Blog of Bermanism

It would seem that we are rapidly approaching the end of an era for modern geekdom. Those of us who love science fiction to the point of obsession are seeing classic scifi shows like Star Trek being put out of production for the first time since its inception in 1966 and the end to the production of new Star Wars movies (much to our relief recently). Other scifi greats such as Stargate SG-1 are closely approaching the state of the ashen remains of fantastic original scifi shows like Firefly and John Doe that were never allowed to mature into the types of series they had the potential to become. Many people have been writing that, with the end of production of such shows, an era of geekdom is coming to an end.

No more Star Trek (unless it gets picked up by a company other than Paramount). It seems almost unheard of. There have now been five independent series of Star Trek running for nearly 40 years, each one intercalated by motion pictures based on the series. It all started with the original series that aired from 1966 – 1969, followed by Star Trek: The Motion Picture which was released in December of 1979. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which was a movie based on a few episodes from the original series, was released in June of 1982, followed closely by Star Trek III: The Search for Spock in June, 1984. Next came Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in 1986, which was the most popular of all the movies because it involved the crew going back in time to the present day, and it was a pretty humor filled movie. Then, after more than 20 years, the next Star Trek television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation (STTNG) premiered and aired from 1987 – 1994. Two years later Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was released, which integrated newer visual effects and technology that had been invented during the airing of STTNG. The final movie with the full original cast, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, was released in 1991, and was far more successful of a movie than V, which sucked a bit in my opinion. Then, following the smashing success of TNG, Paramount created Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which aired from 1993 – 1999, but the show didn’t do very well. It was possibly too far off the beaten path of the Star Trek series, being that the entire basis of the story line took place on a space station that didn’t go anywhere. In 1994, just after the series finale of STTNG, Star Trek: Generations, the first movie with that cast, was released. This movie officially passed the baton from the original cast to the new cast, though it wasn’t the greatest of movies. Star Trek: Voyager promptly took its place at the headline of the Star Trek series from 1995 – 2001, ushering another success story about a lost ship in an unexplored area of the galaxy. During the run of Voyager, Star Trek: First Contact was released in 1996. This was by far the best of all the Star Trek movies from either era and featured the Next Generation’s nemesis, the Borg. In 1998, Star Trek: Insurrection was released and proved to be the lightest and wittiest of TNG’s movies. Finally, the production of the latest Star Trek series, Star Trek: Enterprise, took a step back in time to the beginning of the Star Trek era, to just before the founding of the Federation. This show, although it was very good, found itself at the mercy of policy shifts and a changing of the guard at Paramount, which ultimately caused the early cancellation of the show. Enterprise ran from 2001 – 2005. The last Star Trek movie to be made by Paramount was Star Trek: Nemesis, which was released in 2002. While the plot was a little slow, it was very entertaining, very dark, and had a few surprises that were hard to recover from if you are a hard core Star Trek fan.

All in all, after nine motion pictures and five television series, a total of 731 hours of Star Trek have been released to the public. That is an astounding 30.5 full days worth of nothing but Star Trek, a full month’s worth. With that kind of air time, it is no wonder that Star Trek developed such a devoted cult following. Admittedly, I was one of them. I love Star Trek. I’m not a total Trekkie necessarily, but I will watch any Star Trek that happens to be on TV (and with 30 days worth of content, it is almost always on somewhere in syndication). But, after careful thought, the loss of Star Trek as a source for new scifi material isn’t a great loss. I believe it was time for it to go away. The ideology of the creator of the Star Trek series, Gene Roddenberry, shined a hopeful light on the possibilities of the future of mankind and, in itself, inspired trekkies everywhere to begin trying to make those dreams a reality. Much of today’s technology was inspired by the Star Trek series. The problem though, is that the Star Trek theme was based on an extremely rigid foundation rooted in a military style drama. While this made space exploration very cut and dry, it tended to limit the creativity that could be introduced into the series. Additionally, Star Trek has been criticized by such scifi greats as Orson Scott Card for taking the attention away from the truly great works of science fiction:

As science fiction, the series was trapped in the 1930s, a throwback to spaceship adventure stories with little regard for science or deeper ideas. It was sci-fi as seen by Hollywood: all spectacle, no substance.

Which was a shame, because science fiction writing was incredibly fertile at the time, with writers like Harlan Ellison and Ursula LeGuin, Robert Silverberg and Larry Niven, Brian W. Aldiss and Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke creating so many different kinds of excellent science fiction that no one reader could keep track of it all.

Sadly, I have to agree with one of my favorite authors. Since my inauguration into the world of Star Trek, I have been compelled to delve deeper into the world of science fiction and have subsequently read some truly great scifi writing, including books written by the aforementioned Card. It is my belief that the presence of Star Trek, and Star Wars for that matter, have been an obstacle for modern science fiction to overcome. As Card states, one of the finest scifi television shows to date is Lost. Admittedly, I’ve missed the entire first season of this new show, but, after all the hype, I’ve started DVRing the reruns for the summer repeat season. I intend to see what all the hype is about. Friends of mine that I respect and are hard core science fiction fans, have touted this show as one of the very best. So, I’ve got to watch it.

So, is this the end of an era of Geekdom? As is written by Stephen Lynch of the NY Times:

By the end of May, a golden era of geekdom will have drawn to a close. No “Star Trek.” No “Star Wars.” No “Lord of the Rings.” No “Matrix.” No Jedi. No Vulcans.

But, as Wil Wheaton says:

The end of “Star Wars” is long overdue. The new movies are an absolute abomination. It’s hard to figure out which sequel to “The Matrix” was worse, and “Star Trek: Enterprise” had little in common with “Star Trek” beyond the name. There was an explosion of geeky goodness in the last few years, and now it’s time to step back, and … well, thin the herd, I guess.

I say yes, it is the end of an era, but it is also a new beginning. Great new shows are coming out like the modern remake of Battlestar Galactica, which makes some surprising fundamental changes to the original series, giving the show a very dark and realistic feel. Shows like Stargate Atlantis are paving the way for new creative series that are based on prior successful shows. As usual, many new and great science fiction novels are being written almost weekly. The latest series from Orson Scott Card consists of a series of shadow novels based on the original Ender’s Game series, and, since you can’t have science fiction without a little fantasy, I am very much anticipating the next Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I’m also very excited about Batman Begins, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. Needless to say, the world of science fiction is now wide open to a new schema of creativity and exploration. Those of us who revel in these partly imaginary worlds will revel more, though a little more alone as most of the world turns their attention to the latest reality TV show, leaving us geeks in a little less of a mainstream position. We’ll be back to being shoved into lockers and given swirlies in the bathroom while the big jock boy who only watches the O.C. gives you a super wedgie that redefines the boundaries of your butt crack. We’ll have the memories, we’ll have the good times. We’ll still have other fellow geeks to geek with, but we’ll have to wait patiently for the next big wave of science fiction. Until then, so long and thanks for all the fish.

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