Trek Week: Captain Picard’s Tea was a Gateway Drug
Photo: Kollewin.com
I cut my sci-fi teeth on Star Trek and Star Trek: TNG at a young age. Thanks to my dad’s love of everything Star Trek, and other usually poorly written or produced sci-fi shows, I received an early introduction to what was to become my geeky future. Flights of the imagination and violence were my formative television meals as a child. Science fiction, fantasy, and kung fu theatre was what I looked forward to.
I remember sitting on the floor in front of our small (relative to today’s standards I guess) turn dial TV set and watching the original Star Trek reruns with my brother and dad. We would walk around and try to Vulcan death-grip each other between eating my mom’s homemade oatmeal raisin cookies….mmmm….cookies….
Star Trek: TNG took a special and longest lasting place in my heart due to my mother’s love of Twinnings Earl Grey tea, which to this day I still love. And of course the well-mannered Patrick Stewart always ordered every episode, “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot” from the replicator. Mmmm…tea…. What wasn’t there to love about TNG? The character development was amazing, they had Q and the Borg, Klingons were badass, They had the holodeck, and Jumpin’ Jack Flash ran a bar!
Photo: Dailycontributor.com
Of course there were the spin offs and subsequent Star Trek franchise attempts, some better than others. I remember distinctly actually enjoying Star Trek: DS9 despite later in life learning it was looked down on by most real “Trekkies”… err, “Trekkers?” But I enjoyed the more stabilized space station approach as a change from the frontier exploration of the Enterprise. They brought over characters from TNG and there would be crossovers, just like in the comics I loved! And, of course the quasi-angsty son of Captain Sisko was a good relation to my youthful rebellion.
Then came Voyager. Not too shabby. I didn’t stay with it for a long time though, mainly because life started getting in the way. Then they tried to relaunch with the original Enterprise deal…and by then I was tuned out. Sorry, Star Trek.
I have to give Star Trek huge props. It got me started in sci-fi. Later came Quantum Leap, Sliders, Aliens, Predator, Flight of the Navigator, Tron, Terminator, and lots more. So I guess while I’ve always been a geek, there was a definitive point where I started. If I had to pick a point, I would have to give it to Star Trek reruns. So here’s to you Scotty and giving it all the power you can; to you Dr. McCoy and being a doctor, damn it, and nothing else; to you Mr. Spock for helping us all learn that emotion disconnectivity doesn’t mean you can’t love; and finally to you Captain James T. Kirk for being a pig and a jerk but making us love you anyway.
What was your first exposure to Star Trek and what role did it have (or not have) in your geek exposure?
