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Star Trek movie can open door to reading
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It’s the 11th Star Trek movie that opens today, but this may be the first Trek for uncountable thousands of youngsters.
It’s been seven years since the last one (Nemesis, 2002), and almost five years since the last Star Trek television series (Enterprise, 2001-2005) went off the air. Yep, unless you’ve been showing them old videos, this could be your kids’ first Star Trek experience.
Now, as a big-budget, big screen, high tech adventure, kids are probably going to love this new movie. You, as a parent, grandparent, or other person-of-the-world, who knows something about earlier Star Trek action and ideas, can leverage some reading time for the kids you love by offering the previous Star Trek adventures in their short-story form -- even if a book is where they have never gone before.
In the 1970s, science fiction writer James Blish adapted most of the original series' tales in four hardcover volumes known as The Star Trek Reader I, II, III and IV. They are available used, inexpensively, from many sources if you check online. You can also get his numerous paperback versions with a handful of adapted episodes each.
(Remember how some kids didn’t start reading Harry Potter novels until after they saw one of the movies, but after that they became insatiable readers? This could happen again.)
If this new movie is all the Star Trek your kids ever see (doubtful), they will miss understanding the underpinnings of the Star Trek universe. Is this important? You bet it
is!
Science fiction in general is thoughtful literature, good for postulating futures. It's also known as speculative fiction. Sci Fi writers tend to be people dissatisfied with the way things are in the world. They think it can be better and so do their fans. But here's the key about Star Trek...most of Sci Fi before Star Trek presented dark and terrible futures. It showed what awaits us if we don't reform, repent, disarm, stop polluting or watch out for Big Brother.
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had a uniquely bright vision of the future. In his United Federation of Planets, mankind, and a host of alien races as well, are doing a helluva a lot better than we are now. Poverty has been eliminated, along with "cut and sew" surgery, the common cold and the headache. Discrimination is unknown. People work for motives other than greed. Starship captains are magnanimous.
Never mind that the Prime Directive is impossible...the Federation has only benevolent intentions. Sure sometimes Captain James T. Kirk has to fight his baser instincts -- but in the Star Trek universe, mankind is always TRYING to be better.
Roddenberry’s positive vision might just be what our kids need right now. Giving them Star Trek Readers could be a great idea.
At any rate, Star Trek is a cultural icon that should be understood. If you don’t love it, okay. But its contribution to the American culture is enormous. It’s contribution to philosophy of the human race, race relations, ideas about war and peace, love and life, loom large. In the original Star Trek series, (1966-1969) there were 79 episodes, most of which had something to tell us about ourselves and our universe, despite the fact Hollywood producers required a certain quota of fisticuffs and shoot-em ups. Star Trek: The Next Generation was allowed to be more cerebral, coming closer to Roddenberry’s original thoughtful vision. There were 178 episodes in The Next Generation’s seven-season run between 1987 and 1994. Then came Deep Space 9 (176 episodes), 1993-1999 and Voyager (172 episodes), 1995-2001, and then Enterprise (98), 2001-2005. That’s more than 700 episodes. Ten movies… Plus uncountable unfilmed novels and short stories. An incredible legacy not to be missed..
Next: The essential episodes.
