Creator: Gene Roddenberry
Starring: William Shatner,
Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei,
Majel Barrett, Grace Lee Whitney, Ricardo Montalban, Roger C. Carmel, Mark
Leonard, Charles Macaulay, Diana Muldaur, Richard Derr, Lev Mailer
Despite it’s limitations in
production values and it’s hokey delivery at times, “Star Trek” was television
ahead of its time. The first season of what was a very strange mix of a
military procedural, flower power values, and fairly well advanced science
fiction themes is a revelation of the times in which it was made. The late 60s
were an incredible period of change for this country and all of it is right
there on the little screen in a show that probably very few people took
seriously at the time.
There’s everything from
advanced astrophysics to racial commentary to war philosophy to Shakespearian
tragedy to be found in the first season of this iconic series. The sets looked
like they were made out of Styrofoam and cardboard (they were), but the ideas
were straight from modern philosophy and sociology. The many gadgets and gizmos
used by the crew of the Enterprise might have looked cheap—Dr. McCoy using a
Windex spray bottle to close wounds is my favorite—but many of them predicted
technological advancements that were thirty and forty years off in the future.
The majority of our population everyday uses many “Star Trek” style
technologies.
What struck me most about
watching these old television episodes, most of which I haven’t seen for thirty
years myself, is how good the acting was. William Shatner gained a reputation
as an overacting mug artist during his long career, and he does overact as
Kirk. He had to in order to sell many of the high concept ideas on space show
for network television. However, it’s easy to overlook much of the fine work he
does here with sometimes-terrible dialogue. Although, the dialogue was often bad,
the overall writing was quite good.
Leonard Nimoy also deserves
high praise for some of the work he does here, although it isn’t as dynamic as
Shatner’s. He’s fully committed to what must’ve seemed to mainstream audiences
a most absurd character, an alien with no capacity for human emotion. He sticks
with his character parameters and never wavers, except with some of the scripts
that required him to gain emotions to contrast his normal state. Spock is an
incredible study in human psychology.
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