It has been years since Star Trek was really important to me. Decades. When I was a teen The Next Generation was (along with the Simpsons and the X-Files) the fiction I loved most. I loved the stories; I loved the vision of the future; most of all I loved the characters and could think of nothing better than flying around having adventures solving problems with a found family1. That’s still something I love the idea of, and pretty much is my mental model of what I wanted out of a working life.
I fell out of Star Trek fandom after my undergrad years. Nemesis was such a terrible movie. I dropped Voyager before Seven of Nine joined the show and never watched Enterprise. I saw the first JJ Abrams movie and it was fine but my spark was gone. I didn’t see the sequels. I watched the first and third seasons of Picard for nostalgic purposes, but could only find bits and pieces of what used to make me happy on TV2.
Now though, I’m in a different place in my life. I’m seeking out that idea of the found family zipping around in space. Mostly because my primary relationship broke down, and I’m making a new life. It’s more complicated doing that when you’re sharing parenting across a couple of houses than when you’ve got a five-year mission to explore space. So my escapism is bringing me back to Trek. I’m going with Discovery for now, hoping these missions and adventures are going to help bring me back to an exploring curious frame of mind.
It’s kind of sad I need the crutch of big commercial TV to make that happen, but here we are.
Pretty sure this is why on first airing I didn’t like Deep Space 9. They weren’t flying around enough and they were embedded in way more complicated relationships with each other and the universe. Last time I rewatched DS9 (in library school) it connected much better. ↩︎
I loved seeing the old TNG crew back together doing shit because I love those characters, and I love that the actors loved getting the gang back together. What they did story-wise was pretty irrelevant for me. ↩︎