Why no reviews of the movies?

This site focuses exclusively on the original 79 episodes (the so-called "seventy-nine jewels") which were made in the late 60s. To me, these are Star Trek like nothing else. Everything since has been, well, something else.

That's not to say that the movies were not good. I quite liked The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country. But they never captured the feel of the original series. Each has a sense of class reunion about it, coupled with twisting and turning to get each cast member at least one big scene, and generally tortured and failed attempts to evoke the spirit of the original.

They also tend to feature derivative stories, lame humor, excessive emphasis on special effects, unsatisfactory endings, questionable characterizations, hokey dialogue, etc. Some of the movies are downright bad, and would actually rank below the lowest quality episodes of the original series. Fortunately, nothing in these films (unlike later series) actually taints the original (except, perhaps, The Final Frontier). Likewise, nothing illuminates it.

My solution is simply to consider them as something else entirely and view them in that context. The show and the movies are two different animals and should not be compared.

Why '79 jewels'?

Because the original episodes keep giving and giving (profit-wise, that is), they became known within the studio as the "seventy-nine jewels."

In 1987, DeForest Kelley used the name at a convention in response to a question about residuals (money paid to actors each time the show is rerun):

"How do we feel about not being able to participate in the royalties of the videocassettes of the motion pictures? We want to cry, don't you know. A lot of people are under the impression that we get residuals from the series. We don't, you know. We did for three years. And at that time the Screen Actors Guild had a contract that after the first year we got paid for seven reruns, the second year, eight reruns, the third, ten, and that's all, and that was all that we were paid for. Shortly after Star Trek was dropped, the Screen Actor's Guild came out with a clause that stated the actor must have residuals in perpetuity even if it only amounted to 25 dollars each time around. So none of us are participating in the 79 jewels for Paramount. It's all theirs. A lot of people think we've been getting paid for all these years, but we haven't. That's the very sad part of it. But things could always be worse."

What about the other series?

Being a descendent of the original Star Trek carries with it a number of large burdens. The original has passed into folklore, and its children (like the offspring of any celebrity) have certain expectations placed upon them. Inevitably, they fail to live up to them because it's impossible to duplicate what has gone before.

Still, you might think that with over a dozen series and countless hundreds of episodes between them, the offspring have been outrageously successful. But the most we can say is that they've been sufficiently successful -- financially. But artistically...?

Of the 79 original episodes, perhaps 25 qualify as really good. Of the hundreds that have come since, I think you would be lucky to find even that many. But the main problem is this: Nothing created since the original Star Trek is actually Star Trek. They all fail to capture, in one way or another, the underlying spirit of the original. I have come to think of them simply as Not Trek.

The magic of the original was in the sets, the costumes, the music, the cinematograhy, the lighting, the props, the writing, the storytelling, the acting, the pacing, the (sometimes clunky but always sufficient) special effects. Every series since then has thought it could do one or more of those things better than the original, and then they didn't. Nothing since -- and this includes the movies with the original cast -- has captured the feel of the original Trek.

Even the bad writing in the original had something that more recent bad writing doesn't have: the genuine spirit of optimism and adventure. Now it's all pastiche -- distant echoes of the original, closer to parody than homage. The modern sets are much more flashy, and much less beautiful. Same with the modern ship designs. The modern cinematography is much more animated and much less transparent. Modern lighting always feels practical. Modern costumes are fashionable but never timeless (obviously not everything in the original was timeless in this regard). Modern stories are always echoes of what has gone before, with far too much fan service, and far too little humanity.

The star of the original Trek was the Enterprise, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Even Shatner knew it, eventually. The star of the show, embodied by the ship (exterior, interiors, costumes, and everything), was a sense of forward motion, anticipation, unspoken but ever-present. It was the embodiment of what we all might hope for humanity: we've solved many of the problems, and in doing so moved ourselves forward and outward. It was the sense that someone one day might actually be able to say, "I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space," with an implied, "We have improved ourselves and humanity as a whole." Flawed as the characters were, they were aspirational -- not us, but who we might aspire to one day be. That sense has been completely lost in modern Not Trek.

The guys who made the original Trek were just doing their jobs, but doing them at all times with an aspirational sense, born from the optimism of their age, I think, and embodied in everything that went on the screen. And it is perhaps very telling that, whenever a modern series recreates those old sets, they still sing. That is a testament to Matt Jefferies, whose mark on the original (with Robert Justman and Gene Coon) may be the most significant.

Nothing since then has contained that spirit. Maybe it can't be done. Maybe nobody has tried. Maybe nobody actually realizes it (this is a business, after all).

In the spirit of consideration, here are some thumbnail series reviews that certainly do not claim to be exhaustive.

The Next Generation has the benefit of the best actor to ever appear associated with Trek (Patrick Stewart). But it suffers from a warm fuzziness that was a signature of its era. In some ways, TNG is what Roddenberry originally wanted for the first series (and the ill-fated Star Trek II). But he had better, more forceful editors with better ideas on the original. TNG was too self-indulgent at times, and eventually settled into formula (mystery followed by quick tech fix). It was at its best when new writers came in and broke rules (for a while). It was at its worst when it tried to be Important. Roddenberry always wanted Trek to say something, but do it through the character situations. TNG often just said things, then went off about their separate story.

Deep Space Nine actually reinvented the franchise, shaking off much of the TNG sweetness in favor of something more political and mystical. To me, it never feels directly descended from the original series, despite its canonical continuity. This is a good thing because it expanded the universe in a way that allowed more story freedom. With a mystical religion to draw upon, issues of spirituality could be referenced, and this was always used to great effect. And the move into longer storylines was handled extremely well, keeping each episode self-contained while rewarding the regular viewers. It wasn't exactly Trek, but as TV spaceship shows go, it was pretty darn great (credit Avery Brooks with setting the perfect tone).

Voyager was doomed from the moment Kate Mulgrew stepped onto the set. Her vapid captain was never written very well, but that's probably because she was so ill-suited to the role. A central premise (the Maquis) was dropped too early, and the warm fuzzies were back along with a lot of ship-in-danger episodes. Despite some fine performers, the writers never got a handle on the characters, and they sunk back into types. And the resident alien character, Neelix, was essentially reduced to a mascot. In the end, the stories were mostly rehashes of rehashes, filled with automatic writing and technical solutions leading to quick fixes every week.

Enterprise, despite its promising concept, was completely dead on arrival. All of the bad things about VOY were retained, and the self-consciousness was ratcheted up a few notches until it seemed like every single episode had to have a reference to something somewhere else in the future canon. Before the show premiered, Scott Bakula seemed like a good choice to play the captain, but he never got out of comic book mode (I think he has about two different looks). The rest of the characters were throw-aways. Most episodes were unwatchable, and its early cancellation was an act of mercy.

Update for 2016: I've now seen all three of the reboot/alternate timeline movies and find them offensive in every way. The worst sin, for me, is casting actors bearing a passing physical resemblance to the original cast, and then coaching them to act like the original actors! This is a terrible artistic decision, which can only result in some novelty that wears thin before the preview is over. It's not that the actors are bad. It's just that, if it must be the same characters, I would rather see Chris Pine play Kirk in his own way, instead of playing William Shatner as Kirk.

Tone is a problem, and makes me realize that I am simply no longer in the demographic for these movies. Everything must be bigger, Bigger, BIGGER! The best stories don't need that, but modern blockbusters apparently do. I dislike all the explosions, and I abhor all the guns. Shatner's Kirk generally saw it as a regrettable failure if he had to fire his phaser, while Pine's Kirk doesn't appear to give it a second thought.

In general, I have left these movies feeling sad because characters are reduced to caricatures, and stories are reduced to a series of action sequences and explosions. Among the creative team, problems are conceived and then solved with brawn and firepower in mind. This results in unimaginative, boring, run-of-the-mill action movies. That's not Trek. That's everything the original Trek was not.

Update for 2019: I haven't seen Discovery. I pay too much for TV already, and I'm sure not going to pay CBS what they are asking for this one show. There was a point, before Discovery premiered, when we actually subscribed to the service to watch The Good Wife, but the picture was dark, and the commercials were just too much. If Discovery ever becomes available on Netflix or Amazon I'll probably check it out, but I'm not holding my breath.

Frankly, from the promos I've seen and reviews I've read, it doesn't really interest me that much. In a way, I actually find myself repelled by the project for reasons beyond the cost. The show seems simultaneously farther removed from the tone of the original than ever, while also retconning a bunch of stuff that doesn't belong. It appears to deface the original, but do it with an air of reverence to cover its tracks. New fans won't care, and they shouldn't. But those of us who were there at the beginning have a harder time with such cheap shenanigans.

Update for May 2022: Over the past two nights I have attempted to watch the premiere of Strange New Worlds as a freebie on YouTube. (I remain unwilling to subscribe to Paramount+.) Unfortunately, I had to turn it off after 10 minutes the first night when Spock and T'Pring began their incredibly cringe-inducing scene. By that point I had already endured multiple painful tropes, beginning with forehead people, "first contact," Pike's horrible beard and brooding demeanor, semi-nudity teasing, the desire to retire, Earth of the future, and the incredibly overplayed need for the Enterprise to launch immediately due to some unprecedented event far away. I mean, how many crappy cliches can you cram into one teaser?

It only got worse when the main title sequence featured the most incredibly banal paraphrase/ripoff of Alexander Courage's classic main theme, and the appropriation of a classic voiceover script, all played over the least interesting starship flybys -- or should I call them "zip-bys"? -- I can ever remember.

I returned a second night and winced my way through T'Pring's seductive proposal -- that horribly retcons "Amok Time's" clear inference that this was an arranged marriage rejected by both parties upon maturity -- and the subsequent unbearable scene of coitus-Vulcanis-interruptus. Amazingly, this was immediately followed by another completely overplayed and blatantly derivative scene of a shuttlecraft delivering the Captain to his ship (perhaps intended as an homage to The Motion Picture, but utterly gratuitous), ending with a non-sequitor beam out -- off screen, no less, to save some cash. Just how stupid can this show get?

But more stupid it got -- and more cliched -- as we had the arrival of a new first officer, who immediately quoted regulations to her superior officer (as must now be a Starfleet requirement), and someone other than the Captain figuring out first that the ship needs protection (first gratuitous weapon fire at roughly 21 minutes). And it all happened on a bridge set so massive and over-the-top that I swear I could hear Matt Jefferies grunting his disapproval from beyond the grave. (Frankly, it was hard to hear Jefferies over Fred Phillips shouting his disdain for New-Spock's mind-blowingly terrible haircut, and Bill Theiss groaning over uniforms that rip off his original while simultaneously removing everything that made them classic. Why are those insignia so damned big?)

Perhaps the most terrible offense, however, is that these characters talk like 21st century teenagers ("I'm all ears", "not in the mood for...", "Hit it", and "pretty weird", to name just a few), not 23rd century explorers or diplomats. They are not characters we might aspire to be, but rather just plain old us. Who the hell wants that? What a cop out. Have we simply ceased to aspire to anything greater than what we already are? Wasn't that aspiration the whole attraction of Star Trek in the first place? Isn't it the foundation of the franchise?

Further, this Pike is one note brooding burden carrier (really a poorly-conceived character device that has no way to succeed in the long run), and one note smirking goofball -- a testament to genuinely bad writing. I don't generally think that Jeffrey Hunter's Pike would have been better for the original series than Shatner's Kirk, but I do think Hunter's conception of the character would have run circles around this incarnation -- a character that in the pilot is annoying and without any genuine gravitas from almost the first frame.

Even worse, you know you are being pandered to when there is a gratuitous and transgressive "Fascinating" from New-Spock in the first act. Nimoy was always too gracious to object to such things, but he was a sufficiently skilled artist to know just how overreaching this type of writing is.

At 25 minutes, I was done with this "new" series. Done. "Modern" Star Trek has been bad for a long time, but now it officially sucks rocks.

A quick word about remasters

Though a curiosity, I basically see the creation of new special effects for the original series as a desecration masquerading as a cash grab. They simply should not have done this, or messed with the aspec ratio, the color correction, or the music. None of this was necessary, and each detracts from the original in measurable ways. For example, I find the new version of the main title theme to be completely unlistenable. I know what they were trying to do, but it could only ever be not the original.

THe artists involved certainly did what was asked of them, but every new shot of the Enterprise is missing the motion that made the original shot unique and interesting and beautiful. In fact, it is the simple lack of beauty which is most noticeable. The clear lesson is that all the audience needs is something that allows the suspension of disbelief, and it's better if it looks beautiful at the same time.

I have long taken issue with Douglas Trumbull's insistence (during production on The Motion Picture) that the Enterprise needed flood lights to illuminate the ship's name and registration. In the real world, I get it. But this is the TV world. Where the light is coming from in TV space just doesn't matter -- and neither does what the planet looks like (with certain exceptions mentioned in my reviews). And those original shots of the original Enterprise are beautiful in a way that flood lights and more fluid motion completely destroy. (I mention this because it seems to have become a primary design aesthetic on modern Not Trek, including the original series remasters.)

The original is what it is. Leave it alone.