Unleash Your Inner Geek

One of the great things about growing up and getting a real job is being able to afford the toys your parents didn't want to get you when you were a kid, either because they were very expensive, very large, or because you didn't mow the lawn without a fight.
I myself have taken great advantage of my salary to collect MicroMachine's line of Star Trek, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica replicas which are on proud display in my office. Yes, as a child I always wondered about the Enterprise facing off against a Star Destroyer but now I can live the dream. (The Enterprise would win because even though the Destroyer carries multiple heavy guns and is well armoured, the Enterprise is far faster and more manouverable, has better shields, and if worse comes to worst can just beam a bomb into the Destroyer's engine room).
In what is now a trend in the TV industry, many fans of classic sci fi series are now in positions where they have the ability and influence to bring back those shows to life.
Now, if one looks through the pantheon of TV/movie sci fi, there are four leading series: Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica.
After its initial lucrative splash, Star Wars went away for a long time until George Lucas brought it back with his "first" three movies and now the ongoing Clone Wars series. Like a kid who has all the money in the world and can do anything he wants with it, Lucas is riding the Star Wars wave for all its worth.
Similarly, Russell T. Davies, a huge fan of the long running Doctor Who serial in the U.K. (1963-1989) brought the show back to television in 2005 with upgrades special effects, a great ninth doctor (Chris Eccleston) and all the nostalgic features to keep original fans interesting in tuning in to the new version.
Then then is Ronald Moore who took what should have been a forgotten, one season show from the late 1970's, Battlestar Galactica, and built it into a four season blockbuster that never seems to lose the ability to up the ante in terms of fan emotion and anticipation.
In fact, of the four great ones, only Star Trek seemed to decline when its fans took the reigns. Under Rich Berman and his friends, Star Trek: The Next Generation began slowly and, other than sporadic flashes of greatness, eg. "Yesterday's Enterprise", "The Inner Light", devolved into a repetitive soap opera that cared more about the crew's boring interactions with one another than about bolding going where no man has gone before. When Deep Space 9, Voyager, Enterprise and pathetic movies like Insurrection and Nemesis were added to that, the resultant weight brought the Star Trek house of cards crashing down.
Yet there are still fans out there wanting more Star Trek, especially with the success of the other franchises still resounding around them. But what to do? The original crew held the torch until Picard and his losers grabbed it from them. Once the NextGen started to do their own feature movies and studios could no longer supply uniforms that could fit James Doohan's corpulent frame, there was never a chance of seeing the original crew in action again.
Or was there?
Because now, NOW there is. In a stunningly brilliant move, J.J. Abrams has gone back and brought the original crew back to the big screen. No, we're not going to see William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy sucking back Geritol as they blast the Klingons from the stars. Rather, an entirely new cast has been picked (many of them because of their eerie resemblance to the original actors in the 1960's) and we are, as of May 2008, going to be treated to more adventures with Kirk and crew, the original and, in this writer's humble opinion, only authentic Star Trek crew.
For a taste, check out the video bar at the side of the blog for the latest teaser. For a non-fan, well there's pills for you. For the fan, you'll need those pills too to contain the excitement and get your head back to work.