Cold turkey 2 July 2003, 14:12

March 13, 2003

A tribute/fairwell to startrek.nl:

In stressful times at school or work from September 2000 through December 2002, nearly my only solace was the softly-designed, incredibly calming interior of the Enterprise, Voyager or Deep Space Nine. That soothing, deeply reassuring, sleep-inducing, commercial-free radio play accompanied by 47 minutes of Blockout, punctuated by the occasional glance at the screen. The drama heightened by listening to the dialogue and ignoring the action – a long habit established in 1993 of coping with the soporific effects of the (admittedly bad) best show on TV outside of the Simpsons.

I first glimpsed that lovely, muted taupe and mauve Trek-evocative interface at the Star Trek in Sound and Vision themefest, which now seems quite pedestrian compared with startrek.nl. Dennis, the sainted author of this site, provides a TV guide to all the Trek on Dutch TV every week, and sometimes, in my time, that was a lot of Trek.

Sometimes I had a backlog of two tapes to watch, and at a certain point in 2001 there were two different episodes of DS9 to watch on weekday evenings: two different channels and timeslots! How gloriously impossible! Dutch cable TV in the Utrecht area spoils expats with BBC1, BBC2, CNN, etc. plus various European and Turkish channels. The networks’ Trek tap dried up after awhile in 2002, deserting me in my darkest hour. I was left with a couple of NextGen episodes a week on the BBC and little else. But startrek.nl never, ever flagged. (Disclaimer: occasional JavaScript anomalies with Netscape/Mozilla.)

Now that I have left the Netherlands, free cable, television itself, and my unplayable tapes behind (not to mention Farscape, mmm), I must remove startrek.nl from my browser’s Personal Toolbar. But I shall never forget. Live Long and Prosper, startrek.nl Webmaster Dennis.

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