Star Trek's Enterprise now has an owner's manual
Haynes, a company famous for producing car manuals, releases an owner's manual for the USS Enterprise. It follows the evolution of the different starships and will surely be a wonderful Christmas gift.
As we enter the season of buying people things they don't like, it is fortunate that one company has stopped to think what the world might truly be missing.
Haynes, a company that has made its name and fortune out of creating perfectly bound owners' manuals for every conceivable car, has taken its talents to celestial heights.
According to the Daily Mail, the company is releasing an owner's manual for the USS Enterprise.
This would seem to be a little more difficult than creating a manual for a Ford Escort. The Enterprise went through quite a few iterations and some of the technology seemed to be a little more sophisticated than that offered by Detroit's finest.
Haynes' manuals try to make the complex seem less so and the company claims it has managed to stay true to its mission with this Enterprise enterprise.
"People want to know how warp engines work. We explain that. People want to know how transporters work. We explain that," Haynes' Derek Smith told StarTrek.com.
One wonders, though, whether this manual can possibly satisfy those who have lived, breathed and dreamed of hot wiring a star ship.
Smith admitted to StarTrek.com: "It just wasn't possible to do a complete strip down and rebuild of each ship like we would for our car and motorcycle manuals. For a start, most of the Enterprises have been destroyed, but I think workshop space would have been tight in any case."
Well, indeed. And then you have to wonder just how many more than its 160 pages a full Enterprise manual might have required, if the authors had gone into every technical specification.
The manual is also highly reticent about the version of the Enterprise that appeared in the J.J. Abrams 2009 movie. It seems that technical information about that star ship was scant. So Haynes didn't want to make too many guesses about the innards of its undercarriage.
Nevertheless, I am sure that many will appreciate this opportunity to pore over the intimate details of so many Enterprises.
Personally, though, I will not be buying it. I am still in therapy trying to deal with John Carpenter's revelation about the villain's mask in "Halloween." For it was actually a spray-painted, reshaped William Shatner Captain James Kirk mask that a prop guy bought in an LA store.