How to survive a Star Trek Marathon

In early January, not long after the New Year, I embarked on a Star Trek: The Next Generation viewing marathon. 7 seasons, 176 episodes, watched over a period of approximately 3 and a half months. Yes, that’s a lot of Star Trek. And I followed it with a Star Trek Voyager marathon (which I'm currently finishing – season 6 right now - after a 2 month hiatus) and in the midst of all this I watched season one of Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

It’s a lot of TV and a lot of time spent sitting or lying down in every different possible physical position imaginable. As I was thinking about this, it suddenly came to me that everyone who plans to embark on such a venture should have at least some sort of survival or tip guide at the ready, in order to help make such an undertaking agreeable.

This list is first and foremost intended as being humorous so please take some of what I’m saying only partially seriously :)

1- You need to love or at least like Star Trek
2- You need to be ready to sacrifice other TV shows that are currently playing on TV
3- You need a comfortable area to lie or sit upon (lots of pillows also help)
4- You need to have some food that you can munch on close at hand
5- Drink fluids but not too much so you don’t have to press pause every 15 minutes to go to the bathroom
6- Get some exercise done once in a while so your muscles don’t atrophy or you don’t gain too much weight (see the food comment above)
7- Get some fresh air everyday so you can see there is a world outside your television and your apartment
8- Don’t answer the phone or the door so as not to break your concentration and pray that no alarm rings while you’re watching your favourite episode.
9- Also pray that none of your neighbours will play their stereo too loud
10- You need to be ready to order in once in a while so as not to be bothered with making food because you will need to stop the DVD from playing.
11- Be patient when someone needs to interrupt you because they have a life or death question and or situation
12- Enjoy it as much as you can and be in the moment but don’t expect to remember everything unless upon repeat viewing
13- Try not to drink too much alcoholic beverages before watching Star Trek Nemesis (Dataaaaaaa noooooooo!) so as to avoid crying like a baby


Well, that’s about it! Hope it will help you out! :D

Cheers!

Nathalie