Remember all those nerds, geeks, freaks, dorks, and weirdoes from Trekkies, Roger Nygard’s condescending 1997 portrait of Star Trek fanatics? Well, they’re back in Trekkies 2, which revisits some of its predecessor’s most infamous characters – such as Barbara Adams, who wore her Space Federation uniform while serving on the Whitewater jury, or Gabe Köerner, a mullet-sporting superfan obsessed with his homemade Star Trek costume – while also spanning the globe to find new aficionados in Italy, France, England, Australia, Germany and Brazil. Once again hosted by Next Generation alum Denise Crosby with a mixture of amused fascination and thinly concealed repugnance, Nygard’s sequel is a repetitive hodgepodge in which memorabilia collectors, amateur filmmakers, and tribute bands – all of whom praise the series as a liberating influence on their lives – are profiled alongside regular ol’ trekkies, who once again make it their duty to lecture laymen on their preference for the term “trekkers.” More sloppily constructed than the first film, this follow-up does strike a chord in its profile of Serbian fans, who find in the sci-fi series a vision of multicultural harmony all-too-absent from their own homeland. By and large, however, Trekkies 2’s subjects have so drastically crossed the line from casual fandom into bizarre infatuation that it’s hard to quibble with the patronizing attitude taken by Nygard’s films.
Damn, I can't believe they made a sequel to that crap. It should have a been a half-hour show on TLC, not a feature film -- never mind two.
Posted by: Joe Grossberg | July 05, 2005 at 01:46 PM
Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous that they got TWO films out of this freakshow-filled subject.
Without Tivo, I never would have bothered watching it.
Posted by: Nick | July 06, 2005 at 06:14 PM