We’ve already established that the HD DVD release of Star Trek is going to contain “enhancements” in the form of a lot of digital bells and whistles and there’ll be no HD DVD set of the unmolested episodes the way we remember them. The original series DVDs have cost me enough money already (twenty dollars each for forty two-episode discs with no special features at all, then 100 bucks a pop for 3 complete-season boxed sets with numerous special features of varying quality), so if they think I’m buying that shit again, they can take a flying fuck at the moon. But I’m totally torn about the CGI enhancements, unable to decide whether it’s a good or bad thing.

I’ve seen a few episodes on TV where they’ve made their changes, and while part of me screams “Don’t fuck with the tried and true!” the changes are not as odious as those made to Star Wars. Also, Star Wars consistently attracted new young fans just the way it was, making George Lucas’ decision seem to be more of a case of showing off than an action with legitimate motivations. Star Trek, however, hasn’t been quite as able to bring in the young kids—not in recent years, anyway—and this could be an effective way to bring brainless young people who laugh at shitty effects to Star Trek. Once they see the episodes, with the new digital perks helping them buy into the world, they’ll hopefully come to the realization that special effects should be completely secondary to awesome stories and characters anyway, and we’ll have brand new Star Trek fans on our hands. So while I like anything that can bring new Trekkies into the fold, this revisionism is still a somewhat upsetting notion and I’m definitely not going to pay for it.

And, finally, if next year’s Star Trek XI sucks (and it is fighting an uphill battle, recasting the roles that were played by established actors for 25 years) I am basically going to kill myself. Enterprise (the most recent series) never really took off, even for fans like me who wanted desperately to love it, and that basically buried Star Trek’s television presence. And Star Trek: Nemesis was mind-blowingly terrible. Watching that film was sort of like having somebody take a crap in your mouth, only he doesn’t have very good sphincter control so he gets it all over your face, too. It was a terrible, undignified way for the Next Generation to conclude its excellent legacy, it turned a lot of people off of the franchise, and it generally looked like Star Trek was going to lay dead for a long, long time. This upcoming new movie is the franchie’s completely unexpected new lease on life. Those in charge of the creative end of things seem to be actual fans of the show (unlike the director of Nemesis, who knew nothing about Star Trek and whose film made it abundantly clear that he didn’t care), and they have high hopes and the best of intentions. But they’ve picked a dangerous route with this “The Early Years” plot, and there are a lot of difficulties inherent in that notion that even the very best of intentions may not be able to overcome. I’m hoping for the best, but I don’t quite know what to expect.

But I do know that if it tanks like the last one, Star Trek will definitely be dead forever. And that means, inside, I’ll be dead too.

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