VULCANIZED "BONES"

FBI Agent Seeley Booth understood why Angela Montenegro couldn't remain detached from her work as a forensic artist, because "she wasn't raised on Vulcan" like the others on Dr. Temperance Brennan's team at the Jeffersonian Institute.

"Bones" Brennan's response? "I don't know what that means."

I do - a big, Zonk!ing headache.

TV shows that make reference to 'Star Trek' is probably the most common of all Zonk!s for Toobworld. 'Star Trek' is supposed to be part of Toobworld's future, and yet all of these characters who have been around since the late 1960s know about their future due to a TV show which dramatized it.

'Frasier' attended a sci-fi convention and met somebody dressed as a Klingon.

During his 'Wonder Years', Kevin Arnold once fantasized himself and his friends as characters on the show.

After getting food poisoning at a convention, a lot of Trekkies had to be treated by the 'Nurses' of a Miami hospital.

At least the future of 'Futurama' is beyond 'Star Trek' by about six centuries, and even though it's just a TV show for them, I could shrug it off as being relegated to the Tooniverse. But that doesn't take into account 'Star Trek: The Animated Series'......

Like I said, one big headache.

And when it comes to mentioning the planet Vulcan, it's not just 'Star Trek' that's being Zonk!ed, but also 'Doctor Who'. In "The Power Of The Daleks", the first story to feature Patrick Troughton as the Doctor in his second incarnation (and which sadly has been lost by the idiocies of the BBC), there was a colony of humans on Vulcan by 2220. They were attacked by three rogue Daleks which had buried themselves into the soil of Vulcan two hundred years before.

The Doctor, with help from his companions Polly and Ben, was able to destroy the machine-encased monstrosities, but most of the humans were killed by that point. However, it is unknown if any of the host Vulcans were killed before the arrival of the TARDIS. As there was no mention of them being on the planet at all during the story, it seems to me that the Vulcans had allowed these humans to establish their colony in one of the uninhabited regions of their planet and suffered their presence as the Earthlings began mining the planet for what rightfully belonged to the Vulcans.

It's possible the Vulcans weren't too sorry about what the Daleks did. Wait, what am I thinking? That would have been an emotional reaction.

Officially, the first contact between the Vulcans and the people of Earth won't be taking place until 2063, after Zephraim Cochrane made the first warp flight out of Earth's atmosphere. (This was all played out in the movie "Star Trek: First Contact".)

But the Vulcans had visited Earth in the past, most notably in 1957 as seen in an episode of "Enterprise". Three Vulcans were stranded for a time in a small mining town in Pennsylvania. (There they met the future scientist Jackson Roykirk as a young teenager.)

One of them was left behind to live hidden among the humans, but the only impact they might have made by this contact was the introduction of Velcro to Earth culture.

Right now, it's my way of thinking that at least Agent Booth knows about Vulcan because of this incident. That eventually that stranded Vulcan somehow came to the notice of the governmental authorities in America, and it was all hushed up in one of 'The X-Files' compiled by Agent Arthur Dales.

Booth may be all queasy around the forensics done at the Institute, and yet he probably never did a spit take when he got the chance to look at some of those files maintained by Special Agent Fox Mulder.

However, that still doesn't splain why everybody - except Dr. Brennan, - seems to know about 'Star Trek' as a TV series.

I can't pass off the idea once suggested to me that the stranded Vulcan made it to Hollywood where he gave Gene Roddenberry the idea for the show, as he was a contemporary of 1957 Earth, not flung backwards from the future of 'Star Trek'. So there was no way for him to know about Captain Kirk and Company.

No, that scenario only works if someone from the future beyond the known reaches of 'Star Trek' and its many franchises came back in Time to pull off such a stunt? And why do it at all? Perhaps to better prepare the world for the role it would one day play in the universe.

WDIK?

BCnU... and live long and prosper!
Tele-Toby