Happy Friday! If you're new to Now I Know, you'll notice that today's format differs from the rest of the week. On Fridays, I pause to write the "Weekender," my  "week in review" type of thing, or to share something else I think you may find interesting. Thanks for reading! — Dan

Hi!

This one is nerdy, I have to warn you. But I don’t think you’ll need to be a nerd to appreciate it.

I’ve been a Star Trek fan for as long as I can remember. I definitely saw Star Trek III: The Search for Spock in theaters, despite still being in elementary school and — maybe, my memory is hazy here — not having seen Wrath of Khan yet. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home made me a fan, but I quickly transitioned to The Next Generation. I was still in elementary school when TNG came out, and while I didn’t get to watch a lot of it by today’s standards because streaming video on demand wasn’t a thing — you either watched a show when it was live or you missed it seemingly forever — it became my Star Trek.

Fast forward to, oh, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, and I finally got around to watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It came out in 1979 but by then, I had already watched and re-watched all of TNG, Deep Space 9, and probably Voyager and Enterprise. I was used to detailed spaceships speeding through the galaxy at Warp 9 (in violation of the warp speed limit) — these ships were awesome, but hardly special. So when I got to the scene below in The Motion Picture, I was, uh… well, my reaction was more “wtf” than “wow.”

If you can’t get that to play, here’s a summary of the clip. It’s four minutes and 44 seconds long. No words are spoken. The whole film is only 132 minutes long, which means this constitutes more than 3% of the entire movie. No action, no dialogue. Just Star Trek music and a very, very long look at the new Enterprise.

For years, I openly made fun of the movie because of this scene. What were they thinking? I’d assert rhetorically, with a chuckle. Typically, it was met (by other Star Trek fans) with agreement, but then — I think on reddit — someone pointed out that I wasn’t watching the scene through the same eyes as the fans it was written for.

The last episode of Star Trek (the original series) aired on June 3, 1969. The Motion Picture came out more than ten years later, on December 7, 1979. That’s a decade without live-action Trek. And the Enterprise from the 1960s was a tiny toy model, seen on a similarly tiny TV screen, using technology hardly befitting the mid-23rd century (whatever that may turn out to be). The movie, though, was different. The ship had never been seen before in all its grandeur, and certainly not on the big screen with surround sound. For Trek fans, this wasn’t a passing moment. It was an experience — one that deserved four minutes and 44 seconds.

I re-watched the movie with that perspective in mind, trying to view the movie through the eyes of a Trek fan yearning to not only see Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, et al on screen, but also the Enterprise. And the experience was totally different. The cruise around the ship is still long — I’m not going to lie — but I appreciated it. And the whole movie became, suddenly, pretty good.

I’ve shared this story with other younger (as in, my age, which probably doesn’t count as “younger” any more!) Trek fans and a few have done the same thing — with similar results. Trying an experience while actively practicing empathy can have pretty cool effects, it seems. And you don’t need to be a Betazed to try it.

(Interested in promoting something in this space? Reach out and let me know! Now I Know subscribers get a 50% discount! — Dan)

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Monday: The Man Who Shipped Himself Home: Don’t try this.

Tuesday: A Chicken Way to Embezzle: Don’t try this either.

Wednesday: Special Agent Grimsley: Honestly? This one would be fun to try.

Thursday: How Ignoring Orders Gave Us an Idiom: I can’t keep the “don’t try this” bit going because it doesn’t make sense here.

Now I Know is supported by readers like you. Yes, you! Many of my readers donate a few dollars a month to help Now I Know grow and thrive. And in exchange, they get an ad-free version!

And thanks! — Dan

Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:

1) “Sucker: My Year as a Degenerate Gambler” (The Atlantic, 56 minutes, March 2026). This one is behind a paywall and the gift link I used won’t work going forward. I don’t typically share pieces behind paywalls but this one was so good, I’d be foolish to not recommend it.

2) “My dad made the biggest jeweled egg in the world. The obsession would destroy his marriage, family and fortune” (The Guardian, 20 minutes, March 2026). The piece begins with “Who would spend £7m on an egg?” and that’s a great question.

3) “How the Greatest Scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture Was Made” (IGN, 9 minutes, December 2019). Behind the scenes on the scene I initially reacted to with “wtf.”

Live long and prosper,

Dan