Yup, Momma was a real first generation Star Trek fan.
She watched it from its introduction on Sept. 8, 1966 through its end on June 3, 1969.
(Admittedly, she was very young and when the Apollo 11 landed on the moon one month later on July 20, 1969 she was completely unimpressed. Momma had just turned 5 and had seen Captain Kirk and Spock (swoon!) do it weekly for nearly three years in COLOR. The grainy black-and-white footage of Neil Armstrong was b.o.r.i.n.g.)
Knowing this, Momma's brother introduced us last year to John Scalzi's 2012 hysterical sci-fi novel, Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, which was the winner of the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, with the chance to serve on "Away Missions" alongside the starship’s famous senior officers.
Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to realize that 1) every Away Mission involves a lethal confrontation with alien forces, 2) the ship’s senior officers always survive these confrontations, and 3) sadly, at least one low-ranking crew member is invariably killed. Unsurprisingly, the savvier crew members below-decks avoid Away Missions at all costs.
Then Andrew stumbles on information that transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.
(The idea of red-shirted characters being frequently killed in Star Trek has become a pop culture cliché. But is it really that hazardous? Click here to find out, but please note the women have a much better survival rate.)
Anyway, it was with great joy when we saw that FX announced plans to produce Redshirts as a limited television series - hopefully in 2015.
If Galaxy Quest was one of the best Star Trek motion pictures ever made, then Redshirts has the potential to be one of the best Star Trek television shows ever made.
We LOVE Star Trek too. you are so right in saying that female red shirts were better off than their male counterparts. Either way it was even better if you had a name when going on an away mission. Those poor unnamed souls... :`(
ReplyDeleteLive long and prosper, Addie and Addie's momma.