Trek08: Preface

Trek08: Preface

Jan 02

Paula.

Not the prettiest name for a high-school crush. Because of the opening “P,” it sort of explodes from the mouth in an unappealing way, then becomes the verbal vomit of the “-aula,” so it makes a sound like someone spitting in your face, then barfing on your shoes.

Nevertheless. Paula was a crush, my crush, during the spring of my sophomore year in high school, when our all-boys institution finally satisfied the desires of ten of its gayest students and started a drama club. Our debut production was West Side Story, and Paula was a dowdy, blousy Maria with not a speck of hispanic blood in her body. Seriously–she was PAINTED SLIGHTLY YELLOW USING MAKEUP.

Which naturally has you thinking, “What does a young Matt see in such an odd choice for a crush?”

That’s an easy one. The day I first saw her, she was wearing a Star Trek T-shirt. Not any old Star Trek T-shirt, but one depicting the cast of the 1966-69 series, or The Original Series, as most nerds know it.

And that was literally her only virtue, as it turned out. Of course, this took me months to figure out, during which time I fantasized about us cuddling together on a couch in some imaginary living room or den, our heads touching tenderly as we thrilled to the exploits of Kirk, Spock and Bones on the flickering television before us.

It’s not that I didn’t like, y’know, HOT CHICKS as a teenager. It’s just that to my tiny and fragile mind, the idea of a GIRL who liked STAR TREK trumped everything else. The mere concept was literally unimaginable to me, like a horse piloting the space shuttle.

It was not the first idiotic situation Star Trek got me into, nor would it be the last.

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These days, saying you’re a Star Trek fan has become the kind of information that just hangs in the dead space of a conversation or relationship. It’s meaningless detritus. Star Trek has so little presence in the popular culture that you might as well confess your abiding love for the jazz records of Jimmy Durante.

I think what’s sorta disappeared along with it is the classic stereotype of the Trekkie, as immortalized by the cast of Saturday Night Live and host William Shatner in the famous “Get a Life!” sketch from the eighties. The guy who’s thirtysomething, still a virign, and lives in his parents’ basement doesn’t watch Star Trek anymore; he collects comic books, or plays World of Warcraft, or maybe even owns a pair of Hayden Panetierre’s screen-worn unwashed underpants. Not only is it meaningless to be a Trekkie these days; it’s not even an excuse for ridicule.

Ya know what? I don’t care. I’m a Trekkie. Always have been, always will be. It’s encoded into my DNA alongside Star Wars. It’s an essential component in the foundation for my geekdom, and by extension, my personality. It lingers, sometimes it invades, but it’s always there.

It’s far different to be a Trekkie than it is to be a Star Wars fan. For starters, Trekkies have not one, but two nicknames: the classic “Trekkie” and “Trekker,” some idiotic attempt at legitimizing the term. Star Wars fans are known as…Star Wars fans. That’s it.

It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that just about everyone in the freaking world is a Star Wars fan on some level. The movies are ubiquitous, and sure, some artsy film student may CLAIM to hate them during their Godard phase, but we all know it’s bullshit. Everybody likes Star Wars. Many love Star Wars. Fewer still dive into the endless mire of novels, toys, comic books, limited-edition statuettes, and other googaws that has become Star Wars fandom.

There aren’t so many casual Star Trek fans. Especially now, as the franchise gasps final breaths on life support, waiting for the promised revitalization from J.J. Abrams’ film reboot late this year. To be a Trekkie, both today and since the show’s earliest days, has meant subscribing to an entirely different level of interest.

You have to have seen ALL of the Original Series episodes at least once. That’s seventy-something hours of television, plus the cartoon show, plus (if you choose to continue) Next Generation, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise…plus, what, eleven two-hour movies? Beyond that were the novels and comics, another vast expanded universe, literally millions if not tens of millions of words used to detail every minute corner of this fictional beyond. Furthermore, to truly earn the title you have to KNOW the franchise, understand what arcane terminology like “pon faar” or “IDIC” meant, and absorb specific lines into the permanent storage areas of your brain.

The reasons for that critical difference–why there are Star Wars “fans” who have maybe seen the movies a few times, and no Star Trek fans who have seen “Amok Time” less than seventeen times–would require deeper exploration than I can offer here. Suffice it to say that unlike Star Wars fandom, being a Trekkie automatically makes you something else–it makes you a geek.

It made me a geek, that’s for sure. It led me to ill-fated pangs for the frumpy Paula, among other things.

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And that is what is drawing me here, to this year of 2008 and my journey through classic Trek. If Star Trek made me a geek, then maybe I can learn something from exploring it closely for such a long and protracted period of time–about myself, and about geekdom. At the very least, I can document a journey that feels…right, somehow. I’m not gonna compare it to climbing Everest or running a marathon, but it feels like something I must do.

So I will. All three seasons of classic Trek, plus six movies and maybe the cartoon show, documented here, along with whatever other memories and (gasp!) books and comics cross my path. Wish me luck, or better yet…tell me to live long and prosper.

And if your name happens to be Paula, you appeared in a Marist High School production of West Side Story in 1996, and you own a tattered Star Trek T-shirt, you’re too late. This Trekkie’s taken.

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