Over time, I narrowed my choice to two: Pitzer and Oberlin.īoth colleges had the slightly wacky, liberal arts feel I wanted after three years at a gated, New England prep school. Not receiving them wasn’t an option.ĭespite hinging my chances at an adequate secondary education on being a Trekkie, I was accepted to most of the fifteen schools I applied to. When I couldn’t afford the official, licensed DVDs of my favorite seasons (five and seven, FYI), I turned to Singapore via eBay. He and his teenage son, Jake, were some of the very few bits of representation I had in the genre I loved, and are still the best examples of fleshed out black characters from that time. In my college essays, I waxed poetic about how much Ben Sisko and, by proxy, Brooks, meant to me as a sci-fi loving black kid. But before any of that, we learn one thing: Sisko is a single black father. The character, played by Avery Brooks, was many things throughout “DS9”’s run: a captain, a war hero, a 1950s science-fiction writer, a baseball enthusiast, even a god. And, of course, there was the show’s diversity, showcased in its lead protagonist: Commander Benjamin Sisko. While I didn’t understand it then, the women of this “Trek” series were also fleshed out to a degree that was unusual for the time - especially in science-fiction - and there were many of them, allowing the show to offer broad spectrums of womanhood. It was my first taste of a fully fleshed out, multi-season story arc the seven season show spends five seasons taking viewers through the complicated politics that eventually lead to war between the Federation and the Dominion. The quick attachment I formed with “DS9” hinted at the things that would be essential to my enjoyment of television later in life. But it wasn’t until 1993’s “Star Trek: Deep Space 9” that I found my home in the “Trek” franchise. And four months after Captain Picard’s crew had their encounter with Q at Farpoint in 1987 on “The Next Generation,” I joined in on the obsession. “Star Trek” was a constant in my house, something both of my parents enjoyed. It was 2005, and I was still “not like other girls.'

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