Oh, I know it's the butt of many a joke because of Wesley Crusher (poor Wil Wheaton has gotten the biggest shaft in the history of fandom), because of the Picard Maneuver (that tugging on the costume that the actors all had to engage in, Patrick Stewart most famously, to keep it looking good on camera), because of the escapism ex machina of the holodeck (who wouldn't honestly have just pulled a Barkley and spent our entire lives wallowing in fantasy)?

But c'mon -- James Tiberius Kirk, with all his bluster, wishes he could have muttered the Iowa equivalent of merde as often as Picard did.

Look, Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) is simply better than Star Trek, retronym-subtitled The Original Series (TOS). It just is. TNG didn't have green slave girls. (Yeah, I know that was a feature, not a bug, for certain fans, but geez, could the galaxy have been any more in need of a Betty T'Friedan? How about a green slave boy once in a while?) TNG made fun of all the silliness of TOS, like how the Klingons lost their ridges, or gained them, or something. TNG wasn't about war but about peace and diplomacy and being nice to people as much as possible and enticing drinks with exotic names in Ten Forward and a world where everyone was gorgeous enough to wear spandex (and where bald was beautiful). It was hopeful in a way beyond Crap, I hope Kirk can keep his pants zipped in this episode lest he threaten the Federation's peace with this galactic quadrant by propositioning the Chla'thralk princess in her fertile phase ...

Now, I ain't sayin' I ain't lookin' forward to J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek reboot. (Bruce Greenwood as Christopher Pike? Best casting ever.) Ho boy, but it's gonna be a hoot ... even if it sucks. Which it could. Why on Earth -- literally, why on Earth? -- are they building the Enterprise in the bottom of a gravity well? You build starships in orbit, dumbos, not on the surface of a planet with such heavy gravity as ours. That kind of nonsense -- which is perfectly plain in the trailer -- is enough to make me think they're not taking this as seriously as sci-fi dorks like me demand. Zachary Quinto looks awesome as Spock, but why the hell is he attacking Kirk in a rage? The dude is supposed to be keeping himself under tight emotional control. Are we gonna get John Cho running "Naked Now" with a sword all over the Enterprise, too?

I mean ... merde.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
MaryAnn Johanson's film reviews appear at FlickFilosopher.com. (email me)

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