Denise Crosby talks Trekkies in new interview for 25th anniversary release

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION’s Denise Crosby was co-Executive Producer and interviewer for TREKKIES” Image: rwoan, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

MAY 26, 2022 - If you were a Star Trek fan, or a fan of any franchise or other pop culture phenomenon, back in 1997, you might have been waiting for someone to come along and take you and your fandom seriously. Rather than smirking at your Spock ears perhaps you needed someone to try to understand what that fandom meant to you.

Denise Crosby, who played Tasha Yar and Sela in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and director Roger Nygard made a documentary film in 1997, Trekkies, which intended to do just that. That film was followed up in 2004 by Trekkies 2. This week Shout! Factory released a 25th anniversary edition of Trekkies, restored in HD for Blu-ray and video on demand. Crosby sat down with TrekMovie to talk about the film and its enduring relevance.

Crosby said that Trekkies is more relevant now than ever. “When we initially made the film 25 years ago, these doors were just opening up. There wasn’t an onslaught of DC and Marvel movies. Comic Cons weren’t as huge as they are now. We hit it just when things were starting to open up and change. So I think it’s a great piece of representation for the beginnings of what we kind of take for granted right now.”

She noted that Gene Roddenberry’s assistant and Star Trek archivist Richard Arnold was instrumental in guiding the filmmakers away from doing anything that would be seen as making fun of Star Trek fans and getting to the depth of what Star Trek meant in fans’ lives.

While Crosby says she does not keep up with the latest Trek series “fully enough,” she is still in touch with the fandom at conventions and loves the “generational sharing…. My favorite thing is always hearing from young women that are now adults, who were watching the character I played and really, something like a light bulb went off in their heads: ‘These things are possible for me… I can be a strong individual and succeed as a woman!’”

For more from Denise Crosby on Trekkies, her experience on The Next Generation, and the possibilities for a Trekkies 3, head over to TrekMovie.

The Trekkies Blu-ray edition, which includes a new special feature with Crosby and Nygard, is available for order on Amazon. There is no word yet on streaming options, but a digital version is also available.