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  • Star Trek: Neil deGrasse Tyson Names His Favorite Captain

    It’s an argument that Trek fans have battled about since the third season of TNG: Which Star Trek series captain is best?

    Originally, it was just a Kirk vs. Picard argument. Then Janeway got rolled into the mix.

    If you walk around at a Trek convention or Comic-Con asking the question, you could damn near start a Palin-esque brawl in the hallways. Everyone has an opinion, and they all have sound reasoning — they will call it “logic” — to back up their pick.

    “Kirk was a true leader,” they may argue. “He was active and daring.”

    “But Picard weighed decisions like a statesman,” a retort may come. “He knew weakness. He knew history. He read more than Kirk, for crying out loud!”

    “Begging to differ from you all, but Janeway trumps them both. They both had Starfleet to refer back to when things got tough. Janeway was thousands of light years from home, unable to get backup or reinforcements, forced to makes friends of enemies and keep her crew together.”

    You can’t win this one.

    But, since opinions are like stable wormholes, everybody has one, the question had to be asked of one of America’s most visible and vocal scientific minds today, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. And Geekwire did just that.

    In a recent interview with Tyson, Geekwire peppered him with questions about commercial space travel, the possible existence of a multiverse, and science education. Then came the lightning round. We learned that Tyson prefers a Time Machine to a Transporter, Stephen Colbert to Jon Stewart, and Mac to Windows.

    But then came the clincher.

    GeekWire: Kirk, Picard or Janeway?

    Tyson: Kirk. I love Janeway, but Kirk. I was disappointed that Picard never actually got into a fight. Kirk could use blunt human reasoning that transcended logic, because sometimes emotion matters more than logic. If he had to fight an alien, he’d go into fisticuffs with him. Occasionally you need that. So I’m with Kirk all the way.

    Picard never got into a fight?!

    Perhaps Msr. Tyson never saw “Tapestry”, wherein we learn of a young Picard’s fight with multiple Nausicaans and how he got his artificial heart.

    Perhaps Tyson never saw this:

    Or this:

    Perhaps Neil deGrasse Tyson would like to rethink his faulty response.

  • Star Trek: 3 Over the Top Trekkie Moves You Won’t Do

    So, you know the names of the core crew members from the Star Trek: The Original Series, as well as from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and even Deep Space Nine and Enterprise.

    You also know that any decent Trekkie would refer to all of those shows by their initialisms: TOS; TNG; VOY; DS9; and ENT.

    You know the names of Spock’s parents (Sarek and Amanda). You know that Kirk’s middle name is Tiberius. You know that William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols shared the first televised interracial kiss as Kirk and Uhura.

    You know the basic science behind transporters, replicators, warp engines, and holodecks. You know all the different things a deflector dish can be adapted to do.

    You can raise one eyebrow, make a Vulcan salute with ease, and are certain that, if you really wanted to, you could render someone unconscious with a neck pinch.

    The Force is strong with you. (Sorry. Sorry.)

    But can you:

    Speak Klingon

    I don’t mean an occasional “Qapla’” among friends. Get in there and learn the grammar rules.

    Dr d’Armond Speers claims he only spoke Klingon to his son, Alec, for the first three years of the boy’s life.

    “He was definitely starting to learn it,” Speers said. “When Alec spoke back to me in Klingon his pronunciation was excellent.”

    Then there is the case of 23-year-old Jossie Sockertopp and 29-year-old Sonnie Gustavsson. They got married in a Klingon ritual ceremony, complete with wedding vows in Klingon.

    Name Your Kid After a Trek Character

    Not your pets, gentle reader. Your progeny. All those cats aren’t your kids.

    This one is tough to come back from, and could cause some difficulty for your kid later. But hey, that’s the price. One lady admits that her youngest daughter’s middle name is Troi.

    If you are hip to the idea of doing this, you might find this list of possible baby names helpful. It covers all five series, and is divided into boy/girl lists, as well as unisex possibilities. A few that you could sneak past a spouse without much suspicion: Nichelle, Deanna, Tasha, and Dax. You might even get away with B’Elanna.

    Get a Trek Tattoo

    What could go wrong?

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