the Rick Berman years of Trek. One of Gene's top guys since the start of TNG, he would lead the franchise for 14 more years, up until the end of "Star Trek: Enterprise" in 2005. And he would not let Trek rest on its laurels. Within three years of Roddenberry's death, he had spearheaded two new Trek shows, and relaunched the movie franchise with the TNG crew as its stars. And while his accomplishments and his contributions to Star Trek have been debated over the years, there's no denying that he was the guiding force behind everything that was good about the franchise since Roddenberry's death. Unfortunately for his legacy, he's equally to blame for the shitty stuff.

The Berman era The great "Deep Space Nine" (1993-99) is the misunderstood stepchild of Roddenberry's original vision - and the boldest, most audacious, rich series the franchise ever gave us. It was a look at Star Trek's universe from a different, more complex angle; instead of the flagship of the mighty Federation on a ship of Starfleet's finest, the DS9 gang was a diverse mix of archetypes, most of whom saw Starfleet from an outside perspective. Over the course of seven years, DS9 shook up the Trek universe, and through its willingness to break the rules that had been established for it, showed us how it was even more cool than we thought it was. The show managed to weave together a knock-down drag-out two-year war, an oppressed spiritual race, political intrigue, and a singing, self-aware hologram in a Vegas gin joint. Pretty amazing. And it's too bad the show never received the true crossover acceptance that TNG did, but the true fans know how damn good it is.Meanwhile, the first TNG film, "Generations," usually is ranked as one of the lesser movie series entries by the fans, and despite its box office success, it was not seen as viable evidence that Picard and his gang were movie stars. The presence of original series elements in that flick - most notably a high-energy scene-stealing supporting performance from the future Denny Crane - fueled the perception that the TNG crew might not be true successors to the celluloid Trek throne.But all that changed with the 1996 release of "First Contact," which, in Trek's 30th anniversary year, managed to become the second most financially lucrative Trek film ever, despite what some saw as an oversaturation of the franchise at the time, with two series on the tube every week. Undeniably the best TNG movie, "First Contact" put to rest any debate over who was truly the king of modern-day Trek: it was Jean-Luc Picard. He had been a superstar on the TV show, without a doubt, but after a more subtle, quiet performance in "Generations," the second TNG movie let Stewart truly let loose, and show us a Picard we'd never seen before, both heroic and angry. (Ten years after the release of that movie, his legendary status in the sci-fi genre has only strengthened with his subsequent role in the blockbuster X-Men series.) No longer was there any question that TNG could hold its own on the big screen.

On the small screen, however, things were a bit shakier. While "First Contact" was burning up the box office, the UPN network's pride and joy, "Star Trek: Voyager" seemed to be experiencing a measurable ratings drop with every episode. "Voyager" was born around the same time the Internet was exponentially spreading its wings, and while Trek and the Net are often thought of as symbiotic, "Voyager" took hits like no other Trek series ever had as a result of online fans complaints. And a lot of the buzz was bad. To be fair, many of the complaints were justified. The show had a great setup and very little follow through. While DS9 benefited from its unique take on the Trek universe, Voyager was hindered by its conceptual similarity to TNG. For a show which was set 70,000 years from the Federation, the stories and aliens we met seemed pretty familiar. Precisely the wrong approach was taken---the more the show stumbled the more Berman tried to make it like TNG. What he should have done was push the envelope and give the show its own voice. Never happened. Despite creative bursts here and there - and a brief resurgence in attention to the show with the addition of Borg-in-a-catsuit Jeri Ryan in Season 4, the show was creatively stunted for most of its run. Voyager lasted for seven years, but it had worn out its welcome long before then.

I won't say much about "Star Trek: Enterprise" because unfortunately its story pretty much mirrors Voyager's. Bold beginning, interesting concept---it was even the first Trek series to cast a semi-well-known "star" as its captain- Scott Bakula, who had headlined the popular "Quantum Leap." But for the most part, it didn't deliver. It was seen as the same old stuff, and Trek fans were getting bored. The strongest evidence that Paramount had lost confidence in the show was when the moniker "Star Trek" was added in the third season (for the first two years the title was simply the more ballsy "Enterprise," which seemed to indicate a later-abandoned break with the formula). The seven-year Trek series life established by TNG was over; Enterprise had to fight for even a fourth---and final---year. (Ironically, the last season of Enterprise was its best. It started to truly tie in Captain Archer's stories with the "future" series' chronicles. If the fourth season had been the first, the show might actually have lasted longer.)The Berman era was clearly in a rut. The two most recent Trek feature films, "Insurrection" and "Nemesis," each dropped off measurably at the box office from the previous installment.

For the first time in 18 years, there is no Trek show on the tube.But that's probably a good thing. Trek is too perennial and too much a part of popular culture to be gone forever, but it needs a rest. On this, the 40th year of what Roddenberry wrought, we need time to step back and enjoy what we we've been given. We need to watch our DVDs of the original, TNG, DS9, and the good Trek movies, and revel in how good they are, and just be happy that we will always have them. The future So it's with decidedly mixed feelings and hesitant anticipation that I greet the recent announcement of an 11th Trek movie planned for 2008---this one spearheaded by "Lost" and "Alias" guru J.J. Abrams with nary a Berman or Brannon Braga in sight. New blood? Yes, it's a good idea. And if Abrams can guide the tired "Mission Impossible" film series, featuring a star whose popularity is on the outs, to $140 million, maybe he can reboot Star Trek, which (sorry MI fans) is clearly a much better series, both on TV and celluloid. But has Trek had enough time off? My instinct says not even close. How much time does it need? Think about the title of the second show. Maybe Trek needs to wait for the next generation---pun absolutely intended---until its next rebirth, when the world can see it with fresh eyes and welcome it with open arms, with all the baggage of Trek-spinoff-overload long since shed.

That being said, I'm a Trekaholic, and I'll be there opening night for whatever the hell the next installment ends up being. I just hope it proves itself worthy of its 40-year legacy. ---The Journalist.