Welcome to Star Trekking, my weekly attempt to share points of interest and random intersections in the final frontier.
The ongoing thesis of this newsletter is that, whether you’re actively looking for it or not, Star Trek is everywhere.
This week it arrived for me in the form of a star shining above a manger.
Literally.
We took a day trip to the mountains, to appreciate the gorgeous autumn foliage, of course, but also to visit a gift shop. This one had been closed last time we’d been in the area (yeah, coronavirus) and some of my family members were eager to get T-shirts commemorating the mountain climb we’d made earlier this summer. As I wandered around - (yes, wearing this mask) -
I spotted an ornament (or maybe it was jewelry).
I brought my son over to look at it. He didn’t see anything special about it until I covered the bottom section. My wife, on the other hand, spotted it immediately.
Star of wonder. Star of night.
Star that’s Federation bright.
Spaceward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us with thy perfect light.
Out there. Thataway.
My friend Neil S. Bulk also spotted the insignia in the wild this week. He was watching On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (the favorite film of many Bond aficionados) and spotted this.
Do you see it?
Thanks for the screenshot, Neil!
And by the way, if YOU see any Trek out in the wild, please share with me!
It’s a shame we’ve resorted to worshipping Vaal.
(I spotted that one at The Atlantic.)
Tis the season
Very fun thread. Worth snacking on. (See what I did there)
There are many more - just click on that first tweet to see them.
And here’s another fun thread. Again, I’m only sharing the first couple of entries, but the whole thread is worth reading.
ART TREK TUESDAY
by Lee Sargent
A random Trek-related scene by one of my favorite artists, Lee Sargent.
This week’s random episode is from TNG - “Code of Honor.”
So after complaining last week over how much I dislike holodeck episodes, I was rewarded with the season one TNG episode Code of Honor. Code of Honor is considered one of the worst episodes of TNG, and upon rewatching, I can see why. That said though there’s a nugget of an okay story, buried deep under the cringe-worthy layer, which is deep.
The decision to make it an African planet for some reason is genuinely baffling and I suspect it’s offensive (I’m not sure that it’s my place to declare something racist – but it certainly feels so).
The rest of it is all a bit meh with the whole “I can’t believe a woman can be tough” and then this weird thing around Tasha having to fight to the death and her kind of being up for it. Troi is reading her mind and letting the Captain know that Tasha likes the attention. It’s just a mess of stuff in a show that hadn’t even vaguely found its footing yet.
But, if the episode was a completely alien race then who knows how it might have come across.
Since I honestly wasn’t that interested in capturing a scene I decided to just do a character piece of Tasha, using ink and nib.
You can buy Lee’s original art - including Random Trek Tuesday pieces - in his shop: shop.leedrawsstuff.com.
For more of Lee’s art, visit his website: LeeDrawsStuff.com. You can join me in supporting his work at Patreon.com.
Those Gold Key covers were always SO GREAT while simultaneously being SO WRONG.
SCIENCE!
DIRECTIVES
This newsletter was mentioned on this week’s excellent All Access Star Trek podcast!
Check out these new Star Trek watches.
My friend Laurie Ulster got to interview Una McCormack about her new Trek book - it’s a delightful interview. I preordered the book a year ago(!) and look forward to reading it. It’s available today.
NYT article about horror movie masks inevitably mentions Shatner.
That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading. Please share with other Trek folks and let me know what random Trek references you come across during your week. I’d love to share them here.
Grok you later.
LLAP,