Trekkie mania

Star Trek is back, and is boldly going where it has never been before.

The new prequel has travelled back in time to the beginning of the starship Enterprise, ridding itself of The Next Generation (and all the tired sequels thereafter).

It has already thrilled the reviewers, and as the capital gears up for the film's release this Friday, London's hidden Trekkie life is being re-awakened.

Predictably, London's famous Trekkies are all overgrown boys.

Jonathan Ross, the beacon of nerdy-cool, says he has been a fan "since day one".

He was joined at the premiere on 21 April by Jeremy Clarkson, who is a self-confessed "space nut" and whose countless mentions of Star Trek in his columns are such a giveaway that he may as well have pointy ears.

The Trekkies' hero is Richard Branson, who is in the process of making commercial space travel a reality via his company Virgin Galactic.

Not only has he called the first spacecraft VSS Enterprise after Star Trek's USS Enterprise, but he also offered the original Captain Kirk, William Shatner, the first ride.

Comedian Bill Bailey - who often refers to himself as a Klingon - went a step further than Branson, naming his son Dax, after the Star Trek: Deep Space 9 character Jadzia Dax.

Aside from providing us with the English language's most famous split infinitive, "to boldly go where no man has gone before" (which irked grammarians the world over), Star Trek also invented a whole new language.

"Klingon" might sound like a series of grunts to the uncultured ear, but not to members of the international Klingon Language Institute in the US, where fans learn and study Klingon.

Star Trek catchphrases have also had a habit of catching on, such as the famous Vulcan greeting "Live long and prosper" and "Phasers to stun", Captain Kirk's stock instruction when landing on a new planet.

The much-repeated "Beam me up, Scotty", however, is a misquote, and was never actually said by Captain Kirk.

If you didn't understand any of that, don't worry. Everyone in Star Trek uses a universal translator anyway, which instantly translates any language, alien or otherwise.

The crew of the starship Enterprise had a penchant for high necklines and slim-fitting Lycra.

Here in London, Kate Moss has been flying the flag for similar futuristic fashion, wearing a Star Trek-style silver Balmain dress two weeks ago (and proving that you need to be ultra thin to pull off skin-tight space-suits, as she managed to split it).

Pam Hogg's runway show at London Fashion Week in March was awash with metallic catsuits, and after Thierry Henry's ex Claire Merry turned up at the Star Trek premiere wearing one, you can bet they will be all over London's high streets in a matter of weeks.

Until recently Trekkies were complaining on forums that the Star Trek social scene had all but vanished from London.

The famous Star Trek pub, Page's, in Westminster, got vaporised years ago, and the last London convention was in 2007.

The new film is set to bring with it a new wave of inter-galactic events (the Sci-Fi-London festival with its "Star Trek All-Nighters" finished yesterday).

In the meantime, fans should check out 24 London in Soho, a bar that claims to be "Star Trek and Star Wars all rolled into one", and the Star Trek Tube Tour on planetbods.org where stations are connected to Star Trek in a purposely convoluted and tenuous sci-fi way.