By Steve Fey

For decades a vicious war has raged in America. The seeds were sown in the 1960s, when a science fiction program with a very unlikely cast of characters was saved by a massive letter writing campaign. Those letter writers have been known ever since as "trekkies." They hate that name, preferring "trekker." As I said, they’re called trekkies, and they’re still with us. The trekkie universe was unruffled until that day in the seventies when everybody in the country watched a humongous spaceship up on screen, which turned out to be a little bitty spaceship. What was even weirder, there was a title slide at the beginning of the movie that said "Episode IV." Episode four of a movie nobody had ever seen? What the hey? And so the trekkies had competition for the hearts, minds and wallets of geeks and children everywhere.

Now it’s later. A lot later. The last Star Trek series ever, in all likelihood, is about to broadcast its last episode. At almost the same instant, Episode III, The Return of the Merchandising Behemoth, will premiere in theaters across the planet. No, not the Forest Moon of Endorr, but the real planet where real people live. That would be Earth, if you’ve forgotten. Thus, it can truly be said that Star Wars has outlived Star Trek. Officials across the world are hoping for an end to the violence that has resulted from the conflict between the two groups of geeky fans over the decades.

Anyone who’s ever witnessed a gaggle of costumed conventioneers in a knock-down wrestling match over whether a phaser or a light saber is the superior device with which to fight a Wookie or a Klingon will appreciate the hope that such things may finally become a thing of the past. (I’ve always found the ‘off’ button to be very effective.) But, whichever camp a combatant may belong to, I do wish to say one thing to them: Hey, geek-boy! It’s all fake! It’s all a pack of lies! People (they call them ‘writers’) make all that stuff up so that geeks like you will pay them a lot of real American money (not Latinum, gold pressed or otherwise) so they’ll keep on writing the stuff. It’s lies! All lies! What, you think the Vulcans are really going to show up in Idaho in 2065? Oh, sure they are, and Denebian Slime Worms are gonna fly outta my butt.

In some ways the Star Wars world is easier to take. That’s because it’s "long ago and far far away" as the title slides say. Star Trek has a problem in that some of the history mentioned during the various series has already happened, and it wasn’t that way at all. Well, maybe it’s an alternate universe, much like the sort of cheap story line pasted on the end of the final series this spring. Hey, it could be, though I’m not betting on it.

I’d like to think that this really is it, but I fear otherwise. For one thing, there are nine episodes of Star Wars written, and Episode III is the sixth one released. What will happen in Episode IX? Han Solo meets James Kirk in a winner-takes-all grudge match on Hoth? Hey, maybe that would be worth ten bucks to see, huh?