Review of Trekkies (1997) by David S — 24 Sep 2009

This is a brilliant and bizarre look into the lives of die hard Trek fanatics and some of the lengths they will go to to celebrate their love for all things Roddenberry. As odd as some of the fans may appear this documentry is far more affectionate than exploitive and its actually quite touching come the end to witness the impact the series has had on some fans with less than full lives.

But the real fun of this lies with some of the more excentric characters, for instance the fan who followed James Doohan (Scotty) for over 20 years from convention to convention with a syringe constantly asking for a sample of his blood, to the guy who when deciding what to wear for his interview decided to go for a lesser character from a specific episode but instead decided to wear a wig and lipstick and come as that characters never seen wife.

The Doc explores everything from kids who make there own online Trek films to online character sex storys or (slash) storys as they are better known through to Klingon language classes. Many of the favorite Trek actors from all of the different series crop up making this an engaging, and funny watch full of anecdotes and strange tales.

Its very easy to pity some of the fanatics as in their own delusion some of them actually believe they are members of Starfleet and have actually asigned themselves ranks that everyday people are expected to address them as, but most of these people seem perfectly happy as they are and without them the world would be a less interesting place.