Trekkies (Roger Nygard; 1997) and Starwoids (Dennis Przywara; 2001)
First, let me put this out there: Star Trek and Star Wars have absolutely nothing in common. I hate that, as a fan of both venerable science fiction franchises, I can’t express my love for one without someone piping up about how the other is better. For the record, I’m a bit more of a Star Wars fan. It’s mostly to do with nostalgia, but also, The Empire Strikes Back is better than “City on the Edge of Forever,” in my view the two pinnacles of each franchise. Also, Star Wars never plunged to the depths of Voyager. But in the end, who cares? They’re both brilliant for entirely different reasons, and if they weren’t both so long-lived and successful, we’d never be having this conversation.
Trekkies and Starwoids, however, are entirely comparable. They both attempt to explain the phenomenon of fandom, and they both succeed, but only marginally.
The biggest problem with both of these films (but especially Trekkies) is their lack of nuance. Star Trek and Star Wars are both worldwide phenomena which attract all kinds of people, most of them quite normal (even those who attend conventions). The makers of Trekkies found the most insane, unbalanced people possible to represent Star Trek fans. This makes the film quite humorous (I was laughing hysterically the whole time), but it also kind of ignores all the people in the background of the conventions, who aren’t dressed as Klingons, and who don’t dream of Brent Spiner while looking in the direction of his house. I fucking love Star Trek. I watch it all the time. I’d consider myself more than a casual fan. But the people in this movie are crazy, and the filmmakers go out of their way to exploit that.
In this way, Starwoids fares somewhat better. Though I found most of its subjects irritating (manic, hyper dorks are the bane of any self-respecting fan’s existence), very few of them seemed at all unbalanced. Yeah, waiting in line for The Phantom Menace for six weeks seems insane in retrospect, but it was the most anticipated movie of all time, and once you find out how it really works (you take shifts, you’re not there day and night), it doesn’t even seem all that hard. The line is much of the focus of Starwoids, but I found the other stuff involving action figure collecting, an embarassing looking Star Wars musical, and an actor who played one of the Jawas a lot more interesting. The 2005 documentary Star Wait about the Attack of the Clones line was far better for entertaining line antics.
Trekkies is a more well made, better paced, and all around more entertaining film, but I found Starwoids less mean-spirited toward its subjects. Starwoids is a celebration of Star Wars, but Trekkies is often derisive toward Star Trek.
NOTE: I hate names for fan groups, whether it be Trekkies or Starwoids (a term I’d never heard until I saw this film—and by all accounts, I’d fall under its banner) or (the worst) Whedonites. Fuck that shit. Can’t you just enjoy something and be a fan of it? Do we really have to define ourselves this way? Stupid.
The Captains (William Shatner; 2011)
The basic premise of The Captains, William Shatner’s new documentary, sounds like pure fan service. Shatner interviews every actor who’s ever played a captain on Star Trek. As a Trek fan, this definitely appealed to me, but I really wasn’t expecting what an emotional experience it turned out to be.
Shatner has used this format to explore not only Star Trek, but his own life and legacy. It’s self indulgent, but there’s a genuine melancholy in seeing this 80 year old man (!) looking back on the role which has come to define him in life (as it will in his death).
Although its musical score is manipulative and maudlin, The Captains rises above that by way of the depth and genuine emotions in its interviews.
I love Star Trek and Next Generation, but I have no particular attachment to Deep Space Nine and I have outright disdain for Voyager and Enterprise, but I found all of these conversations illuminating. Shatner is an excellent interviewer, as he engages with his subjects, but always allows them to speak. The only interview that left me a bit cold was Chris Pine’s. Shatner avoids discussing Star Trek with him most of the time, and he still seems a bit hurt over the 2009 film. Although that hurts the interview, it adds to the film as a whole, which becomes a thoughtful self-portrait of Shatner. He’s never been entirely comfortable with where his career went after Star Trek, and this film is really about that.
The moment which best illustrates this is when, in conversation with Patrick Stewart, Shatner admits to always being slightly embarrassed by his own performance in Star Trek, and how Stewart’s performance in The Next Generation helped him get over that embarrassment. Then, when Stewart speaks on his acceptance and embracing of the fact that he will be primarily remembered as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Shatner thanks him for helping himself come to that same point. It’s kind of a beautiful moment.
