Star Trek the Younger Generation

There has been a lot of buzz about the new Star Trek move due out on May 8, 2009. This is the eleventh outing for the franchise and according to the synopsis this movie "explores the early Starfleet careers of future Enterprise officers Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, McCoy, Sulu, and Chekhov. A Romulan, Nero, and a much older Spock are influences, as well as Captain Pike, the first captain of the USS Enterprise."

This took me back to last year when I was invited to promote Escape 2 Earth at a sci-fi convention in Dallas, Texas. Seated across the room from me was Garrett Wang( Star Trek Voyager), two tables to my left was Connor Trinneer (Star Trek Enterprise) and next to Conner was the hardest working man in the business John Billingsley also from Enterprise. He told me a very funny behind the scene story but I can't repeat it without getting him into trouble.

Anyway as you would probably image with three stars from Star Trek in the same room (not to mention several Klingons roaming about) it wasn't very long before I got into a conversation with a few of the conventions volunteers about which Star Trek series was the best. I was not surprised that after much discussion that no consensus could be reached but what did surprise me was the division between the hardcore fans who were not at all happy to see the demise of Captain James T. Kirk and those who were more than happy to see him go. With that in mind I can't help but wonder how this current movie with a much younger version of Kirk will be received.

As for me it's difficult for me to pick one series because there were elements from each that I thought were better than the other, for example, the story lines on the original Star Trek were great but for obvious reasons the special effects were lacking. I also liked the story lines and special effects on Voyager but the most disappointing of all the Star Trek series has to be Deep Space Nine, it just didn't live up to its potential.