"I’m sorry that it’s taken so long. It must have been a bitch while I was gone. Do you mind if I sit down for a while and re-acquaint yourself with my style?"
Damn. It feels like 100,000 years since I put out the last issue of Cashiers. I’m through with apologizing for the lateness of CdC, though, because no one’s been busting down my door looking for it.
Maybe y'all figured that I took the summer off. Or maybe it crossed your mind that I simply fell off the face of the earth—I took your money and ran. But, the truth is, I was scared to do this particular issue.
A few weeks after CdC #6 hit the newsstands, I got a letter from a loyal reader who compared my zine to the Star Trek film series. They claimed that the even numbered issues have been the best; the thick-n-meaty #2, the digest-sized #4, and the DTP'ed #6. Personally, I took offense to this analogy since I think Wrath of Khan hasn’t been beat and I hope nothing I’ve ever done is as bad as The Final Frontier.
Instead of blowing off this letter and rolling with the punches, I heavy heavy let it hang over my head. It plagued me. It was everywhere, even in my troubled sleep. It was there, alive and kickin'. I pored over story ideas, wondering what would signal this issue turning to shit like the destruction of the Klingon ship in Generations.
To me, the entire movie changed direction after that event. I mean, the way Guinan described the Nexus wasn’t anything like it turned out to be. She said you'd never want to leave it but Picard had maybe a good five minutes before he decided it was time to go. Speaking of time, it seems like Picard and Kirk could have travelled to anywhere in time, so why pick that particular instant to come back? Why not go back to the Enterprise B and not beam aboard Soren in the first place?
I guess I’m too much of a nerd for my own good. If I didn’t watch Star Trek and dig the movies then maybe I wouldn’t have let it get me into such a tizzy. At least I haven’t had a reader compare issues to the different TV incarnations. If they did, I guess the Original Star Trek issues would all have articles about mankind being judged by an outside force with a desperate cry for our humanity at the end. The Next Generation issues would be good but a little too politically correct. No one would read the Deep Space Nine issues since they wouldn’t go anywhere. And the Voyager issues would all deal with time-travel.
I can’t even watch Voyager any more since the first four episodes all had some sort of time-travel element (been there, done that, enough already), asking the question, "Will we get home?" Of course you’re not going to get home!! That would mean the end of the whole series since you'd be subverting the dumb ass premise of the show!
The fifth episode was the proverbial camel-back-breaking-straw since it dealt primarily with the Holodeck. One would think that after all those times the Holodeck went nuts on TNG that Starfleet might reconsider making them standard issue on their ships. Didn’t Picard send them a memo each time it happened?
The bad news about this issue is that I grew a goatee and wore a green shirt during these last few weeks of writing. The good news is that this baby fermented in the back of my mind for quite some time. I even did What No Movie Critic Has Done Before, I went back and re-watched everything I wanted to review so I could get the facts straight and give a thought-out second opinion of them. Kooky, huh?
Damn. I was hoping to never let out the fact that I’m such a geek. My "Boba Fett-ish" article might have been your first clue. I could try to do some damage control and assure everyone that I don’t wear Spock ears or have an Enterprise X-mas ornament. But, who am I trying to kid? You know I laughed the loudest at the Medieval Times scene in The Cable Guy and I busted a gut during Seinfeld’s season opener. It just can’t be helped.
I hope you'll still accept me and love me for what I am—a nerd.
Back to Issue 7