STAR TREK - THE BORING PICTURE...

I remember 1979 almost as if it were only last week.  1979 was the year that STAR TREK The MOTION PICTURE was released, and I have to be honest and say I considered it a bit of a dud.  The movie came out a mere ten years after the TV series had ended, but for some strange reason that ten years seemed more like twenty.  The show had been repeated by the BBC a number of times since cancellation, and there was also an animated series in 1973-'74, so it seemed as if it had always been around in some form or other.  The fact, therefore, that there seemed to be an enormous gulf of time between the show's first UK broadcast and the release of the movie strikes me as odd - almost surreal.  I guess that when you're only 20, as I was in '79, ten years feels like a far longer period of time, as it represents exactly one half of your life up to that point.  (I have to say that the movie seemed to last ten years when I first saw it - it's moves at an incredibly slow pace and is devoid of action.)

As I said, 1979 doesn't seem that long ago to me, so it feel weird to now live in a world where so many of the original cast are no longer around, having passed away over recent years.  They'll live on, of course, in their performances, and to someone like me who never met any of the actors, I can experience them in exactly the same way I first did as a kid and teenager - on television.  In that respect, nothing has really changed.  Does it ever?  Time travel is a fascinating hypothesis however unlikely it seems, but thanks to DVDs of classic shows, we can all return to our youth whenever the fancy takes us.  Anyway, these thoughts were swirling around in my head, so I thought I'd share them with the rest of you to make of what you will.

However, returning to the movie franchise, I'm glad to say that the next one - The WRATH Of KHAN - was a vast improvement, but my favourite was the last in the original series of films - The UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, which I thought was immensely entertaining.  The movie came out in 1991, an astounding 26 years ago, yet that period of time seems nowhere near as long as the ten years between the TV series ending in 1969 and the release of the first movie in '79.  Anyway, if your brain hurts as much as mine does after wading through all that, here's a nice pic of NICHELLE NICHOLS to make you feel better  

Live long, and prosper.

Posted in: Cartoons