Quite an
Enterprise
by
Jeff Stimpson © 2007
Alex and Ned will learn together for a while,
side-by-side, until that one grade when Ned surpasses Alex. "Ned
will eventually be more the big brother," a friend said recently,
and the trend has already begun with Ned calling some of Alex's
video choices "baby shows." "Is he gonna watch this when he's a
grown-up?" Ned demands to know.
Every now and then, however, a show comes along
you watch as a kid and as an adult. At seven one morning Ned says to
me, "Hey dad, 'Star Trek' is on!" My first thought is not delight in
having Kirk and the old crew back on my set where they belong, but
wonderment at what in hell it's doing on at seven in the morning
when TV Land clogs its airwaves every evening with "Little House on
the Prairie" and "The Andy Griffith Show." And not the ones with Don
Knotts.
"Hey," Ned says, "that's the ship we built!"
Dad does not give you bum gifts, Ned. He was
referring to the snap-together model kit I gave him during the
Christmas/Hanukkah/Ned's Birthday Blizzard of last month. The prize
present, the kit that to build with my son would consummate my
fatherhood: the Klingon battlecruiser. First one I passed to Ned on
Christmas morning.
He unwrapped the box and said, "Dad, it's great! I
love it! What is it?"
Ned had no frame of reference for a Klingon ship.
I mentally ran through the episodes for one with a Klingon ship in
action. Not many episodes fit that bill, at least few that would
impress Ned, as special effects when "Trek" was made had more to do
with flashlights than computer graphics. There'd be no shortcut to
sharing the show with Ned.
Not long after that, Ned found "Star Trek" -- or
"Trek" as fans knew it for all those years when they should have
been asking girls out, or "TOS" ("The Original Series" as its come
to be known in the wake of spin-offs. I could never wholly jump in
the saddle with the corporate tone of "Next Generation" ("TNG") or
the neighborhood feel of "Deep Space Nine" ("DS9"), and TOS seemed
to be have been penned by guys who'd fought in World War II, and who
set to the stars their own Big Three (Kirk, Spock, and McCoy) to
fight for the free galaxy.
"Ned, you're going to like this show," I said.
"It's a got a lot more action than the newer one." First episode we
watched - and taped - was the one where kids survive a colony's
being wiped out by an alien. The alien uses the kids to launch a
takeover of the galaxy, and sneaks aboard the Enterprise and
he does pretty well until he runs into William Shatner.
(I, a Trek guy from about 1971, in fact know the
title and could take a good guess at the original airdate of this
and every other episode, but I feel that that would somehow alienate
readers.)
(I do not answer to the labels "Trekkie" or
"Trekker.")
Ned got behind the kids episode, and was
especially taken by how the alien changed in appearance from a
kindly old fat uncle type to a slag-encrusted gorgon. "Did he die at
the end?" Ned asked.
"No. That's the way he really looked," I
replied. "The children and the crewmen were seeing things. And so
were you all through the episode!"
I ask Ned what he thinks is going to happen, how
he thinks each story will end. "They're solid stories," notes Jill.
Pretty soon Ned is also showing a mind for tactics, such as when we
discover a supposedly dead Captain Kirk costumed like a Romulan
("The Enterprise Incident," original airdate Sept. 27, 1968).
"He's going to board the bad guys' ship!" Ned cried.
And after another episode ("Spectre of the Gun,"
Oct. 25, 1968): "Then Captain Kirk pulled out his gun and was going
to kill that guy!"
"But Captain Kirk didn't kill him, did he, Ned?
That was the whole point. That's why the alien at the end there let
the Enterprise approach his planet -- he had seen that Kirk
was peaceful!" Solid.
So many strange new worlds out there: the gangster
one, the Nazi one, the evil Enterprise, and the one with the
Tribbles. The big question is, how do I think this story is going to
end?
Copyright 2005 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
