Boldly Going, Watching, Remembering

Forty-three years ago this month, or maybe next month, I spent an evening with William Shatner.

That may have been the name, actually. An Evening with William Shatner.

It was at Gammage Auditorium at Arizona State University, where my brother and I were both students, and we bought cheap seats way in the back.

For some perspective: this was seven years after Star Trek had been canceled, following three seasons. I don’t remember watching the show when it first aired, and I’m thinking I was too young at first (8 years old when it premiered). I was surely aware of it, though.

And within a few years, it had become so thoroughly, successfully syndicated that I became very familiar. I remember coming home from high school and watching episodes in the afternoons.

I don’t need to explain Star Trek. I’ll just note that it feels like an organic affection, in my case. I was a space-crazy kid, because we all were. It was the 1960s, and the future was just over the hill. Kids like me didn’t watch because it was Star Trek; we made Star Trek a thing, in the same way passionate viewers in 1968 made it, writing letters to NBC to save their show from the axe after its second season. We’re all in this together.

I remember some details from my night with Mr. Shatner. Before he came out, they showed a couple of scenes from the show, remarkably splayed out on a huge screen, merging two mediums in a way I’d never seen before.

Shatner was 45 in the fall of 1976, and it’s easy to speculate on his perspective. After a couple of decades as a working actor, getting good reviews for stage, film, and television work, and then Star Trek, I can see how he might have been scrambling for relevance. Once considered in the same league as Robert Redford and Steve McQueen, he was at risk of being Captain Kirk forever.

It turned out to be not such a risk, obviously. I remember him mentioning that a Star Trek movie was a distinct possibility, and that we should keep our eyes open for news.

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I’m not sure where I fit in the fandom world here. I enjoyed the show, and watched The Next Generation religiously. My attention started to fade when the next iteration came around, and I eventually lost interest (although my kids, particularly my son, kept it up).

None of us became superfans, though, no conventions or cosplaying (my kids had a few Star Trek Halloweens, if that counts). It’s part of the family consciousness now, part of our conversation and shorthand. We all enjoyed the reboot movies. John has been playing Star Trek Online for years, and still comes back to it.

It was John who noted that ST: The Motion Picture was being shown in our local theater as part of a 40th anniversary thing. I don’t remember being particularly impressed with it the first time (I dozed off in the middle, actually), although a year or so ago John and I watched it and I was surprised. There were nice moments, a slightly different feel than the other films. I agreed to go with him to the mall on Wednesday afternoon to do this thing.

There were three other people in the theater, although this was the 4pm show; they had another at 7pm, so who knows. It was sparse enough that I used my phone whenever I wanted, checking on actors and other trivia while we watched the movie, and that’s when I understood.

The friends I saw it with in 1979 are still my friends. I remember a lot of the details of that night, including one of us walking across the parking lot to buy pizza while we waited in line.

Those friends would all attend my wedding in four years. My daughter was born the following year, and my son came along a decade after I waited in line that night, his own Star Trek adventures to come.

I communed a little with my 21-year-old self, then. I talked to him. Look at this, I said.

The 29-year-old in the seat next to you? That’s your son.

You’re 61 now. You’ve been married for 36 years, and you’re a grandpa.

That rectangular piece of plastic and glass on your lap? The one that should be in your pocket, or else it’ll end up sliding off and fall under the chair (of course it did)? It’s a $1000 supercomputer that’s superior to any pretend technology on the bridge of the Enterprise (they seemed to be using floppy disks).

But the film didn’t feel like a relic. It didn’t inspire thoughts of a simpler time, or of technical inferiority. It was a little cheesy, but so is a lot of 2019.

It wasn’t nostalgia, in other words. It was an awareness of how things have changed and still stayed the same. Forty years is a long time, and still I found a constant, if a slightly silly one.

Spock and Scotty are no longer with us, but the rest of the bridge crew is hanging in there, Shatner pushing 90 but still active and still the captain.

And I’m still me. It never occurred to me that this particular movie would be any kind of a touchstone, but now I think it is. I could sit in my seat and marvel at how much the world has changed, and still recognize that some things remain the same. And cherish that, a little.

It turns out that the only place no man has gone before is his future. It was just nice to be reminded that it’s a journey and not an end, not yet. Live long and prosper, y’all.