Existential Angst Aboard the Starship Enterprise

---

---

James Kirk (William Shatner): Spock, did we just see the beginning of a new life form?

Spock (Leonard Nimoy): Yes, Captain. We witnessed a birth. Possibly a next step in our evolution.

Kirk: I wonder.

Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley): Well, it's been a long time since I delivered a baby. And I hope we got this one off to a good start.

Kirk: I hope so, too. I think we gave it the ability to create its own sense of purpose ... out of our own human weaknesses ... and the drive that compels us to overcome them.

McCoy: And a lot of foolish human emotions. Right, Mr. Spock?

Spock: Quite true, Doctor. Unfortunately, it will have to deal with them as well.

---

If you're under 40, you need to understand the status of the Star Trek franchise on this day in 1979.

Up to that time, there had been only one primetime Star Trek TV series — the original one that aired for three seasons in the 1960s and starred William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. There was an animated series that ran on Saturday mornings for a couple of years; otherwise, Star Trek's fan base had to content itself with reruns of the original primetime series, which were plentiful.

"Trekkies" — if that is what they were called — spent tons of money on the Star Trek promotional materials that were marketed in those days. Hard–core Trekkies could purchase a set of blueprints for the fictional Starship Enterprise. In hindsight, all the signs were there that Star Trek was about ready to take off — and it did. It became a cultural phenomenon.

There were also signs that many Trekkies suffered from undiagnosed mental disorders.

When "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" premiered 35 years ago today, it launched a movement. I've never been a Star Trek fan, but, by my count, there have been at least four TV series and five additional movies to date since the first movie's debut. Not all of the movies were good, but the first one, as even non–Trekkies such as myself had to admit, was pretty good.

The movie that premiered on this date in 1979 reunited the original cast and touched on all the running themes from the original series. It must have been everything that every Trekkie had dreamed about. It earned three times as much as it cost to make.

---

---

Interestingly, film critic Roger Ebert saw the reunion of the original cast as a negative.

"Epic science–fiction stories, with their cosmic themes and fast truths about the nature of mankind, somehow work best when the actors are unknown to us," Ebert wrote. "The presence of the Star Trek characters and actors who have become so familiar to us on television tends in a strange way to undermine this movie. The audience walks in with a possessive, even patronizing attitude toward Kirk and Spock and Bones, and that interferes with the creation of the 'sense of wonder' that science fiction is all about."

Maybe so. As I say, I was never a Trekkie, and I always have had a little trouble getting into Star Trek plotlines, whether they were on TV or the big screen. That was particularly true of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry produced the movie, and I think he felt liberated by the big screen because special effects were splashier than anything I had seen on TV. I think, to a certain extent, I was dazzled by that.

Consider, for a moment, what an achievement that was. The late '70s and early '80s probably produced more blockbuster sci–fi movies than at any other time in film history. Coming in the wake of such recent releases as "Star Wars," "Alien" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," the special effects had to be impressive — and the special effects in "Star Trek" really were quite extraordinary.

Anyway, the plotline of the movie bewildered me just as the plotlines of the TV episodes bewildered me. My mind is not oriented toward science fiction.

But then at the end it all came together for me — just as it often did with the episodes in the TV series — in a kind of cosmic metaphysical twist.

---

---

Spock: Each of us ... at some time in our lives, turns to someone — a father, a brother, a god — and asks,"Why am I here? What was I meant to be?"

---

I'm not sure I ever really bought the movie's conclusion at the time — and if you haven't seen it, I don't want to spoil it for you.

But if you have seen any of the original Star Trek TV episodes, you can probably guess.

"The Star Trek movie is fairly predictable in its plot," Ebert wrote. "We more or less expected that two of the frequent ingredients in the television episodes would be here, and they are: a confrontation between Starship Enterprise and some sort of alien entity, and a conclusion in which basic human values are affirmed in a hostile universe."

Nevertheless, Ebert wrote, "There is, I suspect, a sense in which you can be too sophisticated for your own good when you see a movie like this. ... My inclination, as I slid down in my seat and the stereo sound surrounded me, was to relax and let the movie give me a good time. I did and it did."

"Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was nominated for three Oscars and lost all three.

Tornado Season

---

---

I grew up in central Arkansas. If there is a heart in the so–called "Tornado Alley" in America, that must be where it is.

They take tornadoes seriously in Arkansas, as they do in neighboring states like Oklahoma, because they have a long history of dealing with them. Tornadoes are the loose cannons of meteorology. They pop up almost without notice and tend to be short–lived, but, oh, are they destructive.

We've needed no reminders of that lately, having just experienced the deadliest day in my lifetime in terms of tornado activity.

I recall a devastating tornado that came through my hometown when I was about 5 years old. My parents had gone out for the evening — probably for dinner and a movie — and they had left my brother and me with a teen–aged girl who lived a couple of miles down the road from us.

This girl had watched us before. We lived in the country, and it was a convenient arrangement. My brother and I liked her — well, I guess I can only speak for myself. My brother was about 2 years old, but he seemed to like her, as I remember. Anyway, her name was Gail.

At some point that evening (probably early, but I don't think I had learned to tell time yet), it turned windy and stormy. I remember listening to the radio with Gail (my parents didn't have a television in those days) and hearing the tornado warnings that were being issued — and wondering why Gail had turned as pale as a sheet. I guess the words in the broadcast were really beyond my years.

Anyway, she called her father and asked him to come pick us up and take us back to their house — because there was a storm cellar there. He was at our house in no time, and the three of us made a mad dash to his pickup truck. We piled in, he turned the ignition, and he drove like a crazy man, trying to outrun the tornado — which was practically on top of us.

If its path had been unobstructed, it might have picked up that truck and tossed it who knows where. I don't know how powerful it was. I don't think the famous Fujita scale was in use at that time, but it must have been pretty strong. The area where we lived was kind of hilly, and the tornado must have bounced off the terrain. I remember looking up through the windshield and seeing the tornado go directly over us.

The noise was deafening. The truck shook some. But nothing worse than that happened to us.

The storm proceeded into town, plowing through a residential section and leveling several homes by the time we arrived at the sitter's house. At that point, the danger had passed us by, I guess, but we still got into the storm shelter, anyway, and stayed there for what seemed like hours. When we emerged, the wind was still blowing — although not as violently as before — and my strongest memory is of my sitter and her siblings catching shreds of paper and announcing the addresses on envelopes and magazine labels.

It was really astonishing how far some of those pieces of paper (presumably) had traveled in a short time. At least, it seems so in hindsight. At that time in my life, I presume, I had no concept of the distance between places.

Anyway, I developed a healthy respect — at an early age — for tornadoes.

My parents must have picked us up at some point that evening. I have no memory of it. It had been kind of a harrowing evening for all of us.

Later, after I had grown up, I lived in Oklahoma for awhile. We had some pretty severe storms during the time I lived there, and we had a few tornado episodes, but nothing devastating hit the area in which I lived in the time I lived there. For that, I was grateful — especially since some particularly nasty storms went through the area a couple of years after I left.

Tornadoes have done considerable damage in Oklahoma since I moved away, and the movie that premiered 15 years ago today — "Twister," which was set in Oklahoma — is the only film I have ever seen that realistically re–created the experience of an encounter with a massive, deadly storm.

I never saw it in the theater, but I suspect it would have been a lot like a movie I saw with my mother — 1974's "Earthquake." The experience was enhanced by an audio system called Sensurround in which low–frequency sounds gave viewers the physical sensation of an earthquake.

I don't think they were still using Sensurround in 1996. Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time a movie was advertised as including Sensurround. If memory serves, it was kind of cumbersome and costly in the mid–1970s, and most theaters decided, in the end, not to invest in the equipment that was necessary.

With few theaters using Sensurround technology, it simply didn't make sense to make films that utilized it.

If Sensurround had still been in use when "Twister" was released, I'm sure it would have made the theatrical experience as terrifying as the real one can be.

---

---

I didn't see any flying cows when I was 5 years old. I'm sure that would have been a memorable — not to mention traumatizing — moment for me. I remember having nightmares at about the same time after seeing the winged monkeys in "The Wizard of Oz."

Even without Sensurround, I think the film's main attraction was the special effects — and to experience that as fully as possible, it probably was necessary to see the movie on a big screen. Not matter how large one's TV might be, I always figured the dialogue in "Twister" was realistic. I've never traveled with any "storm chasers" so I can't speak from experience on that one. But the dialogue struck me as authentic — even if some elements of the story were a bit forced.

That isn't meant to take anything away from the cast.

Helen Hunt was as charming as ever — and had better things ahead of her. Two years later, she won an Oscar for her performance in "As Good As It Gets."

Bill Paxton, who played her ex– (and, the story hinted, future) spouse, was something of a hot commodity in Hollywood in those days. A year earlier, for example, he had played one of the astronauts aboard the ill–fated Apollo 13 — one of the top–grossing films of 1995.

A year after "Twister," he played a character who appeared to be loosely based on Dr. Robert Ballard, the man who located the wreckage of the Titanic in James Cameron's blockbuster movie of the same name.

Some of the other cast members were headed for bigger things. Jami Gertz, who played Paxton's girlfriend in "Twister," has enjoyed some success on TV. Philip Seymour Hoffman, who played a fellow storm chaser, has been in several noteworthy films. He also won an Oscar.

But, in 1996, nothing was bigger than their adventures chasing storms in Oklahoma on America's silver screens.