Destination Star Trek: The Final Frontier

Star Trek is arguably the most successful sci-fi franchise of all time, although there are plenty of people who would argue that that accolade should go to Star Wars. Of the two my preference is for Gene Roddenberry's creation, but I am by no means fanatical about Star Trek. There are however plenty of die hard Star Trek aficionados, people who I have always thought of as Trekkies, but I understand that plenty are known as Trekkers. Is there a difference between a Trekkie and a Trekker? If there is, does it matter? There is a school of thought that a Trekker, while an enthusiast, enjoys the shows and the Stark Trek universe as an entertainment whereas the Trekkie is more full on. Some hold that the distinction is that while a Trekker thinks it a shame that the show came to an end, the Trekkie is sad that the Enterprise is being decommissioned and the crew reassigned.[1] Roddenberry himself favoured Trekkie.

Whatever the distinction, and I would say that it is a little more blurred, less defined than that and that there is plenty of crossover, Star Trek has spawned a number of series, characters and worlds of imagination that have brought pleasure to many people the world over. And that pleasure has extended to people attending Star Trek conventions, dressing up in Starfleet uniforms, or as Borg or as Klingons, or actually learning Klingon. I had never, before last weekend, come into contact with anyone who did any of those sort of things (although I may have seen someone in a Starfleet uniform at a fancy dress party), but having been offered some discounted tickets for Destination Star Trek 3, off I went to the Excel Centre in London.

To my surprise and slight disappointment, the concourse at Excel was not thronging with wannabe Captain Kirks or Mr Spocks, but there again I did arrive two hours or so after the event opened. In I went and again, initial impressions were not favourable. All I seemed to have got for my money was access to a number of merchandise stands. But initial impressions can sometimes be wrong; while there were a lot of merchandise stands, there was other stuff too. Like the display of uniforms and other props from the shows and films, the talks and the photograph and autograph opportunities, although these last two were another means of parting visitors from their money. I admit that we did spend some money on a signed photograph of Brent Spiner, but all told we managed to keep our spending to within reasonable limits.[2]

The talks were well attended; we caught the end of Bruce Greenwood's[3] talk, although I confess that the acoustics in the Excel, coupled with my notoriously flaky hearing meant that I understood little of what he was saying.  The talk given in the afternoon by Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden and Denise Crosby[4] was packed out; presumably it gave the merchandise stall holders a chance to have cup of tea and a sit down, with about 90% of the convention visitors in attendance (or so it seemed). It wasn't particularly insightful, but it was entertaining. Probably the most significant thing I learned was that Marina Sirtis is a Spurs supporter and that her accent is very North London.

Left to right: Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden and Denise Crosby.

What is unique about the Star Trek canon is its place in other fiction. Almost unlike any other show, Star Trek can be relied upon to pop up in other TV shows, either by indirect or direct reference. It has always amused me that if a character in a TV show is actually watching TV they always seem to be watching a wildlife documentary. I think that it was in Phil Redmond's soap opera Brookside that a metafictional soap opera was invented to give the characters a TV programme to talk about, after all have you noticed that in TV programmes the characters never, ever speak about programmes in general or soaps in particular? Hardly art imitating life.

Star Trek features heavily in programmes like The Big Bang Theory, going so far as to feature Will Wheaton (Wesley Crusher in The Next Generation) as himself. The Noel Shempsky character in Frasier was a big Star Trek fan and in one episode he asked Frasier Crane to obtain Scott Bakula's autograph for him at a convention. Shempsky was unable to do so "because of William Shatner's restraining order." Much of the plot of that particular episode turned on Frasier's failure to get the autograph, resulting in him making a speech in Klingon at his son's bar mitzvah[5]  but redeeming himself by obtaining Joan Collins' wig from the episode 'City On The Edge Of Forever' from the original Star Trek series. City On The Edge Of Forever was the second to last episode of the first season of Star Trek and is in my view the pinnacle of the original series. That episode was written by Harlan Ellison, just one of a number of eminent writers who contributed to the series.

Pic: NBC

Star Trek gets referenced in novels also. In The Electric Ant Philip K Dick refers to Star Trek by using "Captain Kirk" as a generic term for a science fiction TV show; 'They watched the captain kirk to its end, and then they went to bed.'  John Scalzi's excellent Redshirts, while not being about Star Trek by name, is about Star Trek, just as the film Galaxy Quest is really Star Trek.

Roddenberry's idea for Star Trek was that it be a "Wagon Train in space," Wagon Train being (as the name suggests) a Western series that ran for many years and that, along with his involvement in writing for Highway Patrol are clear influences on the early Star Trek themes, James Kirk being another in a long line of slightly maverick law men except that instead of a horse or patrol car he has a starship.

Of the six different elements of the Star Trek canon it is the original series and The Next Generation that have the most adherents, although these days I find the original to be very dated indeed. The most recent series, Star Trek: Enterprise, was great fun in my opinion, although it was amusing to note the obvious struggle the producers had with the fact that technology has advanced so much since Captain Kirk first took to the screens, yet the series had to be less technically sophisticated than Shatner's universe.

Kirk's uniform from Star Trek: Generations.

Many years ago, while I was listening to a radio phone in show, it became apparent to me that a caller believed that a character in a TV soap was actually a real person. There are plenty of people like that, the sort that send flowers when a soap character is killed off, or memorably the person who sent Granada TV a cheque to buy The Rovers Return in Coronation Street when the pub was put up for sale on the show, and there are obviously enough Trekkers out there who must know that Star Trek is a work of fiction yet treat it as though it is real. Roddenberry was a script writer who struck gold with Star Trek; had his series The Lieutenant (about the US Marine Corp) not been cancelled after one series, we may never have had the opportunity to boldly go where no-one had gone before. 

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[1] Thanks to Francesca Black for the definition: http://www.science-fiction-corner.com/trekker-vs-trekkie.htm

[2] Your definition of reasonable may differ from mine of course.

[3] Bruce Greenwood played Christopher Pike in the J.J. Adams Star Trek reboot and the sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness.

[4] Deanna Troi, Dr Beverley Crusher and Tasha Yar in Star Trek: The Next Generation respectively.

[5] In revenge for his failure to obtain Scott Bakula's autograph, Shempsky, who had agreed to translate Frasier's speech into Hebrew, translates it to Klingon.