Star Trek Creator's Son Gives Fans New Way To Geek Out

Star Trek Into Darkness beamed into theaters at midnight last night. It's director J.J. Abrams' second movie in his reboot of the sci-fi classic.

Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry, son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, told Here & Now's Robin Young, "I came out very impressed, very happy. I've got to say, this really holds up more so to the original Star Trek and The Next Generation and the philosophies that were incorporated into that."

Roddenberry is executive producer of a new podcast called Mission Log, which delves into every aspect of the television series. Ken Ray hosts the podcast with John Champion.

"We've come across so many episodes where we're not arguing about 'OK, well could they actually go Warp 8, or would they have to stick at Warp 6?'" Ray said. "We're actually talking about the nature of happiness."

Roddenberry says he didn't pay much attention to Star Trek until after his father died.

"I wanted to learn more about it, and the way to do that was to really go back and look at these shows and try to take them apart," Roddenberry said. "Listening to [Mission Log hosts] John and Ken, they don't go too geeky or too nerdy, but they really kind of look at the ethics and what it means in the bigger picture when a captain or someone in Star Trek does something."

One episode that both Rod Roddenberry and Ken Ray like is "The Corbomite Maneuver" from season one of the original series. Captain Kirk, addressing his crew after receiving a distress signal from a ship that was just trying to destroy them, says "There are lives at stake. By our standards, alien life. But lives, nevertheless."

"That is Star Trek at its best," Roddenberry said. "That is the vision of the future that my father really had in mind — that kind of humanity."