Star Trek Jeopardy; Naming 78 of 79

A man i'll call Bryce showed me early on the power of television.

While no one really wanted to be Will Robinson of TV's Lost In Space, Bryce wrote, produced and starred in his own Star Trek film. He played Mr. Spock. Will's Robot may have showed up under some Christmas trees, but did anyone drag him around for Halloween? Yet Bryce donned the pointy ears - Spock again - for some candy.

So I wonder if in this, our Summer of the Aliens 2011, if anyone - save Jeopardy's computer - can equal the devotion Bryce gave to the Trek.

Without prying, he could tell you, with analytical detail, how many times Kirk and Company time traveled and how many times the venerable captain used flawless logic to blow a computer's CMOS chip off the motherboard. He could tell you that pronunciation of the word 'civilization', in the show's opening sequence, changed at some point.

He even crafted his own wooden phasers. But three flashing police cars later, they went away one night after he and a friend had been seen waving them around inside a car, with nearby stores about to close.

http://www.startrek.com/

Now you might think the Trek meant everything to him. But Bryce would reassure you, "It wasn't an obsession. It wasn't the center of my life!"

Maybe not, but when I got to know him better, I gave him a little quiz. Supplying him with the only the title in all 79 episodes, he correctly gave the plot and characters in 78. When he flubbed on episode 69, That Which Survives, he begged off, moaning, "I know I've only seen that episode two or three times!"

On a separate test, he identified Wolf In The Fold within 30 seconds by watching the opening without seeing the title. Then the grief began. "That's really slow," he apologized. 'What's wrong with me? I've recognized shows just by the opening music."

At that point, he couldn't continue.

Bryce moved on from the Trek to major in communications and do a little work in radio. Yet he said later he hadn't sworn it off. "I still like it. Its better than a lot of shows on TV now." And he could still probably tell you who played Khan's girlfriend on Space Seed.

But its not like it was the center of his life or anything.