Busy Busy Busy, and Star Trek!

We are currently in Santa Fe for a few days, visiting friends and getting ready for our two month stint at Ghost Ranch.

This has kept us spinning, so today we decided to take a break and go to the movies. In our other life, we saw anywhere from two to five movies a week. But no more, since many of the places we travel don't even have movie theaters. Now going to the movies has become a special treat for us.

With all the summer movies in the theaters, we decided that we should go see the new Star Trek movie.

I remember when the original Star Trek television series first premiered. I was living in the Haight Ashbury and the word got around that there was to be this new science fiction television series that was supposed to be something really special. The problem was, that among the eleven people living in the house, none of us had a television. Because we REALLY wanted to see this new show, we all chipped in and bought a tiny used TV, just for this show. We put the TV up in the attic (where we got the best reception) and all huddled around, excited that maybe television was finally going to do some science fiction the way it was supposed to be done.

We were all huge science (speculative) fictions fans.

I wish I could tell you I remember exactly what that first episode was, but truly I don't. I do remember how excited it made us, and I remember that every week we continued to watch. It seemed like nothing we had ever seen before. A picture of the future which represented different races, different sexes, even different species. And it did it all without resorting to violence as the first avenue of resolution.

I really loved it.

Looking back at the whole Star Trek phenomenon, it's hard to realize that the original series lasted a mere three seasons (although in those days three seasons would produce close to eighty episodes). I've sort of followed the successive Star Trek series, but, while they seem to be quite good, I guess I just haven't been in as receptive a place as I was when the series originally premiered.

So I was really interested to see what this new film was all about. I am a big fan of director J. J. Abrams (Alias, Lost) and I had high hopes going in.

I wasn't disappointed.

Now, it didn't get into a lot of the "philosophical" areas of the original series, but it did a great job of reintroducing all the characters at a younger time in their lives, effectively setting us up for future adventures. I do have a few questions about some of the characters, but I must say, none of them occurred to me during the film. I was captivated.

I give the new Star Trek movie a definite Thumbs Up!