Wednesday, September 18, 2002 6:20 PM

Doohan, Meany, Please beam me up!

On the way up and on the way back, in the car, from Cleveland and to my various suburban destinations I listened via audio cassette tape, the middle button on the convoluted display of my automobile radio set, between Tuner and CD, to Star Trek Movie Memories. William Shatner.

So my recent entertainment and education wafts between the History Plays of Shakespeare and Star Trek the Original Generation. Surprisingly both complement the other. Both bring a new intellectual and personal outlook to a medium and an age. Although the Enterprise crew is relatively virtuous and stalwart some of the villains on Star Trek exhibit a humanity not seen on TV. Richard III and Kahn. Mudd and Falstaff. Lovable Bastards All.

I am of an age that says, yes, I watched and enjoyed the series on its first run (Outer Limits, Twilight Zone and even Truman Bradley on Science Fiction Theater past normal bedtime on Friday nights.) I recall the episode with Michael J Pollard and the one with Frank Gorshin and so on. The reason you can’t really call me a Trekker (Oh man this name and identification stuff will make you nuts, Can’t say Frisco to San Francisco, can’t call it sci-fi to a science fiction fan, can’t, for goddon sure say Trekkie to a Trekker.) because I can’t categorize, name or much remember any of the details of the episodes. My wife and I sat circa 69-70 in our Berkeley CA kitchen and watched the “reruns” at 6 o’clock as we ate dinner. I have, yes seen every episode at least once. AND I

don’t lead my life per the precepts of Kirk et al. It was, after all a television program with more depth than most, but not nearly as astonishing as the Science Fiction I read and adored in a younger day. Or the misery found in Dostoevsky, or the warmth found in Steinbeck or the play and intellect found in Joyce, the image found in Eliot etc etc etc.

I find myself coming to Star Trek once in a while. Watching now, for example, the First Series of the Next Generation on DVD as I chew a garden of green and purple food at dinner. And the movies, in order of appearance, on the weekends. I have not yet become a fan of Deep Space Nine or Voyager and don’t even know when the new series appears on TV or for that matter its name. I am irritated by the glut of Star Trek Books that stand next to a equal glut of Star Wars books which stand between a mess of X Files, Babble On Five (Unviewable as I remember) and whatever other media blitz including made for novels about Video Games at the local book stores.

I listen to Shatner’s story about the making of the movies. It is amusingly light and fine for traveling down the superhighways of America or even the side streets on my way to work and life. It is good for dreaming. (Perhaps, not so great for cruising the highways) Good for putting a pretty thought or two in my head. Good for recapturing some of the wonder that used to ride high in my life each and every day. Some of that wonder that gets buried amidst problems that don’t have as much meaning as they seem to at the time they occur. I dream a cosmology as the wide world buzzes me. I twirl off the rotating planet and hang breathless in black velvet surrounded by the blazing blinding colored jewels of the lights of the universe, somewhere midway between here and the beginning, infinite and bounded, look into the mysterious creation and the true face of God.

Taped to the faux wood cabinet over my desk is Walt Whitman’s wonderful poem about the Learn’d Astronomer.

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time,
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.