I was channel surfing one night last week and came across reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation (now to be known as TNG). The first episode I saw was when when the Borg captured Captain Picard. Well, I remembered that was a good one, so I stayed up until midnight watching. The next night was the post-Borg episode when Picard goes back to his home village on earth and has one of the best Star Trek endings ever, proving that Gene Roddenberry was truly a genius.
It ends with Picard back on board the Enterprise, and all's right with the world. His star-crazed young nephew sits outdoors looking up at a starry sky, dreaming about when he will be a starship captain. That image wrung my heart.
I always wanted to travel in space. Good lord, I've been reading science fiction since I was 11 years old! Now that I am turning fifty next month, and living with metastatic cancer, it seems highly unlikely that my dream will ever come true. Still, many other girls and boys were inspired by reading science fiction and watching Star Trek and took up careers that may some day bring humanity to the stars.
So now I am hooked on TNG again and stay up too late at night watching bad 80's hair styles and some pretty stiff acting. But I still want to go aboard the Enterprise one day "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before..."
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