Giving one's life to a TV show might seem, in some people's minds, a little extreme. Those who do not participiate in the full-blown final-frontier of fandom for Star Trek often look sideways at those who put on Starfleet Uniforms and strap dustbusters to their belts. Often mumbling "get a life" under their breath as they shake their heads, the non-conformists walk away blissfully unaware that for the average Trekkie, those three words mean little beyond a classic SNL sketch with William Shatner.

Getting to the bottom of the human compulsion for obsession is not the mission of Trekkies but one might be compelled to see it that way. The movie ties up no loose ends nor does it answer any questions, it merely serves as one long joke about why a person would, for example, make it their life-long dream to save up enough money to have his ears surgically pointed like Mr. Spock.

Of all the faults that Star Trek fans may have, lack of creativity is not one of them. Creative but ultimately benign Trekkies examines their passion as an effort of one-upmanship. All the subjects seen in the film might seem like geeky oddballs but they are mostly harmless and rarely at a loss for a wide grin.

The most famous made headlines. She is Barbara Adams, the juror from Little Rock Arkansas who arrived for jury duty wearing a Star Fleet uniform for the Whitewater trial of Governor Jim Guy Tucker. She wasn't pulled off the jury for wearing the uniform, but rather for talking to the press. We see her in an interview discussing her reasons which she states "If the president himself were on trial, I would still wear the uniform. I am an officer in the Federation universe 24 hours a day." And just to further prove that she felt she was doing the right thing: "I don't want my officers to ever be ashamed to wear their uniforms." That's not the surprisingly part, the surprise is that every line of her face and her speech suggests that she believes every word she's saying.

Others are just as rigid in their obsession. We meet a man who legally had his name changed to James T. Kirk and a woman so obsessed with Next Generation's Brent Spiner that she started a club called "SpinerFemmes" and proudly displays volumes of scrap books with the actor's pictures in it. Also, there's a dentist who runs "Star Base Dentistry" and has not only decorated his office with a Trek motif but insists that his employees all wear Starfleet Uniforms. Might not seem so unusual to some but me being a hardcore Star Wars fan that would seem like Hell on earth.

Some, I think, merely use Star Trek as a cover for deeper issues, like a man who cross-dresses as a female Star Trek character that he created and wears the costume in public. Freud would eat this man for breakfast.

The most surprising thing that director Robert Nygast does with Trekkies is that he doesn't back away from those who go off the deep end. Two spooky encounters are found, first by a woman who participates in an S&M ritual dressed as Captain Janeway and the other by a man who walks around with a syringe trying to get a vial of blood from the actors.

If Trekkies is best at accentuating the positive, then I think what the movie lacks is the downside.
There are interviews with the cast which are mostly positive. What's missing is the negative. These actors have spent 35 years visiting conventions and attending thousands of Q & A sessions with pickidy fans while afterwhich secretly talking to their agents and trying to get something on their resume besides Star Trek. For me, nothing compares to going to a convention panel with Walter Koenig where he was asked what he thought of the comedy Galaxy Quest. Rapping his knuckles on the table Koenig said with a bit of tension "Oh yeah! I love the part where they're out of work and they're signing autographs at a convention!"

But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is a movie about those who worship Star Trek and keep those actors in a legacy whether they like it or not. Those of us who do not participate in the Star Trek obsession might be compelled to laugh and simply ask "why?". Well as my mother says about my passion for Star Wars: "There are worse things to passionate about". Quite right, I mean, at least there isn't a fanbase for Barn of the Blood Llama.