I've only read one doctoral dissertation in my life, Henry A Kissinger's "A World Restored" and it was certainly nothing like this one:
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.
Seriously, though, I saw a Star Trek, the Next Generation episode that did better in one hour what Contact tried to do in two and a half. Personally, I am a big fan of sci-fi, at least the sci-fi that's hard sci-fi, the sci-fi that has cutting cultural and scientific content hiding in the plain sight of a typical sci-fi plot. Robert Charles Wilson, Robert Sawyer and Stephen Baxter being the three most recent sci-fi writers I've read (links are to most recent books I've read by each and books I enjoyed very, very much). Call me a dork, as I resemble that remark.
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