Ultimate Trek: Star Trek's Greatest Moments

This is a UPN special that aired on December 1, 1999. It's silly but at the same time fun because it shows clips from many previous Star Trek shows and movies. Jason Alexander wearing the original series Star Trek captain's uniform plays the role of Kirk. He is acting a little in the way William Shatner would act his role. He is accompanied by Spock and McCoy. They are on a mission that if left unsolved could result in "chaos of galactic proportions". So they're looking to solve their mission... on Earth in Los Angeles 1999.

The show features clips of "great Star Trek moments", the results of online surveys about the best Star Trek episodes and some Star Trek "bloopers". There are also clips from other shows like Saturday Night Live who made references to Star Trek over the years.

It's silly and not to be taken to seriously, but I still enjoyed it.

There's nothing really more to say about this other than it's lazily-cobbled together clip show of seemingly random moments hosted by horribly unfunny impersonators (including Jason Alexander's Kirk). This special saw one VHS release after it's initial air, and has never been seen or heard from again.

Funny enough, I was an intern at UPN when this was produced, and I remember them wanting it to be played totally straight. They wanted John Stewart and Jeri Ryan hosting it from the Voyager bridge, but both of them turned it down. Somewhere along the line, Jason Alexander expressed interest and a small network like UPN was ready and willing to allow him to do whatever he wanted on the special.

Starring Jason Alexander as Captain Kirk, Kirk, Spock, and Mccoy are in present day Los Angeles trying to "solve" a mission. Through their adventures, or rather mis-adventures, we are treated to tired and reused documentary footage of the real Star Trek actors telling their stories of their days in front of the Trek camera. The entire hour long tribute to Trek comes off as a very bad running gag. With a production value equal to that of an after school special, this show is filled with cliche after cliche of Star Trek references that, after the first 5 minutes, are about as amusing as watching paint dry on growing grass. The tribute to Deforest Kelley is especially painful to watch. While the tribute itself is nice, watching the horrible "act-alike, look-alikes" perform a death seen for his character is neither funny or touching, and in very poor taste. Alexander, as Kirk, is very forgettable in a rather forgettable production. Don't waste time on this one, folks, you wont get it back!

I really enjoyed this one. As a Seinfeld fan (Jason Alexander played "George" in that series) and a classic Star Trek fan, this 43-min. comedy was quite entertaining for me. The gags are indeed hackneyed at this point, but I still laughed throughout. Knowing that Jason Alexander is a Star Trek and Shatner fan himself made this tour de force more meaningful to watch. Alexander has said in the past that Capt. Kirk was his childhood hero and has joked (was he joking?) that he tried to model his acting style on that of William Shatner's Kirk. I loved hearing Alexander belting out lines like "Kha-a-a-an!" and "I am Kirok!" The humour in "Ultimate Trek" is light, good-natured, family-friendly, and well worth seeking out if you are a fan of the original Star Trek series.

It was an age of infamy, deep in what some consider the darkest years of Trekdom. Deep Space Nine was gone. All that was left was Voyager. So Paramount let this be made to celebrate ... what, exactly? It wasn't any significant anniversary for the bona fide cultural phenomenon that was Trek. There was no new show or movie on the horizon. It was like they were just putting out a program to take up space and remind us that Trek lives. Emptiness would have been preferable. They should have remembered that even in the Trek-less years of the early '70s, the fans still had plenty of fun.

In this show, the jokes were weak, the acting weaker. Jason Alexander couldn't do a Kirk impression if his life depended on it. Kevin Pollak would have been so much better, but this was Alexander's own vanity project as executive producer. Apparently nobody around him had the compassion to tell him what a bad idea it was. In the few moments when this wasn't painful, it was just plain boring. Watching any episode of the original show would have been a hundred times more enjoyable. It was an insult to any true fan. The actors looked, sounded and and acted nothing like the characters they were supposed to be playing, which made for severe distraction, something they could ill afford in a program as wretched as this. Luckily, for most viewers, this program has been mercifully forgotten. Maybe it's an intentional amnesia.

But what do I know? Maybe I just need to get a life.