Boldly Going… Into Star Trek Week

I have a confession to make.  If you repeat it to anyone else, I swear I’ll deny it…

Wait.

It’s going to be right out on the internet for everyone to read.

Damn!

Oh well.  Here goes:

When I was a teenager and all my friends and I were getting our first cars to drive to school, we all put CB  radios in our cars, found a nice quiet frequency without a lot of chatter, and took to the airwaves.  Instead of the “handles” that truck drivers used, we had names for our vehicles.  Not too coincidentally, the names all came from the names of starships from the Star Trek world.  My first car, a 1979 Mercury Cougar, was the Stargazer.  My second, a 1984 Plymouth Voyager I purchased with the money from selling a slew of baseball cards before my sophomore year of college, was… duh: Voyager.  A friend of mine spoke Klingon. He and his girlfriend at the time adopted Klingon names for each other.

This was back in the halcyon days of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

My first girlfriend in high school bore a striking resemblance to Lt. Tasha Yar. Coincidence?

Picard was the captain.  Riker “made it so.”  Whoopi was a bartender. Yar was hot [To me, at least.  All my friends thought Troi was the hot one, but not me.  Once Yar was killed off - what a sad day - I would choose Dr. Crusher over Troi.  Ah, to be young and naive.].  Worf was a badass.  And Q was one of the greatest villains in Star Trek history.

I wasn’t just a TNG buff.  I watched and re-watched the original series episodes whenever they were on tv.  I stayed with the tv series’ until sometime during Voyager.  I even went to see Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in the theater on opening night.  My friends and I joined two other people in the theater for that one.  Whales?

I collected the Hallmark Star Trek ornaments until they started making 5 or 6 of them every year and I was a broke young teacher.  I still put them on the Christmas tree almost every year and my shuttlecraft still plays Spock’s message when you press the little button: “Shuttlecraft to Enterprise.  Shuttlecraft to Enterprise.  Spock here.  Happy Holidays.  Live long… and prosper.”

Just a little resemblance.

I’ve also been told I bear some resemblance to transporter Chief Miles O’Brien.  I guess I can see it.  We both have curly hair.

These days, I’m not a huge fan of anything and everything Star Trek.  I guess, that goes along with not having a current Trek series on television for several years now.  Today, I’m not really even a fan of sci-fi as a genre.  I lean more toward fantasy and horror (sci-fi horror is acceptable).

As we sit almost a dozen years into this young millennium, We can look back and see the importance of Star Trek, not just to the science fiction genre, but to everything from space exploration (the prototype US space shuttle was the Enterprise) and medicine (modern scanning devices, retinal implants, laser surgery) to personal communications (cell phones, the iPad) and law enforcement (tasers).  I’m just thankful the fashions never caught on.

Here on Geekcentricity, we’re acknowledging Star Trek for the entire week.  It is only fitting that we kick it off today, March 22, William Shatner’s 80th birthday.  Saturday, March 26 is Leonard Nimoy’s 80th birthday.  So, prepare for warp speed as the writers of Geekcentricity explore the Star Trek multiverse and share with you, dear readers, what Star Trek has meant to each of us.

“Live long and prosper.”