Note: I am taking the long weekend to get started on some projects, so no show today and no posting either. Instead, here is something from behind the green door that people suggested I post here at some point. That point is now. Please consider signing up for a green door account. Five bucks a month is a bargain.
Flipping around YouTube I saw some videos on what I assumed to be the latest abomination in the Star Trek franchise. Having grown up watching the re-runs of the original, I try not to think about what they did to it. Lots of men like me ended up in the STEM world because of science fiction. Not all of it was art. In fact, most of it was crap, but it made being smart cool and adventurous.
That was the real hook for the kids of my day. The original Star Trek was a pirate ship in space where the crew got to do cool stuff with technology. The crew were not just swashbucklers, but problem solvers who often had to use their wits to get out of a jam of their own making. More than a few trips were made to the emergency room because boys decided to replicate what Kirk did to defeat the Gorn.
Then I saw that the Drinker had a review or preview about whatever they were doing with Star Trek, so I gave it a listen. Turns out it is not a new film or series, but a short that is something of a farewell for William Shatner. In less than ten minutes it covers the life of the character he created for the series. There is no dialogue, just computer enhanced images and a soundtrack.
It is a poignant and beautiful farewell to the man who played the role, but also the characters and the series that made the franchise possible. It a short goodbye to a long career and the relationship with the fans. It is exceedingly rare for Hollywood to do anything with dignity and class these days, but this is as close as you get to an honorable death in the entertainment business.
It is ironic, in a way, that Shatner would go out with such class, given that he is an old school carny in many ways. He was known for a willingness to take any role that paid, no matter how ridiculous. His run as TJ Hooker in a television cop show was a long running joke because it was so silly. Shatner was an anything for a buck sort of guy, which often meant taking less than dignified jobs.
On the other hand, it is these sorts of carnies who tend to be the most grateful for and humble about their success. They treat their job as a profession. Michael Cain and Clint Eastwood are other examples. Their job, as they saw it, was to make entertainment product for paying customers. These are the types who avoid politics and just shut up and sing, so to speak.
Maybe that is why Shatner could be part of this poignant goodbye. He is 93 and his health is not good. This is the final role of his career, so he could put what he has left in the tank into it. How much he was able to do is unknown, but the mere fact that he was willing to do it speaks well of him. He respects the role he played, because he respects the audience that made his life possible.
As far as the film itself, it brought back many memories of sitting on the living room floor after school watching the crew of the Enterprise explore the world. It also reminded me of the wonderful scene in The Wrath of Khan where Spock dies and utters the famous line to his old friend Kirk, ““I have been – and always shall be – your friend.” In the theater when I saw it, you could hear a pin drop.
That was the beauty of the original series, something I came to appreciate as I got older, and that is it was a show about a group of men, adventuring through life, not as solo acts but as part of a brotherhood. If you are lucky as a man, you go on your journey with a group of mates, losing and adding some along the way. The ones you lose will be waiting for you on the other side. The ones you add will carry you there.
That is another lesson of the original series. In my life the people who have given me the business for liking the series have always turned out to be people wearing a red shirt, the people who could never get the previous paragraph. Life is for living, which means taking risks. What makes it sweet is doing so with your crew. A man lives and dies inside his *kóryos or he never lives at all.
Another thing that came to mind watching this short was that no one under the age of fifty will get any of it. If you are a millennial, the original series had been supplanted by the sterile nothingness of The Next Generation, which replaced the pirate-ship-in-space concept with the corporate division in space idea. Then came the HR department in space and then the remote field office in space.
More important, the concepts of brotherhood and the noble male life had pretty much disappeared from the culture. Even in my youth these ideas were being mocked by buddy comedies and the action hero. Mel Gibson was a lot of fun in Lethal Weapon, but by normal cultural standards, his character was a loser. The same was true for all the action heroes, who were solitary figures unable to be part of the Männerbund.
Therein lies some flickers of good news. At the AmRen conference I saw groups of young guys, which is not so common. Going to a conference to hear old men moan about the state of the world is not much of an adventure, but it is a start. There are groups like the Old Glory Club forming up for young guys to join. They may not have had these concepts fed to them as children, but the seeds are still there.
That may be why a relatively unsuccessful television series has cast such a long shadow, despite Hollywood trying to kill it. It is based on eternal truths about the human condition and the male role in life. No amount of cultural vandalism can plow under these truths to the point where they cannot grow again. Those who recall the old truths may be in their winter, but spring will come again.
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The original Star Trek series was what good science fiction offers: an optimistic view of the future. And men get there by using their minds and their bodies, their intelligence and their emotions. It was a band of swashbuckling brothers seeking out new adventures. It emphasized science, technology, engineering and the power of the logical mind. Good point about Star Trek the next generation. Some episodes are good but it is the corporate division, and Picard is a dull, efficient bureaucrat. The rebooted series had a chance to recapture that spirit but blew it. At the end of the 2009… Read more »
Trek – “Hollywood either cannot understand the bond between heterosexual men or they are actively hostile to it.” They don’t now but they did; that very bond you speak of was the basis for several films of late, great Director Sam Peckinpah. In “The Wild Bunch”(1969) the West is changing, the bunch is getting older, & running out of banks to rob & places to run. In the end, they sacrifice it all to bring back one of their own. In “Cross of Iron” (1977) a highly decorated non-com butts heads with an elitist superior while trying to hold his… Read more »
Hollywood either cannot understand the bond between heterosexual men or they are actively hostile to it.’
Both.
not sure if this is news or not, but the ST:TOS episodes were remastered in 4k with many of the matte effects redone superbly. they really look fantastic, especially if you only ever saw the original eps on pre-HD tv.
a little OT, but if you have transporter technology (as ST universe did) then no one would really need to die. just recreate them from a stored transporter image :). of course this would drain a lot of the drama and tension out of the stories.
Just like the move command using file manager in Windows. It’s just copy and delete.
there was an episode in the newer version of Outer Limits where there was a glitch in teleportation. Basically copied man and sent him on the way butscrewed up and left the original instead of destroying him. Gave away the dirty little secret. Anywho, all bs for sure, never happen.
ever see this episode (original Outer Limits): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Duplicate_Man
one of my favorites from the original series.
Lucas and Star Wars should’ve done this. Instead, they messed with the human parts and added CGI and dialogue where it wasn’t needed nor welcome.
Star Trek’s inability to fully explore the implications of the technology in its universe is a big part of why I have never been able to get into the series. Replicator tech is just as badly handled as the transporters, sub-atomic level control of matter and energy and the best thing they usually think to do with it is making themselves food or trinkets. The whole nature of the society seems off too, as hinted upon in Z’s post. Post-scarcity society would almost certainly be extremely conservative in its approach to the unknown, rather than pointlessly sending out small forces… Read more »
I often see this “bond between men” thing in many shows of the old days. Whilst I’m just under forty, I do remember watching the original Star Trek as a youngster, and finding it great fun. Everything about it, to me, was epic. Of course, at the time, the idea that this was a story about male kinship and what bunches of blokes close together can achieve, was lost on me. Perhaps that’s why I watch so many older shows now – this group behaviour is unapologetically represented. This is absolutely an aspect of manhood that women don’t really seem… Read more »
Yup Star Trek to Captain America, Hollywood must snuff all our iconic (and positive) male exemplars because Hollywood — like elite America — is anti-masculine. Not enough groceries in the bags. They damn sure don’t hide their loathing of us, either. They’re afraid of brotherhood taking root in America, to which the OP alludes. That’s what keeps them up at night; it’s really the only threat they have to fear. So they belittle males while dissing and separating dad from the family unit, then celebrate single women, single motherhood, and the associated Welfare State. Nice going LBJ! The Prog agenda… Read more »
I think that the original series Star Trek was based loosely on James Cook’s voyages of discovery aboard Endeavor. IIRC, the original starship was named Endeavor, later changed to Enterprise. I don’t think I would watch the original series with as much as enthusiasm as Z-man, since my recollection is that many of the episodes were basically 60’s era morality plays, resolved according to the most avant garde 60s attitudes.
if by morality play you mean kirk banging alien poon, then yes, that is what it was about.
There were several episodes devoted to racial equality; even one that attributed all racial differences to environmental factors.
The book Gilligan Unbound examines the messages of 60s tv such as aforementioned and Star Trek. Manifest destiny with liberalism as it’s guiding force. Then the falling away with shows such as X files.
Quite true. For me star trek as always been pure trash and the generation raised on the religious tales of the next generation just made me hate the all thing.
“There are groups like the Old Glory Club forming up for young guys to join. They may not have had these concepts fed to them as children, but the seeds are still there.” I hate to see that the Boy Scouts have almost disappeared and that military service is greatly diminished as a place for men to bond in service to a greater purpose. I am glad that team sports and even fraternities haven’t been extinguished, but they are not for every man. The local volunteer fire department is a group I contribute to, but was never able to actually… Read more »
“…the Boy Scouts have almost disappeared and that military service is greatly diminished as a place for men to bond in service to a greater purpose.”
Indeed & that is all by design; they were attacked as “bastions of male chauvinism/white supremacy” & destroyed.
the scouts were pedo bait from day one, it was just covered up (like the catholic priest, and public school staff).
The K of C would be a possibility if the old boomer men would step aside and leave room for the young men to lead. But they hang on until death. My local council is basically a septuagenarian and octogenarian social club. It was particularly embarrassing during the COVID crap in my council when “men” who call themselves “knights” wouldn’t meet in person for 1.5 years, and then required so-called “vaccines” for members to meet in person. I let the Grand Knight know what I thought of that and resigned. These “men” don’t seem to realize that the founder, Fr.… Read more »
My tale isn’t quite as heroic. In 2020 my AA group did not meet for over a year. When it resumed they required wearing a mask. In fairness it was landlord imposing that requirement. I said approximately “I’m tired of this bullshit. Call me when they drop the mask requirement.” (For me that is pretty strong language in that group.) And a month or two later they called me.
Well said. Happy Thanksgiving.