Star Trek Memorabilia

[Warning -- links to large files!]

In late July, or early August, 1967 I received
an envelope in the mail from Bill Theiss. The envelope contained seven black and white pictures. One of the U. S. S. Enterprise, and six personally autographed pictures from the cast of Star Trek: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, and Nichelle Nichols.

My
grandmother was a neighbor of (or knew -- I wasn't ever really sure) the mother of Susanne Wasson, who played Lethe in the episode Dagger of the Mind from Season 1, Episode 10.
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Star Trek: Into Darkness

Almost four years ago my daughter and I went to see the J. J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek. Yesterday, I took her to have lunch with a co-worker and, after eating, she and I made a spur of the moment decision to see Star Trek: Into Darkness. The movie was filled with plot holes the size of solar systems. Nevertheless, after the final credits rolled, she remarked "that was amazing!" I can only agree. I loved the line, "If you can't even break a rule, how can you be expected to break bones?" It was Trek at its finest: using the backdrop of space to explore humanity.
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A Plea to Software Engineers

trek_software

Image courtesy of Automotivator and Star Trek.

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These Are The Voyages...

Thursday, September 8, 1966. Judsonia, Arkansas. 8PM. I was eleven years old and was glued to the front of my grandmother’s color television for the first broadcast episode of Star Trek, “The Man Trap.” I was enraptured from the very start, daring everyone else in the house to even so much as breath and interfere with my concentration.

Fast forward 43 years to May 23, 2009 at 7:10PM EDT. Rachel and I are at the end of the line for the 7:15 showing of the eleventh movie in the Star Trek series. She notes that we’ll be on time for the start of the movie due to all of the commercials before the main feature. I tap the tip of my nose. She asks if I always have to do that and I explain to her why it’s so important. Flash back to 1973 or 74. “That’s hitting the nail on the nose” was one of the favorite expressions of Kathy Y. when I was at the University of Virginia; and the nose tap is a reminder of that. Jim A. and I were walking over the bridge in Charlottesville that goes over Hwy 29. We were playing the “Star Trek” game where one of us would say a line from the show and the other would have to name the episode. For example, “What am I, a doctor or a moon-shuttle conductor” would be “The Corbormite Maneuver”. One of us had said a line but neither of us could remember the episode. A girl who had been walking behind us came up between us, named the episode, and kept on walking. Of course, we couldn’t let her get away and that was how we met Kathy.

The movie was almost spectacular. The interior of the Enterprise was disappointing, and the use of “red matter” as a
MacGuffin was a stretch. But it was good to see old friends made new again. Zachary Quinto was the perfect choice to play young Spock.

I was born three hundred years too soon.
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