Canon fodder: Die-hard 'Star Trek' fans offer glimpse into American mythmaking

It took just a few seconds of footage -- a single trailer -- for the hue and cry to rise on Trekmovie.com, the top fan site for J.J. Abrams' new "Star Trek" movie. By the hundreds they weighed in, a contentious cacophony that would have jammed even Lt. Uhura's comms system.

Spock's voice is weak. The Enterprise bridge looks like it was manufactured by Apple in Cupertino. The ship wasn't built in Iowa; it was built in San Francisco. The transporter effect is too different. Anton Yelchin looks nothing like the original Chekov. John Cho is way too old to be Sulu. Jim Kirk was never this rebellious. Sounds like "Star Wars." Where's Shatner? It's a reboot. No, it isn't. Yes, it is. How dare you. How dare YOU?

Those fans who loved the trailer were dismissed as undiscerning Kool-Aid drinkers. Those who dismantled it point by point were whiners. The discussion kept coming back to one word -- a word that contains much of the passion behind Gene Roddenberry's imagined world.

Canon.

In the run-up to the film's opening Friday, fan passions are still running high when it comes to debating "canon" -- the notion that the details of the most enduring fictional universe in TV history are coherent, cohesive and should not be jumbled up for the sake of marketing.

"We're all hard core. No one is more hard core than anyone else, really. And we all love it. But I guess it's almost political," said Anthony Pascale, who oversees Trekmovie.com. "Some people have a very strict view of what 'Star Trek' is: 'It's this, this and this.' They've got a checklist."

Sure, it's easy to dismiss this with the old nerd-in-mom's-basement trope. William Shatner did, notoriously, years ago on "Saturday Night Live" when he jokingly told hardcore fans to "get a life." But that outlook misses the point. In reality, "Trek" fans run the gamut in America -- including, apparently, the president himself.

It's more than that, though: In a nation where mass entertainment helps define the culture and where the national narrative is based on exploring the frontier, "Star Trek" fans' sense of ownership about their fictional final frontier offers a glimpse into modern American mythmaking -- and why our stories matter to us so much.

For 43 years, since before mainstream fandom even existed, "Star Trek" has been embraced by -- and guided by -- its fans. The original series, which aired from 1966 to 1969, might not have even had a third season had it not been for an uprising of the faithful that caused NBC to reconsider its cancellation.

The myth accumulated copious details over the decades as it moved from the original to an animated series, from theatrical movies to "The Next Generation" and three more series that ran until 2005. For those keeping score at home, that's 716 episodes from six series plus 10 films. That's a lot of nits for the picking.

"Once those details start to mount up, it becomes really fun to follow it. And we start to talk about events in these fictional people's lives as if they were really past occurrences," said James Cawley, an actor and producer who is behind a sophisticated fan-made "Star Trek" series that picks up where the original five-year mission left off. In it, he plays Kirk.

"It's been cultivated so well for so long that the fans just love it and are very protective of it," Cawley said.

Abrams' movie, though, creates a new frontier for the final one, reimagining Kirk, Spock and all the beloved original characters in ways that are both familiar and different. He has said repeatedly that the new "Trek" targets fresh fans -- people who may have never seen a single episode.

"We're not completely restarting everything," he told GQ magazine, but "the work we had to do is in many ways the same. You have to make sure you're giving people a way in."

There's where it gets dicey. Yes, "Star Trek" as a philosophy has always been about inclusiveness -- racial, extraterrestrial, ideological -- but in reality the fan base can come across as insular. The message often seems as if it's this: Come join us, yes, but on our terms.

Still, most "Trek" fans typically agree that the mythos must involve a sense of hope about the future, a feeling of deep friendship among the characters and a zest for exploration. As global as "Star Trek" is, those are fundamental characteristics of the American experience.