geektrek

 There is indeed a lot of griping online about the new Trek movie - the look of the film, its apparent action theme etc.  A lot of this seems to be coming from old school Trek fans, who have been around for at least the run of TNG. That’s actually quite a few years now. The gripes tend to vary from things as minute as the production design details, to something as immense ( in the Trek sub-culture anyway) as the fact that the back-story details of the canon are going to be irrevocably changed to suit the story telling needs of this new film. Blasphemy!!!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll reiterate it here again, Trek was in desperate need of an overhaul if it was to survive in the 21st century.  Face it, the last two TV shows - Voyager and Enterprise - could only be watched by Trek fans, extremely forgiving Trek fans. Voyager was an incredibly stupid show that pretended to be smart by having the characters talk too much - about nothing. Enterprise tried so hard to be a throwback prequel, that its attempt at Classic Trek quaintness actually came off as too naive for modern TV. I’ve always wondered why none of the alien species they encountered didn’t start to shoot at Enterprise after of couple of seconds of Archer’s “Speechifying”. What, we humans are so evolved as to have done away with racism, war, poverty, a monetary-based class system etc, and yet we are still ignorant enough to start preaching about how great we are DURING A BATTLE!!   “Hey Captain, they’re trying to kill us, not have a debate club meeting!!!”

Actually, the thing that bothers me the most about latter-day Trek is the singing. Yes, Nichelle Nichols sang on Classic Trek, but that was part of the character. ( You’re telling me the comm officer wouldn’t have perfect pitch?) But when it got down to Data, and Barclay, and then the damned Doctor!
I’m quite torn about the Doctor - like the majority of Voyager fans, ( I am not one of them.) I think that the Doctor is a great Star Trek character. I wish he and Tuvok were on another show, and another ship entirely. But, when Robert Picardo started forcing his singing chops on the writers and producers, and thus on the show, I totally lost interest in the program altogether. If the opening teaser featured the Doctor singing, I would turn the channel and watch something else. I can understand Picardo being a frustrated theater actor who never got to show his chops. He got his first breaks doing heavy make-up jobs for Rob Bottin, and was forever type-cast as a “genre” actor after that.
But why take it out on the Trek audience? Trek is not a musical.
It is an adventure based drama. 24 is an adventure based drama, and nobody sings like Nathan Laine drunk on his birthday on that show. The singing on Trek was meant to be cute or quaint but eventually became over-whelmingly nauseating.
Ending DS9 with a holographic lounge singer sending them off was the lamest thing to ever happen to Trek - lamer than the plot of Insurrection and Nemesis combined.

It certainly didn’t help in maintaining a regenerating fanbase. Imagine a newbie tuning for the first time: He’s sees the singing, sees none of the other characters are annoyed by it, sees how long it goes on and immediately thinks : “This show is for fags.” And shuts it off.
Truly, it was actually the gay community that kept Voyager on the air, it ranked third favorite show behind Ellen and Will and Grace while it was on the air.

One thing nerds are spectacularly afraid of is being embarrassed. ( Those who actually know what that means, that is.) To give them a product that is going to further embarrass them to be a fan is death to that product.

I think that is why a lot of old school Trek fans are appalled by the notion of this new Trek movie being geared towards everybody - They will have to share the competitive world of geek knowledge ( like the world of sports knowledge, but with less statistics) with people who are not geeks. Imagine in the long run, being out-Trekked in a conversation by a jock, or a Barbie-girl. Madness, I tell you!! They’re not afraid that the movie will be bad, we’ve been through that before, they’re afraid that the Masonic Kaballah that is a life-long knowledge of Trek canon is going to given away freely to the public, like loaves of bread at a gladiatorial game.

And that is what is scaring fans to death - to have their hard-earned geekness handed over to a whole generation of newbies who don’t have to earn it. Face it, it takes time to amass a head full of fairly useless Trek knowledge. Some folks might take offence at the notion that all the Trek they ever knew has come to a complete stop. And anybody new who comes along can pick up all the DVDs and a few textbooks and biographies and they too can have the exact same vast pool of usless knowledge, all hardly-at-all earned in a matter of weeks, instead of decades.

The old school fans don’t fear this movie - They fear their Trek-Trivia gun-slinger status will be forever taken away, and handed over to the undeserving neo-phytes who just happen to be the future fans will keep the franchise alive for generations to come.

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