The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

M-C and I have been on a bit of a Star Trek kick the last month or so. Can't remember exactly how it started, but with the price of DVDs so low I picked up all the Star Trek: Next Generation movies (the cheapest was $2.00, shipping included, for a copy of Star Trek: Nemesis off of Ebay). Then we picked up two volumes of the "Best of" Next Generation TV series. We couldn't get enough! So we started to go through the original Kirk & Spock Star Trek movies and today, for just $7.99, I saw a "Best of" Star Trek DVD of the original TV series. Well, for less than the price of a movie admission, how could I refuse? I remember as a kid being captivated by the series and saw many episodes on syndication. A way to revisit my youth somewhat.

I want my 90 minutes back.

There are four episodes on the disc, and after the second we couldn't take any more. Now some of the spoken dialogue (repeat: some) is well put together, and you can see in season one there were many growing pains they had to go through before reaching the finish line: You want to give it some slack. But because almost everything doesn't work all that great, whether the outrageous story lines, cheesy special effects or high-school quality sets, it's just too hard to, well, enjoy it.

The entire time I was thinking, "How did I let this pass as entertainment before?" I guess when I was eight, pretty much anything passed as entertainment and I didn't develop my cynicism just yet. But trust me when I say, this series hasn't aged well.

One story involved them visiting a planet where the civilization adopted the livelihoods of 1920s era gangsters, because a previous visiting spaceship forgot their gangster history book when they left. I wish I was making this up. Seeing Spock in a fedora welding a tommy gun is just too much.

The other episode had fist fights where punches would miss by a mile. Every movement was exaggerated. And they were trying to sell Spock as this emotionless alien being, but you can see his numerous smiles while playing 3-D chess. Didn't anyone think maybe a re-take was in order?

Anyway, I'm not going to bother watching another. There are some episodes I remember fondly (remember that one when Kirk combined a bunch of elements lying around to make gunpowder to kill that man-lizard thing? Loved it!) but I have a feeling those memories will turn sour if I try to revisit them. Anyway, some things just don't age well, and this is a prime example of it.