It is not often that I drag my sorry carcass to the cinema. I prefer lost films myself. Celluloid masterpieces such as Edward D. Wood Jr.'s 1972 classic, The Undergraduate are my forte. Films that exist in rare prints, films that are only extant in a damaged or incomplete form and some that never existed in the first place are my usual fare. À tort et à travers, I lurched into the local picture house recently to satisfy a childhood craving.

The year was 1977 and my recently redundant father entered our sitting room with a brand new COLOUR TV. When I say redundant I mean relieved of his employment rather than his position as titular head of household. My dysfunctional siblings and I were already assembled around the space where the cathode shrine would take pride of place. Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis and all that. Up until then, and rather late in the day might I add, we had satisfied ourselves with monochrome domestic entertainment. We even listened to the radio in black and white, although this was only a problem when they broadcast snooker.

Anyway, the prospect of one show more than any other made our ocular facilities salivate or should I say lacrimate - Star Trek. We were a family of proto-Trekkies who weren’t sad enough to become actual Trekkies. We even had favourites. Mine was that irrepressible Russian Starfleet officer, Pavel Andreievich Chekov. I chose him because I was the youngest and all the others had been taken.

The television came replete with a sliding, wood effect door. This enabled you to hide the fact that you dared to watch the goggle box from your disapproving neighbours - if they ever popped around for tea. Middle-class families in our neck of the woods were obviously expected to have a good old sing song round the piano of an evening. Television was for common people and Roman Catholics. We were both. Property prices took a nose dive I can assure you.

Having switched it on, in eager anticipation, we were forced to wait while it ‘warmed up’. The picture seemed to wobble on to the screen like a sort of green tornado, something I’ve never witnessed on any other piece of televisual equipment. But, and this is the crux of my tale, the image that burned itself on to our retinas was the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Captain James T. Kirk sat in his throne, looking habitually pensive. Spock stood to his right, typically emotionless and calculating. Scotty stood to his left, a look of familiar defeat crowning his features. Only this time they were devoid of their dull, grey uniforms. Kirk was yellow, Spock blue, Scotty a shocking red. We had never witnessed anything like this. It was like walking in to a Jackson Pollock painting. That image lives with me to this day, in sparkling Technicolor.



So, having been blown away once by Gene Roddenberry’s baby I couldn’t help but notice that Star Trek was being reinvented for the big screen, again. I thought nothing of the original movies, still less of the cloying, saccharine, vomit fest that was The Next Generation. Those other abortionate incarnations will remain unnamed for aesthetic reasons. The difference here was the prospect of the original characters once again being introduced. I always loved Kirk’s logs which appeared to be full of faux ‘philosophispeak’ and Shakespearian buffoonery: “My soul searches for meaning on this deserted planet. Spock and the others seem distant. What is the lot of man, are we meant to suffer? The others may return to the ship but will they be the same men and women who left it”? In truth if an unknown character went on a mission they were invariably struck down by a child-like Apollo or laid low by a prosthetic disease. We called them ‘the expendable ones’. I do wonder how the Enterprise functioned with Kirk’s inane ramblings. Couldn’t he have inter-spliced them with some practical announcements like “The Holodeck needs a wipe” or “The canteen will be serving Vulcan selhat soup, followed by shepherd’s pie”?

I was not disappointed by the aural and visual delights that faced me as I drank in the latest incarnation. The story was a little far-fetched. A convenient meeting between the spanking new 'buff' Captain Kirk and a decrepit Leonard Nimoy stretched credulity, but with plenty of stunning, ear-splitting effects and a little humour, popcorn spilled on to my velveteen chair, the tangy taste of caffeinated coke fizzed around the roof of my mouth and I was entertained. Oh, and Simon Pegg really is a star, after all.