Those four words can evoke a universe worth of feelings in some people. I, happen to be one of them. I grew up watching Jean-Luc Picard and Will Riker sleep their way across the quadrant. I watched Data, Geordi and (for a while) Wesley create impossible solutions while eating diner when I was in elementary school. In my (many) years of highschool when I had so much homework to do that I had to pull an all nighter, I'd put on channel 31. Knowing that, eventually a TNG marathon would come on (this was before Spike became CSI central). For my entire life I've been a trekie. I watched Barkley give life to his imaginings in the holodeck; I watched Q and his many run ins with Picard; and I've watched Riker grow a beard, shave it off, grow it back, etc. etc. And now, tonight, I have watched what has to be the final chapter in this colourful history of space.

A couple years back, the movie Star Trek Nemesis came out. I never watched it. I never got the chance. When it first came out, I was in the beginnings of highschool, and I wasn't about to go to the movies to watch Star Trek with my mother. And then I never remembered to borrow it from someone. Yesterday, I borrowed two Trek movies from my grandparents. Insurection and Nemesis. I knew that Nemesis was likely to be the last TNG era Trek film, but I don't think I realized just how hard the ending of this large part of my life was going to hit me.

There will be no more Enterprise with Jean-Luc in the captain's chair. No more "make it so"'s. There will be another Star Trek movie eventually. The franchise is too big for Hollywood to just let it die. But for me, the journey into the stars is over. I saw Data die today. And it wasn't an obscure death.* Or at least... It wasn't completely. Yeah, the writters have given you that little bit of hope that maybe, just maybe Data will live on in his brother. But it's not the same even if B4 becomes like Data. Riker's off on his own ship, and taking Troi with him, the Enterprise looks nothing like it used to, and most of the rest of the crew is red shirts.

I guess right now I understand what the fans of the Originals felt like when the last Kirk movie was made and they wrapped up the story. Yeah, so Kirk came back in Generations. It wasn't the same. And it's not going to be the same if Picard or any of the other crew show up in the next generation of Trek films.

Anyway, I started this entry with an actual purpose tonight and that was to say this. Thank you, mister Roddenberry for creating a universe in which a child can grow to love an android, a Betazoid, an annoyingly smart teenager, a man with too many hormones for the universe's safety, the guy with the largest nose in starfleet, and a blind engineering officer like they were family. So here's to you, Enterprise. You've boldly gone where no one has gone before.

Goodnight,
Me.