Riverside rejoice: Trek relevance is canon at last!

Since 1985, the city of Riverside has had a messy relationship with the Star Trek writers room. That was the year then-Council Person Steve Miller pitched an unexpected but popular idea to other municipal officials: brand the town as the future birthplace of Capt. James T. Kirk, the fictional Captain of the USS Enterprise from “Star Trek: The Original Series.”

The council vote was originally intended to revitalize the small town’s annual celebration, previously known as the River Festival. The decision unexpectedly exploded into the Trekkie collective consciousness, however, after local news and eventually national outlets caught wind of it. Local legend says the mayor had to take a week off from his day job just to answer all the calls from reporters.

Miller’s revelation was sparked after reading a 1968 biography by franchise creator Gene Roddenberry titled, “The Making of Star Trek,” in which the writer describes Kirk as someone who “appears to be about thirty-four years old and was born in a small town in the state of Iowa.”

Roddenberry himself was quoted on the subject of Riverside’s declaration later in 1985 by The Gazette, saying, “As far as I’m concerned, the first volunteer has it.”

Star Trek canon, however, would go on to dance around the city’s claim, and at times seemingly contradict its elaborate lore in the coming decades.

The following year, “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” hit theaters, and declared Kirk’s Hawkeye status on the silver screen with the line, “I'm from Iowa, I only work in outer space.”

A fun moment, but a Riverside-specific reference would have fit the scene just as easily. This suggests a choice by producers against committing to the bit. The people who make Star Trek are great about continuity; such an oversight being accidental is almost unthinkable. It wasn’t a matter of requiring a reshoot, either: IMDB reports the movie’s filming schedule from Feb. 24 to May 5, 1986, months after news broke of Riverside’s declaration.

There may have been legal considerations at play. Circa 1989, Miller has claimed that Paramount was threatening to sic its lawyers on the small town. According to Iowa Starting Line, he told radio station Nash FM in 2021 that the studio was sending letters, “offering to sue me into poverty,” but reversed course when a photo of a TrekFest attendee dressed as Spock showed up on page two of the LA Times. (The Nash FM article has since been taken down, for reasons beyond me.)

“I said, ‘We’re giving you guys millions of dollars of free publicity every year and we have no intention of doing anything that would harm the image of ‘Star Trek’ and (a Paramount attorney) said ‘OK, I’m done,’” Miller recounted.

The Riverside Area Community Club stumbled into its own apocrypha when Kirk’s “Future Birthplace” marker was erected behind a former barbershop in town. The monument predicts the captain’s birthday on March 22, 2228. But TOS episode “The Deadly Years,” which aired Dec. 8, 1967, mentions ol’ JTK’s canonical birth date as March 22 of 2233, five years later.

A few licensed novels went on to explicitly reference the town. “Best Destiny” mentions the English River, while “Final Frontier” gives the city a namedrop. Still, neither book is canonical, so these mentions are more Easter egg than usable trivia.

Eventually, Riverside came to accept its not-quite-canonical status and ignore the dissonance of its birthplace signage. In 2004, the marker was carved into stone, replacing a previously wooden sign.

Five years after that, “Star Trek” (2009) reached theaters, meeting negative reviews from many fans despite an impressive $4 million opening day and overwhelmingly positive critical reception.

Paradoxically, this just-OK Trek film opens with perhaps the best 10 consecutive minutes of any Roddenberry-based media ever conceived. A thrilling, fast-paced scene of a Romulan vessel emerging from a black hole and targeting a Federation Starship — the USS Kelvin — rewrites the universe’s past, setting up a quasi-prequel in a parallel reality that fans call “The Kelvin Timeline.”

The effects hold up. The acting is remarkable. The stakes are high, the tension is palpable, the sound and graphic design meet with impressive camera work to convey an urgent, powerful, kinetic feeling for space combat that previous films hardly hold a candle to. There’s a ton of lens flares. Chris Hemsworth is there. The scene concludes with the death of Kirk’s dad, moments after the space-faring captain to-be’s birth in an escaping runabout shuttle.

A fleeing shuttle in space. Not in Iowa.

Heresy!

The sequence blatantly disregards what Washington County residents know to be true! That Kirk is born on or near the ground in Riverside at the current or former site of his birth marker, either immediately outside of City Hall or behind a salon! (The marker was moved in 2021 to make room for a business renovation and ostensibly to sow confusion for time traveling aliens who might try to interfere.)

Furthermore, even though it’s in a parallel universe to the Prime Timeline, the timing of Kirk’s delivery suggests an in-space birth even for the original Jim. Maximum warp wouldn’t have carried the Kelvin from its location in deep space (75,000 km from the Klingon border, according to the Star Trek Wiki,) to Riverside in the 10 minutes between the first frame and Kirk’s birth, even absent a Romulan attack. The alternative theory to keep Riverside’s dreams alive involves the Romulan ship somehow inducing labor early for Kirk’s mom, which I find at least equally unlikely.

As if to apologize to the collective population of Iowa, the next scene opens on “Riverside Quarry” where an adolescent Kirk drives a fancy car into a canyon that somehow exists in the Midwest. It later shows the “Riverside Shipyards,” halfheartedly suggesting it’s still the community Kirk is “from,” as if pretending the movie didn’t just spiritually desecrate a monument carved in stone years before it started shooting.

Even if “Kelvin Kirk” ostensibly attended Highland schools and enjoyed the post-scarcity equivalent of Bud’s Custom Meats, the film confirms nothing about the original Kirk’s status as a Riverside resident, even while it seems to disprove that version’s birthplace.

Which begs the question, who cares? Iowans want claim to the OG Jimmy K., not some off-brand “alternate timeline” version portrayed by Chris Pine.

Fast-forward in time to 2022. The season 3 finale of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” drops. Without getting into spoilers, the episode features a whole bunch of ”California Class“ ships, a Starfleet design used in the 24th century for support and ”Second Contact“ missions.

The names of these ships are rattled off in rapid succession. Among them is the USS Riverside.

Alas, the Star Trek industrial complex has once again blasphemed the casino-hosting gem of northeastern Washington County.

The USS Riverside as we know it has the registry NCC-1818, and is a modified Constitution-Class ship with a replica already built in Riverside, Iowa, where it’s mounted on a trailer across the street from Railroad Park. It’s not hard to spot the differences from the now canonical Cali-Class Riverside, which has nacelles beneath its saucer section and a far smaller secondary hull.

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Sure, the “Lower Decks” Riverside is presumably named not for Iowa, but after the city in California, following the convention of every other vessel in its class which includes the USS Cerritos and Merced. But it’s unlikely that Starfleet would repeat ship names outside of rebuilt vessels, so it’s still a departure from Southeast Iowa’s mythos.

Reaching this conclusion, my heart sank. That particular nail in the coffin of contradiction added insult to injury, and I assumed despairingly that my Riverside would never be canon.

On June 29, 2023, almost four decades after that fateful city council meeting, an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds dropped. The series begins on a stardate that translates to the modern calendar’s 2259, aboard the iconic Enterprise but before the original series which starts in roughly 2265.

On Nov. 19, I get around to watching that episode. In the last 60 seconds or so, it shows La’an (an SNW main character,) hopping on a video call with a young James Kirk, who has not yet achieved the rank of captain.

La’an asks a question about the birthplace of Kirk’s brother, Sam. Then, as if it were no big deal, James T. himself casually replies.

“Riverside, Iowa,” he says with intonation one might use to describe a grocery list, or perhaps a preferred brand of socks. He pauses for a beat, as if to build suspense for me, specifically, before continuing “...same as me.”

I’m propelled off of the couch. I’m jumping up and down. I’m crying. I’m laughing. I’m full of life. I’m gasping for air. Every synapse in my brain fires in an already doomed effort to construct a sentence amid utter euphoria.

“He said- but-! RIVERSIDE!” is an approximation of the words I produce.

I pause the episode. I rewind. I watch it again to prove my ears do not deceive me. My reaction is the same. I pause and rewind once more, this time to enjoy the moment, rather than fact-check it. Same reaction.

My girlfriend, Katie, has agreed to watch this show with me in a tremendous demonstration of love and self-sacrifice. She’s visibly confused by my sudden bout of delirium. Having been briefed on Riverside’s claim to fame by yours truly, she says something like, “Yeah, Riverside, I got it.”

But she does not get it. It’s lost on her, and perhaps most viewers, that Riverside’s status has never been canon before. It was apparently almost sued out of even headcanon status, at one point. More recently, it’s been nearly debunked by various Star Trek products.

And now, in an episode debuting a week after TrekFest, Captain Kirk has come out and said, unambiguously, in a mainline franchise product on the Prime Timeline, that Riverside, Iowa, is not only his home, but his place of birth.

Hark! Rejoice and be glad! Viva la revolución! The long-awaited day is upon us and the tyrant Paramount has at last conceded what we, the masses, already knew! That Starfleet Hero James Tiberius Kirk is from Riverside, Iowa!

Maybe this was an intentional move to make amends with the city of 1,048 people. Perhaps it was a rogue copy editor, rebelling against the Star Trek Machine from within, or even just a mistake from overworked script writers who Googled “where’s Kirk from?” and grabbed the first city name they saw without a second thought.

In any case, somebody somewhere has, with a few pen strokes, atoned for every studio-endorsed wrong against this community. Riverside is, indeed, “Where the Trek Begins,” and at last, that truth is written into Star Trek history, once and for all.

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com

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