As a kid, I was an equal opportunity em-toyer. My collection of Barbie dolls, Barbie cars, Barbie clothes, and Barbie shoes (the shoes were the most important and I even had a little box used specifically to store all 36 pairs) was rivaled only by my collection of Star Wars action figures, Star Wars spaceships, Star Wars posters, Star Wars records, and the Star Wars Ewok Village from Endor. In retrospect, it wasn't so much a village as it was four "trees" connected by a platform, the middle of which had the spit that Han, Luke, and Chewie were all going to be roasted on. I think it was my and my sister's joint collection of Star Wars gear that made my doll-murdering mother feel confident that we weren't Barbie crazy and therefore wouldn't grow up with a screwy body image. I mean, who has arches like that? The gulf between Barbie and Star Wars was bridged in our two Barbie-esque Star Wars dolls. We had a Luke and a Leia and they were slightly bigger than our regulation Mattel Barbies. Leia's cinnamon-roll hair buns immediately came unfurled (never to be seen again after a trip to my sister's Barbie Hair Salon in the form of a dull pair of scissors), after which we either lost interest in the Amazonian doll or we just lost the doll. Luke was much more useful as he looked like he could beat up all our other Kens, whose heads popped off far too easily and whose bodies were often used as water bottles when we were bored.
(I should explain that by "doll-murdering mother," I do mean "doll-murdering mother." See, she had this collection of beautifully painted and exquisitely dressed dolls that my grandmother gave her. However, instead of serving them tea or putting them in baby carriages and rocking them to sleep, my mother was more interested in using them to act out murder mysteries. Hey—you wouldn't blame her if you saw the besilked one she had with an open mouth, red lips, and VERY REAL-looking teeth! Shudder.)
Our joint collection of Star Wars action figures was the envy of every boy in the neighborhood and filled two of those double-tiered plastic Star Wars carrying cases. As I later became obsessed with the movie, we had some Black Hole action figures thrown in there as well. The detail on the Star Wars action figures really impressed us as kids—remember the plastic capes and the arm slit for the various lightsabers? We particularly loved collecting the same character from different movies. There was the White Leia from A New Hope; the Snowed-In Leia and the Brown Leia from Empire Strikes Back; and our favorite: the Bounty-Hunter Leia from Return of the Jedi, whose true identity was revealed when you took off her helmet. My sister and I never felt compelled to get Itsy-Bitsy-Teeny-Weeny-Yellow-Polka-Dot-Bikini Leia for some reason.
Although we managed to get a hold of an X-Wing Fighter, an Imperial TIE Fighter, Luke's Landspeeder, and those twin-pod flyers from Cloud City, we never had our Millennium Falcon dreams realized. To this day, I would love to get my hands on one, but it would probably cost thousands of dollars because the only ones around are the kind that haven't been taken out of their boxes and, like, breathed on or something.
Collecting is something I've never understood—I wanted to play with my toys, not preserve them. It's no fun if you can't store guns in the openable trunk or shift gears in the Landspeeder. And how do you make Darth Vader crash into Mt. Piled Holly Hobbie Blanket if you don't pop off the wings?
My sci-fi media exposure didn't come from books as much as it came from television, movies, and very bad video games (Astrosmash for Intellivision, anyone?). When it came to books I really gravitated more toward the fantasy side of things. As a kid, my mother used to take me to her favorite book store in Minneapolis: Uncle Edgar's. It was all mystery books—used, new, rare, and signed. However, next door was Uncle Edgar's evil moustached twin (Uncle Hugo's) and that is where I stocked up on the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms series. I will admit that a few Anne McCaffrey books made it in but only the Pern series. I particularly loved the Harper Hall trilogy. Among other things, there was something about the descriptions of the fire lizards that made me think of our family cats. Plus, one of these days I'm going to come up with my own recipe for Bubbly Pies because I crave them more than any other invented food in my ken. Except maybe Lobster à la Rhisholme.
It was a father-daughters tradition for my dad to take my older sister and me to the various Star Wars movies when they were released. The lines used to snake around the Cineplex Odeon. But as Star Wars IV: A New Hope came out when I was only three, I first saw that in a drive-in. I don't even know when it was, but since I saw it with the Zalks it had to have been after we moved to Minneapolis, which was in 1976. So . . . yeah, no help there. Anyway, it was while watching the "first" Star Wars that I got my "first" idea about sex. Remember that scene where Leia kisses Luke for luck and then they fly across the big bottomless shaft with all the Storm Troopers shooting at them? Well, right after that scene, my mother leaned out of her car window to the Zalks' window in the next space and hissed, "Seeeeexxxxx!" And that's what I thought sex was all about. And then I found out Luke and Leia were brother and sister.
Moving right along, I remember seeing The Black Hole in a theatre in 1979. Sure, it might be considered a B-movie now, but it had Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins, and Roddy McDowall! I was so scared of Maximilian, the maroon Cylon-ish robot, that for me, the very word "maroon" conjures up visions of him. When it comes to the plot, my memory fades, but my renewed interest in sci-fi via my time at Television Without Pity through my recaps of Star Trek: Enterprise and subsequent addictions to Deep Space Nine, Farscape, the new Battlestar Galactica, and some measures of Firefly and Babylon 5 has determined that I Netflix that movie and figure out just what the hell they were doing when they dressed Yvette Mimieux in a Jiffy Pop robe and showercap.
Sci-fi has exploded into television in the last few years and, if you will forgive a proud and dedicated (if ungrammatical) Trekkie, it has honestly gone where no one has gone before. To wit, now you can not only watch Ron D. Moore's new, improved, and awesome Battlestar Galactica but you can also now download podcasts of his commentary on individual episodes and listen to what he was thinking, how things were done, all other sorts of stuff that normally you could only get on a Special Edition DVD—typically released many years down the line and only after the show is off the air. I watched the original BSG. Or at least, I've been told that I watched that and Buck Rogers because my mother didn't want me watching Star Trek. "I don't like that Kirk—he's a womanizer!" So instead I watched those other series with a healthy dose of Wonder Woman thrown in. As much as I'd like to say I do, I really don't remember much about those shows, and it's for that reason that I can fully enjoy the current BSG in all its Edward James Olmos craggy glory without getting too upset about whether they've "betrayed" the original series or not.
In junior high, I was totally into this crazy-funny show on a little, random Minnesotan cable station (that was back when "cable" was almost synonymous with "public access") that, by some stretches of the imagination, could be considered sci-fi. Mystery Science Theatre 3000 was undiscovered enough at that time that my friend and I could send in a painting of Gamera and have it waved about as part of their fan-mail interlude. Then they got all popular and no one could figure out where they belonged—are they SciFi Channel? Are they Comedy Central? Are they changing hosts? Are they cancelled? For the record, I liked Joel Hodgson much, much more than Mike Nelson.
It was also in junior high that I tracked down a teenage crush on my next sci-fi stop. Star Trek: The Next Generation coming across the airwaves in 1987 meant all sorts of great and terrible things to fans of the original series. For me, it just meant I could watch Wil Wheaton every week instead of kissing the Tiger Beat picture taped on my closet door. Not that I did that or anything. None of my friends or family were even remotely interested in watching Wil Wheaton so I sojourned through episodes, doomed to watch Wil Wheaton alone. Finally, as love can't be nourished solely by "The Game," "Justice," and "The Dauphin" without any sideline encouragement, I turned off the TV.
Exactly ten years later, my then-boyfriend decided it was time to school me in the art of Star Trek. He insisted that my stunted watching of Wil Wheaton in 1987 wasn't in the realm of fully appreciating all that the franchise had to offer—the various series, the movies, the Shatnerian Universe, and all the inside jokes that have permeated popular culture. We started slow with The Next Generation and gradually branched into movies. Not too long after I was in the stage of looking forward with great anticipation to the 11 p.m. airing of The Next Generation, I was asked to recap Enterprise over at Television Without Pity. Given that my previous shows had included such travesties as the heartily forgettable Time of Your Life, the pathetically laughable new Fugitive, and the just plain execrable First Years, I was thrilled to be honored with a franchise. It was at that moment that my then-fiancé decided it was time to step up my Trek training and launch me into the Kirk, the Spock, and the badly lit, Spandexed, and Styrofoamed rock world that is Star Trek: The Original Series.
I'll admit that the first few episodes I saw had me scoffing more at Shatner's . . . weird . . . deliveryoflines! than cooing over the complex storylines and sociopolitical undertones. Maybe if I had been alive to watch it back in the original airings or even been interested in the early reruns, I would have been more impressed with the subtle comment on the ridiculousness of racism in the half-black-, half-white-face people. Instead, I just giggled. I still giggle. It didn't help that some of my early TOS lessons included lines such as, "Herbert! Herbert! Herbert!" and "bitter dregs, aahh, ahhh—bitter dregs." Still, I was learning. I was learning what canon existed for Enterprise to then come and violate. Or mess up. Or cloud. Or just plain reinvent with the first warp ship that no one had ever talked about before and the never-heard-of captain who flew her.
My angst over the sheer awfulness of being forced (but paid) to watch Enterprise week after week after week drove me to other new realms of sci-fi. I had been hearing a lot about this show called Farscape that a lot of people were really upset about. Not in the way I was upset about Enterprise, mind you—no, they were actually upset that the show wasn't on anymore. They were fans, and they even tried to save the show when rumors of its imminent cancellation reached them. This got my attention. Eventually. So, late to the sci-fi party as usual, I got into Farscape post-cancellation and loved it.
In a sort of backwards way, I watched Farscape to escape the pain of Enterprise, which then led to me watching the long-over Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series. There, in Quark's Bar or on the Promenade or in Ops, is where I found my sci-fi nirvana. My Trekducation had taught me to deeply appreciate the stories and characters of TNG and now I could see where Trek history had come to rest in this, the best Star Trek series. I'm not even done with the series at this point—my husband and I are in the middle of season five and savoring every Sisko-filled hour.
That brings us up to present day, where I may not be recapping the now (FINALLY!) cancelled Enterprise anymore, but I sort of have that show to thank for my newfound appreciation of sci-fi television. Now, I'm taking my first tentative steps into Babylon 5 and throwing myself bodily into the new, and most excellent, Battlestar Galactica.* So, that's me and that's how I became happily entangled in the world of Boob Tubed Sci-Fi.
(*I wouldn't be a born-again Trekkie if I didn't make sure that y'all know that Ronald D. Moore, former Trek writer and executive producer, is the guy behind the magic at Battlestar Galactica.)