Alien babes, space ships, lasers…what’s not to love?

“Space… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It’s five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

You’ve heard this before. You dismissed it as stupid and dorky. This is why you are wrong.

Star Trek: The Original Series can be billed many different ways. You could say that it was the first real science fiction television show, and paved the way for modern marvels like Battlestar Galactica,

Firefly, or even Star Wars, seeing as Trek preceded it by at least a decade, used Trek as inspiration. You could say that it changed the world, since inventors watched the show, saw the communicators, and asked “Why not?” See: the modern cell phone. It was also one of the most diverse shows on the air in the late sixties, with African-American Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura and Japanese-American George Takei as Lieutenant Sulu.

However, you might think that it’s some freaky, cultist, outdated show that was cancelled in the early seventies and therefore has no purpose. But it does have a purpose. It has the same purpose as MySpace, or Supernatural, or YouTube.

It’s entertaining.

You don’t have to be fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon to “get” Star Trek. You can be the world’s biggest fan and still admit that Warp Speed 5 (Traveling at five times the speed of light) isn’t even theoretically possible. It’s not a cult unless you want it to be.

Star Trek is about the U. S. S. Enterprise and its crew, centering on Captain James T. Kirk, Science Officer Mr. Spock, and surgeon Dr. McCoy. Over the course of the series (spanning about 80 episodes), they:

1.Visit alien planets

2.Get jiggy with alien babes

3.Get their shirts ripped up every two episodes, in Kirk’s case

4.Blow things up (for great justice)

5.Set their phasers to stun, kill, limp, “bit of a cough,” or “left the gas on.”

What’s to get?

“The alien languages,” you say.

“Ah,” I reply, wagging my finger at you knowingly, “but there are subtitles.”

“The cultists, then,” you say.

Okay, first off, it’s not a “cult…” really. It’s just a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering on their sacred symbols. No cult there.

Ahem.

Also, if you keep off of the Internet, don’t go to the conventions, and stay the heck away from the fan fiction, it’s just a show. A show that was, yes, cancelled way before I was born. But you can dabble. I dabble. Dabbling is healthy.

“You sound like you’re trying to explain away a meth habit,” you say.

“Shut up,” I snap, twitching. “You just don’t understand.”

Still unconvinced that this is the way you should be spending your time? Here, have an episode summary—Star Trek, episode 42, season 2. The Trouble With Tribbles. “The U. S. S. Enterprise, after being called to a space station by a priority 1 distress call, is overrun with small balls of fluff called Tribbles. They purr, eat, and multiply wildly, literally carpeting the spaceship. Meanwhile, Chief Engineer Scott punches a Klingon in the face. Wackiness ensues.”

Call me crazy, but I thought that our generation loves this kind of humor. Robot Chicken, anyone? Random humor is our business! This outdated fan-service is not a stretch for the teenagers that grew up on South Park and reruns of the Smurfs.

“Yes, this is all well and good,” you say, waving away my explanations. “But how will this help me get into college?”

One, you learn new words. Try working “altruistic” into your next conversation. Two, they reference things like Dante’s Inferno and the works of Plato to make them sound smart. You could try that too. Third, you could work on your grasp of physics by thinking about just why the things they do Just Aren’t Possible.

Also, if you want to major in American History, they do travel through time and experience the Depression. That’s both history and a blatant disregard for physics, for those playing at home.

In conclusion, if you liked Borat, you might like this.

2 Responses

1. 8:45 AM on January 29th, 2007startrekfan1:

   star trek on a cereal?! Stop being silly, that is not happening!

2. 9:20 PM on February 7th, 2007sophie:

   be nice!

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