Trekkers
Created | Updated Mar 17, 2002
Now for some inexplicable reason, after this ratings-failure vanished from NBC's airwaves it became massively popular, spawning a cult of dedicated followers who, for reasons best known to themselves, were dubbed Trekkies.
Throughout the 70's, the Trekkies campaigned for Star Trek's return, eventually succeeding in 1979 when the movie Star Trek - The Motion Picture was released. This was followed by a series of successful sequels, and in 1987 a spin-off series called Star Trek - The Next Generation.
By this time, it had been widely accepted that fans of Star Trek or Trekkies were, in-fact, deeply sad. They gained a reputation for wearing plastic ears, dressing in their pyjamas, and carrying toy guns. Anything to which they expressed mild disdain was labelled as "illogical", and stickers like I Grok Spock and This vehicle travels at Warp Speed, were increasingly found in the rear window of cars.
So through the 90's, fans of Star Trek and it's spin-offs coined a new term to describe themselves. Distinguished from the Trekkie by not being sad/lacking in interpersonal skills/emotionally retarded, the Trekker was born.
Sadly, they fooled no-one. And they proved themselves to not only be deeply sad (by similarly wearing pyjamas and carrying toy guns, only this time with latex foreheads) but also pedantic. (by whining and complaining that they were in-fact a Trekker, not a Trekkie.)