I was fascinated with the way he would use terms like �fascinating� and �interesting�. I was delighted with his concentration on intelligence and the intellect. As a schoolkid I would use terms like �suspended animation� and �force field�, but the other kids at school seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. They were obsessed with sport or girls. I was interested in neither and often felt alone and apart from my classmates.
Another fact that set me apart from the rest was that I read BOOKS. This made me an egghead to my peers but I didn�t care. Every Saturday, thanks to TV, I would be taken to new worlds and shown experiences that my classmates had no comphrension of. I knew what a force field and phaser was before they could even tie their show laces in some cases. Star Trek was my world and Spock was my hero - so much so that I began to imitate Spock. This involved concentrating on showing no emotion, thinking logically and only showing interest in intellectual pursuits. I even sported a Spock �bowl� haircut. As I grew older I added a moustache but it wasn�t a good look.
The Vulcan philosophy continued to be my guide into university when I studied psychology. But gradually I began to realise that this Vulcan philosophy was a limited one. In Star Trek the motion picture Spock is forced to accept that being half human means that he has emotions and that fighting them is not only illogical but unhealthy. I came to accept that my dedication to a life of logic was as sensible as stepping into space without a spacesuit.
Star Trek had become, for me, a substitute family. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura were people I thought of as friends. While I couldn�t joke with them or go with them to a movie in real life, I could share their joys and sorrows on the screen. The defining moment when I realised how isolationed I was from real people came when I tried to tell a friend how much Star Trek meant to me. Being a non-believer he couldn�t understand what any true Star Trek fan takes as obvious: the special-ness of the Star Trek phenomena. To help communicate a little better I switched on the theme to Star Trek the Motion Picture and started to explain how special the series was to me. The only problem was that the music overwhelmed me. My feelings were so strong that I started to cry. My friend apologised, thinking he was at fault for probing me. I was more sad because he couldn�t understand why Star Trek was so important in my life.
It was then that I decided that I had become addicted to the idea of a substitute family, that I would have to do something about it. Star Trek had become my entire universe. The sad thing was I couldn�t see how much more there was in life - apart from the series. Sure, Kirk, Spock and Mccoy and their adventures on the Enterprise were exciting but I needed to start having adventures and relationships of my own with real people! William Shatner outraged fans in the eighties when he told them to �get a life�. He was right. Many fans, with their single-minded obsession with Star Trek forget where the basis of Star Trek came from: reality.
So I went out and got myself a reality. But after that, I came back to Star Trek. This time as someone who recognised that while I wasn�t there on the Enterprise I could still enjoy the series. And I did. In re-runs and on video. Ironically, when The Next Generation came along I dismissed it as a poor copy of the original: an attempt to capture the magic of the classic series. The classic series was always dear to my heart, and I couldn�t see how any other series could be as good as the first.
I was wrong. After initially resisting watching I slowly watched a few episodes. Some I didn�t like, particularly when that pesky kid (Wesley Crusher) was involved, but many others I did. One of the great strengths of the Star Trek series� is that the characters are well developed or at least very likeable. I began to take a strong liking to the Next Generation cast: Riker, Data, Picard, Troi, Beverly. But it was particularly Picard that I was drawn to. I was impressed by his intellect and intelligence. While careful to avoid becoming too �attached� to this character I was still deeply moved by his experiences, particularly at the hands of the Borg and his attempts to reintegrate in �Family�. The scene where Picard looks out of his ready room at the end of Best of Both Worlds has to be one of the most emotionally intense I have ever seen in the series. It is this ability to capture the emotional moment that has made Star Trek such a special series.
This deep sense of the importance of humanity and of relationships has continued in the following Star Trek series, DS9 and Voyager. Unfortunately, when DS9 was released I tried very hard to like it, and while I have watched many episodes and like the acting and scripts of some, I still can�t seem to attach myself to the characters and the series in the same way as I have with the others.
Voyager�s arrival in the Star Trek universe was also initially resisted, but I quickly came to love this incarnation as well. The doctor is one character I find particularly appealing and I have been intrigued by his development as a sentient being. The very idea that a hologram can have an existence seems unbelievable yet the series is renowned for overturning conventional ideas. The creation of his family in one episode suggests how hard it is to create your own ideal friends and family and the importance of being comfortable with yourself.
My journey over the last three decades with each new Star Trek series has reminded me of the importance of keeping an open mind, and expressing feelings. The growth I have seen in the various characters, from Spock, to Picard to Janeway has been mirrored in my own growth as a human being. I might not Grok Spock in quite the same way now as I did as a teenager coming to terms with his identity, but I still love watching a good TV program that not only has something intelligent to say about the human condition but also respects infinite diversity in infinite combinations.
