musings on her father, or, keeping the tradition alive

reader, the baron is very excited for tomorrow's release of the new 'star trek' movie. even though she's been referring to it in her mind as 'star trek: the tiger beat version', and even though she is annoyed by all the young, young actors in it*, and even though jj abrams went and uglied up eric bana for no good reason... in spite of all these things, the baron is, as the 1998 version of herself would say, totally psyched!

she loves 'star trek', the original one, with kirk and spock and bones and scottie and chekov and sulu and even that mostly useless uhura. she loves all the movies, even the 'wrath of khan', and especially the one where they end up in modern-day san francisco? the one with the whales? she even loves 'star trek: the next generation', a series that she watched until almost the end, when the characters had evolved so far from their original selves that she had long since lost the ability to understand or relate to them.

she's not the type of fan who can quote the films back to you, or the type who knows every epsiode by heart. she would refer to herself, in the right company, as a trekkie... but not a TREKKIE, if you get her drift. and anyway, what's not to love? 'start trek', at least the two television series that she watched (after 'the next generation', she kind of gave up on it), took place in a mostly idyllic setting, where mankind had magically not destroyed the planet or itself. where practically any kind of food could be produced, whole, from a replicator (lamb tonight? no problem, and guilt free! no baby animals were slaughtered for your meal!). where the big issues were solved in one hour, two at the most. and really, who doesn't want his or her own holodeck? indeed, the 'star trek' universe was pretty heady stuff for the baron, stuff she's never quite gotten over.

and also.

her father loved 'star trek'. he always did like a good escapist novel or film, but 'star trek' was special. so special that - as the baron has told a few people this week - he used to skive off work on the opening day of a new 'star trek' movie to catch the day's first showing. later on, when the baron and the brother were older, he would take them too... though, no skipping school for them. the baron never quite knew exactly why her father was so excited about these films, or what spoke to him from the screen. she never knew if he saw himself reflected in kirk or spock or bones, or if he liked the subtlety of direction, or if he had had, since youth, a yen for space travel. they weren't really chatty in that way, the baron and her father.

so.

what she's left with are her memories of coming home from school the afternoon that a 'star trek' film opened to find: leftover popcorn on the kitchen counter (back in the days when popcorn came in bags, not buckets; her father could never finish a large bag himself); her father ready to share his very cursory review of the film; and the lingering feeling that something special had happened that day.

so.

the baron, being rather desperate to remember her father any and every way she can, will see 'star trek: the tiger beat version' tomorrow with the husband; new traditions and all that. she'll hope for a transformative feeling, one to remind her of childhood, before things got heavy. she'll pay a little homage to her father - maybe with a large popcorn - and try to imagine what he would have seen on the screen, what his review of the film would have sounded like.

she can actually imagine it now, what he might say after sitting through nearly two hours of film, the whole movie boiled down to this: 'those kids sure seem young.'


*(these actors are not, it should be noted, actually very young at all. the baron is probably just bothered that, for the first time in her life-long relationship with star trek, she is approximately the same age as the players on the screen. which makes her feel old.)