Zombie Love Letters

Another of my abandoned high-concept blogs, the former betterthanmemoryalpha.blogger.com/ (Memory Alpha being the definitive Star Trek wiki) was conceived as an online updating of the format created by Chris Howarth and Steve Lyons for The Completely Useless Doctor Who Encyclopaedia (well worth hunting down on eBay) and it's Trek-based follow-up.

The Completely Illogical Star Trek A to Z seemed like a fun idea and perhaps the means to get my foot in the door with the higher echelons of fandom. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact I'll never be rich 'n' famous, but becoming a minor internet sensation would, I felt, have done my ego some good.
Anyway, this little project failed to thrive for a couple of reasons; first, it was clearly suited to Tumblr and I could never get on with that site, and secondly I just wasn't updating it often enough, indolent sort that I am.

Preserved here for posterity is everything I did write for the blog. I hadn't worked out entries for every letter of the alphabet, which was another reason why it didn't work.

* * *

A-LIST
Many famous faces have appeared in the Star Trek series and movies, though it's arguable as to who was the biggest of all. It depends on how you define a 'name' actor; if it's a simple question of fame Winona Ryder probably takes the top spot, but if the criterion is stature, then Patrick Stewart surely wins hands down. Trek alumni include golden age Hollywood veterans (Ricardo Montalban), prestigious stage actors (Christopher Plummer, Ben Vereen, et al), Oscar winners (Whoopi Goldberg, Joel Grey), TV stars (Joan Collins among many others), models (Iman, Famke Janssen, Padma Lakshmi unfortunately), comics (Andy Dick, Sarah Silverman), rock stars (Iggy Pop), British thesps who always play villains (David Warner, Malcolm McDowell) and a very long list of people who became hugely famous after popping up in one Star Trek production or another (David Soul to Kirsten Dunst). All in all, Star Trek has yet to attract contributions from any movie stars of truly A-list status, but that's probably not a bad thing. There have however been some significant near misses.

TEN VERY FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO WERE VERY NEARLY IN STAR TREK (UNLESS THEY WEREN'T)

1: Eddie Murphy
The 'what if?' scenario that still can bring even the most jaded of fans out in a cold sweat. The scariest part is how close it came to happening; depending on who you ask, either the Voyage Home screenwriters came up with the idea of Murphy, then Paramount's biggest star, co-starring in the film as a (no doubt terribly wacky) 20th century college professor who believed Kirk and co. were aliens, or Murphy- longtime Trek fan- himself approached Harve Bennett and Leonard Nimoy and asked for a role. Either way, early versions of the script were drafted based around this Close Encounters of the 23rd Century Kind idea, and it's telling that no material from said scripts seems ever to have come to light. To play devil's advocate though, it's perfectly possible that this abandoned Star Trek movie could have been a huge success both artistically and commercially, but from a fan's point of view it'd most likely have been another Superman III, in which the producers drafted Richard Pryor for a starring role, slapped Richard Pryor's mug very prominently on the film's poster, and generally made a big deal out the presence of Richard Pryor. The result, unsurprisingly, was a fairly bizarre Richard Pryor sci-fi comedy with a guest appearance by Superman.
2: Sean Connery
First choice of the Star Trek V producers to play Sybok, the star of such iconic classics as The Molly Maguires and Darby O’Gill and the Little People chose instead to take the role of Henry Jones, Sr. in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Given that Connery had previously said yes to Zardoz, anf would later turn down both The Matrix and Lord of the Rings only to choose The League of Extraordinary Gentleman as his Hollywood swansong, we can at least say he made one good career decision where SF movies were concerned.
3: Sigourney Weaver
Reportedly offered the role of Martia in The Undiscovered Country. We certainly can't imagine why she might have turned it down.
4: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Long rumoured to have been pencilled in as captain of a group of alien 'supermen' pitted against the Enterprise-D crew in an Olympic-style contest by Q (or something), perhaps crushing the Crushers and hearing the lamentations of the Earth women, in one of many TNG episodes that went unproduced. Leaving aside the patent ludicrousness of this frequently debunked rumour, the idea of Arnie crossing the Final Frontier seems to hold a peculiar fascination for the press. Jonathan Frakes, at one time attached to a sequel to/ remake of Total Recall, was acquainted with Schwarzenegger, stating in at least one interview that the Austrian Oak had 'loved' First Contact. Perhaps surprisingly, this statement quickly mutated into a report in Dreamwatch magazine (always first in the genre press to pounce on unsubstantiated chatter that made for a good headline) that Arnholt would be appearing in Insurrection. But then they also said that the Romulans, Q, the Prometheus and Christopher Walken would be in the film.
5: Robin Williams
Just imagine how much more obnoxious time-travelling conman Berlingoff Rasmussen (and even typing his name his irritating) might have been if he'd been played by moist eyed man-bear Robin Williams, for whom the part was written. Williams went off and made Hook instead, which was almost as much of a crowd-pleaser as A Matter of Time.
6: Jude Law
Genuinely considered to play Shinzon in Nemesis, which could be taken as much as a statement of intent of the part of the producers as anything (look! we've got money this time!). Other contenders were SF TV faves Michael Shanks of Stargate SG-1 and Buffy's James Marsters, whom Marina Sirtis later said should have gotten the part. We think this means she'd have preferred to have done the kissing scenes with him, the minx. At any rate, Tom Hardy's career certainly doesn't seem to have suffered for the box office failure of Nemesis, as he's now one of those people who Did Trek, Got Famous. Side note: Craig T. Nelson was also named as being up for a part in the film: we're guessing the Viceroy.
7: Tom Hanks
America's favourite flag-waving golden boy, Hanks (another Trek fan) is often cited as being an early choice for Zefram Cochrane in First Contact, but there's next to no evidence to back this up. Most sources suggest Hanks failed to appear in the movie due to a schedule conflict, rather than the fact his salary would have swallowed up about two-thirds of the budget.
8: Tom Cruise
Hollywood's other very famous Tom was only one of dozens of big names bandied about for the 2009 movie, but by far the one that raised the most eyebrows. Online scuttlebutt linked Cruise to the role of Pike and was repeatedly and strenuously denied by all parties, which probably means there was some truth to it. We could make a cheap crack about Cruise insisting the villain's name be changed from Nero to Xenu, but we won't.
9: Matt Damon
For a brief time during pre-production of the J.J. Abrams movie we all knew for certain that Matt Damon would be playing Kirk, alongside Adrien Brody as Spock and Gary Sinese as McCoy. Damon had been actively pursuing the part and had got the nod of approval from Shatner, or so we heard. In fact, Abrams did think of having Damon play George Kirk, but obviously that didn't work out either. Or rather it worked out very nicely, for Chris Hemsworth (Did Trek, Got Famous).
10: Ricky Gervais
Yes, the UK's dumpy titan of mirth was indeed approached by- wait for it- J.J. Abrams, to take a reportedly 'major role' in the 2009 movie. Gervais told the UK press he turned it down due to not being much of Trek fan, saying he would have been appearing in a blockbuster just for the sake of it (as opposed to his epoch-making performances in Night at the Museum 1 and 2). He didn't specify which dark-haired character hailing from the British Isles he was offered, but I think we can make a guess. Thank God it went to the right actor in the end, eh!

AMERICAN INCONTINENCE INSTITUTE
See OBVIOUS JOKES.

ARGYLE
Since the makers of TNG didn't seem to think their new series, with it's huge, fantastically advanced Enterprise needed a full-time chief engineer, we got no less than four of them in the first season. Of those, only the bearded Lt. Cmdr. Argyle made more than a single appearance, with actor Biff Yeager very keen to become a permanent cast member, at least according to one young actor who shall remain nameless (hint: poorly executed beard). The story goes that Yeager was trying to instigate a fan letter-writing campaign appealing for his promotion, and that once the producers got wind of this, he was out the door. Argyle proved memorable enough to make appearances in TNG novels and comic books where to date he has been killed off twice, in two entirely different ways. Most amusingly of all, Memory Alpha describes Argyle as possessing a "slight northern English accent". Er, which episodes were they watching?

AUDIOBOOK
A great way to enjoy the classic Star Trek novels from Pocket Books for that tiny minority of fans who couldn't be bothered to read them, the Simon and Schuster audios boasted 'collectors picture discs' (the CD's had a picture of the novel's cover on them) and were 'Enhanced with Sound Effects and an Original Score'. Admittedly, the sound effects were just generic sci-fi beeps and whooshing sounds and the same 'original' score was used on every title, but no matter, the real draw was always the dramatic readings by Star Trek cast members and, occasionally, people who had nothing to do with Star Trek whatsoever (someone really should have informed Joe Morton that Admiral Nechayev didn't speak with a Slavic accent). On special occasions the reading duties were split between two actors, as with John de Lancie and Majel Barrett on Q-in-Law or LeVar Burton and James Doohan with Relics (that's right, an audio book version of the novelization of a TV episode, read by the two actors who featured most prominently in said episode. You get used to this kind of insanity as a fan of giant multimedia properties). Predictably, the most fun to be had was from hearing the actors do impressions of their fellow luminaries; Shatner's semi-concussed Bashir, for example, has to be heard to be believed. Now if anyone out there has actually sat through the 8-hour unabridged audio version of Alan Dean Foster's 2009 movie novelization, please get in touch and let us know if Zachary Quinto does a better Scottish accent than Simon Pegg, and also at which secure institution you are being held.

AURORA
Originally one of Star Trek's cheapest and most cheerful starship designs- simply a reused Tholian web-spinner 'flown' backwards with some frankly adorable nacelles attached- Dr. Sevrin's hijacked cruiser was of the oft-mentioned J-type, and so slightly disappointing, as these ships had been spoken of in previous episodes as if they were the backbone of Starfleet. Luckily, the REMASTERED team came along and corrected this decades-old embarrassment with a brand new, original design that looked like a 23rd century Weinermobile.

[ B ]

BEARD
Facial hair sported by Klingons, Commander Riker and numerous sinister types: the Mirror Spock's goatee being one of the most iconic images the franchise has produced, serving as visual shorthand for characters' evil doubles in the likes of Knight Rider and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, as well as inspiring the name of a prog metal band (see also: T'PAU). Thank God, because without Mirror, Mirror it might well have been Lazarus' hilariously fluctuating face fuzz everybody remembered. Jonathan Frakes' beard remains the second most famous, certainly the most immaculately kept Trek beard, although the whim of various screenwriters saw this fine, full, dignified beard exploded to cartoon proportions for Parallels or reduced to a goatee for Frakes' second turn as Tom Riker. This wasn't the worst of it though, as eagle-eyed fans later spotted a howlingly unconvincing fake worn by Frakes in one early bridge scene in Insurrection (a common downside of movie making, scenes filmed out of sequence), the movie in which Riker was seen clean shaven for the first time in ten years. Other victims of the fake fungus include Alexander Siddig, whose five o'clock shadow had to painted on for one of DS9's Mirror universe romps, DeForest Kelley as the medallion-wearing country 'n' western McCoy of The Motion Picture (now there's an action figure variant we're still waiting for) and the supporting cast of Voyager's Heroes and Demons.

THE BIG BANG THEORY
Popular sitcom co-starring Wil Wheaton about the misadventures of a quartet of geeky scientists and their beautiful airhead neighbour. From the makers of Two and a Half Men, and rising above a similarly uninspiring premise by dint of a talented cast and genuinely witty scripts, whilst happily recycling every smart people/ SF fan stereotype in the book; the patrons of real comic book shops, for instance, don't fall into awed silence whenever someone female walks in (ah, the old 'girls don't do sci-fi' chestnut). Though often very funny The Big Bang Theory tends to be at its most irksome when going for cheap laughs like this, with the 'geeky' references typical of comedy written by people who know nothing of actual geek culture. These range from basic errors (it's not a "Green Lantern lantern", it's called a power battery, goddammit!) to things that simply don't ring true (we find it hard to swallow that Sheldon adores Firefly but detests Babylon 5, it seems far more likely it'd be the other way around. Plus Sheldon forgot all about his Firefly fandom in that episode with Summer Glau on the train), and it is in the series' many Star Trek references that this is especially evident. Maybe it's just us, but when Leonard threatens to open his mint condition production error Geordi action figure ("Ok man, be cool!" Side-splitting), we felt very nearly moved to write in and point out that such figures are not all that rare or valuable, and it might have been more plausible had Leonard been brandishing, say, the limited edition red-uniformed Redemption Data figure (named for the episode in which he didn't wear said uniform). Earlier in that very same show Sheldon (who can't pronounce "Qapla'" to save his life) stated that The Enterprise Incident takes place in 2328(!) This is kind of thing is simply unacceptable. Yeah, yeah, we know, it's Not Made For Us.

BLINDNESS
Did you know that the Federation President in The Undiscovered Country was meant to be blind? Chances are you didn't as this wasn't exactly made explicit on screen, but in theory the swish mirror shades he wears during the briefing scene allowed him to see, suggesting something far more elegant and advanced than Geordi's VISOR. So it's probably for the best that officially his eyes were fine, and he just held his head that way because he was a bit aloof. Bad enough they chose to put Kurtwood Smith in the Saratoga helmsman's make-up from The Voyage Home, which must have left more than a few cinemagoers wondering how a Klingon could be President (their race has since been named as Efrosian, but we bet you thought they were Klingon the first time). Today Smith is most famous as disciplinarian father Red Forman in That 70's Show, in which his character's fondness for referring to everyone around him as a 'dumb-ass' always earned gales of laughter and applause from the studio audience, even into the seventh seasons. Thus his appearance in Star Trek VI was a source of much amusement to the former stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 when they recorded their Rifftrax commentary for the film. Though Smith went on to play Thrax in DS9 and Annorax in Voyager, to SF fans he will always be Clarence Boddicker, the man who blew off Peter Weller's hand with a shotgun- and eventually got a spike through the neck in return- in RoboCop.

[ C ]

CASPERIA PRIME
Oft-mentioned vacation planet from the latter seasons of DS9. Ideal destination for those sick to death of Risa, i.e. the television audience.

CLAYMATION
Format in which the sixth Star Trek movie would be filmed, or so wag Walter Koenig told a credulous George Takei, who hoped that he and the rest of the original series cast would at least be asked to provide their characters voices. Had this really happened, chances are the studio would have hired everybody except Koenig, so the joke would have been very much on him.

[ D ]

THE DAUPHIN
If ever an illustration was needed of just how piss poor most of The Next Generation's second season was, just take this Wesley Crusher story in which the dimpled space Mozart experiences his first doomed romance, Worf battles a dumpy alien governess who's really a furry shapeshifting bodyguard (or vice versa) and Riker and Guinan share a cringe-worthy jokey scene in which they pretend to moon over each other like teenagers. And then consider that it is by no means the weakest episode of the season. It's not even in the bottom five.

DePAUL
Two-time Enterprise navigator played by Sean Kenney, better known as the crippled Captain Pike of The Menagerie. The frequent Kenney/ Pike confusion probably explains the 1996 Captain Pike action figure, which looks a helluva lot more like DePaul than it does Pike. The hair is a dead giveaway.

Immortalised in plastic

[ E ]

EL CAPITAN
A note to any future filmmakers considering setting a scene on this or any other famous giant rock: we appreciate the logistical difficulties involved in shooting on a real mountainside, but if you're going to employ a 1:1 scale mock-up of the rock face, try and ensure that a) the paint is dry, and b) the actual mountain isn't clearly visible in the background.

ENDGAME
Voyager may have been the most heavily criticised Trek series, but we feel this spectacular, emotive finale has been unfairly pilloried. Admittedly, we all felt profoundly cheated that the 'suspense' surrounding whether or not they'd get home (as if there was ever any doubt!) was spun out until literally the final minutes, thus denying us the chance to see the crew set foot on Earth, nor acclimatize to life back in the Alpha Quadrant, or dealing with the tremendous emotional fallout. Yes, the Chakotay-Seven romance was horribly contrived and unconvincing. And OK, we all wondered why they went to the trouble of getting Alice Krige back as the Borg Queen when all they had for her to do was say things like 'neurolytic pathogen' and do some embarrassing pole dancing. But what we cannot let lie is the charge of derivative storytelling. The episode, which features return appearances for the Negh'Vahr-class Klingon cruisers (introduced in All Good Things...) and those horrible, high-waisted future Starfleet uniforms (also introduced in All Good Things...), has long sequences set in the future some 25 years hence, like in the hugely popular TNG finale, All Good Things.... In this possible future, Janeway is an admiral (like Riker in All Good Things...), Paris an author (like Geordi in All Good Things...), Torres is working for the Klingon government (like Worf in All Good Things...), Harry has become a Captain (like Beverly in All Good Things...), Chakotay and Seven are dead (like Troi in All Good Things...) and Tuvok is suffering from some 24th century version of Alzheimer's (like Picard in All Good Things...). Derivative? We have no idea what these people are talking about! Endgame is nothing like Timeless. It does however end with a shot of Voyager being escorted to Earth by Galaxy- and Defiant-class ships, in what's tempting to see as a last minute stab at mollifying the fans.

See also THESE ARE THE VOYAGES...

ENTERPRISE-B
Established as having been an Excelsior-class ship long before her screen debut, the third (or fourth. Possibly even fifth?) starship to bear the name Enterprise still needed to appear excitingly new for Generations, and so the old war horse Excelsior model was extensively modified; large outboard impulse engines, nacelle caps, a new colour scheme, and a flared 'Kill Kirk Here' section added to the secondary hull. Playmates produced an electronic model of the B only to repackage it with Excelsior decals. It's generally assumed they mistook the two ships for identical, but it seems more likely they simply hoped nobody would notice given that the 'energy ribbon' sound effect was still present on the Excelsior version. Either way Pocket Books managed to get the two mixed up, slapping a picture of the Enterprise-B on the cover of the Flashback novelization.

"EXPERIENCE BIJ!"
The Next Generation: Interactive Video Board Game, also known as A Klingon Challenge, basically a Star Trek take on the Atmosfear/ Nightmare format, trumps most Trek-based games in that it's quite fun, indeed something you might conceivably play more than once a lifetime, and seems to have been put together by people who really knew their Star Trek. The video stars Robert O'Reilly as a renegade Klingon, Kavok (sounds like 'havok'. See what they did there?) who commandeers the Enterprise from spacedock and plans to use it to attack Kronos, thus ending the 'intolerable' peace between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. Over the 60 minutes the game runs- well, 45, thanks to a convenient time anomaly- we're treated to footage from 11001001, Where No One Has Gone Before, Yesterday's Enterprise and Cause and Effect. Filmed on the actual TNG sets and with an opening voice-over by Jonathan Frakes, the game ticks a lot of boxes from the outset, with players cast in the role of a Starfleet repair team working their way through Jefferies tubes, collecting isolinear chips, dodging force fields and making frequent trips to sickbay or the Holodeck. The game isn't perfect- Klingons don't actually attack without warning any ship that enters their space, as shown in the video- and the downside of the format, as with every 'interactive movie', is it tends to be rather static and repetitive. O'Reilly's role consists almost entirely of saying the same handful of lines in a variety of different locations: "Mev!", "You! The one who is moving now", "Experience Bij!" (meaning take a forfeit card), "I place you in a stasis field" and "Take the challenge of the Klingon sword to determine your destiny". This latter involves a Twister-type spinner with a d'k tahg motif (so not actually a 'sword' at all). A follow-up game, starring Q and the Borg was planned but failed to materialise, although the concept was recycled for the Star Trek: Borg CD-ROM and it's subsequent soundtrack release, both of which were utter, utter shit. Oh, and the box the Klingon Challenge game came in was white in the US, but black everywhere else. We've no idea why.

[ F ]

47
The atomic number of silver. In case you didn't know.

FINAL FRONTIER
Proposed web-based animated series, one of several projects mooted for production in the wake of Enterprise's cancellation. As with Bryan Singer's Federation concept, this would have taken place in a dark, post-Nemesis future and charted the rebuilding of the Federation following an apocalyptic war. The team at Zero Room Productions intended a frenetic, Clone Wars-influenced style for the series, and with a Kirkesque captain, TOS-style uniforms and phaser designs firmly in the ray-gun mold, they clearly hoped to win the Trekkie vote with a big helping of fan service (Omega particles would have featured prominently in the show's premise), whilst updating the Star Trek tradition of allegorical storytelling for a post-9/11 audience. Bleak, hard-edged plots infused with paranoia, set aboard an old battleship, the Bismarck-class cruiser Battlesta- sorry, Enterprise. And if all that doesn't sound completely, excruciatingly awful to you, just take a look at how they imagined the ship

THE FIRST ADVENTURE
The Starfleet Academy movie that never was. It must be noted that the prequel film we eventually wound up with bore only superficial similarities to Harve Bennett and David Loughery's screenplay, but we could appreciate Harve feeling just a tad aggrieved after having his pet project shot down so many times in the 90's only for something very similar to be hailed as having saved the franchise. The First Adventure is now just another footnote in Trek history, but it did produce some rather striking conceptual art, in particular an amusing sketch of a reclining McCoy with stetson pulled down over his eyes. Also of note, design ideas for the battered old training ship Enterprise, which just might have influenced a later Star Trek prequel (see below).

FREAS, KELLY
Respected SF artist whose Star Trek works include the "Officers of the Bridge/ Deck" portrait series produced for a convention book in 1976. His Uhura, Chekov and McCoy though very much of their time are fairly impressive, but his Kirk looks like a Spitting Image puppet of Michael Landon, his Spock very obviously based on a contemporary shot of Nimoy with unconvincing pointed ears added in, whilst a fully bearded Scotty is presented in traditional Scottish regalia (or as most Americans imagine Scottish people dress anyway), kilt and sword, and Sulu... Oh my, Sulu. Grinning, shirtless, posed oh-so-rakishly with a foil, Freas' Sulu protrait may well be one of the campiest Star Trek items ever created. Which would be fine if said portraits hadn't been chosen to represent the greatest science fiction series of all time by being put on display in the Smithsonian alongside such genuinely priceless artifacts as the original eleven-foot Enterprise filming model (and also some NASA stuff as well). Fans can do little but file the Freas collection with other such Unfortunate Novelties as the celebrity cameos (see CAMEO), figural mugs, any album released by a Star Trek actor and the 2009 movie.
View the prints here http://tinyurl.com/od2ovxa

FRIED EGGS
How Dominic Keating described the neural parasites of Operation -- Annihilate! which would have almost certainly put in an appearance on Enterprise had the show managed a fifth season. Sadly that never happened and we and Keating were denied the chance to see this apt nickname become canon.

[ G ]

GOLDSMAN, AKIVA
Screenwriter responsible for Batman and Robin, universally considered one of the worst films of the 20th century and possibly a crime against humanity for which all involved should be standing trial in The Hague. Other classics on Goldsman's CV include Lost in Space, Practical Magic and Deep Blue Sea, but he also won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind and adapted Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code novels, so we suppose all's forgiven. Goldsman played one of the Vulcan ministers in the 2009 movie, but was rumoured to have been writing the tenth Star Trek film several years earlier, making a lot of people very unhappy. In hindsight, could he have done any worse than what we wound up with?

GOURMET COFFEE, STAR TREK
Star Trek branded coffee is one thing, it's not a million miles from, say, Star Trek cereal, but pouches of premium blend 'Federation Supremo' or 'Galaxy-class Roast' marketed as collectors items and sold at a huge mark up is just madness. Originally sold through the Las Vegas Star Trek Experience (home of the Wrap of Khan), they were later made available through other sources via mail order. Imagine mail-ordering Star Trek coffee beans, God almighty. That's the problem with merchandising derived from a huge franchise like Trek, for all the prerequisite t-shirts and video games, the cool action figures and so on, there are the inescapable collectors plates, mouse mats, Christmas tree ornaments and, more recently, the nesting dolls and limited edition guitar pick set. A Mr. Spock Pez dispenser might pass muster as an appealing bit of hipster-friendly kitch, but the same probably can't be said for the Mr. Spock nutcracker, or the Spock figural decanter and liquor bottle from the 70's.

ITEMS OF STAR TREK MERCHANDISE THAT SOUND MADE UP, BUT SADLY AREN'T

1. Marbles (1990's)

Or 'Collectable Action Marbles' to give them their proper name. Because these rudimentary children's playthings were crying out for the addition of Next Generation and Deep Space Nine characters' faces to make them that much more exciting. And collectable, of course.

2. String Art Kit (1976 (naturally)

This kind of thing was all the rage once upon a time. If you liked a good Trek yarn (haha), there was also the Star Trek kite string (1979) and later, Star Trek shoe laces.

3. Dust ruffle (1986)

What's a dust ruffle?

4. Comb and brush set (1977)

The collectibles guide books assure us this set came attractively packaged in its own window box.

5. First aid kit (1979)

Because nothing is more reassuring in times of accident or injury than sterile bandages bearing the name of a popular movie franchise. Astonishingly, McCoy wasn't even on the box.

6. First Contact toiletries (1996)

The most successful TNG movie also boasted perhaps the largest marketing campaign of any Star Trek film since The Motion Picture, with fans given the opportunity to enjoy a relaxing soak with a Borg bubble bath and scrub themselves down with a bar of glycerin soap containing a little plastic Enterprise-E. Not the first Star Trek themed hygeine products to reach the shelves, nor the last.

7. Spoons (various)

There have been several varieties of Star Trek-inspired collectable spoons over the years. We've elected not to offer any photographic evidence, you can take our word for it. Ditto the Star Trek thimbles.

8. Light switch plates (various)

Again, a number of different designs have been manufactured, for those sorry few who need to Star Trek-ise every inch of their home. A small niche market, but nevertheless.

9. Stove burner covers (1995)

Seriously, who the hell thinks these things up?

10. Star Wars, Star Trek and the 21st Century Christians by Winkie Pratney (1978)

We known nothing about this book, save that it was written by a fellow named Winkie Pratney.

[ I ]

"I HATE YOU"
Popular song found on Earth of the 1980's. Probably the only punk rock song of the entire era to contain the word 'eschew'.

"I LOST A BROTHER ONCE"

"I was lucky I got him back". James T. Kirk was a callous bastard. In case anybody besides the writers of Star Trek V forgot, Kirk actually did have a brother, Sam aka George Kirk, Jr., who actually died in rather unpleasant circumstances, but hey, why let a minor detail like that get in the way of such a heartwarming scene. Indeed, this startlingly insensitive line was rather ironic in the movie that introduced a previously never-hinted at brother of Spock's. The line so aggrieved author Peter David that he amended it to "I lost two brothers. I was lucky I got one of them back" for the comic adaptation. Sam Kirk was also absent from the 2009 movie, at least in the cut of the film we all saw. Young Kirk's friend Johnny, the kid seen hitchhiking, would have been Sam originally, but his scenes and all mentions of a brother were deleted, possibly because it occurred to the makers of the film that the tearjerker opening Kelvin sequence would be somewhat undermined if the Kirk's already had a son- and where was he? Since everything leading up to the appearance of the Narada is meant to tally with the (sigh) 'Prime' timeline perhaps we can conclude that Sam was actually Kirk's half-brother, George, Sr's son by a first marriage. Either way, if Alternate Sam ever makes an appearance in a future Trek movie we demand he be played by Chris Pine in a mustache.

[ J ]

JACE MICHAELS
What those imaginative folks at Decipher, makers of the Star Trek Customizable Card Game christened the unnamed Odyssey first officer played by actor Michael Jace. See what they did there? Inspired. Through an ever-expanding collection of subsets and expansion packs, not to mention a complete change of format necessitating collectors purchase new versions of cards they already owned, as if the whole demented pastime hadn't bled them of enough cash already, it fell to the creators of the CCG to devise names and personal details for a vast number of background characters, many of them non-speaking extras onscreen for as little as a few seconds. This kind of thing is common to the Star Wars universe, where every human, alien or droid who ever appeared in any media, in any capacity is automatically awarded an horrendously convoluted biography and their own action figure (and yet Lucasfilm still won't remaster the original theatrical versions of the trilogy for DVD release because it would be 'too costly'. Sure George, cos they'd never sell enough copies to make it worthwhile). Decipher showed a bit more imagination when they revealed that X-Men director Bryan Singer's tactical officer character from Nemesis was genetically enhanced Lt. Kelly, a man possessed of "uncanny" mutant abilities. Boom boom.

JOHNSON, SHANE
Author of Trek reference books in the 1980's, Johnson's Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise was published between the release of Star Trek's IV and V and followed in the illustrious footsteps of the original Starfleet Technical Manual, drawing from the FASA role-playing games for it's references to 23rd century dating, but a plausible volume in most other respects. With only the four movies released up to that point to work with, Johnson made some reasonable suppositions, such as all movie era shuttlecraft resembling the 'sled' piloted by Spock in TMP, or that the Enterprise-A would be equipped with transwarp drive. By the time of his Worlds of the Federation clever guesswork of this sort was going out of fashion with fans and studio alike and the book carried a disclaimer stating that the information provided was strictly the author's interpretation of the Trek universe, although this was probably because so much of it was based on The Animated Series with entries on the Aquans, Aurelians, Caitians (descendants of the Kzinti, doncha know) and other favourites, although there was no sign of Arex's people, oddly. Accompanying these entries were some charming line drawings providing our first glimpses of, among others, the Denebian slime devil (amusingly, the book's example of a typical native of Betazed is clearly based on Wyatt Miller). Colour illustrations came courtesy of artist Don Ivan Punchatz, with cover art (included thoughtfully as a centrefold) depicting a group shot of familiar faces, including Bynars, a Phylosian, our old friend Thelev, a diminutive Saurian dressed in Wesley Crusher's grey jumpsuit thing and a very hungover looking Motion Picture-era Klingon.

TEN THINGS WE LEARN FROM WORLDS OF THE FEDERATION

1: Mankind's first contact with an extraterrestrial species occurred in 2048, when the UNSS Icarus met the people of Alpha Centauri, a very advanced race believed to be descended from ancient Greeks transported from Earth by the Preservers. Centaurian physicist Zefram Cochrane gave humans the secret of faster-than-light travel after two days. Strikes us as a tad irresponsible, that.

2. Tellar's First Contact was with humans and sparked a worldwide panic, an incident which lead to the creation of the Prime Directive. Tellarites give birth in litters, usually of 6, and are considered to have reached adulthood by age 12.
3. The Rigel system is home to multiple intelligent species, including one of the many Vulcan offshoots, found on Rigel V, and the Orion people who come from Rigel VII. Orion males are yellow-skinned.
4. Saurians are fascinated by the religions of other worlds, having no concept of religious faith themselves. They are immune to the effects of their famous brandy. Their name for humans is "Kyrrstn'Kwynn" (so presumably the first human they met was a woman named Kirsten).
5. The 'moon' visible from Vulcan's surface is actually her dead, volcanic twin world, T'Khut, named 'Charis' (look it up) by human astronomers.
6. Marcos XII is home to Piersol's Traveller, a unique species of walking tree. Sadly, they don't talk or have beards.
7. After scrapping their Chicago mobster-based culture the people of Sigma Iotia II found a communicator left behind by the crew of the Enterprise and went on to reshape their society based on Starfleet, right down to the population all wearing the uniforms. Well, it sure sounds like the kind of thing those impressionable idiots would do. Indeed, this popular concept was the original basis for what became Trials and Tribble-ations and later a comic book storyline. We can definitely see why, it sounds hilarious.
8. After the events of The Devil in the Dark the Horta were given a half interest in the mining operation on Janus VI, although we're not told what they spend their half of the profits on (more rocks?)
9. Tholians have specialised body configurations for different roles in their society. Their natural shape resembles a giant quartz pendant with eyes.
10. Klingons hail from the planet Kling. The Original Series Klingons were genetically-engineered human hybrids and the true Klingon physiology only became known to the Federation after receiving the distress signal from IKS Amar. Hang on, haven't we heard this somewhere before?

JORAN
Murderous sixth host of the Dax symbiont. Introduced in Equilibrium and presented as believably psychotic, Joran reappeared later in the same season when his consciousness was telepathically implanted in Sisko (the DS9 writers never told us the Trill could do this before because they didn't think we needed to know, presumably) at which point theatrical masks and creepy piano melodies were dropped in favour of having Avery Brooks do Hannibal Lecter, his slow talking, o-ver e-nun-ci-a-ting routine obviously being more of a crowd pleaser ("Hell-o Jad-zi-a") than the performance illusions of Jeff McBride. By Joran's third appearance, now played by Leigh J. McCloskey who's subtlety we all remember from Voyager's Warlord, most of the character's credibility was out the airlock. It was one thing for him to have degenerated into a sneering panto moustache-twirler, but if he was all in Ezri's head, would someone care to explain how he was able to look around a room and notice things independently?

[ K ]

KOERNER, GABRIEL
Easily the most memorable interviewee in Trekkies, the young man whose mullet and appalling phone manner will haunt him and all of Trek fandom for eons has gone some considerable way to redeeming himself since that interview in 1997. An accomplished digital artist, Koerner's work can be seen on Battlestar Galactica and in movies such as Speed Racer and Superman Returns. More importantly, his reimagined 'retro' style Enterprise 1701, seen in the 2007 Ships of the Line calendar and subsequent book, was vastly superior to the one J.J. Abrams later gave us, receiving a thumbs-up from just about everyone. Fitting then, that Koerner should be behind the CGI Enterprise-D seen in the closing moments of The Final Insult..., marking the final appearance of the -D, the Galaxy-class and indeed any 24th century starship, in the final shot of 18 years of televised Star Trek. Justifiably proud of this achievement, Koerner dutifully noted: "everything before the final shot is unwatchable". Actually the most grievous element of his Trekkies segment was not the phone bit or even the ghastly replica First Contact style uniform he wore throughout (could have been homemade, could have been a Rubies official replica, we'll never know) but rather his choosing to display a paltry line-up of Star Trek action figures in front of a large collection of mint in box Star Wars figures. Dude, not cool.
See the video here http://tinyurl.com/p2ckfl9

[ L ]

LATINUM CARD
VHS promotion launched by CiC Video in the UK, affording fans the opportunity to collect "latinum" tokens with each DS9/ Voyager tape they purchased, which could be redeemed against a range of entirely unexciting crap with the Star Trek logo/ delta insignia printed on it. For those unmoved by the pen, the watch or the pair of binoculars, the most desirable item was, unsusprisingly, also the most expensive: a personal CD player shaped vaguely like the Defiant. We're sure those few who actually bought every tape from DS9's sixth and Voyager's fourth season to collect all the tokens were thrilled with theirs, thought perhaps less so once they'd worked out a novelty walkman had cost them around £260. The flashy, silver-boxed re-release of TNG's first season also boasted "isolinear chips" in every pack; 'These unique devices', began the leaflet blurb, which didn't go on to say 'are actually boring, shiny stickers with pictures of different ships on them', although purchasers could send away for a special presentation album to display them in, cementing their status as true collectibles.

[ M ]

THE MAN TRAP
A salutary lesson to the females of any species; you can only call a man "Plum" so many times before he shoots you.

MARAUDER MO
Popular line of action figures on Ferenginar. Quark was delighted to find his mother had held onto his treasured vintage Marauder Mo's, and we got the customary gag about how much more valuable they'd have been if he'd kept them in the original packaging. Ah, but did they each have an individual serial number stamped on the bottom of their feet?

MARSHMALLOW DISPENSER
A replica of this camping must-have, from Kraft Foods, makers of fine, jet-puffed marshmelons, must surely be one of the most insanely brilliant bits of franchise spin-offery ever. Disappointingly, the mail-away item was simply a lever-operated plastic tube, capable of holding a whopping four marshmallows at once, with a gaudy Star Trek V sticker slapped on it. It did come supplied with a miniature plastic spork and knife set though, plus a little instruction note signed by Captain Kirk himself; one of several items released down through the years purportedly carrying Kirk's signature (none of them match, strangely enough).

"MOON OVER RIGEL VII"
Campfire sing-along classic suggested by Kirk, who rather undermined his reputation as a legendary explorer by mispronouncing 'Rigel'. We got that unforgettable rendition of "Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row Your Boat" instead, but we at betterthanmemoryalpha.com like to imagine that this galactic favourite is sung to the tune of "Bridge Over Troubled Water".

[ N ]

NECK, BACK OF
Location of Chakotay's testicles, at least judging by where Seska chose to stick her needle when attempting to extract his, ahem, DNA. Then again, judging by her failure to impregnate herself perhaps it's actually Cardassian men whose sperm is produced and stored at the base of their necks and Seska just wasn't that familiar with the differences in human physiology.

"NOT YOUR FATHER'S STAR TREK"
Provocative tagline used in TV spots for the 2009 movie that may as well have read "SHOO NERDS, SHOO!" for all the goodwill it engendered amongst the fan faithful, for whom Paramount apparently decided their franchise had no further need. An in-your-face marketing campaign that proclaimed 'a STAR TREK for everyone' (read: not just geeks) only fuelled fan doubts that the dreaded reboot would be little more than a Michael Bay movie with Romulans. The disquiet inspired parody news service The Onion's popular "Trekkies bash new Star Trek film as 'fun, watchable'" video, which many found hilarious and right on the money, as if action set pieces and one-liners were somehow anathema to Star Trek fans. Yeah, cos we've never seen anything like that before.

Watch the Onion video here http://tinyurl.com/24uyaju

NUMBER ONE
Erstwhile Enterprise first officer, Star Trek's Woman With No Name. Even Gene Roddenberry never bothered devising an actual moniker for this trailblazing character, even after casting his then mistress in the role. The most popular (read: fanwanky) theory to Number One's identity is that she was a sister or other blood relative of Christine Chapel, whilst the daftest comes courtesy of none other than D.C. Fontana who reckoned the character was from a planet called Illyria, and 'Number One' was her actual name.

PEOPLE AND THINGS WITH MULTIPLE NAMES

1. Number One

In the Early Voyages comics she was simply Lt. Cmdr. Robbins, whilst Peter David's New Frontier books claim she is an immortal named Morgan Primus, the mother of Robin Lefler and the spitting image of both Christine Chapel (Scotty meets her at one point and does a double-take) and Lwaxana Troi. Another novel suggests her name was Timothea Rogers, but in the Assignment: Earth comic miniseries by John Byrne, she was a Gary Seven-type time agent named Diana Winters. Yet another comic book, Star Trek: Crew (also by Byrne), a potted biography of the character, turned the whole vexing business into a running joke, having someone always interrupt whenever her name was about to be spoken, etc.
2. Uhura
As popular as 'Nyota' might have been (no one seems quite sure who invented it or when), before it was formalised as Uhura's first name in 2009 another popular choice was 'Upenda'. The FASA Star Trek role-playing game, a great source of defiantly non-canon material, dubbed her Samara.
3. Enterprise-A
Most people go with Roddenberry's assertion that Starfleet just rechristened an existing ship rather than build a whole new one, but whereas Roddenberry suggested the vessel in question was the Yorktown, in a nice nod to Trek's origins, the book Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise states the ship was called USS Ti-Ho.
4. Chakotay's ship
The spiffy Maquis raider with the TARDIS-like interior, judging by its crew compliment (OK we never got an exact figure, but given the ship's size it can't have been more than a dozen, surely?) was officially called the Val Jean, tying in nicely with the Eddington story arc in DS9, but has been variously named in spin-off novels the Liberty (very original), Zola, Geronimo, Selva and Spartacus.
5. Kronos
Or 'Qo'noS', to use the correct spelling. Did anyone ever really like the idea of the Klingon homeworld being called 'Kling'?
6. Romulus and Remus
Thanks to Diane Duane's popular Rihannsu novels, there are to this day a number of fans doggedly insisting that Romulus be referred to as 'ch'Rihan' and Remus as 'ch'Havran'. On the whole, we prefer the much catchier '128 Trianguli III-A'.
See also ROMII.7. Saurians
Mego reckoned these affable space lizards were Rigellian.

[ P ]

PINBALL
The first Star Trek pinball machine from Bally is best remembered for some very funky artwork of Kirk and co. on an alien planet with the Enterprise flying overhead, capturing the 60's milieu beautifully. For the machine's 1979 reissue the artwork was changed to reflect The Motion Picture, with an updated Enterprise and the movie's infamous Starfleet Dental Corps uniforms pasted onto the characters. 1991 saw the release of the Bally/ Williams Next Generation pinball machine, an impressive beast boasting authentic cast voice samples, a 'Poker Night' mode and a number of inlaid miniatures of Trek ships dominated, oddly, by the Descent-type Borg vessel. "What player could resist balls being launched into space at warp speed?" as the narrator of the promo video so adroitly put it, accompanied by an actress clad in one of the cheaper off the rack TNG costumes (the kind with the silk screened combadge) trying her best to look 'star-struck' by the game. "Players will become dedicated pinball Trekkies after their first tour of duty" we're told, which must explain why she ends the video talking into her wallet as if it's a communicator.

PINK SKIN
Racial epithet repeatedly hurled at Archer by Shran, although never when Mayweather was in the room for some reason. Incidentally let's not forget Thelev, who's true identity made for a stunning twist; certainly nobody watching Journey to Babel for the first time suspected those antennae might be fake. Thelev was an Orion posing as Andorian, and yet in his tussle with Kirk we got some startling glances at his distinctly human-caucasian looking hands, suggesting perhaps some freakish genetic anomaly. Or possibly that green plus blue makes pink?

PROTON TORPEDOES
Ordnance carried by spacecraft of the Star Wars universe and politely ignored by Paramount, who are obviously good sports about this kind of barefaced provocation. We somehow doubt Lucasfilm would be so gracious if Klingons started wielding 'lasersabers' in battle.

[ Q ]

Q'S GUIDE TO THE CONTINUUM
When the funniest bit of your comical Star Trek guide book is the cover, something obviously went wrong somewhere, although if you did hire Michael Jan Friedman to write the thing we suppose you can't expect miracles. A circus sideshow-themed cover design with Q bursting through a poster surrounded by shots of the Borg Queen, Gorn, Weyoun, and Telok from Crossover (or it might have been Nu'Daq from The Chase), none of whom appear in the book in any capacity, promised mirth and merriment at the expense of a few of the franchises' sacred bovine bioforms. "Captain's log, Stardate Eleventy-leven eighty six point negative nine. Charted a blah blah blah with my blah blah crew today, collecting samples of blah blah blah..." reads the back cover blurb. In stitches yet? Well if not, it's doubtful the 175 pages of sub-Hitchhiker's Guide witticisms contained therein will rock your world, nor will Q's searing insights into the secrets of the Trek universe. For example, we learn the key to destroying a Federation starship... Hit the warp core. Well duh. That's rather like saying the 'secret' to totalling a car is crashing it. Not exactly forbidden knowledge. John de Lancie himself had a bash at this sort of material when he got together with Peter David to pen the novel I, Q, and the results weren't much more enthralling. For an offbeat, irreverent Star Trek tome that's actually funny, track down Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe's Legends of the Ferengi, which is terrific. Avoid like the Telurian plague any of the books on the following list.

TEN STAR TREK PUBLICATIONS FROM POCKET BOOKS THAT REALLY AREN'T WORTH OWNING

1. Star Trek Cookbook

The second Trek-themed cookbook to reach print, following the unrelated Official Star Trek Cooking Manual by one Mary Ann Piccard. Co-written by Ethan Phillips (in character as Neelix, unfortunately) and detailing favourite recipes from Star Trek actors, as well as in-universe dishes adapted for Terran cuisine. Now one could well argue that an item such as this has more right to exist than a lot of collectibles, being as it offers some practical value, i.e. you can use it to make Jennifer Lien's Good Karma lemon lentil soup if you feel so inclined, whereas a commemorative plate or an action figure that's never taken out of its packaging is something to be owned just for the sake of ownership. Well, you could make that argument, but have you seen the cover?

If you do happen to own a copy of this, for God's sake don't let any non-fans see it.

2. Star Trek: Paper Universe
The Star Trek origami book. Same notation as above.
3. The Hologram's Handbook by the Doctor (as told to Robert Picardo)
Robert Picardo tries his hand at in-character comic writing in what's virtually a follow-up to Q's Guide in that it's slim, smug, obscenely overpriced and not remotely funny. If the cover photo of a smoking jacketed Doctor doesn't strike you as too embarrassing to contemplate purchase, the godawful cartoons from Picardo's Flesh and Blood co-star Jeff Yagher should do the trick.
4. The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition by Quark (as told to Ira Steven Behr. There's that gag again)
Only lists 70 of the 285 rules, most of which can be found listed in any number of episode guides you probably already own.
5. Scriptbooks
Pocket released two books of shooting scripts, Becoming Human: The Seven of Nine Saga reproducing key Seven episodes from Voyager's fourth season (so most of it, in fact), and The Q Chronicles including every Q story from Farpoint to The Q and the Grey. With no notes or contributions from anyone involved in the making of the episodes, not so much as a perfunctory foreword, each volume was the size of a phonebook and about half as much fun to read. The usual colour photo pages livened things up only slightly (there is one priceless candid snap of John de Lancie seductively prodding the boob of one of the bikini babes sitting on his lap).
6. Enterprise Logs, various authors
Decidedly inessential anthology of ten short stories set aboard various Enterprise's. Beginning with the sailing vessels of the Revolutionary War and WWII eras penned by Trek fiction's best-selling naval jargon bore Diane Carey, and with subsequent yarns dutifully including Captains April, Pike, Decker and Spock, because we know some fans would complain if they didn't. But where was the story about the crew of the space shuttle Enterprise, eh? Or the XCV-330?
7. New Frontier by Peter David
Groundbreaking novel series, the first to feature an all-new ship, the Ambassador-class USS Excalibur (seen in TNG's Redemption, part II) and an all-new crew (including such TNG characters as Shelby, Dr. Selar and Robin Lefler, plus three or four from David's Starfleet Academy books). David took the opportunity to amp up the SF weirdness and shoehorn-in as much graphic violence and sex as he could get away with, the nadir of which was when Dr. Selar hooked up with hermaphrodite engineer Burgoyne and each wound up pregnant with the others' child. Or something. If you think you'd enjoy reading Star Trek fiction written by someone who really wished they were writing Farscape then dive right in. And please don't think we're dismissing the series out of hand- we ploughed through no less than 17 volumes of this crap before giving up.
8. Dark Passions by Susan Wright
A two-book series set in the Mirror universe that raised a few eyebrows at the time of publication as it seemed to be the first officially licensed Trek slash fiction, the covers promising all manner of Sapphic shenanigans among the leading ladies of TNG, DS9 and Voyager. You may be shocked to learn they were actually rather tame. These are another of those items you really don't want non-fans to catch you with. Honestly, if this kind of thing appeals to you, you can find far naughtier and better written material on any number of fan sites.
9. Star Trek Celebrations by Maureen McTigue
A book about the various holidays and festivals seen in Star Trek. Not quite as riveting as it sounds.
10. Starfleet: Year One by Michael Jan Friedman
Hey, what a brilliant idea!.. Or maybe not.

[ R ]

RATED R, THE
Unintelligible hip-hop artist who appeared in Mark A. Altman and Robert Meyer Burnett's "comedy classic" Free Enterprise, performing rap duties alongside The Artist Formerly Know as Shatner on "No Tears for Caesar", which, we're assured, was hilarious. Having cast younger and better looking actors to play themselves, lifelong Trek acolytes Burnett and Altman described the semi-autobiographical movie as Swingers meets Clerks, which probably explains the frequent bare breasts and preponderance of the word 'fuck'. The film, in which the fictionalised Robert and Mark encounter a quixotic Shatner inbetween scenes of bedding a succession of sexy ladies (we did say semi-autobiographical), lives in infamy for the aforementioned Shakespeare rap number and for the line "I fucking hate The Next Generation! Only original, only classic!" which must have gone down well with Michael Piller, who attended the movie's premiere. In fact, Burnett has since gone on to produce the extras for the TNG Blu-ray releases, whilst Altman's subsequent screen credits include the movie version of arcade classic House of the Dead, featuring Jurgen Prochnow as a boat captain named Kirk. Slightly funnier than anything in Free Enterprise.

RIGHT STANDARD RUDDER
Um, starships don't have rudders.

ROMII
Longtime source of confusion, the mistaken impression that the Neutral Zone map in Balance of Terror, created by someone on the TOS art department clearly unfamilar with Roman mythology, designated the twin worlds of the Romulan Star Empire as Romulus and 'Romii' just goes to show that sometimes, typeface is everything (Nemesis). Even those esteemed oracles of all things Trek the Okuda's recylced this ancient fallacy in their STAR TREK ENCYCLOPEDIA, and it's amazing to think how few people in the 40-plus years since that episode was made have wondered if, just maybe, the map was actually meant to say 'Rom II' (Romulus 2). This is nothing however, compared to what's revealed in the Star Trek: The Original Series Sketchbook in which a sketch by Matt Jefferies seems to indicate that the Klingon insignia has been the wrong way up for the last 45 years.

RUNEPP
Rasiinian (not the most famous of Star Trek aliens) dignitary who once visited DS9. Runepp was the creation of fan John Paul Lona, the winning entrant of a the Design an Alien competition held by Playmates, the prize being a walk-on role, in make-up and costume based on his design. By cruel caprice of fate, the episode in which he appeared was The Muse.

[ S ]

SEVENTY-NINE
Number of original Star Trek episodes produced. That is to say, Star Trek: The Original Series ran for seventy-nine episodes. Seventy-nine. 79. No less. Do try and remember, and ignore any sources that say otherwise. By all means correct anyone if it should come up in conversation.

STARFLEET
Go back and read that again. Starfleet. It's one word, people, not two.

STRATEGIC OPERATIONS OFFICER
Important sounding job contrived for Worf on his posting to Deep Space 9. In theory the strategic operations officer’s duties involved coordinating Starfleet to-and-fro and general intelligence/ security stuff (so a whole new world for Mr. Worf). In practice, we got four more seasons, and three movies, of our favorite Klingon doing basically the same thing he’d always done, only with slightly less standing around. Still, he did land the plum job as de facto captain of the Defiant on those occasions when both Sisko and Kira obviously had better things to do. Like that time the Borg attacked Earth.

SURAK
Captain Archer, we're told, became Federation president and had two planets and at least one starship named after him, and for what? Getting bloodied up a lot? Leaving his top collar buttons undone to let us know when he was feeling a bit stressed? On the other hand Surak, father of Vulcan philosophy and the man who delivered his people from violence and chaos, had a small, drab shuttle named after him and that seems to have been it. Kirk had never even heard of Surak, whereas David Marcus seemed to think he was a physicist. A shameful case of humanocentric bias if ever there was one.

[ T ]

TRANSPORTER
The most famous teleport device in all of science fiction history, referenced, ripped-off and parodied perhaps the more than any other Star Trek icon and still a good standby for any commercial/ comedian/ TV host/ news broadcaster in need of a cheap laugh. As for that famous misnomer of a catchphrase, well, we trust we need not go into all that again.

TEN TRANSPORTER EFFECTS (AND ONE FROM AN ALTERNATE REALITY)

1. "The Cage"

The slow one. Longer and louder than the classic FX sequence we all came to love, with an intensifying hum suggesting the build up of enormous power. Cos, y'know, the future and whatnot. All together now, "THE WOMEN!"

2. The Original Series

The iconic one. Amazing how a strong light and some aluminium* foil can make for such an indellible SF visual. Never bettered, though its sentimentally anachronistic use in Relics still irritates a certain portion of fandom.

3. The Motion Picture

The wrong one. The disco one. The what-were-they-thinking one. The thank-god never used again one.

4. Star Trek II-VI

The very bright, very loud one. The Klingon transporter beam was identical, only in a much more sinister shade of red.

5. The Next Generation

The sparkly one. Updated for the 1980's/90's and still very cool. The floor of the Original Series transporter pad became the ceiling of the TNG version. (For the benefit of the three remaining people on Earth who haven't heard that nugget of trivia before).

6. Deep Space Nine

The Cardassian one. Later, the TNG version. One area where DS9 did not rock the boat.

7. Voyager

The lava lamp one. For a long while it seemed Voyager's transporter might be unique as this version didn't seem to be in use anywhere else, up until Message in a Bottle. Then those flashbacks in Dark Frontier showed the TNG-style transporter being used by the Hansen's, suggesting that bit in Message was the oversight we all initially suspected after all.

8. Generations-Insurrection

The expensive one. Pretty much the same as the TNG transporter, only it looks and sounds more... monied.

9. Enterprise

The swirly one. The first attempt to show every individual molecule of the subject de/materialising and a very good effort it was, too. Enhanced with the actors' always amusing checking-they're-all-there bit after beaming somewhere.

10. Nemesis

The alien one. Looks wrong, sounds wrong. Damn you, Baird! See also NEMESIS.

11. The 2009 movie

The whirlwind one. A method of transport first pioneered by the Tasmanian Devil and Jim Carrey's The Mask. Use of the TOS sound effects impressed no one.

*For the benefit of readers in the US, this unfamiliar word means 'aluminum'

TRICORDER, UPSIDE DOWN

The tricorder was first devised by Gene Roddenberry, largely to give Kirk's yeoman something to do with her hands. He imagined the scanner/ recorder device would also make for a good toy aimed at "girl-type children". Ah, that old Roddenberry progressiveness. 27 years later TNG's Silicon Avatar gave us Dr. Kila Marr. She may have been driven homicidally insane by years of unresolved grief (unless she was just another tragic victim of the Crystaline Entity and the whole story was meant to be morally ambiguous? We can't remember, we fell asleep), but she was still enough of a genius to be able to read and operate her tricorder whilst holding it upside down. At least that's what we're assuming, since nobody corrected her. We could also mention the photo of the little tricorder accessory on the back of some early Playmates Data action figures was upside down, but only the most tragic of fans care about details like that and they already know.

TRILOGY OF TERROR

Fan designation for a regrettable segment of Voyager's third season, Darkling, Rise and Favourite Son, three consecutive episodes of unremitting direness. In fact, whilst the latter is certainly among Voyager's worst, Darkling isn't terrible so much as just hokey and a bit pointless (the Doctor becomes temporarily evil after adding personality traits from the likes of Lord Byron to his program. It could just as easily have been a bad Data story), whereas Rise is just tedious; Stuck in the lift with Neelix might have been a more accurate title, and at least would have provided some forewarning for the hapless viewers. Voyager would arguably repeat this pattern with, for instance, Live Fast and Prosper, Muse and Fury. For other such 'trilogies', see Samaritan Snare, Up the Long Ladder and Manhunt from TNG's second season- or True Q, Rascals and A Fistful of Datas from its sixth, depending on your tolerance for whimsy. Enterprise's Singularity, Vanishing Point and Precious Cargo are certainly up there, as well.