Mar 31 2004

Resistance is Futile

by Megan Edwards

Since I am not a diehard Star Trek aficionado, I might have gone my whole life without entering the parallel universe inside the Las Vegas Hilton. In fact, I didn’t even know about the Star Trek Experience until I shared a bench with a Ferengi on a city bus.

“Aren’t you the guy in those TV ads?” someone called when an ordinary-looking man boarded at a stop on Boulder Highway. The guy nodded, smiled, and sat down next to me.

“You’re an actor?” I asked, and that’s how I found out about his extraterrestrial connections.

“It’s the perfect gig,” he told me. “It’s stable, I get union wages, and I wear so much makeup I’ll never be typecast.” It sounded good for him, but I still had little incentive to shell out thirty bucks for what I figured was a haunted house with Klingons instead of skeletons.

But over the next few months, I kept hearing about “the Star Trek thing,” and the comments were never negative. As far as I could tell, everyone who went to the Star Trek Experience “absolutely loved it,” and the phrase was just as likely to come out of the mouth of a tattooed girl as it was a thin-haired gentleman. Finally, since everyone seemed so universally blown away, I drove up Paradise Road myself and parked at the Big H.

That was a little over a year ago, and after my Experience, I, too, went around saying, “I absolutely loved it,” because it was absolutely true. I’m still no Trekkie, but from the moment I paid my money and stepped into Gene Rodenberry land, I was entranced.

The first part of the Experience is more like the Smithsonian than Disneyland. A backlit timeline begins with Galileo, moves quickly to Einstein, touches on Yuri Gagarin, and blitzes ahead in steps so seamless you can’t help believing that the future has already happened. Suddenly you’re looking at a tri-level chess set, Star Fleet uniforms, and various models of phasers as carefully as if they were George Washington’s false teeth. The effect is enhanced when you read about Captain Kirk’s meeting with Abraham Lincoln.

On my first visit to the Star Trek Experience, the culminating event was a showdown with aggressive Klingons aboard the Enterprise. I absolutely loved it, so when I read that the long-anticipated “Borg Invasion” was open, I didn’t need any encouragement to head for the Hilton again.

The museum part of the Experience was even better than I remembered, and a diehard Trekkie in line ahead of me pointed out all the updates and enhancements I probably would have missed. While we were waiting to enter the Borg Invasion, a friendly Ferengi schmoozed the line, and I couldn’t help wondering if my erstwhile busmate still had his union gig.

The Borg Invasion made me laugh and scream, sometimes at the same time. I can’t give you details without being too much of a spoiler, but I can say this much. It’s not a ride. It’s an experience, just as advertised.

On the way out, a route that (surprise) takes you through gift shops and Quark’s Bar, a lady in a Star Fleet uniform approached me with a Palm Pilot. She looked about the right age to have had a crush on Captain Kirk in high school.

“Do you have time to take a 60-second questionnaire?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, and when I finished telling her how I’d heard about the Experience and that this was my second visit, I asked her a question.

“Do you like working here?” Her eyes brightened, and she smiled.

“I absolutely love it,” she said.

Obviously, resistance really is futile.

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