Star Trek

When I was 12, I had a problem. OK, I probably had several problems, but here we're going to discuss The Science Fiction Problem.

You would have thought that 1978 would have been a great year for a young sci-fi fan. "Star Wars" was at the cinema, "Star Trek" was on endless loop on TV and "Blake's 7" had started to run around an old quarry in Surrey in fancy dress.

But ...

• Although "Star Wars" dazzled with the special effects, the plot was an ill-disguised wafer-thin fairy story.

• "Star Trek" had some excellent plots ("City on the Edge of Forever", "The Trouble With Tribbles", "A Piece of the Action"). But the acting and the dialogue and the shoddy sets ... yeek.
  

• "Blakes 7" managed to combine worst features of both.

In short, nothing on TV or Film in 1978 compared to written Science Fiction, which was fine. I lost myself in Heinlein, Asimov and "Doc" Smith and I never became a Trekkie, Trekker, Star Wars fan or Warsie.

Fast forward to 2009 and I'm nearly 43 and at a loss in Basingstoke.
I decided to see the new Star Trek film, and blow me if it didn't make me feel like was 12 again.

The plot was unsatisfying, the morals were simplistic and Simon Pegg's Scottish accent was laughable. But that's nothing when you're riding a starship on a blast wave to escape the wake of an exploding black hole. Or making a HALO drop from the edge of space onto a platform drilling down into the core of an alien planet.

This film is a inch deep but it's light years wide with a considerable visual impact that probably would have totally poleaxed me if I was 12.

The euphoria quickly faded after the film when I jumped into my tatty diesel car and navigated myself inaccurately around the one way system. Seat Toledos don't have warp drive. Or photon torpedos. And I can tell you that you desperately want to use both when you're in a dump like Basingstoke.