Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Gems from the Past

A relatively new channel was added to our cable package recently, the Heroes and Icons Channel, H&I for short. It has a lot of action adventure shows from the '70's, '80's, and '90's. Kung Fu. Hercules. Renegade.

Last month though, H&I started running all five live-action Star Trek series on Sundays and weeknights. (It makes me sad that Roddenberry declared the animated version of the original series isn't canon because it had some damn, fine episodes.)

All five.

While we have the complete sets of TOS and TNG, we don't have the other three. In fact, we haven't seen Enterprise is its entirety because Genius Kid was walking by the time it debuted. (I missed a lot of my favorite TV shows during the Toddler Years.)

I hadn't seen DS9 since it ended its first run while I was pregnant. I'd forgotten how much I loved the show.

However, I'm not sure if my visceral reaction to Vedek Winn the other night is memory or the current rise of extremist religious groups in our reality.

But an article in the AV Club last week reminded me that in many ways, DS9 was the "trekkiest of the Treks." None of the characters were perfect. They made mistakes, but they always tried to do the right thing. And they had some fun along the way.

Even more amazing were the comments after the article. Readers had a general discussion of DS9, the other Trek series, and comedy versus drama. No one was rude or insulting. It was rather refreshing compared to the plethora of trolls you find on other websites these days. A cooperative, entertaining, and thought-provoking view of the universe.

Maybe Gene Roddenberry has been right all along.

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