Well, I’ve done it. I went and created a blog dedicated to my star trek posts. And why? Would it be enough if I were to stop with, I’m a geek? Probably not. In fact, definitely not. I have two reasons for creating this blog in addition to my general blog, Life-snippets, which is also accessible on Blogspot. The truth is, I have a lot to say when it comes to star trek’s ability to grapple with social, ethical, political and moral questions, and those are only a few of the questions it deals with. Yet the truth is, not everybody who reads my blog is a star trek fan. I’ll go you one further and tell you freely that most are not, in fact, fans at all. That’s fine. So I created this blog to give fans a place to go who want to read something that is, hopefully, thoughtful and insightful about the phenomenon we all love; however, I also made this blog so that friends of mine who are not fans don’t have to wade through my star trek posts in Life-Snippets to get to the topics of general interest that they care to read about. So, in doing this I serve both groups, fans and non-fans alike. But after half a life of watching star trek (Half a Life is, incidentally, the name of a Next Generation episode and a good one), I felt it was time for me to systematically set down the thoughts I’ve had over the years. I don’t know if anyone will read it, ever. And if they don’t, I can accept that with some degree of equanimity.
This being the inaugural post in this blog, let me introduce myself briefly. I’m an ABD doctoral candidate in the German department at the University of Illinois. For those who don’t know what ABD means, we generally mean, “anything but done,” or something like that. In short, I’m almost done. That’s what my advisor thinks, bless her. I’m 28 as of today, engaged, and blind. Blind, only in the physical sense, and no, Jordy LaForge is far from my favorite character, but for the blind trek fans out there, I do have a post planned about the use of blindness in trek. In that post, incidentally, I’ll also answer questions I’ve gotten over the years dealing with how I, as a blind viewer, am able to watch and appreciate the show. These are well-intended, if tiresome questions, so I’ll get them out of the way one of these days. Not today. As for what you care to know about me, I’ve been told repeatedly that even among the more devoted fans of star trek, I stick out when it comes to analyzing the shows characters, themes and concepts and most annoyingly, for quoting the dialogue. Apologies to all those I’ve annoyed with long-winded rambling discourses or endless dialogue quoting. So maybe that analysis needs to get out there and do someone other than me some good. So here you go.
Generally, I intend to stick to what is loosely called the star trek canon. By that I mean episodes of TV series, the animated series now and again, and the star trek films. I might occasionally talk about a book or book series, but there are thousands of books out there, and so if I do, I’ll stick to books the vast majority of trek readers would’ve read. But books won’t be a regular part of this blog. And, fare warning, we may not agree. For example, I loathe the Star Trek 2009 movie. From what I’ve seen from fans on startrek.com, many of them hate it too. It deserves its own blog posting, and it will have it. I’m also disgusted with star Trek Enterprise, and it too will receive its own blog posting. Look for those soon. Meanwhile, I have a long Deep Space Nine-related post coming up next. Look for that in about 24 hours, and I warn you, it is long. But not all my posts will be as long as the DS9 one, I promise. Why DS9 first? Well, I’m attending the con in Nashville here at the end of the month, and I want my thoughts out there before I go. I also intend to keep a written record of my thoughts and experiences at the convention. I know I always enjoy reading those. So if Star Trek fans do stumble across this blog in the future and there are topics or episodes that I haven’t yet covered, send me an email or leave me a comment on Blogspot, and I’ll get to it. Meanwhile, here’s to the voyages.
No comments:
Post a Comment