Star Trekking

There's a new Star Trek movie opening in about three weeks. It's a prequel to the entire franchise beginning before the first starship Enterprise (NCC-1701) was completed.

I was never really much into Star Trek growing up. I caught a few episodes of the original series on Saturday mornings and enjoyed them, but I was definitely more of a Star Wars kid than Star Trek. I watched many episodes of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION when I was in high school and years later became more a fan of the franchise. I'm not a Trekker or Trekkie, but am a casual fan. However, what I didn't realize until just recently was that even though I wasn't a big fan, Star Trek had a huge prescence throughout my life. From 1979-1998 a new Star Trek movie was released every two-three years and, even though I only occassionally watched ST:TNG, from 1987-2005 there was at least one Star Trek show on television. When you're interested in pop culture and there's a franchise that has that large and long of an influence, it's bound to affect you somehow.

Last week I realized that it's been six-and-a-half years since the last Star Trek movie was released and four years since the last Star Trek television show ended its run. That's the longest break since the original series ended and the first Star Trek movie came out. I remember watching the last Star Trek movie, STAR TREK NEMESIS and I remember reading about when STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE ended it's run on tv (at the time the UPN wasn't airing around my area). With Star Trek in the background of my life for so long, I hadn't realized the franchise had been gone for so long. For whatever reason, that realization made me both nostalgic and hopeful.