There should never be any shred of trepidation for a Star Wars fan to admit he digs Star Trek. The notion that there's a rivalry between these two franchises is not only artificial, but it's outdated. It may have had some currency in the pre-internet days, when fandom was largely defined by being either a Star Wars fan or a Star Trek fan, but now, in a post-Hobbit, Hogwarts, and Anime online world we find ourselves in, the big two grand-daddy franchises with "Star" in their names are just two meaty parts in a big geek stew.

Back in the early '90s, Star Wars fans could point to being hipper than thou, as the Trek crowd bore the brunt of the basement-dweller stereotype. Remember the Star Trek 30th anniversary TV special, where one-credit celebrities with pasted-on smiles and rented tuxes limped their way through well-meaning yet misfiring tributes, including a retrospective on Trek's visuals with musical accompaniment by Kenny G.

Kenny frickin' G.

The Star Wars fan of 1996 could mock whole-heartedly, pointing to the fact that scenester acts like Weezer and Ween proclaimed themselves Star Wars fans and that kids gladly be-decaled their skateboards with Boba Fett stickers but wouldn't likely do the same with a Harcourt Fenton Mudd sticker.

But 10 years later, both franchises are getting long in the tooth and creaky in the knees. You can't really play the hip card, not with upstart whippersnappers like Matrix, Rings, Spider-Man and X-Men drawing in the teen crowds. And thanks to websites, blogs and wikis, it's obvious Star Wars fans are just as obsessive and cellar-dwelling - if not more so - than their Trek cousins. Endor Holocaust dissertations anyone?

But Wars does have a sizable edge over Trek in terms of future, because kids LOVE Star Wars. As much as 30-year-old Star Wars fans like to gripe about Special Edition that and Jar Jar this, the changes and innovations that upset the old and crabby have won over a new audience of tow-headed lightsaber-wielders.

(G'head. Try showing a 13-year old the '77 version of Star Wars and the '04 version, and seeing which one they prefer. Now do you start to understand the reasoning behind such things...?)

A whole new generation of six to 12 year olds want to be Jedi Knights, Bounty Hunters and Rebel heroes. Kids love Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda and General Grievous. You expect that. I'd be very surprised to find an eight-year-old who wants to be Kirk, Janeway or Sisko.

But enough with the ultimately unhelpful comparisons. This is Trek's day, and bravo on 40 solid years. You've given me countless hours of entertainment at just pennies a serving. You offer a universe that, while not as homey as the Star Wars universe is to me, is always a welcome place for me to visit.

So, here are my two strips of gold-pressed latinum on the various Trek incarnations of the past four decades...

The Original Series: Call me a heretic, but I could never get into the original series. And it's for the most shallow - yet pertinent - of reasons. I couldn't get past the 60s production values and dated designs. It all looked too much like people "playing Star Trek" rather than Star Trek, if that makes any sense. And yes, I do understand, intellectually the appeal of the Trek triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and the issues that they grappled and how it was a mirror to 1960s society, but it never connected emotionally. I just couldn't get past the silly day-glow look of the whole thing. I'm one of the few people my age who is unapologetically looking forward to the CG upgrade, because maybe then I'll be able to look past the seams.

The Original Series Movies: It wasn't until the movies that I came to appreciate the original crew, since they thankfully now had a budget and were able to tackle big sprawling vistas befitting a setting as big as a galaxy.

The Motion Picture was too long and plodding, and any points that Trekkers tried to score by claiming the movie was much more spiritual and intellectual than its popcorn-friendly contemporary, Star Wars, are lost when they have to fess up that the basic premise of the movie was ripped off from an episode of the series. And, oh man, the spandex...

The Wrath of Khan is the perfect Trek movie. Starfleet is transformed into a military force, thanks to the superb direction and vision of Nicholas Meyer. There's real heart in there, as Kirk struggles with age, and a fantastic scenery-chewing villain in Kahn. It doesn't get better than this.

Search for Spock is underrated. While Christopher Lloyd is no Ricardo Montalban, he plays a perfectly enjoyable Klingon villain in what ends up being an entertaining flick. The Enterprise explosion is some of ILM's finest miniature pyrotechnics.

The Voyage Home is overrated. It's by far the most appealing Trek movie to non-Trekkers, for its much more relatable future fish out of water story, but in retrospect, it comes off as cheap, embarrassing and hasn't aged well.

The Final Frontier is stunningly bad. Oh, there's a lot of bad movies made, but thanks to home video, very few incompetently-made movies make it to the big screen. Micheal Bay movies, for example, are horrid, but they're technically competent. Trek V has the distinction of not only being bad, but being totally inept through-and-through. It's watchable in a VH-1-Behind-the-Train-Wreck kinda way.

The Undiscovered Country wins back a lot of the welcome that was worn out by Frontier, and while good, it's a little too puffed up and full of itself to be great. Too much Shakespeare (I can't help but think the Bard would be embarrassed), and the Scooby Doo ending of the video version is silly, but it's still a suitable send-off for the beloved crew.

The Next Generation: This is where I climbed aboard the Trek train. The first two seasons are almost unwatchable, mired by embarrassing spandex pajamas, subpar effects, and writers and actors struggling to find their characters, but by the third season, it picked up steam. Smart stories, great characters and real relationships between said characters was the appeal. Sure, TNG had its faults - it can be blamed for making the boardroom a sci-fi staple (ugh, all that was missing was bagels that nobody asked for), and watching TNG today, it seems quaint and stodgy compared to edgier modern fare like Firefly and BSG. But more than any other part of Trek, TNG defines what Trek is - good and bad.

The Next Generation Movies: A real mixed bag of stuff. Generations is embarrassing, with too small a story, too wimpy a villain, and too weepy a captain to frame a story wherein Kirk gets iced. First Contact is a blast, though more jokey than it should be at times. Insurrection is utterly forgettable, while Nemesis is a bad idea all around. Dune buggies? What is this, Metalstorm?

Deep Space Nine: Hands down, my favorite Trek of the bunch. The earthy, backstabbing politics and particularly the morally ambiguous war years of the later seasons makes the TNG Enterprise look as thrilling as a Marriott in space. Oh, and Dax managed to be a babe without wearing too-tight clothing.

Voyager: Never got into it, and again, for pretty shallow reasons. The ethnic diversity of the crew seemed so labored and manufactured as to be slightly insulting (What, no Inuit crewmembers?) and living in Manitoba at the time, Captain Janeway's nasal voice reminded me so much of Senator Sharon Carstairs that I just couldn't stand to hear her talk.

Enterprise: They lost me with the power ballad intro theme, and never won me back. I gave the show a full three minutes before turning my back on it. Sorry.

But at least I didn't spend years complaining about it on Trek fansites.