Star Trek and Me

All right, it's time to face up to the painful truth: I was a shameless Star Trek fanatic in my youth. For a significant portion of my younger years, I pretended I was some fearless Starfleet officer protecting the world from foul Romulan invaders. And not that I'm that annoyingly fanatical anymore, but I still enjoy Star Trek and I still enjoy watching episodes whenever I get a chance. You see, Star Trek has a way of investigating parts of our society which no other television program dares touch. This is because it is more palatable to dissect our society when it is removed from present surroundings by a few hundred years. In this way, we aren't judging ourselves as much as we are judging the characters. However, from there, we can then come back and heap those same criticisms upon ourselves. I think this is the reason that people watch Star Trek. In addition to the cool costumes. And the awesome technology. Think, for a minute, my friends, what you could do with a holodeck. The possibilities are endless. But I digress.

The true purpose of this is to complain to the air about the presence of Star Trek on television. Of course, all the cable people out there will tell me that TNN carries Next Generation episodes every night. However, I don't get that channel, and thusly don't get Star Trek. Frankly, I miss it. The Powers That Be need to make it available on UPN again, like it always was. Then I could get my Star Trek fix and I wouldn't have to do homework or anything like that.

Incidentally, there are a lot of cool Star Trek sites online for the like-minded nerd or geek. Some of my favorites include:

• Startrek.com. The Official Website. I don't know why all sites about a subject always link back to the official source for that subject, even when the official source isn't really all that great a webpage. However, despite the commercialization and ads, Startrek.com has an interesting Trek library full of wonderful stuff.
• Ex Astris Scientia, a fan site that I found recently. It has hundreds of pictures of ships and technology and such things, often scanned from Star Trek: The Magazine or from some other official source. The author also ponders on minor (and major) inconsistencies between the various episodes. Check it out, but only if you care about Star Trek. (Why, indeed, would you be reading this if you didn't?)

Okay, so I lied. There are two cool Star Trek sites online. Be that as it may, Star Trek is unbelievably awesome and should be on television more.