LeVar Burton played the blind engineer Geordi in Star Trek the Next Generation. If I may politicize for a moment, I fully support blind engineers everywhere. Not train engineers, though. That would be scary.

Cue awesome segue.

Speaking of Star Trek, George Takei got a freaking asteroid named after him. Takei is best remembered for playing Sulu, The Man with the Most Beautiful Voice in the Galaxy, in the original series and movies. I mean it. His voice is awesome. If I had his voice for just one day, oh, the places I’d go. Someplace with an echo at the very least. I think when we all go to our reward and the great golden gates of heaven open before us and brilliant white light bathes us in peace and tranquility, God will look down from his throne and when he speaks it will be George Takei’s voice.

Takei has been flexing him vocal chords most recently with guest appearances on the hit NBC show Heroes as the father of everyone’s favorite bungling but well-intentioned hero, Hiro. Hey look, homonyms. Very clever, Heroes creator Tim Kring. Takei speaks in Japanese for much of his screen time, proving that his pipes are awesome in any language. Sadly, at the beginning of this season, Takei’s character gets offed, and then he goes up to heaven where he is GREETED BY HIS OWN VOICE!

Incidentally, Takei was once in an episode of MacGyver, in which he also died. Takei guest appearance = dead character. I guess that’s the plight of the gay Asian.

Now I have to decide whether to talk more about MacGyver or give in to my inner geek and talk about science fiction. The geek is strong in this one.

In a little over a month the long, painful Battlestar Galactica hiatus will come to an end when the two-hour special Razor airs on the SciFi channel. For those unfortunate few of you unfamiliar with this show, I command you to go buy the first two seasons on DVD, watch them, then name your firstborn child after me for introducing you to its greatness. This is said not as a guy who just spent half a typed page talking about George Takei, but as a video professional and storyteller who was unexpectedly and absolutely blown away by this series from the very first episode. In a word, it’s beautiful. It’s revealing. It’s topical without preaching. And there are, in fact, spaceships flying all over the place.

The production value is equal to that of most movies, and the special effects are innovative and astounding. The effects artists take advantage of complete freedom of motion inside the virtual 3-D space, shifting the camera in impossible ways, but still owing to real camera movement. There are no lasers in Battlestar. The technology is intentionally anachronistic – bullets, missiles and flak make the setting seem as much WWII battleship as far-future starship. But effects are incidental to the real value of the show.

The drama is real and intense. Tricia Helfer, Katee Sackhoff, Aaron Douglas, Michael Hogan and James Callis in particular give acting tour de forces. The young Sackhoff is destined for great things (has already achieved them). The setting: the human population has been all but obliterated by the Cylons, an evil race of robots (who become less evil and more conflicted as the show progresses). Against this backdrop, the crew of the Galactica and the few other survivors of the massacre live out intense but believable personal dramas. The social dynamic, not contrived sci-fi scenarios, is what is studied, and the show delves with abandon into issues of religion (the Cylons are monotheists acting out what they believe to be their god’s will), politics and psychology. It is simply a stunning accomplishment.

But wait, you say, aren’t there three season of Battlestar? Why yes, but season 3 isn’t out on DVD yet, and I have to admit parts don’t live up to the impossibly high standards of the first two seasons. The beginning of season 3 is fantastic, and there are a few great episodes thereafter, but the writers, in a half-witted attempt to flesh out the Cylons, wrecked the wonderful enigma they had created. It’s not a total loss, and it seems like halfway into this effort they realized their mistake and did their best to write their way out of it. Season 3 is still great, but it might have been too aware of its greatness, and became a bit self-indulgent.

Battlestar is the best thing ever on television. Strip away the spaceships, and you have one of the smartest, most meaningful shows ever created. Put back in the spaceships, and you have friggin’ spaceships and that should be enjoyable enough for anyone.