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The trek to a dream

On the 50th anniversary of Star Trek last week, Anand Sivakumaran tells us how Gene Roddenberry's cult television series defined him as an individual

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William Shatner as James T Kirk; The late Leonard Simon Nimoy as the legendary Spock; The original cast of Star Trek with Gene Roddenberry (third from the right) at the rollout of the Space Shuttle Enterprise at the Rockwell International plant at Palmdale, California
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I remember waiting for 10 am Sunday after Sunday – back then, it was the most important hour of the week for me.

I remember trying my hardest to train my eyebrows to rise, independent of the other and becoming despondent when they insisted on making it a couple affair. Especially since there was one boy in class who could do it in a perfect Spock-esque fashion.

I remember us discarding our mock pistols for fake phasers.

I remember us saying, 'Beam me up,' a zillion times and feeling acutely woebegone when our bodies stayed intact instead of reducing to molecular nothingness...

I remember memorising the words to Space The Final Frontier and chanting them with way more fervour than my Sandhyavandanam mantras...

The memories are endless and how can they not be, for Star Trek (and Star Wars) opened up my imagination, made me believe in the fantastic, convinced me that mundane realities were not all that the world was about. They taught me to ask, what if? What if I could become invisible and go punch that bully? What if I could travel forward in time and skip past the exam week? What if I could teleport directly to my grandparents' place in Chennai and cut out the arduous three-day train journey?
 

Star Trek taught me to dream, to think wild, imagine realities that no one else would perhaps believe in. It gave me such joy, filled me with such excitement that it was more than enough. Perhaps, the seeds of my becoming a storyteller were laid then.

When I think about it now, I guess it also taught me not to give up, to trust in and stand up for my friends, to battle on despite all odds – far more than any sermon or morality class could. It taught me about honour, courage, friendship and determination without me even realising it. I was just having the ride of my life. But in the later years, when the chips were down and easy ways presented themselves, the thought that Kirk or Spock would never do this, stopped me.

Sure it was just another TV show, a cult one nevertheless. And when I now look back on those magical days and the years beyond, I know it wasn't just a show. It was one of the things that defined who I am, the choices I made, the paths I took. And for that I can only say Gene Roddenberry and the whole Trek team – Live Long and Prosper.

(The author is an independent scriptwriter and storyteller)

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