Exploring the final frontier

I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I never tire of watching reruns of the original Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. I absolutely loved Deep Space 9, but it appears that I'm going to have to buy the DVDs if I want to watch those episodes because I can't DS9 on TV.

It's funny that I would grow to be a "trekkie". My first exposure to the original series was in college. My roommate lived for Star Trek! That's all she ever watched on TV, and it was my TV! She bought the log books so that she could memorize the dialogue. So it was not unusual for my friend to mouth the words as we watched an episode. My friend drove me nuts with this, but I put up with it because she was my friend. After college, she convinced her new husband to honeymoon at a Star Trek convention, and he didn't even watch the series! I hated Star Trek - probably because I was saturated with it when I lived with my roommate.

Years after college, I started watching reruns of The Next Generation (TNG). I took to the series immediately. I fell in love with Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). He appealed to my intellect. He was cultured. And, darn, was he sexy! I never felt that way about Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner, star of the original series), but I was crazy about Mr. Spock, the Vulcan. On TNG I also had a thing for a certain Klingon, Lieutenant Worf. My friends teased me because I had a "thing" for two characters that 1) weren't considered to be conventionally attractive, and 2) didn't display much warmth. We won't explore the psychological implications of my crushes!

My fascination with space and science fiction goes back to my years as a young girl, when I read voraciously about planets and drew pictures of planets and radar systems - at least the way they appeared in my imagination. I think space has always been my escape from the real world. It still is to this day.

When Star Trek: Deep Space Nine came on the scene, I was instantly hooked. It was gritty. It had lots of odd-looking characters, many of whom were social outcasts. The Ferengis, for instance, would do virtually anything for money. But there was something about the most ambitious and annoying Ferengi, Quark, that made him redeemable. As for Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks), he was definitely a babe! Like Jean-Luc, he was smart and skilled in diplomacy.

My college roommate thinks it's hilarious that I'm a trekkie now. My children used to watch the shows with me when they were small. But one day I guess I took my love for aliens too far.

I went to the neighborhood video store and rented five tapes. I came back home to the kids, who excitedly looked through the videos to see what they wanted to watch first. All five videos were Star Trek tapes.

"That's all you got??" they moaned. I gave the kids a sheepish grin.

They mumbled, then went out to play. I put my feet up and quietly escaped for a few hours to the "final frontier."


tags: star trek, trekkie, naomi-usa, the journey to naomi