I've been a geek since birth, so when my father sat me down in 1987 to watch the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the character with whom I most readily identified was the android Data. Finally, there was someone on television who valued brains over personality! He was pasty white as me! And people laughed at him, and he didn't know why! It gave me hope that maybe someday I too could grow up to be, if not popular, at least important.
I doubt I was alone in such fantasies, though the form may've been different for others. Regardless of their particular obsession, geeks often overlap in their interests. Be it Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, or computer programming, there's just something about these hobbies that attracts similar mindsets.
When not just the fans but the interests themselves intersect, it is a cause for jubilation. Such is the case with musician and performer "Weird Al" Yankovic, who often performs parodies and spoofs of Star Wars, eBay, and more. Many of these topics feature in the music video for his popular song his song "White & Nerdy", which encapsulates all a geek's attributes into less than three minutes. Could it be any nerdier?
The answer: yes. This video takes the "White & Nerdy" audio and sets it to montages of my childhood hero:
This video's debut was preceeded a month earlier by a Spock version, which has some good chuckles. There's also a Deep Space Nine take, but it limits itself by being based entirely on the "Trials and Tribble-ations" episode. Finally, there's an attempt to set Weird Al's "The Saga Begins", which tells the tale of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, to video from Star Trek: Voyager. It's creative, but I'm not really sure it works.
What are some of your favorite Star Trek spoofs or Weird Al tunes?
Not bad. Data certainly was nerdy, though I thought his skin was somewhat gold, rather than white…