The trouble with trifles

As with any green-blooded American, my early life was to a great degree shaped by the original Star Trek. I had the classic Trek lunch box that was just a little too vintage to take to school. I've made the hegira to Vasquez Rocks to see the location of essentially every non-soundstage alien world. (That no away team ever ran into Lorne Greene and Michael Landon still annoys me.)

So it's been a blast to discover that a local station known for resurrecting series from syndication's suspended animation is showing Kirk and Co.--just when I should be going to bed, but those are the sacrifices one must make for nostalgia.

Yet something is just a little off. No, not the hammy acting. I'm well aware of - indeed, a big connoisseur of - Shatneriana. (Though nowhere near as deep into it as these guys.) And not the fact that Klingons look like pissed-off Beatniks back then. Too easy.

It's the special effects. They actually look...uh, good.

Take last night's offering, the infamous "Tribble" episode. I don't remember the Enterprise ever being seen from so many angles. Or moving so smoothly. And did the phasers always light up so cool? Am I going senile???

I have the feeling whoever is in charge of the legacy, under the guise of restoring the original, has succumbed to the Lucasian temptation to use 21st-century sfx technology to spruce up 20th-century kitsch. Would Desilu have sprung for CGI if it had been around in 1968? For a TV show?

That would be - say it with me, you pointy-eared freaks - illogical.