strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Jun 7 03: resistance; futility
Bob turned 34 on the Saturday we were in Vegas. So I took him to the Star Trek Experience. Yes, it was among the geekiest things I’ve ever done. Je ne regrette rien. Every out-of-work actor in town was there, improvising wildly beneath latex Klingon foreheads in the bar or as plucky Federation ensigns in the flight-simulator. There were strolling Ferengi and Borg, too. It had a big timeline of Federation history, with display cases of props and costumes and video monitors showing relevant clips from the various series. It had a big crazy immersive interactive walkthrough thing including a groovy ‘get beamed up onto the Enterprise’ moment and a ride in a shuttlecraft—simulated—where you got chased by Klingon birds of prey through a wormhole. Woo hoo! Needless to say, Bob and I had to keep our Ironic Detachment Field Generators cranked up to eleven the whole time. Heaven forbid we be as dorky as those folks over there in the t-shirts. But in the interest of fairness I must confess that my bubble nearly collapsed at the end of the ride in the shuttlecraft. We’d evaded the Klingons, gotten bounced around a lot, had saved the world, etc. etc….and Captain Picard radioed us and made a typically Captain Picard speech about how each of us contained the seeds of our future, of his present, blah blah…and I nearly wept. I was this close. All verklempt, I was. Eeep.
The immersive Experience dumped you out in, of all places, the gift shop. Actually there were two gift shops. The first one sold the predictable t-shirts, hats, glassware, keychains, prosthetic ear-tips, teddy Borg, teddy Klingons, Klingon Empire baseball jerseys, neckties, books, DVDs, 7 of 9 wristwatches (RESISTANCE IS FUTILE on the band), baby apparel, bumper stickers, Klingon-language instructional materials, radios, command jackets, mouse pads, action figures, card games, chess sets…et cetera. The other one sold the ‘special limited edition’ stuff: photos signed by the stars, or high-quality replicas of props, or swarovsky-crystal-encrusted handbags in the form of the Federation inisgnia, all for hundreds to thousands of dollars. If you really, really need a life-size vinyl replica of Alice Krige as the Borg Queen, ths is where you need to go. Of course I bought something. But I didn’t buy nearly as much as Bob, so there.
We did not go into the bar. We knew better than to drink with Klingons, thank you. On a variety of levels. But man, that was fun.