Jeopardy: The Next Generation

No, this post is not about Ken Jennings, the 38-time (and still) Jeopardy champion. In between acts of the DNC, I happened to tune in to the game show this evening, and I noticed that it is "College Week". Three kids, one from Rice University, one from Wake Forest University, and one from St. Ofaf College got a question that hinged on knowing that it was "dilithium crystals" that powered the warp drives on Star Trek's star ships. They drew a blank. All of them.

Three, college students... all of them geeky enough to get to appear on Jeopardy... and not even one of them knew the basics of Star Trek? Not one?

This is worse than the time I visited my alma mater and while talking to some students realized that not only had not a one of them had been born when man first walked on the moon... None of them had been born by the time we stopped going back! A generation of college students that is ignorant of Star Trek, Star Trek TNG, Star Trek DS9, Star Trek Voyager, and even Star Trek: Enterprise? OK... Voyager I can forgive. I never could get into that one. But Enterprise is still on the air! How could you find three college age uber-geeks and not have at least one of them be a fan?

Oh well. Maybe they'll at least pick up on the new Dr. Who when it comes around.