For me, as a girl child, it was a thrill to see a woman on the bridge of a spaceship. It sure wasn’t happening in the Apollo program. Didn’t stop my youthful dream to be an astronaut though (even though life stopped it eventually).

As for the experiment, I wonder what the results would have been had the researchers added a third environment including the faded printouts of BOFH stories, Dilbert strips & XKCD cartoons. This is the typical natural habitat of those ersatz-geeks like our beloved IT department, who represent the ‘we’re all blokes whose attitudes and behaviours (not to mention computing skills, knowledge and policies) are stuck firmly in the ’80s’ demographic.

On a related side note: when a colleague at the next desk sneezes, he makes a noise that is almost identical to a TIE fighter on a strafing run. Just before Christmas, when we were in a more light-hearted mood than normal (for we are sacrificial lambs going to SuperCity slaughter), I pointed this out. All the men – but just one woman – laughed and nodded knowingly.

I’ve watched a bit of Stargate Atlantis. Should get around to the rest of it sometime…

I have also been a fan of Stargate, but it doesn’t have *that* many women…

Bruce, I feel soooo dim: I’ve never made the connection between Ferengi and Jewish people….

Good points about fetish vs enjoyment.

As for Deus ex Machina – well, so many shows have that element of ‘magic’, from CSI and its ability to zoom in on reflections in car windows using crummy security cameras, to super-geniuses like Samantha Carter in Stargate.

My experience is that the level of Star Trek fetishism is inversely proportional to the level of actual competence in computer science. Those who buy every Trek item out there are also likely to latch on to and fetishize some particular aspect of things that don’t actually matter, such as overclocking&coolers, case-modding, gold plated oxygen-free tapered audio cables, or MHz-is-everything. They are also likely to either think that Windows is the best thing ever or else be a member of the -O9 -funroll-loops gentoo cult. Ok, to be fair I’ve met one or two Mac users like that too (JMB), but they are a small minority.

Please don’t confusing enjoying the shows as being the same as fetishizing it. I enjoyed the earlier shows too, until I got totally turned off by the deus ex machina episodes with the holodeck and the jewish caricature (the Ferengi).