What Would Picard Do?
When I was a young kid, my first memory of watching Star Trek was seeing it on a black-and-white TV set. I remember that my dad was still living with us, so I was five years old or younger. The episode was "Where No Man Has Gone Before," where Captain Kirk's friend and the ship's helmsman, Gary Mitchell, displays telepathic and telekinetic power after the Enterprise tries to cross an energy barrier is struck with a powerful force. I remember this episode because I was struck by Mitchell's glowing eyes. (At the time, my mom said that the film editors scratched out the eyes on the reel to make the eyes appear to be glowing but I now know that the effects team did more than that.) I became hooked with the television series and imagined some day, I would be travelling in space. I wanted to be a member of the crew, someday becoming the ship's captain. While I admired the cast of Star Trek , I never wanted to be Captain Kirk, or Spock, or Bones McCoy. When I ha...
