Forging new frontiers in academic exploration: Dr Djoymi Baker with Star Trek fans (from left) Angelo Kene, Scott Liston and Ben Kimberley.
Photo: John Donegan
It’s the PhD thesis that boldly goes where no thesis has gone before. Djoymi Baker watched 700 episodes – 624 hours without ads – of Star Trek and its spin-offs, dating from 1966 to 2005, in the name of research.
She analysed the series armed with an exhaustive knowledge of the characters and storylines of ancient mythology – from Homer’s Odyssey down.
It may sound like torture for those with an aversion to William Shatner’s campy theatrics but, six years and 90,000 words on, it has earned Dr Baker a coveted chancellor’s prize for excellence at Melbourne University. And the respect of academics and Trekkies alike.
“I was interested in where myths turn up in less obvious forms, and there wasn’t much work on the early years of television and its relation to myth,” Dr Baker said.
You can read the entire Adam Morton story from “The Age” in Australia by clicking on the above image.
I must admit to intitally feeling envy with this. However my own thesis takes on a different part of fandom. Still she has been doing her study as long as I have, and its good to see fandom gaining more and more academic respect from around the world 🙂
SO unfair my thesis is about the Reaction in Australia to the Spanish-American War in 1898…doesn’t get quite the reaction from people when I tell them as what she would! Although as a fellow Melburnian…..so proud! *sniffle sniffle*