CONTINUUM '93

Stereotypical Trekkers are people who spend their days and nights lost deep in space thoughts about Klingon justice and worm holes, leaving it to the rest of us intelligent life forms to cure cancer and take out the garbage.

"Get a life," William Shattner, the unsinkable Capt. Kirk of the classic Star Trek series, once advised them in a "Saturday Night Live" skit.

Such a Trekker might own tapes of all 79 episodes of the Capt. Kirk-Mr. Spock-era classic Star Trek; or the 150-plus hours of the current "Next Generation" TV series, which updated the cast to include an android and an "empath" (kind of a one-woman Psychic Network); or the fresh new hours of "Deep Space Nine," a "New Generation" offshoot set on a space station that attracts only the galaxy's most interesting aliens; or the six Star Trek movies; or the countless Star Trek books and comics; or Star Trek artwork; or Star Trek collectible plates, pajamas, you name it.

That mostly describes the collection of Janie McGaugh, who is the chairman of CONtinuum '93, a Star Trek convention beginning today at the Holiday Inn Convention Center. But McGaugh has a life. "I spend most my time organizing the convention," she said.

The reality is that most Trekkers who belong to a Star Trek fan club are in it for the socializing rather than a desire to be immersed in Trek.

That's true of McGaugh, a Cape Girardeau secretary who says she's more interested in "fandom" than "Trekdom."

"That's the reason I joined in the first place," she said.

The members hit it off because of Star Trek, she added, but Star Trek usually turns out to be far from the only thing Trekkers have in common.

"Most of the people tend to be more intellectually oriented, and I don't necessarily mean smarter," McGaugh said. "A lot read other kinds of science fiction."

McGaugh's husband, Roy who has a mail-order business has become very good friends with people he's met through the U.S.S. Sally Ride, Cape Girardeau's Star Trek fan club.

"They tend to be the type of people I like to associate with they're literate, they read, they tend to be creative."

He himself is more a fan of historical simulations, games he has played since he was 12.

The McGaughs have two children: a 21-year-old son who also loves Star Trek and a 16-year-old daughter "who couldn't care less," Janie McGaugh said.

She and other area Trekkers say the Star Trek series portrays a mostly positive view of tomorrow "We conquer some of our problems" that they share.

"It's a bright outlook of the future," she said.

Diane Brooks, a licensed practical nurse from Jackson, likened it to the optimism of Star Trek's creator.

"Gene Roddenberry's dream is about better hope for the future," she said. Capt. Kirk's words from an episode of classic Star Trek "Let me help" are a motto of sorts, she said.

Members of the U.S.S. Sally Ride support a number of community causes, including the American Red Cross and the Christian organization FISH, both of which help people in need.

The club's monthly business meetings are devoted to these matters rather than rehashings of the most recent Star Trek plot lines.

"It's a community service kind of thing," Brooks says of her membership in the club.

Sisters Juli and Cindi Aldredge are Trekkers who have differing approaches. A student at Southeast Missouri State University majoring in commercial art, Juli likes the science and astronomy aspect more than the show itself. "I don't live week to week to see what's coming up on Star Trek," she said.

Juli, who lives in Cape Girardeau, will be doing some pen and ink drawings of the star ship Enterprise for the convention.

Cindi, a 24-year-old Jackson resident, is more of a hardcore Trekker. And that's Trekker, not Trekkie.

"Trekkies sounds like they're groupies or slobbering idiots," she said.

She, unlike other Trekkers questioned, admits to having a favorite character. It's Data, the android on "Next Generation," who aspires to be more human.

She's also fond of Odo, the "shape shifter" on "Deep Space Nine." Odo's natural form is a liquid state, so he spends 16 hours a day in a bucket.

Vulcan philosophy, with its ideal of infinite diversity and infinite combinations, appeals to her.

"They accept that everyone is different, but that it is not a bad thing. That it should be honored rather than reviled."

These days, some Trekkers are interested in the once-villainous Klingons, who in "Next Generation" have joined Starfleet on the Federation side.

"A big group of fandom is fascinated with Klingon culture," Cindi Aldredge said.

Klingons, for instance, don't mourn their dead. "They believe they have gone on to a different plane of reality where they are doing the same things they are doing in this one, and that they have died honorably and are not to be mourned," she said.

The Borg, a race of cyborgs linked into a hive community, have taken the Klingons' place in the galaxy of villains, she said.

Their single purpose is to assimilate other races into their technology. As such, they present a peculiarly anti-American enemy. "They don't believe in individuality," she said.

At the opposite Trekker pole from Cindi Aldredge is Diane Hall, a Cape Girardeau dentist. A recent arrival in town, Hall joined the U.S.S. Sally Ride much as she would the Chamber of Commerce.

"It's a group of people who have a common interest," she said.

She does have some old Star Trek episodes on tape, but doesn't collect anything else of a Trekkian nature.

"I just like the show," she said.

Hall doesn't get together to talk with other Trekkers about Romulan battle tactics or the unfathomable mysteries of Trekdom and fandom expected to draw hundreds of people to CONtinuum '93 this weekend.

"It's just a show," she said.