The Ladies' Room!

(The title of this post is of course the audience supplied punchline to the original Star Trek opening speech, which my daughter screeches out with unalloyed joy when we have mini-trekfests. She doesn't allow us to skip past the opening credits for that reason, and because she digs the song - the version with the woman warbling the melody, particularly. That's our topic, the TV show that died but wouldn't lie down. (Lay down? I can never remember.))

Today, Mr. Lileks kinda mourns the demise of Star Trek (and, y'know, a little blog like mine linking to the LILEKS is kinda like the bacterium on a flea linking to the dog upon which the flea rests). He does a great takedown of what was wrong - and get this fanboys and girls - what was done right. And there's only one gratuitous toupee joke.

I agree with the whole post. I often felt alone in my intense dislike of the holodeck episodes in tv Trek II/TNG (and the resulting spread of the virus to the other latter shows). About the only thing I liked were the Data and the Borg episodes. Oh, and I loved the episode where Troi is impregnated with Starman for so many reasons: 1) the shameless ripoff of the movie, 2) the Starman Tinkerbell light going under Troi's covers and popping into the correct place to be to start a fetus - the audacity alone of showing that on TV - and her reaction to the same, and 3) all the resulting hilarity from Troi flunking the pee test. In the bright, shiny future when you don't have to buy whole season sets, or ridiculously expensive 2 episode DVDs of TV shows, and can pick and choose individual ones to buy for say $3, I'll prolly get those eppies.

I saw only one tv Trek III/DS9, which was a retread of the Tribble episode from the original series. It was fun watching them recreate the old sets and digitally fold the new story into the old. That'll be on the list, too.

I dug tv Trek IV/Voyager, but mostly because I had a thing for Capt. Janeway (I thought she was the only Capt. outside of Kirk with any guts), and of course Seven of Nine was just fun to watch. Neelix was amusing in a wonderfully grating way. But, after his wife died and joined that bald chick from the first movie as some sort of cosmic entity, the series got old for me.

I tried tv Trek V/Enterprise, but it was the same old same old, politically correct shite that the Trek team since tv Trek II had been spewing at us. Even though Trek characters had sex in the later episodes, it always smacked of Human Resources approved courting and was about as believable as "professional" wrestling. I dunno, when Capt. Kirk was pulling his boots back on, and his latest conquest was at the mirror putting her hair back in place, it just seemed like a good time was had by all.

Oh, and tv Trek V/Enterprise had a cute little beagle. Which meant that they would snuff about a bazillion redshirts, but the damn dog would never be in greater peril than missing a mealtime when the Capt. was held hostage on an alien ship. Wouldn't it have been bold to have an alien hoist the puppy on a pike to taunt the Capt. and crew? But then we'd have to have a very special episode where they went back through time to rescue the dog - so maybe it's a good thing the doggie was protected by the Hollywood double-standard of wiping humans out left and right, but the doggie is always OK. (And forgive the brief segue into a very serious topic, but this is kinda reminiscent of the Muslim world flipping out over the supposed defacing of copies of the Koran, but not being so concerned about all the loss of human life - including their own people - through the incessant suicide and car bombings. Tell you what, if I were given the choice in some fiery cataclysm where I could either rescue an original copy of the Bible or Karl Rove (our current governmental Darth Vader, for those of you in the cheap seats), I'd save Rove's fat ass without even pausing to think about it.)

Mocking the themesong of tv Trek V/Enterprise is about as effortless and icky as pushing a little old lady off the curb into the path of an oncoming bus. We won't pick on the totally helpless here.

The fambly and I tried tuning in a few episodes ago to try and pick up the thread to watch the finalies, but after the first 15 minutes of a show (no one does boring quite like latter day Star Trek), we took a quick spontaneous vote that our time was better spent in other activities.

I still think the originals were the best. Try one on if you haven't lately. They were snappy, funny, and compelling. Three words I would never apply to hardly any of the retread series(es).


Here's a thought, though. The last Star Wars is this year. Trek is finally probably really over. Even the Matrix series, which never lived up to the first, is complete. We have reached the end of an era.