AirLockAlpha.com

My life has been overrun by animals! I?ve done something to offend higher powers, and now I must pay my penance by living in a house where puppies and kittens rule.

Since one of my cats vomited on the kitchen table this morning, I began to ponder how Klingons deal with vomiting targs, or how Vulcans react to their sehlats? peeing on the kitchen floor. Was Picard?s fish the former ruler of a distant planet? Did Spot ever shred Data?s ankles with her claws?

Despite some of the exotic animals from different planets that appeared or were mentioned in some version of Star Trek, most of petdom in science-fiction in the past 10 years has been rather mundane. Still, there may be some deeper issues to consider when it comes to sci-fi pets.

I present the following list of ten series from the last 10 years with featured pets for your consideration.

10. "The X-Files" - Fox Mulder?s fish. Yes, I know Mulder?s fish weren?t in outer space, but there was something strange about them. To me, fish are boring, and definitely not worth all the expense of tanks and filters and thermometers to gauge the temperature of water, etc.

Still, Mulder?s fish always seemed to be a good excuse for Scully always hanging out in his apartment, even when Mulder was thought to be dead. In the last few seasons of the series, Scully was always staying at dead Mulder?s apartment to feed his fish.

Why someone would continue paying rent and maintenance on a dead guy?s apartment to house his fish is more of a mystery to me than anything involving alien hybrid super-soldiers.

9. "Stargate: Atlantis" - the doctor's cat. Rodney McKay has a cat. Or has had a cat. Or at least he mentions his cat. McKay reveals ?the truth about pets? in this this clip..

8. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" - the witch's cat. Miss Kitty Fantastico was an adorable kitten that showed up in an episode geared toward revealing more of the relationship between Willow and Tara. I wondered how Tara could have gotten away with having a kitten in her college dorm room, but thought it was kind of cool that she got away with it.

I think Miss Kitty Fantastico made one other brief appearance in the series, but I may be making that one up in my mind! The last we heard of her had something to do with Dawn and an incident with a crossbow.

7. "Star Trek: Enterprise" - cleaning up after the captain's dog. Porthos, the beagle, got a bit too much time on the screen, but sadly, his scenes were some of the best in the first three seasons of this series. I have a friend who couldn?t stand Scott Bakula because she said he looked like a beagle ? which made the choice of dog as Capt. Archer?s pet kind of appropriate.

What wasn?t appropriate was Archer?s risking interplanetary war over what he considered to be his dog?s right to pee on a sacred tree. Sorry, but that kind of Terramericentric attitude would disqualify the man from being the captain of a garbage scow.

A starship captain serving as the first representative of Earth to other planets simply can?t afford to be that short-sighted.

To be fair, Dr. Phlox, the ship?s doctor, did have an intriguing menagerie in sickbay. I wonder what his sickbay smelled like.

6. "Lost" - Vincent the dog. The pet of Michael and Walt, Vincent led the stranded Oceanic Flight 815ers into some pretty dangerous situations. Then he morphed in Season 4 from a handsome yellow lab into what appeared to be a lab/pitbull mix. Another "Lost" mystery ?

5. "Smallville" - Krypto. I felt kind of cheated when the episode entitled "Krypto" aired. Not only was the dog not a white, short-haired mutt like the dog in the comic books, but for some reason, Clark gave him the unexplainably gender-bending name of "Shelby." Another thing that gets me is that Shelby only conveniently shows up every once in a while when the plot needs him.

My dogs are always in my face no matter what crisis I?m facing with friends and family, or on those occasions where I?m called upon to save the entire planet.

4. "Pushing Daisies" - the dog that won't die. Ned has had his dog Digby since he was a little boy, yet Digby is alive and well as Ned faces his 30s ? as long as Ned doesn?t touch him. It seems the boy who can revive the dead with a touch worked his magic with his dead dog. Now he has Digby?s forever companionship, but he can never touch him again, or else Digby will die permanently.

3. "Doctor Who" and "The Sarah Jane Adventures" -- Both feature robotic companion and pet, K-9. The mechanical dog with the British man's voice is kind of cute, even if corny, and saved our favorite characters from a dangerous bomb in 2007. The gas bombs my own canines seem to be unleashing this evening are deadlier!

2. "Surface" - Nimrod. He was my favorite TV pet from any series in sci-fi history next to tribbles. The amphibious baby sea creature who bonded with teen Miles shortly after hatching in his fish tank (and then eating all the fish) was the center of the entire, all-too-short-lived series.

Nim had all the secrets of the genetic experimentation wrapped up into his little electrified, goo-oozing body. Unfortunately, we?ll never know what the entire mystery behind Nim and his gargantuan relatives was, because Nim, Miles, Dr. Laura, and hothead Rich are forever stranded in the steeple of a church after a tsunami yielded big, toothy sea creatures.

1. "Battlestar Galactica" ? Some speculate that lawyer Romo Lampkin's cat is the final Cylon. If you wanted to destroy the last of humanity, just do as Lampkin did and plant your Cylon - er - cat ? on President Roslin's desk. I tell you, that cat was suspiciously conspicuous toward the end of Season 3 ?

Including animals and pets in science-fiction does make sense. After all, aside from many species being domesticated and serving as our companions, animals actually made it into space before people.

The Soviet Union won the race with the United States into space in1957 when they sent a stray dog named Laika into orbit. Unfortunately, the capsule she was in was not designed to return to Earth, so Laika died when the batteries on the life-support systems ran out.

She was incinerated along with Sputnik 2, when it re-entered Earth's atmosphere five months later. A dozen more dogs succeeded Laika in space before the Soviets sent cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit on April 12, 1961.

However, unlike those dogs, Gagarin came back.

The United States favored chimpanzees for space research prior to sending astronaut Alan Shepard into space on May 5, 1961. Other animals sent into space included monkeys, frogs, fish, spiders, fruit flies, newts, rats, crickets and worms.

One of the members of my menagerie just knocked over a cup of tea onto a pile of papers I have to work on and another just licked me on the lips. It?s going to be a long week for Capt. Brownfield and the Starship Nebula.

See you around the galaxy!

"Ten Forward" is a monthly column by Robin Brownfield, a staff writer for Airlock Alpha out of New Jersey, celebrating Airlock Alpha's 10th anniversary. Robin can be reached at rbrownfield@airlockalpha.com.