Watching Star Trek Next Generation recently I was forced to think back to when we were kids and produced our own humourous sketches on an old battered reel-to-reel or cassette recorder. Later on you’ll see why!

We had a vague idea of a plot and who was going to play which character but then basically pretty much anything might happen … sometimes it was hilariously funny, very often it wasn’t. Sometimes we’d rehearse a sketch we liked to the point it lost all sense and was no longer funny (assuming it had been in the first place!).

One of these sketches was based on the original Star Trek. My friend Howard, due to his deep sonorous voice got the part of Spock and I was probably Kirk because I’d rarely play unless I was in charge (nothing much has changed there!). Anyway, we beam down to this planet and Spock comes out with these immortal lines right off the top of his head, “Captain, why is it that every planet we beam down to has the same blue sky and the same pink rocks on the ground?” There was no easy way to answer that and so Howard carried on with, “I believe this studio has limited facilities!”

So why was I reminded of this old Star Trek sketch from further back than I care to count the years to? Well, it is true that you do tend to see Klingons nowadays on Star Trek rather than just a glimps of a Bird of Prey before Kirk has it blasted to oblivion and the special effects are far better than way back then with the lower budgets and even lower technology available. But, it is is still similar in that, although the planets do look different, they all by some incredible freak of chance have an atmosphere breathable by human beings. In one case on Star Trek Next Generation there was even a planet with a breathable atmosphere and no vegetation, which is a really neat trick. I guess suspending disbelief has always been the name of the game even with the most scientific of sci-fi. The Enterprise travels millions of light years through space and encounters an alien whose conceptual framework is almost exactly like ours and his words are translated into perfectly understandable English! Mind you, the idea that the English language could be the same in a few hundred years time on a Star Trek starship is far-fetched enough (just read Shakespeare or any other old English writing). It may not be the same pink rocks on the ground but by God none of these Star Trek actors and actresses are going to have their fizog off the box for a few minutes while they bounce around wearing a space suit … but then the gravity on these planets is always identical to earth gravity so I guess they wouldn’t….