Trek As Religion

I may have enjoyed reruns of Star Trek growing up but it was just one of the many television shows that were part of my childhood.  This would all change in high school.

For much of the 1970s, Trekkies were stuck watching the same old episodes in syndication but an animated series and feature film appeared before the decade's end.  After a few sequels, the franchise returned to television during my last year of middle school with Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The show was interesting but the first two seasons were a bit lacking.

Then for several reasons, I found myself embracing Star Trek like never before starting in 1989.  Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was in theaters and I thoroughly enjoyed it even though most fans didn't.  A new comic book series followed and that further captured my attention.

A few months later, I discovered FASA Corporation's Star Trek role playing game and all bets were off.  The company produced beautiful model ships which blended seamlessly with the established designs from the original series and movies.  Game supplements were well-written and highly imaginative.  FASA took elements from the original and animated series, books, and movies to create a very detailed Star Trek universe where past inconsistencies and errors were creativity explained.  In many ways, what they produced was far better than anything coming out of the Paramount Pictures studios.  FASA's products even inspired me to create my own characters and storylines.

Some of FASA's ship designs are still beloved to this day.

Eventually Star Trek: The Next Generation hit its stride and I really identified with the character of Lt. Barclay whose awkward shyness masked a very creative soul.  As I continued to feel lost in high school, Star Trek spoke to me in ways my Catholic religion didn't.  It presented a positive vision for humanity where profound questions about life were asked and the petty pursuits of this world were a thing of the past.

While Star Trek helped fill a void in my life, it also created a fair amount of isolation.  Building detailed models of starships was hard work that required countless hours of alone time.  I started wearing Star Trek pins on my Bishop Fenwick sweaters hoping to attract the attention of other fans but this only gave my bullies ammunition.  While friends listened to bands like U2, I was checking out soundtracks from the Star Trek films which featured classical music.  I nearly wore out my VCR watching the shows and movies over and over again. 

I eventually realized there just weren't any other die-hard Trekkies in high school.  Here was this wonderfully intricate universe of science fiction yet I couldn't talk to very many people about it.  Now I had an ax to grind.  I felt if my fellow classmates didn't appreciate Star Trek then they were rejecting me.  My love of the franchise turned into a shield that kept people at a safe distance.  If I felt left out of a conversation, I would make an obscure Star Trek reference to get back at them.  To some, I was becoming cold and insensitive.  In our teens we often fail to see how others perceive us.

At the time, being a geek was not very cool.  That's why I am amazed by how accepting society is today of all the things that made us outcasts.  During a visit to the 2016 Boston Comic Con, I saw plenty of people dressed as characters from Star Trek and a good number of them were female.  I thought to myself, "Where were these girls when I was getting teased in high school?"  From models to books to video games, the sheer economic power of today's geekdom is staggering.  However, it's also a double-edged sword.

Star Trek is supposed to be a universe where materialism does not matter but you'd never know it by all the merchandising fans lap up.  Will a Jean-Luc Picard bobblehead doll really bring fulfillment?  Doubtful.  Many place science fiction on a pedestal so high, it starts to resemble a religion.  I once knew a fan of Star Wars who watched the movies so much, it was like his version of going to Mass.

For a while, I too worshiped at the "altar of Trek" but in the end, it didn't lead to true happiness.  The time and energy I spent building model ships just wasn't worth it to me anymore.  FASA Corporation's license to produce Star Trek products was revoked by Paramount Pictures because the studio disagreed with certain aspects of the company's storylines.  Yet subsequent television shows like Voyager and Enterprise seemed to lack creativity.  The current movie reboots are just plain schlocky.

I've been a recovering Trekkie for many years now and while I still think it's important to be young at heart and have hobbies, there needs to be a balance.  Lately, society seems more juvenile than ever.  Are we even seeing the challenges that lie in front of us?  Time spent watching the same movie over and over again could be spent helping the poor or defending a cause.  How are we ever going to realize that positive vision for humanity if we don't do anything meaningful in the here and now to make it happen?

The Joy of Female Friends

Many claim men and women can't be friends because sooner or later the sexual tension between them will be too great.  A search of the internet reveals scientific studies that confirm this but other findings refute it.  Television shows and movies like Friends, New Girl and When Harry Met Sally have the platonic relationships of the characters turn into bed-hopping adventures.  Even Scully and Mulder of the X-Files crossed out of the friend-zone after years of speculation from fans.  I have to laugh at all this because in high school, I was blessed with many opposite-sex friendships.

Bishop Fenwick offered an advanced creative writing class that was open to underclassmen.  Here I got to know a fellow student named Sharon who was a year ahead of me and soon friendship developed.  We also shared the same study session in the cafeteria so as everyone else separated into groups by gender, we sat together.  Eventually her friend Christine joined us and we had a wonderful time hanging out. 

Nothing about our friendship seemed odd or unnatural because it was rooted in mutual respect.  We were all somewhat nerdy so topics of conversation tended to be more intellectual.  These female friends were a breath of fresh air since they allowed me to be more emotionally honest.  Gone was the stifling machismo usually found among my male friendships.

A rendition of the alternative
 clique from our yearbook 

Sharon was good friends with a fellow classmate of mine named Jen and we eventually found ourselves joining her much larger group of girls during lunch.  Most of these kids were part of an alternative clique that existed in the early 90s even though it didn't really have a name.  Some of us labeled them “artsy” or “progressives” because they dressed differently, were into art and literature and shunned the bubblegum pop music of the day.  They resembled Jane Lane from the TV show Daria which debuted a few years after my time at Bishop Fenwick.

Jane Lane from Daria.

Most of these “progressives” had a grudge against the Catholic Church and felt out of place in parochial school.  One girl was very sexual and took it upon herself to promote safe sex and gay rights while another read the Bible just to highlight all the misogynistic passages.  Perhaps it was their way of rebelling against an environment they dreaded. I embraced them anyway because we still had a lot in common.  Whatever their opinion of Catholic doctrine, it wasn't going to change my beliefs.  They knew where I stood and some of them respected my opinions even if they didn't agree with me.  Among these friends, I could be myself and not get judged for it.

Being the only guy in a group of girls didn't bother me because at the time I believed any differences between men and women were mostly societal.  Did our friendships hit the brick wall of biology?  Not really.  The term “friends with benefits” didn't exist and many of us were still somewhat innocent about life.  (Since there was no internet back then, society was a bit more innocent too.)  Sure, the occasional fantasy entered my mind but we just weren't compatible enough to seriously consider crossing any lines.  Besides, I loved my female friends like sisters and didn't want anything to spoil it.

These unconventional relationships probably caused some classmates to question my sexuality but others thought I was getting inside information when it came to understanding women.  It piqued the curiosity of one of my male friends and soon he joined our lunchroom group.  Having female friends made me feel a lot cooler than I was.  Unfortunately, we rarely got together outside of school since we lived so far away from each other.  (Our parents never had to deal with co-ed sleepovers but that would become a topic of conversation in society many years later.)

Female friendships weren't limited to fellow classmates.  During my senior year, the guys in my study session “adopted” a small group of juniors who sat at the table next to us.  These girls had been amused by our conversations so we decided to start talking to each other.

While there are many horror stories of opposite-sex friendships gone wrong, my experiences with them in high school were largely positive.  Perhaps I'm more sensitive than many of my male counterparts who frequent strip clubs and sleep around.  One psychological experiment highlighted the differences between males and females by separating toddlers from a toy with a plexiglas barrier.  Boys typically hit the divider while girls tended to cry.  However, there was a small percentage from both genders who did the exact opposite.  When one of my cousins got married, the groom chose a female friend to be his best man.  Maybe guys like us are the exception to the rule.  It's difficult to say but no friendship can work if you're missing two key ingredients: trust and respect.