I wonder just how many science-fiction
fans were brought into the genre by one or another of Roddenberry's
creations? One of the first things I remember looking forward to on
television was the launch of Star Trek: The Next Generation on BBC
back in the day; I maintained my interest all though TNG and
DS9...and most of the way
through Voyager, though I regret to say that I never managed to get
into Enterprise. By then I was at my 'crazy hours' job and following
a TV series was impractical (though I managed with Battlestar
Galactica most of the way through – I guess the series just never
enthused me.) Obviously I watched the Original Series whenever it was
on. Heck, I bought them on DVD three times over the years...
So
that's where I start – from the television point of view. I think
I grew up at just the right time – when I was in my teens I had
Babylon 5, Space: Above and Beyond, the X-Files, Dark Skies...the
1990s, looking back, were a bit of a golden age for science-fiction
on television. And these are all still heavily represented among my
DVDs now, naturally...which might, thinking about it, be a reason why
these shows aren't on the air as much. When something of that ilk
emerges, then it's just as easy to throw on a DVD. When I started to
really get into reading, it was probably only natural that I
gravitated towards Star Trek novels; I had hundreds of the darn
things, and quite a few of them became firm favourites...(again –
back in the day TOS had the best novels. The quality really seemed to
drop for shows that were on the air, though there were notable
exceptions. (Watch out for some reviews in the future.)
Aside
from Trek, I really was into the older stuff. Asimov, Clarke,
Heinlein, and the like (these days...really only Asimov has held up
on my bookshelves, I must confess.) Walls full of the stuff – you'd
think that nothing had been published past about 1980. I think...I
like the grand vista. The potential of a limitless universe that
anything can happen, though grounded in sufficient reality to give it
a sense of realism that makes it feel as if it could
happen. (It took me a while to get over the disappointment that I
wouldn't attend Starfleet Academy, I can tell you!)
As
this sort of sci-fi has faded from the screen...it picks up in
original novels. Honor Nels...Harrington, for example, though I must
confess I never proceeded that far down the novels. Started to feel
as if I'd already read it when I studied Naval History at King's. The
stand-out for me is probably John Hemry's Lost Fleet...the only
reason I won't be reading the final-final book in that run on the day
it is out is because I have been told I'm getting it for my birthday,
four days later. Not that it does anything...massively original –
but it is an excellent, solid, gripping, entertaining read. It
doesn't have to pioneer new ground for me to have read the whole run
four times in as many years. I'll throw out another one – Helfort's
War, though that rather collapsed somewhere around Book 3 for me. We
seem to have moved from single books to series – written today,
Mote in God's Eye (still the best single-volume mil-sci-fi I have
read...well, that and Space Viking, but I rate that on a different
scale) would probably be a five or six book series. I know there are
likely to be dozens of recommendations here for other series...but in
a way, that isn't the point. None of these quite scratched my itch. I
felt...that perhaps there was something
here I could do. There are a lot of military science fiction series –
lots of space navies roaming around the fictional universe. But
let's get back to the original here...Star Trek.
That
was a lot more than a military science-fiction show. A lot more
than...well...flying around and blowing things up in big wars (that
are NOT WW2/Napoleonic/Civil War...let's make that clear right now).
Yes, there was a military element to it, and that's an important
thing – it creates drama. But a lot more of it was a sense of
exploration, of taking that big step out to see what lay beyond. Best
line is from the TNG episode Q Who: “It's wondrous, with treasures
to satiate desires, both subtle and gross. But it's not for the
timid." Now that
strikes me as a great tag line to launch some sort of adventure.
Ape
Star Trek? No. Not as such. Try and capture a similar sort of feel
through a lens we can be more familiar with today? Perhaps. Star Trek
– in all honesty – became less and less this as time went on,
until it really became another mil-sf show. Not that it was a bad
one, quite the reverse, DS9 has some of my favourite episodes...but
what happened to the opening from Encounter at Farpoint?
“Our destination is planet Deneb IV,
beyond which lies the great, unexplored mass of the galaxy.”
(Emphasis mine – but it's the way Patrick Stewart says it.)
There is a grandeur there. An almost
sensual desire to see what lies beyond the known, and explore the
unknown. Ironically the much-derided first season did this reasonably
well – later it seemed to lose sight of this concept and lose the
fun which I liked in those early episodes. There's an optimism there,
and that is something that
definitely is missing today. Look at when the original series aired –
man was on the verge of exploring space for real. Now we are
apparently further from the Moon now than we were then. Astounding.
That
is where Battlecruiser Alamo comes from. While I can't use those
great, stirring lines about Brave New Worlds...I can certainly try
and put them into practice.