I am, and shall always be...
"I have written," ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oliviacirce said, "an epic internal reflection on my relationship with Star Trek. I do not have a Star Trek icon to post it with, though."
"Well, that seems obvious given your relationship with Star Trek."
"Uh, yeah."
"When I complete my epic internal reflection on my relationship with Star Trek, it will include the fact that there is a signature in my 7th grade year book addressed to 'star trak[sic] girl.' Yours is somewhat different."
So, movie aside, I have been spiraling down into Star Trek fandom again. Star Trek was my first serious fandom (I spent several middle-school summers doing nothing but watching Trek and writing Mary Sue fanfic) but I left it behind rather drastically sometime my freshman year of high school, as season 7 of DS9 was wrapping up.
That being said, in the last two or three weeks, I've re-watched much of DS9 season 3 (and a smattering of episodes across seasons 2, 4 and 5), read Mike Ford's astoundingly awesome How Much for Just the Planet?, and well, hello, long-lost reaches of trek fic, here I am digging for you.
And also there was the movie, which I saw first at a grotty little London cinema and then again in (fake) IMAX with the younger sibling when I got back to San Francisco. And, um, also Countdown, the spin-off prequel comic for the movie. And the whole Yosemite sequence from Star Trek V, to showoliviacirce the Kirk+Spock+McCoy dynamic in full swing.
Just about any time I watch Star Trek now, I'm startled by the degree to which the characters are like family to me. Like many geeky preteens I was not especially happy and Star Trek was my primary way out of day-to-day life. Even now, my first impulse when someone says "Live long and prosper" is to respond with "Peace and long life." Whenever I drink root beer, part of me thinks "it's just like the Federation." And my ongoing love of Les Miserables started with Michael Eddington.
So, while I'm not the sort of Trekker who goes to a movie to criticize the tech and the specific ways they got it wrong, I had a whole lot of long-engrained emotions tied to this movie. And in a lot of ways the movie stood up well to them. And in a lot of ways, this movie broke my heart.
I've been enjoying all the interviews where the producers keep repeating that they love TOS, but also, they have a fondness for the novels even though Roddenberry didn't think they are canon and they wanted to bring in some things from the novels, etc. etc. etc. Because the way I read it is, "Yes, we read Diane Duane's Spock's World too. And it broke our hearts just as much to kill Amanda Grayson as it broke yours to watch her die." Or at least that's what it says to me when I'm being generous towards them.
One of the most painful things about a reboot is losing the universe as it was. In the first several days after watching the movie I was still clutching desperately for that world. A world where Kirk and Spock and McCoy and all the rest of them grow to be middle-aged. And old. And, gradually, die, one at a time. Kirk, whisked off early by the Nexus. Scotty, caught for decades in a transporter beam only to be freed in a time when his expertise has become irrelevant. Bones, aging and bitter and still clinging to life a hundred years later to interrogate a young android officer. Spock, dedicating himself to the cause of Reunification between Vulcan and Romulus. And now, it seems, sacrificing himself for Romulus, but coming too late.
The movie is supposed to be about new beginnings, but for me it is all about the endings. The end of the universe I grew up in, the end of Vulcan, the end of Amanda's life. The end of Majel Barrett Roddenberry's life, the last time she ever played the voice of a Federation computer.
Countdown, the story of the months leading up to Spock's sacrifice, helped a lot actually. (AND it had Picard and Data and Worf. And fleshed-out motivations for Nero. And an explanation for the overwhelming technological and military capabilities of his mining ship.)
I'm eager to see where this universe goes. But I'm still in mourning for the Star Trek that I knew.
oliviacirce said, "an epic internal reflection on my relationship with Star Trek. I do not have a Star Trek icon to post it with, though.""Well, that seems obvious given your relationship with Star Trek."
"Uh, yeah."
"When I complete my epic internal reflection on my relationship with Star Trek, it will include the fact that there is a signature in my 7th grade year book addressed to 'star trak[sic] girl.' Yours is somewhat different."
So, movie aside, I have been spiraling down into Star Trek fandom again. Star Trek was my first serious fandom (I spent several middle-school summers doing nothing but watching Trek and writing Mary Sue fanfic) but I left it behind rather drastically sometime my freshman year of high school, as season 7 of DS9 was wrapping up.
That being said, in the last two or three weeks, I've re-watched much of DS9 season 3 (and a smattering of episodes across seasons 2, 4 and 5), read Mike Ford's astoundingly awesome How Much for Just the Planet?, and well, hello, long-lost reaches of trek fic, here I am digging for you.
And also there was the movie, which I saw first at a grotty little London cinema and then again in (fake) IMAX with the younger sibling when I got back to San Francisco. And, um, also Countdown, the spin-off prequel comic for the movie. And the whole Yosemite sequence from Star Trek V, to show
oliviacirce the Kirk+Spock+McCoy dynamic in full swing.Just about any time I watch Star Trek now, I'm startled by the degree to which the characters are like family to me. Like many geeky preteens I was not especially happy and Star Trek was my primary way out of day-to-day life. Even now, my first impulse when someone says "Live long and prosper" is to respond with "Peace and long life." Whenever I drink root beer, part of me thinks "it's just like the Federation." And my ongoing love of Les Miserables started with Michael Eddington.
So, while I'm not the sort of Trekker who goes to a movie to criticize the tech and the specific ways they got it wrong, I had a whole lot of long-engrained emotions tied to this movie. And in a lot of ways the movie stood up well to them. And in a lot of ways, this movie broke my heart.
I've been enjoying all the interviews where the producers keep repeating that they love TOS, but also, they have a fondness for the novels even though Roddenberry didn't think they are canon and they wanted to bring in some things from the novels, etc. etc. etc. Because the way I read it is, "Yes, we read Diane Duane's Spock's World too. And it broke our hearts just as much to kill Amanda Grayson as it broke yours to watch her die." Or at least that's what it says to me when I'm being generous towards them.
One of the most painful things about a reboot is losing the universe as it was. In the first several days after watching the movie I was still clutching desperately for that world. A world where Kirk and Spock and McCoy and all the rest of them grow to be middle-aged. And old. And, gradually, die, one at a time. Kirk, whisked off early by the Nexus. Scotty, caught for decades in a transporter beam only to be freed in a time when his expertise has become irrelevant. Bones, aging and bitter and still clinging to life a hundred years later to interrogate a young android officer. Spock, dedicating himself to the cause of Reunification between Vulcan and Romulus. And now, it seems, sacrificing himself for Romulus, but coming too late.
The movie is supposed to be about new beginnings, but for me it is all about the endings. The end of the universe I grew up in, the end of Vulcan, the end of Amanda's life. The end of Majel Barrett Roddenberry's life, the last time she ever played the voice of a Federation computer.
Countdown, the story of the months leading up to Spock's sacrifice, helped a lot actually. (AND it had Picard and Data and Worf. And fleshed-out motivations for Nero. And an explanation for the overwhelming technological and military capabilities of his mining ship.)
I'm eager to see where this universe goes. But I'm still in mourning for the Star Trek that I knew.