There's entertainment, and then there's epic entertainment. What's the difference? Regular ole' television series, films and games give us, at best, a night's worth of amusement, heck maybe even a weekend. But the kind of series and franchises we're talking about here have provided decades worth of nerdy indulgence! Your kids' kids will be playing these games, watching these movies and television series for years to come. One could spend a lifetime devoted to devouring the hours upon hours of sci-fi action, fantasy adventure and the quirky other-worldly antics of the awesome series highlighted here. Lucky for you, we've distilled them down to a brief yet lively discourse coupled with high points you should seek out, low lights to avoid and the next big releases coming down the pipe. So clear your schedule, take the phone off the hook, warm up your consoles, flat screens and DVD players and prepare to immerse yourself in some of the greatest and longest running epics in entertainment history!
Star Trek
Of all the recess wedgies given out over the years, how many were borne from the sight of a Star Trek lunchbox? The correct answer, of course, is "in this Universe or the Mirror Universe?"
There are 726 episodes of television, ten films, close to a thousand books, comics, sociological studies, etc. There are few fictional universes more vast, with dozens of complex cultures, races, religions, languages. . . and they all have epic stories to tell.
Regardless of which iteration you are watching, at its core is the adventure of exploration. Terrans (that's us) are part of the United Federation of Planets, whose science/diplomacy/military wing is known as Starfleet. As the best and brightest of Starfleet zip about the galaxy (or have the galaxy zip to it!) things rarely go smoothly, leading to historic, iconographic moments in our culture. The blacky-whitey faced guy. The big lizard in the sand. The dude with the pointy ears who can knock you out with a pinch. Is the Kirk-Spock-Bones troika a stand-in for Freud's Id-Ego-Superego? Is Data any less alive than we are, just because he has a positronic mainframe and neural net? If Q exists outside of time and space, why does John DeLancie lisp? Epic entertainment presents epic questions.
The high point: It's a 500 way tie! Okay, I can't do that, obviously, so it is a three-way tie. 1) Picard's transformation into Locutus of Borg and subsequent return to France in the Best of Both Worlds/Family arc. 2) The Dominion War. Trek goes full-on serial for an epic season of Deep Space Nine. 3) The Fal-Tor-Pan arc of the second through fourth films. It begins with Saavik's Kobayahsi Maru and it ends with Kirk's grateful demotion from Admiral to Captain.
The low point: None. It is all awesome. Okay, maybe the first two seasons of Voyager suck hard.
Next big release: J.J. Abrams reboots the franchise with a prequel....that is also a sequel (in that old Spock is in it, and then goes back in time to create a new tributary in the timeline.)
