Star Trek

For all the reputation of it being egalitarian and cerebral, it sure seems like a lot of the conflict comes down to horny men jonesing for space alien ladies in skimpy outfits.

It’s actually all a lot of fun, even when it’s occasionally quite dry. Among other things, this is a story about the burden of leadership. And largely a model of effective leadership. Kirk is a shiny, heroic good guy, but he gets to be wrong sometimes. One of his great strengths is his willingness to listen to his crew and the trust he’s built with them that allows them to voice their concerns.

The stories as science fiction are hit or miss. Some of them feel like cliches or shallow or like they don’t have nearly enough ideas to fill sixty minutes, but it’s hard to know if these actually were cliches when they aired more than fifty years ago.

Many of the episodes are genuinely thrilling. Many have kind of laughably bad effects. I found it’s best to watch a little stoned.

Some of the alien effects are just remarkably goofy, like just so obviously men in cheap rubber suits. Clearly this is for children. But I was once a child.

So many karate chops.

I’m glad I didn’t skip any of them, even though it took me almost five months to get through these 29 episodes. I’m definitely going to keep working my way thru the Star Trek backlog as long as it continues to feel rewarding. It’s genuinely fun when a character is revealed to be Khan, and I’m like, wait, I don’t really know his deal but I know he’s important, and I lean in. Really I just love to get references, and I’m glad to get more of them now.