TREKKIES (Paramount Classics) Featuring: Denise Crosby, Barbara Adams, Gabriel Koerner, Dennis Bourguignon. Producer: W. K. Border. Director: Roger Nygard. MPAA Rating: PG (adult themes) Running Time: 87 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
I'll be honest with you: the last thing I was expecting from the Paramount-distributed TREKKIES was a warts-n-all documentary about "Star Trek" fandom. Paramount, after all, was the corporate homeworld of the United Federation of Planets; how critical a look could the studio _really_ take at those who so proudly wore the milk moustaches from its most lucrative cash cow? Roger Nygard's TREKKIES, however, is about as far from an officially endorsed whitewash as one could imagine. In fact, though its character studies are at times undeniably amusing, it's almost too focused on turning its subjects into the oddballs everyone already suspects Trekkies of being.
Narrated by actress Denise Crosby (who portrayed Tasha Yar on the syndicated "Star Trek: The Next Generation"), TREKKIES is essentially a loosely assembled collection of cast member anecdotes and portraits of the hardest of hard-core fans. Among the individuals profiled is Barbara Adams, a Little Rock, Arkansas bookbinder and "Commander" of a local fan organization who gained national attention when she served as a Whitewater trial juror in her full Starfleet uniform. Another tour guide is 14-year-old Gabriel Koerner from Bakersfield, California, who leads viewers through a typical "Star Trek" convention -- one of 28 he has attended -- complete with merchandise tables, auctions and guest appearances by cast members past and present.
The bad news for many "Trek" fans expecting a sympathetic portrait is that those two characters are among the more mainstream folks in the film. TREKKIES doesn't hesitate to show us characters like the cross-dresser who performs "Trek"-inspired folk songs, or a woman whose obsession with Brent Spiner (the artificial life form Data on "The Next Generation") borders on stalking, or an engineer who travels the streets of Minneapolis in an enclosed wheelchair-like device modeled after a "Trek" prop. When the subject matter swerves into the pornographic fan fiction which has been created using "Trek" characters, it no longer feels like Nygard is just creating a comprehensive catalog of the manifestations of Trekkie-ism. There's an element of side show exploitation to these aspects of TREKKIES, a sense that Nygard is less interested in understanding the phenomenon of Trekkies than in turning their eccentricities into punch lines.
That's truly a shame, because the "why's" of Trekkies could have been at least as fascinating as the "who's". In an utterly unique way, the universe created by Gene Roddenberry affected viewers as no other television program has in the history of the medium. There are moments of insight into the way "Star Trek" changed the lives of those involved in it forever, as in actor James Doohan's ("Scotty") emotional story about how he helped save the life of a suicidal woman. TREKKIES also touches on the impact of the show's positive portrayal of multi-ethnic integration, and on the optimism of its messages of inclusion and acceptance. Such ideas should have made it easier to see Trekkies as social outsiders who have embraced a mythology in which they are tolerated, and even celebrated. It's ironic -- and somewhat disappointing -- to watch the film turn them into social outsiders once again.
There's no denying that TREKKIES is occasionally quite funny, whether in the answers of cast members to the strangest fan experiences they have had, or in the ways various Trekkies have integrated their love of "Trek" into their lives (like dentist Dennis Bourguignon's "Starbase Dental" office). It was only after I left the theater that I realized I had been laughing at these people more than I was laughing with them. Yes, there are comments about how intelligent most "Star Trek" fans are; it's too bad they feel like token gestures. Many Trekkies themselves seem to have embraced the film, but I'm not sure they should appreciate the way they are turned into exactly what the broader population generally thinks of them. There's not enough balance between the unusual things these people do and the love that inspires them to do those things. It was brave of Paramount to endorse a film like TREKKIES. It also seems like a bit of a betrayal.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Trek meets: 5.
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