Singing Klingons ……..

Now I have been following Star Trek for 57 years, and while I won’t dress up as a Romulan I am as hooked as I was when it first came out in 1966.

For some that might not be something to boast about, but for me the Star Trek project is as real as it gets.

So, in that half century and bit more I have watched all seven TV series from the 1960s till the present, along with all thirteen movies.  

Not only that but I dip back into them at regular intervals and Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without another Star Trek DVD. 

But I have passed on the 3 attempts at cartoon versions.

The fascination is part “Space Opera” but also the concept behind the project, which is based on an inter galactic federation of planets which have banished poverty, and where the material needs for a good life exists allowing everyone to pursue their own interests.

And along the way war, racism and intolerance have been confined to the history books.

Of course, there are those nasty forces out there beyond known space which do not subscribe to “brotherly love …. democracy and peace”. *

But then there always must be the baddies.

Some will argue that the format it is very simplistic, and often collapses into good versus bad, but along the way all the series have explored issues of racism and misunderstanding, even if this was quite crude.

I remember one planet from the original series where the inhabitants had pushed the button, with horrendous results and the survivors existed in a pre-industrial society dominated by two warring groups known as the Yaks and the Comms.  

And yes, the Yaks held sacred an ancient scroll which began “We hold these truths to be self-evident ……”.

But it was that same series that saw the first inter racial kiss on TV which incidentally resulted in the episode being pulled by TV stations in the deep south.

All of which leads to the latest series …. "Star Trek Strange New Worlds", which has returned to the format of a story an episode and has offered up some very dark and scary stuff, along with an improbable phenomenon which resulted in the crew breaking out into song in the style of the Great American Song Book.

And, hence Singing Klingons.

I would like to have dotted the story with images from Star Trek, but I fear I might transgress copyright.

So instead here are pictures from two children's books from the 1950s which offered up a vision of the future

Location; Space

Pictures; from The Pictorial History Book, & Co, Ltd Sampson Low, Marston & Co, Ltd, 1955 and Adventure of the World, 1954

*"Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock”. Orson Wells, The Third Man, 1949