I love "Star Trek." I like Star Wars, "Battlestar Galactica" and all the Stargate shows.

But I love "Star Trek."

Of course, this wasn?t always the case.

My first exposure to ?Star Trek? took place while the show was airing on NBC in the late 1960s, and my twin brother, Wayne, and I were growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania.

One night, our family happened to turn on "By Any Other Name," and that episode had a profound impact on Wayne and me: We were afraid to fall asleep that night for fear we?d be turned into cubes and crushed. (And yes, we know the crew of the Enterprise was really turned into dodecahedrons with 12 sides, but that wouldn?t have comforted us at the time.)

When our mother found us still wide awake the next morning, she declared there?d be no more of that show for us!

I didn?t have any further contact with Trek until Wayne and I went to college in Maryland during the mid-1970s. It seemed that every time I walked through the recreation center in the men?s dormitory, Kirk and Spock were battling ?to de det? on the TV. It was always the same episode, and one of the few things I remembered about the series was that Kirk and Spock were friends, so why were they fighting?

Eventually, during what must have been my 50th time catching part of that episode, I asked a friend who watched it regularly what was going on. He suggested that I sit down and see for myself. "Why not?" I thought. "It?s not like that?s going to change my life or anything."

I quickly developed a voracious appetite for all things Trek. I was in front of the TV every weeknight at 6 p.m. when Channel 20 aired the series.

Those of us who watched the show regularly had a bit of competition when each episode started. The first person to figure out which show was coming on had the bragging rights for the day. I was very good at that contest, but one night I was baffled. When someone called out "This Side of Paradise," I got excited. That was the only episode I hadn?t seen.

"Amok Time," the show I?d watched in bits and pieces for years, became my favorite episode. To this day, I still enjoy the concept of Kirk fighting Spock, and the solution was McCoy. "In a pig?s eye" is one of my favorite lines in all of Trek.

In second place is the third-season character piece called "The Empath." Each character?s willingness to sacrifice himself for the others was an incredible story in the much-maligned third season.

So what caused me to become such a devoted "Star Trek" fan? Many things. I loved its optimistic view of the future. The stories were imaginative and deep. Spock and McCoy always had those wonderful arguments.

But the biggest reason I got into Trek was because I identified with the captain, James T. Kirk. Here was a man in an alien environment, doing things he never dreamed of doing with people he barely knew. And he wasn?t just surviving; he was thriving on the challenges he faced.

I was in college, which felt like an alien environment sometimes. Some of the homework consisted of things I never dreamed I?d do. And I knew very few people when I first came to the school. During those times when I felt like giving up on that term paper or got tired of studying for that big test, I thought about how Capt. Kirk would give it one more try, so I did.

One wintry day, I was searching a local book store to find Christmas presents for family and friends. Along the way, I spotted something with the Enterprise on the cover, the first "Star Trek" concordance. At that point, I knew no one would know I wanted it, so I instituted a new tradition of buying ?a Christmas present for myself.?

More than 30 years later, I still follow that tradition. This year, I bought all three DVD sets of the remastered ?Star Trek? series.

When I graduated magna cum laude, one of my teachers asked me if anyone had been an inspiration to me during my college years. I immediately responded: ?Capt. James Kirk.? She replied: ?Oh, you have friends in the military??

Ever since then, Kirk has been one of my heroes, which is one reason I?m still unhappy about his shoddy death in ?Generations? and would like to see that undone. I never really wanted to see Kirk die. I just like the idea of the captain and the Enterprise still out there somewhere, still boldly going where no man has gone before.

Randy Hall serves as a columnist for Airlock Alpha. He also is the captain of the U.S.S. Chesapeake, a Star Trek and science-fiction club in the Washington, D.C., area. He can be reached at rhall@airlockalpha.com.