Trekkies (1999) a documentary by Roger Nygard

Thursday, 5. December 2002

MEDIA:

Brilliant film about the fan-phenomena numero uno. If you're one of them or know one of them, it's a perfect christmas-gift. I really enjoyed it. Made me understand these people a little bit better. To get this clear, I hate Star Trek. I saw the original series when I was a kid and never really paid attention even though I liked Science Fiction. But I was the Star Wars-generation. I thought the show looked ridiculous. I mean, the cardboard-mountains and those alien they had, come on, it's stupid! Why would you want to waste your time trying to interpret this show as some sort of blueprint for the future? Yeah, they had a Russian and a black woman on the bridge. That's why Whoopie Goldberg became an actress and all that. Does anyone remember "Battlestar Galactica"? It was all about homeless Americans in outer space. I think earth was destroyed and they were just cruising around the galaxy to find a new home. It was truly Western and they had these great cheesy 70s-uniforms which were supposed to look Roman. Didn't they have capes too? Anyway, that show was real shit and just a rip off while Star Trek was something new. The approach was different. It was perfect for the hippies and Spock is obviously a classic charakter. Yeah, I always liked the idea of having Spock around. But everyone else was just a joke.

Years ago, they had a big convention in Bremen and I was writing about it for the taz, which is this daily leftie-newspaper in Germany. Walter Koenig (Checkov) was there and so was James Doohan (Scotty, the engineer), the red-haired woman who played the doctor in "Next Generation" and a few Klingons. I arrived when the doctor was on stage. Someone told me that she's a very rare guest at these cons and that even people from the US were in town to see her. Ok, people came all the way from Maple Plain, Minnesota on a plane to see this person speak for 30 minutes. I was interested to see this and went into that huge hall where thousands of people sat like they were in church. Most of them wore the red uniform that Kirk wears in the movies. Then there were a lot of Klingons, most of them in perfect costume. I had seen these people in magazines and on TV, but it's strange when you really see them doing their thing. It's a way of dressing up and playing around with certain parts of your personality that you usually can't act out in public. I looked at the photographer covering the story, Christoph Riccius. he's working for Wallpaper and all kinds of other fancy magazines by now. He's an ace. If you see what he can do with photography, you will die of envy. He's really getting into it and he was sniffing around like a young dog. I pointed over to the Klingons and said:"this is an easy job, go and get a shot of those guys while I check out this panel. I loved commanding around photographers, but Christoph obviouslay had his own idea. He did some great pictures of white walls and empty rooms. He got the utterly boring enviroment pretty good!

The doctor was talking and she started to get into it. I sat down on the side and watched the program. This was a truly religious event and I started to hate every moment of this. All these fans had been craving for this moment and suddenly this guy with a very bad costume comes on stage and interrupts the actress in the middle of some mildly amusing anecdote. He goes, "we gotta do the costume-contest now and I'm really sorry and bla." The guy took over the Mike and the doctor justz looks at the fans, shrugs her shoulders and leaves the stage. I thought, people would throw their lunch atthat guy, but everyone accepted the shedule. A bunch of the Klingons howled around for a minute, but that was it. Then Walter Koenig was on and he was an extremely nice guy. He must have done this kind of thing hundreds of times, but for some reason he wasn't in the right mood that day.

He obviously didn't like the big three and he certainly thought that William Shatner was an idiot chasing young women around the set. He said quite a few nasty things about how Spock, Kirk and Dr.McCoy always made sure their roles would stay upfront while Uhura, Sulu, Checkov and Spock would remain in the back and never really develop any sort of charakter. He got a little bitter when he talked about the time following the original-series. He was an actor in New York and he did theatre. It sounded like he preferred theatre anyway, but he remained Chekov for everyone even though he never had any better lines than "Captain, 'e 'ave a problem." Did Sulu ever have any other dialogue than "Warp ten, Mr.Sulu", "Aye Aye Captain"? Everyone's making a big deal out of Uhura being the first black woman on a TV-show, but she never got a brain or anything interesting to say. When the movies came out, Koenig tried to get a few more lines, but in the end they rewrote the script and all his scenes were remodelled for Dr.McCoy.

He was a very good storyteller and I laughed alot. But the nerds were making all this noise. When Koenig started putting Shatner down again, one of these idiots in their Admirals uniforms got up and went:"But, sir, don't you think, every ship needs a Captain?" Koenig answered something like"no, I don't believe in Captains and take off that monkey-suit while you're talking to me."
It was funny.

All these trekkie-people were like so challenged. I mean, everyone was ugly. It was unbelievable. They were all so harmless and friendly and talked in soft voices. But it's good they found a home in some way. I would have liked this thing when I was 13, but most of these people are grown-ups....

The question remains: Why make a cult out of Star Trek? How did this happen? Why not X-Men or something cool? Why don't they listen to the Velvet Underground instead?

Trekkie is probably the biggest religion in the world right now. We have to watch them!

Thanks to Jord for sending over the tape!

trekkies