Genesis

So, here's the thing. The NFL season ended yesterday with the Super Bowl, and I have some spare time on my hands. As I was browsing through Netflix, looking for a suitable movie to show my son's basketball team (5th and 6th graders), I noticed that Netflix now appears to have all of the Star Trek series available for online streaming. I'm no expert, but there's the original series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. I think that's all of them (and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong).

And I got to thinking: "Hey, here's a little-known and under-analyzed bit of American pop culture; let's start a blog about it!!!"

I kid.

In truth, though, the multiple Star Trek series have been a staple of pop culture for nearly 50 years now, so I thought it was high time that I became better acquainted with them, especially considering that I can do so (basically) for free. And as I think about it, I realize that even though I know fairly little about Star Trek, it has been a part of my life in various ways for nearly 20 years.

I rarely watched the original series as a kid; I thought it was boring. In my 20s, I would see TV ads for 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' and smirkingly think to myself: Star Trek: The Next Waste of Time. Then I found myself in an on-again, off-again romance with a woman who really dug STNG --- even dressed up as a Bajoran High Priestess for Halloween one year (hi, Tacey!) --- and her Trekkie-ness ended up being just one more stress on a stumbling relationship. I still vaguely recall one emotional discussion about whether I would attend a Trekkie convention with her one year.

Ironically, it was only after that relationship ended that I was willing to give STNG a chance, and actually found that I enjoyed it. I also developed a renewed disdain for the original series and its cast, concluding at one point that Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner each had more talent in their pinky fingers than the entire original cast put together (an opinion I still hold). And it was an episode of STNG which created the opportunity to have my first one-on-one conversation with the woman who would become my wife --- and then my ex-wife.

After STNG went off the air, I made a couple half-hearted attempts to watch/follow the other variants which came out, but never really got interested in any of them. My Trekkie days (such as they were) were already a distant memory when I started dating my current fiancee, who decided she wanted to see the 2009 Star Trek movie on our first date.

So I guess resistance is futile. I was meant to be a Trekkie. But if I'm going to be a Trekkie, I should at least know what I'm talking about. And because it's in fashion these days to live your whole life out in public, I decided I would publicly document my observations/reactions/what have you as I watch each of the combined 695 episodes (ye gods!). Sure, the whole Star Trek phenomenon has been analyzed to death, but I'm a smart guy, and there's a lot of material out there. Surely I'm bound to come up with something no one else has ever said before, right?

Well, I guess we'll see.