Enlarge / No, sorry Jean-Luc. This is not another Trek anniversary post singing the TNG praises.

In two of the nerdiest newsrooms I’ll ever enter—Wired (2011-2012) and Ars Technica (2012-present)—I always identified as a bit of an outcast. I never felt unworthy because I stuck with standard issue OSes or relied on a Nokia 2320 through 2014. Rather, my anxiety existed because I started at Wired as a pop culture reporting intern yet lacked expertise in one crucial genre: sci-fi.

When editors debated the tentpoles of 80s film, I chimed in for Indiana Jones and sat out for discourse on Alien or Close Encounters. As my fellow interns spent downtime catching up on William Gibson, I chose instead to follow the Merge Records release cycle. Sure, I’ve seen the original Star Wars and Matrix trilogies, but moving beyond the genre’s massive standard bearers left me lost in space.

That is, unless the niche discussions hovered around the Enterprise. Specifically, the 2364 model year. Star Trek: The Next Generation is my one area of sci-fi expertise, but not for the reasons you might think. The boundary-pushing 1960s series morphed into a multi-generational form of fandom in my family that’s perhaps exceeded only by sports.