Perhaps strangely, I didn’t see any of the original Star Trek, despite its supposed omnipresence in ’70s syndication, until the summer of 1982. I certainly knew about the show. I had some of the Mego dolls, and a coloring book about a circus planet, and my friend Jamie had a Peter Pan Records comic and audio adventure which was most likely “Passage to Moauv.” I really don’t remember watching the cartoon. I read about the show when I checked some books out of the library in fifth grade, including Judy Fireman’s TV Book and at least one of those anthologies of massively condensed adaptations of episodes by James Blish.
Of course, I saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture at some point in 1979. But even that came after I’d tried piecing together the story of the film from a comic that ran across on the back of a series of McDonalds’ Happy Meal boxes, and I’m pretty sure even that got garbled because the artist drew Spock in scenes before he showed up in the story.
Before I could actually sit down and watch any of that show when channel 46 (then WANX-TV) started showing it (to tie in with the second movie), I had this sort of “race memory” of what Star Trek was about, and it was mainly about noble old extinct alien species with godlike powers who don’t think that humanity is quite ready for them, and who vanish into higher plains of existence which, one day, humans will be able to reach. I knew that, and was not all that excited by it, long before I started wondering why Frank Gorshin had half his face black and the other white, and why Captain Kirk had married a native American girl. If Doctor Who is all about running through corridors, then Star Trek is all about lost knowledge of the ancients. I’ve tried, Lord have I tried, but if it ain’t got Wyatt Earp and a red sky, I ain’t interested. Not even Jeri Ryan in the skintight silver suit can get me to watch Star Trek.
I mention all that at length because tonight’s episode of Jason of Star Command, written – as many were – by Trek vet Samuel A. Peeples, is exactly like that “race memory” of old Star Trek. I mean, at the end, the ancient Tantalutians who temporarily gave the commander the star disk to counter Dragos’s power even reclaims both disks into the great beyond so that our heroes could ponder whether one day humanity would be ready to accept these great gifts.
It’s everything that eleven year-old me found boring and stupid about Star Trek. I tuned out. Our son thought it was awesome and even applauded at the end. God help us, in the future.
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 