Speaking of Star Trek (well, I was yesterday), today is the 40th anniversary of the premiere of that obscure little TV series that nobody’s ever heard of. Forty years of split-infinitive goodness (referring, of course, to the show’s motto: “to boldly go”; it may be grammatically questionable, but it is undeniably catchy, even soul-stirring). Incredible. I can’t imagine how weird it must be for the surviving cast members and behind-the-scenes folks to still hear people talking about this show after all this time. (Granted, it’s not talked about as much as it was ten or so years ago, but it hasn’t exactly dropped off the pop-cultural radar, either.) Shatner has taken a lot of heat in the past for saying in that infamous SNL “Get a Life” sketch that, for him, Star Trek was just a job he did years ago, and he’s baffled by the enduring loyalty of its fans. However, I think he’s being more honest than other folks associated with the show who tend to wax poetic and/or philosophical about it, claiming that they knew all along they were involved in something special and revolutionary. I don’t buy that. Back in 1966-69, it really was just a TV show, just another job for all those involved in its production, and I highly doubt that anyone truly thought it would still be remembered, let alone revered, four decades later.

The thing I find especially interesting is not that the show is remembered, but rather how it is remembered. So often, when you read an article or watch a retrospective about Star Trek, people discuss it as if it was some kind of deep philosophical text outlining the path to utopia. Everyone talks about how the series presented an optimistic view of the future at a time — the late ’60s — when it didn’t look like there would be much of a future. They all mention how the show functioned as a parable for contemporary problems, how it anticipated many of the technological innovations we now take for granted, and how it broke ground by having an integrated crew composed of many nationalities, including women in positions of authority. At least that’s what the respectful commentators say. There are also those who denounce the show as dated ’60s camp, who dwell on the rubber monster suits, the brightly colored costumes, and Captain Kirk’s tendency to romance the female guest star of the week. Where the worshipful types see progressive values of equality, the detractors see sexism, pro-American nationalism, and imperialism.

I see elements of all those things when I watch Star Trek. Like I said in yesterday’s entry, it is what it is, a product of the times that produced it, when new values were being created but old ones were still a powerful influence. However, I also see things about the show that have been largely forgotten, at least by the casual viewers out there who often confuse Mister Spock with Doctor Spock. (That’s always driven me crazy, by the way, along with the frequent mispronunciation of the title as Star Track. Ugh.)

For instance, contrary to what the majority of the show’s fans now believe, Trek was not an ensemble show like the various spin-offs that came along later. It was about a single, heroic figure, Captain James T. Kirk, and the show starred William Shatner, not those other six people. In time, the series evolved to be about both Kirk and Spock and, to a lesser extent, Dr. McCoy, but Kirk was always front and center, and the secondary characters were, well, secondary. Sulu and Uhura never even had first names until the authors of the early-80s spin-off novels gave them ones, and we still know precious little about most of the regular characters’ personal lives, even after six movies and various guest appearances on the spin-offs.

However, the aspect of Star Trek that I think is most overlooked (and which I find one of its most appealing qualities) is the downright eerie tone found throughout much of the original series. Certainly its first season and, arguably, many episodes of the second and third were far more similar in mood to the original version of The Outer Limits than to Star Trek: The Next Generation. There were monsters a-plenty, certainly, but what I’m talking about is more the sense that our intrepid explorers were surrounded by vast and ancient mysteries, that the universe was an inherently spooky place where men in red shirts didn’t just die, they went mad first, from loneliness, from guilt, from plain old fright. And often the most frightening thing of all wasn’t the monster of the week; it was the frailty of the human psyche, the one thing that the crew of the Starship Enterprise couldn’t escape from, even all the way out on the edge of the Galaxy.

Take, for example, the very first episode ever aired, the one that ran 40 years ago tonight. It was called “The Man Trap,” a solidly entertaining middle-of-the-road entry that was neither one of the show’s stand-outs nor one of its embarassments. Many elements of the series were still in flux when “The Man Trap” was filmed — Spock’s character wasn’t quite worked out yet, for instance, and Sulu got almost as screen time as he did — but that eerie tone I mentioned was all over the place as the crew was stalked by a vampiric creature that could appear as the person the victim most desired. Dr. McCoy saw it as an old flame and, in the end, he had to destroy what appeared to be his former lover in order to save his captain’s life. Haunting enough, but what’s always stayed with me about this story is the creature’s nature, as explained by a researcher who discovered it and let it live, even after it killed his wife; the vampire was intelligent, you see, not just some mindless killer, and it was also the last of its kind. The researcher, Dr. Crater, likens it to the buffalo of “Old Earth” — once the plains were black with them, but then one day, they were all gone, an immense sorrow, a thing to be regretted. Crater had spared this last creature partly because it took the form of his dead wife and begged for its life, but also because it was all that remained of an ancient species and he didn’t want to be the one to finally drive the species into extinction. Pretty heavy stuff: a monster that one felt sympathy for, that had to be killed but the killing of which was a thing to be regretted.

Another early episode that functioned in a similar way was “Charlie X,” the story of an adolescent boy with immense psychic powers, who in the end could not live among the human race because he could not control his own impulses, and so was condemned to live among the disembodied essences of the vanished race that gave him the power — essentially becoming a ghost among ghosts. His final, anguished plea to Kirk as he is swept away — “I want to staaaaaaaayyyyy” — is corny, yes, but it nevertheless raises the hair on my arms because it is so full of longing and loneliness and utter hopelessness. Kirk knows that he’s just condemned this boy to hell, but he had no choice because there was no other way to save his crew. The Next Generation never managed to recreate this powerful emotional stew, even on the odd occasion when it was trying to do a spooky story. Picard’s universe was tamer than Kirk’s, less a place to be feared than a place to be adminstrated. I think that has a lot to do with why I never loved The Next Gen the way I loved the original Trek; it didn’t get under my skin and give me the willies.

Of course, it might’ve had something to do with the fact that I was four when I first saw the original Trek, and everything gives four-year-olds the willies…