How to Celebrate Spocktober in Your Own Home
Plus Trekkish Questions with Jonfucius
Welcome to Star Trekking, my attempt to share points of interest and random intersections in the final frontier.
Our friend Lee Sargent decided to celebrate Spocktober in style, creating a month of prompts for his wonderful drawings.
Par of that is also an encouragement for us to share our own Spocktober creations, and while I am not an artist, I have started a Twitter thread of daily Spock Thoughts in haiku form, based on Lee’s prompts.
And speaking of Spock Thoughts, in college I introduced my friends to the LP Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music From Outer Space. Much laughter was derived from the track titled Spock Thoughts.
We particularly latched on to Nimoy’s pronunciation of the phrase “even the dull and ignorant” and exaggerated it even more when we lobbed the term at each other.
Ah, good times.
A few years back, Keven Neece hosted a Spocktober blog event on his site, The Undiscovered Country Project. Some of those posts, including two pieces by yours truly, eventually appeared in Kevin’s collection Spockology.
How are you celebrating Spocktober? Decorating a Spock tree? Hosting a Kolinahr party? Sipping plomeek spice lattes?
If you’re following Lee’s prompts with daily creations, please let me know. I’d love to see them!
A Spocktober party without a dance break would be highly illogical.
MEANWHILE…
I love Trek fashion.
We reach.
Hot take: no matter how you feel about the quality of this episode, “Death to you all!” redeems it enough to make it at least more watchable than something like The Alternative Factor.
Warning - cute content!!
LOVE THIS.
As the meme goes, zero lies detected.
A book review I wrote for Star Trekking recently got picked up on another outlet.
TREKKISH QUESTIONS
with @Jonfucius
First, tell us a little about yourself.
Hi! My real name is Jonathan, but I try to keep my online presence semi-anonymous. I'm a public servant and live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where I met my wife. We've been married nearly five years, and have two incorrigible cats, Fred and George. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @JonfuciusOnline.
What are your first Trek memories?
It's hard for me to pin down my first memory, so I'll share a couple early ones. I vaguely remember seeing TNG "Allegiance" in first-run with my parents. My more definitive memories include the first-run airing of "Redemption," and wearing out my parents' VHS copies of The Motion Picture (the Special Longer Version, natch), The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, and The Final Frontier. The Ceti eels scared the $#!% out of me as a wee lad, so I didn't watch much of The Wrath of Khan until I was a little older.
How has Trek impacted or influenced your life?
It might be a little cliché to say, but I definitely inherited some of my moral code from our Trek heroes, especially Jean-Luc Picard, and the Paramount+ era. I was a staunch conservative Republican until 2016, but that election and the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery heralded a sea change in my personal politics. I consider myself a vigorous defender of LGBTQIA+ rights, and I believe the role of government is to protect all members of our society.
Which Trek character do you most admire?
Can I list a few? I adore our captains - in particular, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and Burnham. Picard's rational, thoughtful approach to diplomacy and leadership is something sorely lacking in our current world, but it should be balanced out by Sisko's pragmatic, no-nonsense determination to do the moral thing, even if it's not the "right" thing. Janeway demonstrated how to bring a group of disparate personalities together into a mostly cohesive whole. Finally, Burnham has been a remarkable illustration of how to process profound grief and loss. If I can add a character from the novels, I also greatly admire Mackenzie Calhoun, who is a 23rd-century figure, but also one with 24th-century sensibilities.
What is your greatest Trek-related extravagance?
I would have to say, my ever-growing collection of Star Trek books, especially "reference" books and coffee table books. I had a few of them growing up, but there were many I missed out on, so now I scour used bookstores and the Internet to fill out my collection. I have a serious soft spot for the New Frontier series, which I've purchased in various formats over the years.
What is your "comfort" Trek series?
My head says "Deep Space Nine," but my heart says "Voyager." I missed out on the first six seasons of Voyager when it was first airing (due to UPN not being in the markets where I lived at that time), but when we did finally move to a UPN market, I binged most of seasons 3-5 in one summer (not an impressive feat in the streaming age, but harder to pull off when reruns only aired in syndication on TV and could be pre-empted at any moment), and then caught season 7 almost in its entirety in first-run. That, and it being the flagship of the franchise after DS9 went off the air, meant that I could really immerse myself in its setting. There's something about that series, especially from season 4 onward, that just feels like home to me. I do really enjoy DS9 as well.
What do you most value in Star Trek?
I value the franchise's commitment to progressive ideals. Given the franchise's output over the last four years (Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and the forthcoming Prodigy and Strange New Worlds), I'm confident that Star Trek can continue to embrace and evolve those ideals for another fifty-five years.
Thanks, Jonathan!
I need to ask you a favor. Please click the button below and help support Star Trekking by becoming a paid subscriber for less than $4 a month if you pick the very Trekkish $47/yr plan.
Thanks to my existing subscribers for your continued support! New paid subscriber-only content coming later this week.
DIRECTIVES
Get up to speed with the Trek lit universe so you can jump into CODA.
Until next time, LOVE long…and prosper.
Grok you later!