No doubt you remember William Shatner as Star Trek's Captain Kirk. You may find his venture into wine interesting. Shatner had a wine tasting podcast about ten years ago. His Brown Bag Wine Tasting episodes were one-on-one videos in which he sat down with another celebrity to talk about that person's life and do some blind wine tasting. It lasted two seasons, not even long enough to put some age on a bottle of Riesling. "Dammit, Jim, I'm a rocket scientist, not a wine taster!"
1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture is the first big screen version of the Star Trek story. All your faves from TV are here, on a mission to save the Earth from some sort of dangerous cloud. I'm glad they got the A-team on it. Everyone was holding their collective breath, waiting to see if the engine in the refurbished Enterprise would turn over. It did, and the director yelled, "Action!"
That's when the trouble started. Someone forgot to write any action scenes for the movie, so the cast doesn't have a whole lot to do. Hard-core Trekkies shelled out their Romulan dollars to see it, though. The movie's first weekend box office was a record setter.
There's a collection of Star Trek themed wines, featuring bottles like Klingon Bloodwine, the Wrath of Khan Cabernet, and the United Federation of Planets Andorian Blue. The website says the vineyards are located on "rolling hillsides near one of the oceans of planet Earth." Drink long and prosper.
Battle Beyond the Stars is a 1980 space opera. Of course, the term space opera refers to stories told in outer space in the same way horse opera refers to westerns. There are no arias, coloraturas or librettos here, but every movie set has to have a prima donna on it somewhere.
The movie reworks the story of The Magnificent Seven, which itself reworked The Seven Samurai. So this tale has come from ancient Japan, through the American West, and into outer space. Try doing that with Citizen Kane.
The film provided big breaks for James Cameron, John Sayles and Bill Paxton, although Paxton's contribution was working on the set as a carpenter. Early days, yes.
A futuristic movie deserves a futuristic wine. Future Perfect Wine is located in Los Olivos, and they make wines from some of Santa Barbara County's best vineyards. Their 2024 Dry Riesling hails from Kick-On Ranch Vineyard in the Santa Ynez Valley and sells for $45. Give it a few years and hope for that petrol emotion.
In 1972's Silent Running, Bruce Dern plays a sort of eco-astronaut in charge of several space-domes filled with earthly plant life. Trees and such have been killed off on their home planet, so a Noah's Ark of flora is sent to house what little is left.
The domes are attached to cargo ships. Naturally, when corporations decide they need to make more money, more money is made. The orders are given to scrap the bio-domes and return to carrying cargo instead. Our econaut bristles at the idea, and tries to save the domes. He reprograms the little robots to help him. This makes me wonder how long it will take these little robots wheeling around the sidewalks of Los Angeles to be reprogrammed as carjackers or stickup robbers. You know it's coming. We can't have nice things.
The efforts to save Earth's plants are noble, although largely ineffectual in the end. The shot of a robot tending to the domed forest with an old watering can is heart-wrenching. It makes me want to go out and water my own plants. Afterward, a glass of wine.
Michael David Winery's Zero Gravity Cabernet Sauvignon is made from Lodi grapes, using yeast strains developed on the International Space Station. It's amazing what grape juice can do in outer space. Expect to pay $26 for a bottle of this out-of-this-world Cab.
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