January 2, 2000 -- "Trekkies" is a film salute to the most dedicated fans in the universe, a fan movement responsible for over $100 billion in sales, including four television series and nine motion pictures (10 including this one), there is no other fan movement like like it. Trekkies are the only fans listed as a group in the Oxford English Dictionary.

It started with a shaky television series over 30 years ago, cancelled after two seasons. The fans brought it back for a third season by popular demand. Never had NBC television dealt with such rabid, articulate fans. The eventual cancellation of the show did not stop the fan movement. Instead, reruns fueled the fire more.

Some of the members of the first series, including DeForest Kelley (who died after this movie was made) share their experiences about the first fan convention, which was a phenomenal success. The actors kept saying to each other "this won't last." But the fans kept coming back to the conventions year after year and they were a huge success. The actors now admit the Star Trek phenomenon looks like it will last forever. Now, on any given weekend, there are a minimum of three Star Trek conventions and they are held all over the world.

What makes Star Trek fans so loyal? First, it is a sense of sharing common goals. The vision of Star Trek is that different races, even different species, can work together toward a common goal. It is this positive vision of the future, in which poverty had been eliminated, as seen by its creator Gene Roddenberry, that made the series attractive. Roddenberry is dead, but his wife, Majel Barrett, is still very much involved in Star Trek. She is also producing another Roddenberry-inspired TV series, "Earth, Final Conflict."

The intense dedication of the fans is explored in interviews with members of several fan groups. One member became quite famous as a member of a Whitewater jury in Arkansas because she wore her Starfleet uniform (the uniform worn by starship personnel) to the courtroom everyday. In the movie her boss says she's a little odd when it comes to Star Trek (on the job, she's called "commander") but she's smart and does her job at a printing company well.

Another funny scene shows a dentist who converted his office into a complete Star Trek motif. All of the staff wears Starfleet uniforms. The place is called Starbase Dental. There's also scenes with people learning to speak Klingonese (Klingons are a warrior race from the Star Trek series) and an interview with the guy who invented the language. There are also interviews with Star Trek art and memorabilia collectors of all ages.

There are people who trade in sexually-explicit materials related primarily to certain sexually-unattainable characters like Mr. Spock (a non-emotional Vulcan) and Data (an android). One sub-group of fans of Brent Spiner (who plays Commander Data) is called Spiner-Femmes. There is an interview with one fan who strongly identifies with Mr. Spock. We see Trek fans who wear their Starfleet uniforms while shopping.

We see numerous couples who say they met at Star Trek conventions. There are the usual inspiring stories of young people who went on to have successful careers because of Star Trek, like America's first black woman astronaut, people like Whoopi Goldberg and a young boy who says that Star Trek saved his life. A Star Trek character in a TV series, Geordi LaForge, was named after such a fan. James Doohan (who played Scottie in the original series) recounts a tale of how he talked one fan out of committing suicide by inviting him to go to several conventions.

Appearing in "Trekkies" are, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, John de Lancie, James Doohan, DeForest Kelley, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, George Takei, Grace Lee Whitney, Levar Burton, Michael Dorn, Terry Farrell, Jonathan Frakes, Chase Masterson, Kate Mulgrew, Robert O'Reilly, Ethan Phillips, Brent Spiner and Wil Wheaton.

Suffice it to say there are probably thousands of inspiring stories arising from Star Trek, and as many tales of fan nuttiness. This film just scratched the surface. Being a Star Trek fan does not make you smarter than other people, but it doesn't make you crazy either, as the movie argues, it probably does no harm. Denise Crosby, who left the "Star Trek, the Next Generation" series after one season, is the interviewer for "Trekkies." This movie was made on a very small budget, so it is limited in its scope, but it does a pretty good job within those limits. It rates a C+.

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