It was 1991. I was standing in the lobby of the movie theatre in the Gloucester Town Centre on the other side of Ottawa, feeling very exposed. I was 21, and I was about to attend my first "in a movie theatre" movie against my parents' wishes and the teaching of my church. There were many theatres closer to where I lived, but I had picked this one because I knew of only one family from my church who lived anywhere near this shopping mall, and who might see me waiting in line.
It wasn't like I was going to keep this indulgence a secret for the rest of my life, but still, the shame of possibly being seen by someone I knew while perpetrating the act had been engrained in me heavily enough that it felt exactly like picking up a prostitute would have for the average person.
More than 15 years earlier, I had first seen Star Trek on television. It was the 70's, and my parents had recently gotten rid of their television when the jokes on M*A*S*H* had became too embarrassingly sexual and/or alcohol-related for my father to be able to comfortably watch with my mother in the room. We were visiting my grandfather's much-younger brother's house, and he had a pair of teenaged sons. I was about five years old, and when I went down to the basement to where they were hanging out, they were watching Star Trek.
I asked what the show was, instantly engrossed in anything that moved around in black and white on the little TV set. Jamie kindly explained to me that it was Star Trek and that it was a very cool show. I started to watch it with them, the show already underway. What I saw terrified me so much I had to go upstairs and sit with the adults as they discussed politics, home renovations and mortgages.
What I had seen, I learned much later, was a small part of the "For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky" episode. What was happening was that the Enterprise crewmen had beamed down to a planet where the inhabitants for generations lived inside the planet, rather than on the surface. The inhabitants of this hollow planet did not know or understand this, as the whole society had descended into mindless, superstitious religion, in which a computer called The Oracle told everyone what to do and shaped how they thought and lived.
Questioning any of this resulted in the computer punishing you by inflicting mortal pain directly into your head. If you didn't relent and give in to the brainwashing, it fried your brain from the inside out.
I saw the heroes writhing on the floor in agony, punished by the computer for bringing "outside thinking" into this tight-knit religious circle. Not too oddly, this terrified me.
Its connection to my own life then is still actually kind of creepy now. The episode takes its title from the dying words of a man, newly freed from the shackles of his superstitious religion, grasping that they are, in fact, inside a hollow world, who utters this realization as he dies, having won some vista on the truth at the cost of his life.
Star Trek was already in repeats when I saw that brief terrifying scene, it having been cancelled before I was born. I soon forgot all about it until an animated version of it was made for Saturday morning television, and though I didn't see it, the kids started talking about it at school. As usual, I followed them around, pumping them for information and trying to picture the whole thing in my head with no visual reference.
The ideas of an emotionless man with pointy ears, of ray guns with immense destructive power, of being teleported from place to place, exploring alien planets; these concepts captured my imagination. Because I was imagining it rather than seeing it realized on 1960’s television budgets, it didn’t have cheap special effects. It was REAL.
My father taught gym class at a grades 6 through 8 school I did not yet attend, and I was in his office in June. I was perhaps in grade 4 or 5, having started to read books, and I saw on his desk a book called Star Trek: Log Seven. It had been left in a change room by an unidentified kid who was now done school for the summer, so first I read it covertly, then I got brave and asked if I could keep it and Dad said I could, but would have to give it back if the kid came looking for it. I still have it.
This started me on a quest to find the novelizations of all of the Star Trek episodes and read every one of them in the evenings while normal kids were watching TV. Star Trek: Log Seven, I found out later, wasn't even a novelization of the original TV show; it was an adaptation of the animated cartoon that came after. I didn't care. It was a book that allowed me to experience Star Trek. (The idea of writing books with the characters from the TV show, but in new, completely original stories hadn't really taken off yet.)
It wasn't like I was going to keep this indulgence a secret for the rest of my life, but still, the shame of possibly being seen by someone I knew while perpetrating the act had been engrained in me heavily enough that it felt exactly like picking up a prostitute would have for the average person.
* * *
More than 15 years earlier, I had first seen Star Trek on television. It was the 70's, and my parents had recently gotten rid of their television when the jokes on M*A*S*H* had became too embarrassingly sexual and/or alcohol-related for my father to be able to comfortably watch with my mother in the room. We were visiting my grandfather's much-younger brother's house, and he had a pair of teenaged sons. I was about five years old, and when I went down to the basement to where they were hanging out, they were watching Star Trek.
I asked what the show was, instantly engrossed in anything that moved around in black and white on the little TV set. Jamie kindly explained to me that it was Star Trek and that it was a very cool show. I started to watch it with them, the show already underway. What I saw terrified me so much I had to go upstairs and sit with the adults as they discussed politics, home renovations and mortgages.
What I had seen, I learned much later, was a small part of the "For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky" episode. What was happening was that the Enterprise crewmen had beamed down to a planet where the inhabitants for generations lived inside the planet, rather than on the surface. The inhabitants of this hollow planet did not know or understand this, as the whole society had descended into mindless, superstitious religion, in which a computer called The Oracle told everyone what to do and shaped how they thought and lived.
Questioning any of this resulted in the computer punishing you by inflicting mortal pain directly into your head. If you didn't relent and give in to the brainwashing, it fried your brain from the inside out.I saw the heroes writhing on the floor in agony, punished by the computer for bringing "outside thinking" into this tight-knit religious circle. Not too oddly, this terrified me.
Its connection to my own life then is still actually kind of creepy now. The episode takes its title from the dying words of a man, newly freed from the shackles of his superstitious religion, grasping that they are, in fact, inside a hollow world, who utters this realization as he dies, having won some vista on the truth at the cost of his life.
Star Trek was already in repeats when I saw that brief terrifying scene, it having been cancelled before I was born. I soon forgot all about it until an animated version of it was made for Saturday morning television, and though I didn't see it, the kids started talking about it at school. As usual, I followed them around, pumping them for information and trying to picture the whole thing in my head with no visual reference.
The ideas of an emotionless man with pointy ears, of ray guns with immense destructive power, of being teleported from place to place, exploring alien planets; these concepts captured my imagination. Because I was imagining it rather than seeing it realized on 1960’s television budgets, it didn’t have cheap special effects. It was REAL.
My father taught gym class at a grades 6 through 8 school I did not yet attend, and I was in his office in June. I was perhaps in grade 4 or 5, having started to read books, and I saw on his desk a book called Star Trek: Log Seven. It had been left in a change room by an unidentified kid who was now done school for the summer, so first I read it covertly, then I got brave and asked if I could keep it and Dad said I could, but would have to give it back if the kid came looking for it. I still have it.
This started me on a quest to find the novelizations of all of the Star Trek episodes and read every one of them in the evenings while normal kids were watching TV. Star Trek: Log Seven, I found out later, wasn't even a novelization of the original TV show; it was an adaptation of the animated cartoon that came after. I didn't care. It was a book that allowed me to experience Star Trek. (The idea of writing books with the characters from the TV show, but in new, completely original stories hadn't really taken off yet.)
Eventually, I convinced my parents to buy for my birthday (we didn't have Christmas) a black plastic toy phaser gun that shot a circular propeller from the front, and later on, a Mr. Spock doll from Mego. I never did get the dolls of any of the other characters. (Well, not until recently, when I discovered eBay)The window of opportunity between when one could ask for things like this, once or twice a year, and when said objects were eventually all sold out of stores was a narrow one. I only had Mr. Spock for company, and I related to the man heavily. I had exactly the same practice of not showing my emotions on my face. It wasn't safe to wear your heart on your sleeve in the setting I grew up in. If you showed pleasure in something and anyone concocted a reason as to why it wasn't a good thing for Christians (for example. my uncle saying "Star Trek is a Godless show" ) that joy you had just displayed attracted lectures and guilt like a magnet attracts iron filings. Conversely, if your face or posture showed some sign of boredom or annoyance with some church-related person or thing, you might be showing signs of being headed for Hell.
My buddy thought Captain Kirk was so much cooler than Spock, because Kirk hit people and got girls and was the boss. My friend tended to hit people and sometimes got girls as well. He's on his second wife now. I related to Spock because he was an outsider, no one understood him, and he wasn't allowed to show emotion, take part in or enjoy anything, so all he had was logic and a life inside his own thoughts. When everyone was laughing at the end, he was standing there with a blank look on his face.
I loved to laugh, but I’d been taught that an awful lot of things weren’t at all funny. Sexual or alcohol-related jokes, for instance. Or ones about religion. When I played with my Mr. Spock doll (which I always called an "action figure" as my father apologetically explained to visitors "Michael plays with dolls..." ) the intrepid officer had always just beamed down to an alien world alone, and had gotten stranded there, for various reasons. Able to communicate with his ship, but stranded nonetheless, he waited around, trying to survive and eventually to escape it all. I related heavily. Star Trek movies came and went, and I read the novelizations of each one, from the library. When it came to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, I read the newspapers, and was appalled. They'd killed Mr. Spock! I read the novelization of that movie and found it deeply moving.
By the time Star Trek III: The Search For Spock was out on video, I hadn't gotten my hands on a novelization of it yet, and besides, I had a new idea, made possible by the wonders of practical 1980’s electronics technology. The kid across the road had gotten a VCR, and we hung out, so I screwed up my courage, went directly into a video rental store, no matter WHO might see me, and I rented Star Trek's I through III.
I watched them almost back-to-back. I started with what Dave calls Star Trek: The Motionless Picture and was amazed and interested in how the characters moved, what their facial expressions were, and how their voices sounded. I hadn't suspected that William Shatner would talk...thaaaatWAY! or that Leonard Nimoy as Spock would have such a deep, resonant voice. I had assumed that, in typical American TV style, the "smart science guy" would have a nasal, nerdy voice.
I borrowed a second VCR and made a murky copy of the movies onto a VHS tape, one whose picture darkened and lightened in a partly successful attempt at copy protection. Watching those three Star Trek movies was an incredibly definitive experience. It felt spiritual in a way church never had, as guilty as that made me feel. I'll never forget it. Now I could simply wait until half a year after the movie stopped playing at the theatre, and I could simply rent it as it came out on video, being careful not to read the novelization until after I'd watched the movie, so as not to "wreck" the movie by knowing how it all turned out.
Then I went to University and Star Trek: The Next Generation came on TV. It was ok, but I certainly never felt I needed to watch all of the episodes. I always felt like it was good, but was watered down Star Trek. Same stuff happening to more characters, more talking, and a ship interior that looked like it was designed by the people who design cubicle-farms in offices.
Later, when my buddy got an apartment with cable TV and a VCR, we started a routine. I would go over to his house each week night shortly before 10 while he was still at work and set the VCR to tape the rerun of Star Trek that was playing that night, but I'd leave the TV turned off so as not to see it. He'd get in from work around eleven (he was working at the gas station below his second-floor apartment) and we'd rewind the tape and watch it. I soon had eight VHS tapes of Star Trek episodes, commercials still in them. After a year or so of that, I had seen every episode. This definitely felt like a victory of sorts.
I watched them almost back-to-back. I started with what Dave calls Star Trek: The Motionless Picture and was amazed and interested in how the characters moved, what their facial expressions were, and how their voices sounded. I hadn't suspected that William Shatner would talk...thaaaatWAY! or that Leonard Nimoy as Spock would have such a deep, resonant voice. I had assumed that, in typical American TV style, the "smart science guy" would have a nasal, nerdy voice.
I borrowed a second VCR and made a murky copy of the movies onto a VHS tape, one whose picture darkened and lightened in a partly successful attempt at copy protection. Watching those three Star Trek movies was an incredibly definitive experience. It felt spiritual in a way church never had, as guilty as that made me feel. I'll never forget it. Now I could simply wait until half a year after the movie stopped playing at the theatre, and I could simply rent it as it came out on video, being careful not to read the novelization until after I'd watched the movie, so as not to "wreck" the movie by knowing how it all turned out.
Then I went to University and Star Trek: The Next Generation came on TV. It was ok, but I certainly never felt I needed to watch all of the episodes. I always felt like it was good, but was watered down Star Trek. Same stuff happening to more characters, more talking, and a ship interior that looked like it was designed by the people who design cubicle-farms in offices.
Later, when my buddy got an apartment with cable TV and a VCR, we started a routine. I would go over to his house each week night shortly before 10 while he was still at work and set the VCR to tape the rerun of Star Trek that was playing that night, but I'd leave the TV turned off so as not to see it. He'd get in from work around eleven (he was working at the gas station below his second-floor apartment) and we'd rewind the tape and watch it. I soon had eight VHS tapes of Star Trek episodes, commercials still in them. After a year or so of that, I had seen every episode. This definitely felt like a victory of sorts.
* * *
So, having a TV and VCR of my own (no cable though, out in cow country), and getting comfortable renting movies from the video rental store without shame, at the ripe old age of 21, I was ready to take the next step.I drove into Ottawa and across the city to the most out-of-the-way movie theatre I knew of, in the mall where I'd worked at Radio Shack during Christmas and been laid off once the holiday season was over. Having a TV was a bit shameful if you wanted to be taken at all seriously as a follower of God's will, and was not something one talked openly about with church folk, unless one knew for certain that everyone within earshot also had a TV.
One guy would actually stand outside of church afterward and ask, "Did you see Magnum PI (on the microwave?)" in a mock attempt at subterfuge, as he didn’t much care about his reputation. Going to the movies was something I had always strongly disapproved of in others, far into my teens. It was decadent, sensual self-gratifying pleasure wallowing and nothing less. It had no possible worth or spiritual purpose, so if you did it, you made clear to everyone that you were the sort of person who preferred "the things of this world" to "the Lord's things." You could be a respected churchgoer who forswore various fun things, or you could be an indulger in these things who was merely a tourist at church, and there was no middle ground. You knew who you were and what was expected of you.
By 21 I had come to terms with how hypocritical it was that my family now had a television, but strongly disapproved of people who would watch a movie at the theatre. This didn’t make sense, and I knew it. My plan was that I'd go see Oliver Stone's The Doors with a guy from work, but I'd been recently laid off and we hadn't managed to synchronize schedules, so I went to my first movie, as with most movies since then, alone. With only myself to please, there was no contest. Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country it was, the last film with the original cast.
It was a very cold winter evening, and I went into the mall, and walked around pretending I wasn't actually about to do the most audaciously irreligious, heretical thing of my life up to that point. Other people's kids at church were (somewhat) secretly drinking alcohol, smoking pot and having sex at this point, but I wasn't other people's kids. I was from a family who insist upon taking absolutely everything deadly seriously, even if it kills us. Just going to the movies would hurt my dad’s credibility at church and completely destroy mine. If I wanted to ever be a respected member of the church, an unofficial elder or teacher of some kind there, I was boldly going in the wrong direction.
So, I walked around, getting my courage up, seeing the bastard who'd laid me off from Radio Shack, hard at work in the store. (Not that I had a brain that could think of anyone as a "bastard" at that point. My brain literally thought of him as "that ______ guy, Tito Peralta" with an unexpressed blank spot where I wasn't allowed a word to express my anger with him, in much the same way I often made inarticulate grunts in place of "swear words" when angry).
If the "important" boss people from my church had found out that I'd gone to the movies, they wouldn't have excommunicated me, as they did a few years later over the parody of their religious literature that I made. They would probably have either informally shunned me as an unabashed hedon, or else would have given me a "word to my conscience." You couldn't have fun AND expect blessing from God. It didn't work that way. You were given eternal life as a free gift, thanks to the work of Jesus. Your life was blessed or not, based upon your abstinence from joy. Every moment of transient pleasure you forestalled was money in the Bank of Heaven. Saved by grace, living by sombre continence, we subsisted.
After living a few decades this way, when anything pleasurable seems to be in the offing, one develops a learned annoyance/disapproval/disappointment response to it that overshadows what would have been the natural one. My cousins soon found out exactly where I'd gone the first time I showed in depth knowledge of the movie before it was out on video, and one of those cousins who routinely watched (rented) movies with me made it very clear that I wasn't "living properly."
I didn't agree, but I nonetheless literally had a series of nightmares in which he and the other church folk drew back in fear and disgust, with burning black globes of hate for eyes, as I became a walking curtain of maggots, vainly calling out for their aid as the writhing grubs filled my eyes, ears and mouth until I couldn’t cry out or breathe anymore.
So, I walked around, getting my courage up, seeing the bastard who'd laid me off from Radio Shack, hard at work in the store. (Not that I had a brain that could think of anyone as a "bastard" at that point. My brain literally thought of him as "that ______ guy, Tito Peralta" with an unexpressed blank spot where I wasn't allowed a word to express my anger with him, in much the same way I often made inarticulate grunts in place of "swear words" when angry).
If the "important" boss people from my church had found out that I'd gone to the movies, they wouldn't have excommunicated me, as they did a few years later over the parody of their religious literature that I made. They would probably have either informally shunned me as an unabashed hedon, or else would have given me a "word to my conscience." You couldn't have fun AND expect blessing from God. It didn't work that way. You were given eternal life as a free gift, thanks to the work of Jesus. Your life was blessed or not, based upon your abstinence from joy. Every moment of transient pleasure you forestalled was money in the Bank of Heaven. Saved by grace, living by sombre continence, we subsisted.
After living a few decades this way, when anything pleasurable seems to be in the offing, one develops a learned annoyance/disapproval/disappointment response to it that overshadows what would have been the natural one. My cousins soon found out exactly where I'd gone the first time I showed in depth knowledge of the movie before it was out on video, and one of those cousins who routinely watched (rented) movies with me made it very clear that I wasn't "living properly."
I didn't agree, but I nonetheless literally had a series of nightmares in which he and the other church folk drew back in fear and disgust, with burning black globes of hate for eyes, as I became a walking curtain of maggots, vainly calling out for their aid as the writhing grubs filled my eyes, ears and mouth until I couldn’t cry out or breathe anymore.
Needless to say, I bought a ticket for the sixth Star Trek movie, not sure where to go or what to say to get a ticket, trying not to look over my shoulder to see if anyone was looking (in case someone was looking) and went in to catch the very start of the very tail end of the very last incarnation of the very first Star Trek franchise.
It was perfect. In every way. Drama. Wit. Tricks. Shakespearean quotations in space. Klingons may be scary, but their blood is pink. The origin of the word “sabotage.” I was surprised at how it felt to be surrounded by a room full of people laughing and cheering and so on as the story unfolded. I had always before watched movies alone or with one or two others only, as kind of a guilty, secret thing. Now, I was in a roomful of strangers, all openly enjoying something in a way I never saw a roomful of people enjoying church. It was perfect. The animated signatures of the principal cast at the end made me feel almost teary-eyed, as if I had just managed, through cunning and boldness, to seize for the very first time my very last chance to see Kirk and Spock on the big screen. I saw it all, and it was very good.
It was perfect. In every way. Drama. Wit. Tricks. Shakespearean quotations in space. Klingons may be scary, but their blood is pink. The origin of the word “sabotage.” I was surprised at how it felt to be surrounded by a room full of people laughing and cheering and so on as the story unfolded. I had always before watched movies alone or with one or two others only, as kind of a guilty, secret thing. Now, I was in a roomful of strangers, all openly enjoying something in a way I never saw a roomful of people enjoying church. It was perfect. The animated signatures of the principal cast at the end made me feel almost teary-eyed, as if I had just managed, through cunning and boldness, to seize for the very first time my very last chance to see Kirk and Spock on the big screen. I saw it all, and it was very good.
