To boldly go where no PhD thesis has gone before

The University of Melbourne has awarded one of its Chancellor's Prizes for Excellence to Dr. Djoymi Baker's, author of the PhD thesis: "Broadcast Space: TV Culture, Myth and Star Trek".

Yes, that's right, a PhD thesis on Star Trek! And boy do the nerd news providers love this. Slash-dot wasted no time jumping onto the story. I expect it will get a fair bit of coverage in the main stream media as well. As a Melbourne Uni graduate, I am just impressed that the uni has people with this level of devotion to the sci-fi classic - which apparently included watching over 700 hours of it!

The thesis itself appears to be more about drawing connections between ancient mythology and popular culture. Star Trek, however, does appear to be the authors main focus. It does raise the interesting question of just how popular television shows like Star Trek will be viewed in the distant future. Will they be studied as some way of gaining insight into civilisation at this time. I would love to read what conclusions one might draw from that. Certainly, one conclusion would have to be that figure hugging jump suits were all the rage in the late 20th century.