TO THE FUTURE OR BUST!
December 9, 1996

Everything in life can be explained by a Star Trek episode.
I'm not simply limiting myself to the old Star Trek, either.
I'm talking about The Next Generation,

Deep Space Nine, Voyager and all the movies (except maybe the first one: Star Trek, The Motion Picture can't explain jack about anything!)

Take the Kennedy assassination, for example. It's easy to imagine what happened. Somehow the Enterprise crew completely screws up the assassination. It doesn't matter how the ship gets back in time or what unbelievable circumstances have to be explained away. The important part is that the Time Continuum has been f---ed with. Who knows? Maybe they land the Enterprise on top of the real assassins. The important part is to make sure history isn't changed and someone on the crew gets laid!

To this end they get Uhura to seduce Jack Ruby. She gets the plan out of him. The crew sets everything as it originally happened. Kirk's in the book depository but he just can't bring himself to shoot Kennedy, a long time hero. Spock, knowing Kirk is a chicken shit, fires the kill shot from the grassy knoll. Scotty fixes the ship in the nick of time and beams everyone out, after which they shoot around the sun and everything's fine again. So, you see, time travel explains anything that happened in the past, ours or theirs, and makes for great location shoots.

The other thing Star Trek is great for is explaining the Human Condition. The most important lesson we learn in this series is that humans will do the wild thing with just about anything, as long as it's the opposite gender.

There is, of course the original half breed, Spock, in the original series. I think some of the best shows had him fighting his human demons. I always imagined him as 49% Human, 51% Vulcan because he was raised on Vulcan and never had any human's to play with as a kid. I identified with him because of my own bi-racial heritage. Mine wasn't as clear because my parents refused to push a single cultural on my brother and I: White neighborhood and school but large, loud and drunken Mexican extended family with a lot of influence.

Deanna Troy, Ship's Counselor, was half Batanzoid and half human. Now, that makes for a nice species! Big hair, big dark eyes and big boobs. What more can you ask for? (I have a problem with her general touchy-feely, healthe inner species, I know you better than you do attatude. That's probably because my mother worked in the psychiatric medical community and I know how crazy most counselors really are.) I must admit that she does come in handy when some tri-nostalled species comes looking for a fight. She can inform them that killing everyone on board won't solve their self esteem issues. The down side to all this is that she can be a nag and no one will let her play poker. Bluffing is useless.

B'Elanna is the half human-half Klingon woman on Voyager. Small head ridges for a Klingon but what a temper. She's a little fire cracker! I love her because she has a balance between liking herself and loathing the confusion she causes. She's my vote for the one and only crew member to come out of the closet. I can just imagine her going through the pain and frustration of realizing she's a lesbian: she'd get drunk in the holodeck and beat the shit out of Tom Paris! Either that or she'd confess her doubts to Captain Janeway and then they'd fall into a passionate embrace. Knowing the weenie writers on the series, they'd have it all be some alien experiment on sex and estrogen.

What the hell, a girl can dream can't she?


Dear Readers,

I plan to take advantage of the fact that this is a two way street, this information super highway. Every once in a while I need answers for the questions posed by life. This is how it'll work. I'll ask you all a question and after a couple of weeks I'll let you know what everyone says.

Here's the question for this week:

#8: QUESTION

Laura


Please send me your comments and suggestions. Email me at lmjimene@ix.netcom.com.


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Copyright, 1997 by Laura Jiménez.