Trekkies

Paramount strikes back! Except that the studio doesn't have a new Star Trek entry to send out against the Lucas mega-movie, so it's had to settle for this Roger Nygard-directed documentary about Star Trek fans who are truly fanatic. Nygard interweaves talking-head commentary by crew members from all four Trek generations (but mostly the original series) with a look at various Trekkies (or "Trekkers" -- yes, the distinction is discussed) who devote their lives to the world that Gene Roddenberry created. You'll meet the Whitewater juror who wore her uniform (she's the "captain" of the Little Rock Federation "starship" Artemis, one of many such starships around the country) to court every day; the dentist who turned his office into Starbase Dental and put his receptionist and assistants into Trek uniforms; the world's most devoted "Spiner Femme" (for Brent Spiner, who plays The Next Generation's Data); the cat "Bones," whose owner has dolled him up in a Leonard McCoy scrub top.

Denise Crosby -- The Next Generation's Tasha Yar -- is the on-camera presence who ties all this together, and she navigates skillfully between appreciation and bemusement. At 100 minutes, the film does go on, and you might wish that the original cast wouldn't take it all so seriously, or that more thoughtful questions would be asked, like how Star Trek fanatics differ from Star Wars fanatics. But it's hard not to be moved when Kate Mulgrew (Voyager's Captain Janeway) explains that when they ask you to visit a child in a hospital, you go, because you know he won't be there next time around. Trekkies is dedicated, we learn at the end, to "Bones" (the cat, not DeForest Kelley), who passed away after his footage was shot.

-- Jeffrey Gantz