Julia Houston On Letting Go Of Star Trek

Over at About.com's Star Trek Fans, Julia Houston has put up this week's new feature article, dealing with how it's okay not to be a Trekker your entire life. She was inspired for this article when a group of her Sci-Fi Literature students found out they weren't quite as impressed by TNG as they once were and a colleague mentioned only TOS interested him:

Now, an uncountable number of factors make the world go around, and people have a right to like whatever they want, as long as it doesn't cause cancer, or insult an ethnic group, or something like that. But I can't help noticing a common thread here, a thread some of my fellow long-term Trekkers might like to discuss for a while. If you're a new Trekker, and this old stuff bores you, why not add something to my new list?

Hmm. Have the children gone? Check behind the sofa.

Nothing there but some stale potato chips?

All right.

The students in my class were watching the exact same show they had seen before, but they were different. They live now in a different world. TNG is both a part of their childhood and part of the 80s. Yes, TNG has lots of classic and wonderful things, but it is dated, just like every other TV show gets dated when decades start to pass. Yes, my students are still interested in science-fiction (at least I hope they are if they're taking the class), but their interest has been changed by life experiences, by other interests, by having seen The Matrix and Schindler's List and The Sopranos.

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