Star Trek Is “Fashionable Again?” WTF?
Middle-of-nowhere, NJ rag Bayonne Community News ran a puff piece on hometown boy and Trek screenwriter William Stape yesterday with the following lead: "With a new film due for release by Christmas, 'Star Trek' has once again become fashionable."
Since when does Trek "become fashionable" only in the months surrounding a movie release? And since Trek XI has been re-scheduled for '09 -- long before the aforementioned article published -- does that mean that Trek isn't "fashionable?"
Let me translate this lead from bad-writer to geek-speak. What Bayonne scribe Al Sullivan really meant to say is, "Since there's a Star Trek movie coming out sometime soon, I can slap some twenty-year-old nerd headline on a piece about a local guy who does geek stuff I wouldn't normally give a damn about and my editor will totally take it."
Yep, I'm working my way up to a full rant about the so-incredibly-wrong "geeks don't really have a life" myth. But I'm going to save it for the next podcast. Here's the short version, for people like Al: Geeks have great lives full of all the same things you want -- geeks just don't necessarily share these things with you.
In the meantime, please don't allow any of the muck I'm slinging to attach to Mr. Stape, who happily helped to bring us at least one ST: TNG and ST: DS9 episode. I'm just sorry he didn't get to talk to someone more interested in what he had to say.
Beam Me Up, Scotty (No, I'm not kidding.) [Bayonne Comm. News]
William N. Stape [IMDB]
Galactic Watercooler 
Modern Geek 
Save Eureka 
Eff This Week 
FitSmart
well…Enterprise wasn’t that fashionable…DS9 VERY fashionable.
GWC EXTREEEEEEMELY fashionable
Wow, you can get paid for writing that poorly? I’m in the wrong business. Also, “Warf?” (Maybe this is the effort of a high-school intern? It sure reads like one.)
Yeah… when I read “Warf” i actually thought this was like a well-done geek in-joke (Lwaxana Troi calls him Warf once, doesn’t she?)
GalaxyRanger: That’s “Mr. Woof.”
Bloody Hell!
I know where I’d like to “beam” him!
GEEK OUTRAGE!!
GEEK SMASH!
Critics like Pike, who can’t earn a living writing, shouldn’t comment on people who actually write for a living — especially when Pike didn’t bother to read high school newspapers to even make the comparison.
The fact is there is a new star trek movie coming out, and it has to be better than the new star wars movie, and someone local had something positive to say — unlike Pike.
One more thing for the editorial writer: not everybody loves Trek — regularless of how you feel about it. Since I write for a mixed audience who doesn’t share your love of trek or want to hear all the crap that goes on inside Trek discussions. Galaxy Quest summed most of it up for me. And always will. I’m not interested in how many star ships you can put on the pin of a needle. The person matters more than the program. Always has, always will. So grow up.