True to the conjecture that "the geek shall inherit the Earth", we finally seem to be in an era where it's hip to be a geek. The world runs on the Internet and is beholden to those who have mastered it, while the success of movies like Batman and TV shows such as Battlestar Galactica are evidence of the consumer power of the geek demographic.

Big Bang Theory puts those geeks in the spotlight with two cohabitating physicists, Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons). Together with co-workers Howard (Simon Helberg of Dr. Horrible) and Raj (Kunal Nayyar), they play Halo and Dungeons & Dragons, attend Star Trek conventions and costume contests, and postulate about quantum mechanics and string theory. When Penny (Kaley Cuoco), a cute Cheesecake Factory waitress, moves in next door, Leonard tries to get her attention without abandoning his esoteric lifestyle. Hilarity ensues.

Although the show does play to some stereotypes, it does so respectfully. Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Raj are respected by their peers and are successful in and fulfilled by their careers and hobbies. The humor arises not from lampooning what it means to be a geek as much as it does by highlighting the culture clash that occurs when geeks try to interact with the rest of society. Besides, how could the show poke fun at geeks when the geeks in the audience can empathize with so many of the jokes? This is a show about laughing with, not at, the heroes.

Although adorable and well-intentioned Leonard is ostensibly the star of the show, the scenes are often stolen by Sheldon, who exaggerates the geek archetype by proving himself completely devoid of emotion. Imagine a creature as logical as Spock but with a complete unawareness of the existence of other organisms' emotions or how to be sensitive to them. Such extreme snarkiness is unattractive, but it makes Sheldon's occasional humanity all the more surprising.

Take this scene from the second season's Christmas episode. Sheldon, not knowing what price range his gift from Penny will fall under, has prepared several gifts to give her based on the value of what he receives. Once he has received and evaluated her gift, he intends to sneak away to choose the appropriate reciprocation.

Would any of us have reacted any differently? (The fact that you're reading Showbits in the first place suggests "no".)

From the opening number performed and sung by Barenaked Ladies to the epilogue, each episode is a riot of intelligent, witty humor. If you liked the superior stylings of Frasier, you'll like Big Bang Theory. My thanks to those who took a chance on introducing me to this series for Christmas.

• On Saturday, November 14th, the touring "Star Wars In Concert" comes to the TD Garden for both a 3:00 PM matinee and an 8:00 PM performance. The concert is described as "John Williams' breathtaking score from the epic Star Wars saga … performed by a live symphony orchestra and chorus, accompanied by a stunning video montage on an enormous LED screen." Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) has been narrating this concert, though it's unclear if that's only at specific venues. Us Bostonians are no stranger to hearing Mr. Williams' soundtracks performed live, as the composer is also the director emeritus of the renowned Boston Pops Orchestra and often serves as guest conductor, but a dedicated concert to this particular score is a rare treat. Tickets are $32.50, $52.50, or $72.50, plus applicable taxes and fees.

• That same weekend is the New England Fan Experience (NEFX) sci-fi convention. Star Trek headliners include Bostonian Leonard Nimoy (Spock Prime) as well as John de Lancie (Q), though the former will be available only on Saturday, competing with the aforementioned Star Wars concert. Online tickets (via a Web site that is remarkably reminiscent of a GeoCities page) are available through November 6th for $45 each, or for $50 at the door.

• NEFX 2009 is held a week earlier than in 2008, avoiding the conflict that occurred last year with the annual Super Megafest, traditionally held the weekend before Thanksgiving. That means this year, you can attend NEFX one week and Super Megafest the next! The latter is held in Framingham, less than a half-hour west of Boston. The expo — which features an unusual amalgam of sci-fi actors, comic book artists, TV show stars, and pro wrestlers — will this year present Brent Spiner (Star Trek's Data), Ray Park (Star Wars' Darth Maul and, more recently, G.I. Joe's Snake Eyes), and James Marsters (Buffy's Spike). In addition to signings, each star also has a half-hour Q&A session, though the schedule is unknowable prior to the event: an email from its coordinator informed me, "No, panels will not be posted on the site. Most celebs will do Q&A sessions both days. However sat is probably the better day to see more Q&A sessions." Last year I happened to show up just in time to see Jonathan Frakes; otherwise I would've been out of luck. The actual show floor is quite small but packs a lot into it. Tickets for the entire November 21-22 weekend are only $20.

Though the two conventions offer cheaper admittance than the orchestral concert, they also have the most potential to drain your allowance, based on how many celebrity autographs you want to go home with; typical fees range from $20 to $50 or more per signing. This will be my third Super Megafest, and I usually budget $100 for at least three autographs.

If you'll be attending either the Star Wars matinee or the Super Megafest, be sure to say hello to Showbits!

My father with his oldest and youngest sons

I'll answer for me: The first ten minutes had me in tears. That isn't hyperbole or dramatic effect; it's literal truth. This action-packed opening sequence is so tragic, yet so heroic; and what it does to the Star Trek universe is terrible, yet also elegant and necessary. This film is both a prequel and a reboot, documenting the first voyage of Kirk, Spock, and company — but it's not the same ship and crew we remember from 1966. There are differences, both subtle and profound, which the opening sequence makes possible, thus giving the creative team the leeway they need to make something both fresh and familiar.

Fans will find much to like here, such as in nods to Trek lore that don't feel forced, be it the death of a character or Chekov's accent. But there's more going on here than in the details, such as the recasting of the iconic crew. I found it surprisingly easy to accept fresh faces in roles that we've long identified with particular actors, and these newcomers' performances are mostly true to the characters as originally written, without being mockeries. Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty each get notable scenes; Bones and Uhura, a bit more. But this adventure is really about the young, brash Spock and Kirk. These aren't the older, wiser Starfleet officers we're accustomed to, yet I can imagine Chris Pine's Kirk acting and reacting just as William Shatner's Kirk would've under these circumstances.

More difficult to swallow are the earth-shattering alterations to the Star Trek universe. This is not Roddenberry's sandbox: it is dark and disturbing, with protagonists defined not by heroism as much as tragedy, whose victories are pyrrhic at best. For someone as immersed as I am in the details of this timeline, I'm disturbed to think of the ramifications this film has for everything that has come before. I just have to remind myself there are those charged with preserving Trek's heritage, and that nothing can take away my memories of those voyages.

As a Trekkie, I loved this movie, despite my conflicted feelings. That perspective aside, Star Trek is still a fantastic film. It has humor, conflict, breathtaking action sequences, space and hand-to-hand combat, and more. There several coincidences and inconsistencies, but what Star Trek has been immune to those? Certain liberties need to be taken not only to be freed from 40 years of backstory, but to still acknowledge it and tie it together into one neat package. It's astounding that a plot this complex and nuanced could've come from the same writing team that gave us the detestable Transformers, or the entertaining yet predictable Mission:Impossible III.

Despite an almost empty theater at last night's premiere, Star Trek seems to be doing well with both hardcore fans and newcomers to the franchise, if we can believe Rotten Tomatoes' 96% rating — the highest of any Star Trek movie. I can only speak from my Trekkie status, as I cannot excise the passion or knowledge that precludes that perspective. But I saw the film with a teenager who'd never seen any Star Trek before and who'd been attracted to this movie by the previews — a leap of faith which I found encouraging. When the credits rolled, he was quick to praise the film though, when pressed, admitted he found it "a bit" confusing.

If, unlike this next generation of Star Trek fan, you've been around the galaxy a time or two, this film may cause you the same turmoil it did me. I've loved this series for decades and, never found it to be stale, even after 716 episodes. The show's declining ratings, culminating in Enterprise being the first Star Trek since the original to be cancelled after fewer than seven seasons, indicate I was in the minority. For the franchise to live, Star Trek as we've known it must die, or at least evolve. I can see its spirit in J.J. Abrams' creation, and not just as a shadow of its former self, but as something cherished and integrated into something new. May this direction give us another 40 years of Star Trek, whatever shape it may take.

(The review ends here. For those who have seen the film and wish to discuss plot particulars, there are spoilers on the next page.)

The franchise's 726 episodes and ten movies are condensed into this other 40th anniversary tribute, which for some reason was uploaded to YouTube just last week. The video — set to one of my favorite instrumental pieces, the orchestral suite from "The Inner Light" — is a brief visual tour of the entire history of Star Trek's two-hundred-year history. Considering how many characters there are to fit into the montage's seven-minute length, you'll forgive the editor if he transitions from one character to the next a bit too swiftly.

I was moved by how familiar I found each of these characters, and how glad I was to see them again. But then, I shouldn't be surprised: Star Trek was on the air consistently for 18 years, making it a constant companion for roughly two-thirds of my life. You could argue it was just a TV show (in which case I wonder what you're doing reading this blog), but every day without a Trek seems dark, as the program represents a hope for humanity.

With the cancellation of Enterprise, television has been without a Star Trek for four years. Now we stand on the cusp of a new Star Trek film — the first one in seven years, the longest span between any two Star Trek movies ever. This movie has the potential to reenergize the franchise and bring it back not only to the public consciousness, but to the television screen. It will be a long time before we can effectively measure the film's success and impact — but it will be only two months before we will have the full feature to judge, and not just this trailer:

(Hat tip to Dayton Ward)

Now the entire archives of the Stewart era are available for free online viewing at the show's official Web site. Comedy Central's library features an easy-to-use slider for calling up specific days, months, and years of episodes, as well as offering a standard keyword search. It's easy to find and watch classic interviews such as with Scott Bakula or Jeri Ryan, or more recent episodes such as an aforementioned critique of Representative Wu's analysis of the White House administration:

I had grown up on the writings of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, but I had watched the original 1960s Star Trek only in reruns. During freshman year, I had fought for the dorm lounge television with people who preferred The Late Show With David Letterman over some old show with people wearing colorful pajamas, odd makeup, or both. But we were a small but dedicated band, and we made it to the stars. Among the friends I met then was my future wife.

Over the course of many late nights and foosball games, I learned about the United Federation of Planets, its Starfleet, and the Prime Directive that forbade its explorers from interfering in the internal affairs or development of alien worlds. The so-called "Wagon Train to the stars" combined Westerns with ray guns, and mythology with scientific speculation.

By the time TNG began, I was indeed a Trekkie — or "Trekker," as some prefer — having learned the cant among the franchise's fans: phasers, warp speed, and the Vulcan nerve pinch and salute. Of the eventual six movies with the space opera's original cast, the best two — Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and IV: The Voyage Home — had already been released. Thanks to magazines such as Starlog and various "technical manuals," I learned about transporters and Jeffries tubes (the access tunnels throughout starships, named after an original series art director). Around Thanksgiving of 1987, I would attend my first science fiction convention, one run by Creation Entertainment in New York.

It's also worth remembering the context into which this Enterprise was launched — that, despite the success of multimedia franchises such as Planet of the Apes and Star Wars, there was little genre entertainment on television at that time. As we look forward to 2007's premieres of Heroes, Lost, or Battlestar Galactica: Razor, among others, note that 20 years ago, there was only Stephen Spielberg's anthology Amazing Stories, horror drama Friday the 13th: the Series, and another Earth-based movie spin-off, Starman. Weak visual effects, even weaker writing, and a lack of interest among mainstream viewers and networks had doomed all but the U.K.'s Doctor Who to short lifespans or syndication.

Fortunately, syndication gave TNG the time it needed to develop, unlike many shows until The X-Files. Many fans of the original crew and earlier Trek films had difficulty accepting a new cast and style. The captain was now a bald Frenchman rather than a Kennedyesque Canadian-American; the jumpsuits and military uniforms were now spandex (later with 1980s shoulderpads); and the acting and scripts/dialogue were a bit stiff. I found the first episode, "Encounter at Farpoint", to be slow, preachy, and not particularly promising.

But it soon grew on me, and at a time in my life when I wasn't watching much TV, I was pleasantly surprised to see TNG and, by extension, science fiction working its way back into mainstream consciousness. The strength of the show was not its pyrotechnics (which were better than in the 1960s) but in the heroic ensemble cast.

Patrick Stewart as the noble Capt. Jean-Luc Picard solved problems more often with diplomacy than with fisticuffs. Other memorable characters included Brent Spiner's Asimovian android Data, who yearned to be more human, and Michael Dorn's warrior Worf, who wanted to be more Klingon. LeVar Burton, as eventual chief engineer Geordi La Forge, was actually the best known actor at the time.

Despite the occasional bad writing, I came to appreciate creator Gene Roddenberry's optimistic vision of the future, in which the best and brightest from hundreds of inhabited planets came together for the shared goals of exploration and defending galactic peace. Over time, even supporting characters became like family, and many episodes revisited humanistic themes and even specific plots from the original series, strengthening archetypes that nearly every genre show has followed since then: time travel, alternate universes, court martials, and so on.

But there can be no drama without conflict, and TNG reintroduced the classic adversaries of belligerent Klingons and scheming Romulans. While the mercantile Ferengi turned out to be better for comic relief, the nearly omnipotent "Q" (John de Lancie, following a long line of godlike beings in the otherwise agnostic or atheist Star Trek), martial Cardassians, and cybernetic, collective Borg transcended a mere TV show where the weapons were really made of plastic and the sets of plywood. Just as Capt. James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock are now part of popular culture, so too are the nightmarish Borg, which columnists for Computerworld still refer to.

By its third year, TNG became a worthy successor to Roddenberry's legacy, even as the "great bird of the galaxy" was in failing health. The introduction of the Borg, the Klingon civil war, and incremental character development (including the return of Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher) started a balancing act between purely episodic plots and longer story arcs that continues to this day. Yes, TNG is in hindsight rather static, but it laid the groundwork for the more arc-driven shows like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, and the aforementioned Lost and Heroes.

Many of my favorite episodes — "Yesterday's Enterprise", "Sins of the Father", "Sarek" and "The Best of Both Worlds" — are from Season 3. (Yes, we Trekkies like to refer to specific episodes by title.) Unlike some of its descendants, the crew of the starship Enterprise (registry NCC-1701-D) was composed of the best and brightest who were able to rise to the greatest challenges and still be sympathetic people.

As the Cold War ended in the real world, Star Trek continued exemplifying SF as social allegory. On the other hand, Roddenberry's direction of the franchise relaxed, the story arcs and character development got stronger, if not always successfully. Star Trek, and indeed much genre fiction, has shown few happy families, competent admirals, or foes who don't eventually get watered down.

The eventual trend toward a "darker" tone was offset in TNG by lighter character studies, allowing even underdeveloped characters such as Marina Sirtis' Counselor Troi and Wil Wheaton's ensign Wesley Crusher to evolve past a touchy-feely pseudoshrink and an annoying child genius, respectively. Author David Brin has lauded the Federation's meritocracy, which has made the novels and various books and games based on Star Trek (one of the largest shared universes in SF, if you count all the contributors) especially accessible.

The show was further strengthened by guest stars: from Whoopi Goldberg as recurring bartender Guinan, to physicist Stephen Hawking as himself in a holodeck scene, to members of the original cast (most notably Mark Lenard and Leonard Nimoy as ur-Vulcans Sarek and Spock, respectively). In fact, like its later peers, Quantum Leap, Highlander, and Lois & Clark, many actors passed through TNG on their way to later success.

By the time TNG wound down in 1994, it had earned its place among the best SF shows of all time. Its seven-year lifespan has guaranteed many years of reruns in syndication, and it launched spin-offs Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) and Star Trek: Voyager. The Enterprise-D continued its voyage on the silver screen, though I feel that the movies featuring the Next Gen cast focused too much on conflict rather than on crew's strengths of diplomacy and friendship, but they each had something to offer the fans.

The seventh Star Trek film, Generations, finally had Captains Kirk and Picard meet, even if the plot was a bit muddled. First Contact was the best, using the Borg and the Enterprise-E. Insurrection and Nemesis tried to bring back some intrigue and family, but weren't strong enough to retain interest from the general audience.

DS9 continued Roddenberry's ideals as it continued to explore post-Cold War uncertainty and conflict with an even stronger ensemble. The Odyssey-inspired Voyager and retconning Enterprise were weaker, to the point that Trek is now taking a break before Paramount and J.J. Abrams attempt to reboot it with the eleventh movie in 2008.

Fortunately, TNG's influence can still be seen. The story arcs of non-Trek space operas Babylon 5, Farscape, Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, Serenity/Firefly, and the revisionist Battlestar Galactica all share ideas and sometimes writers and actors from Trek. While this subgenre of SF is not as popular at the moment as cyberpunk, comic book superheroes, or alien conspiracies, I continue to be inspired by the intrepid cast and crew of The Next Generation.

To my fellow Trekkers, may you Live Long and Prosper –

— Gene

GeneD is a lifelong science fiction fan and a copy editor at Computerworld magazine near Boston. As "Ensign Barney Blintz" and "Capt. Tzu Tien Lung," he participated in various Star Trek RPGs. Read his blog at http://360.yahoo.com/edemaitre.

Also in the TNG at 20 series:

• T-Minus One Week and Counting
• To Everything, There Is a Season
• Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Spock Gone?
• The Human Condition
• But Don't Take My Word For It
• A Good Day to Die

I am not a filmmaker, nor do I have any aspirations to be — but I nonetheless found Mr. Nimoy's insider perspective engaging.