RELATED: Ron Paul Campaign Releases Brutal Newt Gingrich Attack Ad

There are many nicknames for Ron Paul’s fiercely devoted followers (not all of them complimentary), but “Ronulans” is perhaps the most fitting, from a metaphorical perspective. Like the enigmatic aliens from Star Trek, the Ronulans are a powerful bunch, able to deploy money bombs far in excess of their numbers.

Just as the Romulans do well in simulated battles like the Kobayashi Maru rescue, Ronulans consistently deliver huge results in the hypothetical world of Republican straw polls, and their candidate has been powerful in debates.

RELATED:Man Behind Poll That Ron Paul Won Tells CNN That Ron Paul Shouldn’t Have Won

However, the Romulans are prevented from projecting that power as far into Federation space as they otherwise might by the Romulan Neutral Zone, while the Ronulans have encountered a similar barrier that keeps their candidate in a high single-digits to low double-digits neutral zone.

The Romulans’ signature technological achievement was the cloaking device, which rendered their ships invisible to enemies, while the Ronulans seem to be enshrouded in a similar cloaking field, one which renders them invisible to the media.

RELATED: Jon Stewart Scolds Media For Ignoring Rep. Ron Paul: ‘I Mean, F*ck That Guy, Right?’

However, with Republican voters increasingly unwilling to cling on (see what I did there?) to any one frontrunner, and with blowback from “humane” immigration policies demonstrating that the Republican presidential race is no place for humans, could this be the dawn of the Ronulans’ day?

RELATED: Joe Scarborough: With His Immigration Comments, Gingrich ‘Strapped On Same TNT’ As Rick Perry

Paul’s got a steep hill to climb in New Hampshire, where Romney still holds a ten point lead over Gingrich (and twenty over third-place Paul), but his presence on the ground in Iowa, and the two upcoming nationally televised Iowa debates, make that seven point gap in Iowa eminently closeable. Even those twenty points in NH aren’t impossible, in a year that has seen the Republican base morph into an electoral Ricochet Rabbit.

If there is to be one more lead shift before voting begins, it looks now as if it’s only down to Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, and if that does occur, the next frontrunner will benefit from the fact that there’s really no time for the blistering rays of media frontrunner scrutiny to wither them before voting begins. In that narrow fashion, the news media’s complete ignorance of Ron Paul actually becomes an advantage.

The rub, of course, is that even if Ron Paul manages to win Iowa, the media still won’t take him seriously, and if he manages an upset silver (or gold?) in New Hampshire, maybe they will. More than likely, though, bombshell wins by Ron Paul in these early states will simply reinforce the narrative that the GOP presidential field is a mess, and they’re headed for a brokered convention. Honestly, if Ron Paul was actually elected president, I wonder if the media would even show up to cover his inauguration. I imagine the chyron at his swearing-in would read, “Is Ron Paul The Real Deal?”

Note: There are several Star Trek-related details in this article that aren’t quite right, both for my own convenience, and to provide our readers with a reliable Dork Detector. See who spots them in the comments section, and offer them some helpful decorative tips for their mom’s basements.

“Mr. Obama has the onerous burden of obeying the Constitution,” Shatner said. “Captain Kirk…is a dictator.”

The “less like Spock” argument hasn’t really been brought up, as far as we can tell, since 2009. But for a question that could somehow bait the Canadian Shatner–who can’t vote in presidential elections–into making a Star Trek reference on CNN about the American President, we’ll let it pass.

The Blaze‘s Nick Rizzuto kicked off this round, tweeting a link to a Blaze post on Monday’s viral video missive, adding:

After @keitholbermann is through running (what’s left of) Current TV into the ground, we’ll revisit this.

The irony here, of course, is that the point of the story Rizzuto tweets is that declarations of just this type are the stuff that crow-eating is made of.

Olbermann then responds to Rizzuto by mocking his tiny…follower count, and arguing that Beck, who’s still on TV, has already suffered career death:

@Nick_Rizzuto “we” being your massive list of 243 followers who hang on your master’s every belch

@Nick_Rizzuto besides which, he’s already bleedin’ demised

It’s unclear where Beck stands on the issue, but Keith Olbermann is very invested in the idea that he and Beck are not the same. In some ways, he’s right. Beck is the guy who calls women who use Planned Parenthood “hookers,” and Olbermann is the one who makes fingerbang jokes about Carrie Prejean. Got it.

But with the duo crossing paths on their respective ways in and out of television, each trying to establish a new beachhead for his brand, they’re starting to resemble Bele and Lokai, the Star Trek characters who are locked in eternal combat because they don’t like the way the other guy wears his makeup. Come to think of it, that was a pretty good episode.

It is, perhaps, a sign of the times that the onetime mothership of hedonism and debauchery is suspected of causing an outbreak, not of some exotic malady of the penis, or of peculiar muscle strains, but of Legionnaires’ Disease. This is the sad tale of a dusty, ancient relic of a bygone America, and his mansion.

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably wondering, “what exactly is Legionnaires’ Disease?”

I had always assumed it was some horrible plague that got its name by wiping out scores of Foreign Legion troops during some exotic 19th century campaign. As it turns out, it was discovered in 1976 when over 200 attendees of an American Legion convention in Philadelphia became infected. If you ask me, that’s a stupid way to name a disease, like calling chronic masturbation “Trekkie’s Disease.”

According to LA County public health officials, the legionella bacterium is “commonly found in moist environments,” which rules out Hugh Hefner himself as the source.

Bashir wisely employs the tactic of playing an inherently funny story straight, calling in noted non-epidemiologist and former Hefner girlfriend Izabella St. James, and deadpanning such questions as “While you were there, were you aware of possible sources of contamination?” and “Dog urine isn’t exactly an aphrodisiac, is it?”

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. The former world headquarters for orgiastic indulgence is now a urine-reeking hotbed of airborne contagion, and former Nightline anchor Martin Bashir gets to report on it.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC:

Aside from quickening the heartbeats of honorary Starfleet cadets everywhere, the use of the Trek metaphor is particularly useful with regard to the filibuster, the explanation of which reads like an official Fizzbin rulebook. The short version is that, currently, all the minority has to do is say the will filibuster, and if there aren’t 60 votes to end debate, the bill is tabled until this changes. Udall’s rule would require the filibusterer to actually filibuster, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-style.

The segment also takes on the Mr. Smith myth, countering the nobility of the Jimmy Stewart character’s iconic filibuster with the less-than noble reality that the filibuster has historically been used to stand in the way of crucial societal milestones like the Civil Rights Act: (from MSNBC)

From a Trek perspective, the episode A Taste of Armageddon was noteworthy for its use of handheld sonic disruptor weapons that conveniently required no optical laser effects. You just point, the thing makes a noise, and the target slowly catches fire like a pile of moist fireworks. Worst Trek weapon ever!

The Countdown segment also prompted me, Pavlov-like, to re-watch the episode on Hulu, during which I also noticed that Spock refers to his people in this episode as “Vulcanians.” Although technically a goof, it actually makes more sense than calling people from Vulcan “Vulcans.” This would be a bit like a President opening his remarks with, “My fellow Americae…”

The episode also features Barbara Babcock as the rare Trek Babe-of-the-Week who manages to avoid Kirk’s overactive phaser banks. Babcock is best known to couch potatoes in my demo as deadly Hill Street Blues sexpot Grace Gardner.

As for the filibuster, there are many who view this rule change as a risk that could boomerang on Democrats once they find themselves in the minority, a valid point. This question shouldn’t be decided on its convenience to the current political landscape, but on the merits of allowing the minority to maintain such an iron stranglehold on legislative progress. The new rule won’t completely marginalize the minority, but it will force them to make their case for obstruction in daylight.

In the modern media world, that’s a brilliant glare, and the end result should be that the party with the best ideas (and the strongest bladders) eventually succeeds. On that basis, either party’s objection should be judged according to that measure, the ability of their ideas to withstand that glare.

The subject was NASA’s much-ballyhooed discovery of a new form of life, and while Olbermann may have out-geeked the space agency’s best and brightest, he and guest Derrick Pitts seem to have missed a glaring facet of this story.

NASA has discovered a bacterium that can substitute phosphorus, one of six basic building blocks of life, with arsenic, which led one scientist to compare the discovery to the Horta, a silicon-based life form from an old Star Trek episode. Unfortunately, the would-be Trek-spert® didn’t exactly have a Vulcan Death Grip on Federation lore, as she misidentified the episode title, calling it “Dark Evil.”

Luckily, Olbermann was there to swoop in and correct her:

The episode was, indeed, “The Devil in the Dark,” but while Olbermann’s contention that the Horta was “Phaser resistant” isn’t an out-and-out falsehood, it is somewhat misleading, giving the impression that the weapons were ineffective against the creature. As a cursory review of Mr. Spock’s mindmeld with the distressed life-form attests, this is simply not true:

Of course, lost amid the breathless excitement of discovery, and Pitts’ happy-talk of rewriting textbooks and finding alien life, is the one fact that doesn’t seem to be disturbing anyone but me: NASA has engineered a bacterium made of poison!

Am I the only one who thinks this could lead to a cataclysm that would make The Walking Dead look like a psoriasis pandemic? And why arsenic? Couldn’t they have first tried to replace the phosphorus with bacon, or that delicious cheese they put in the middle of Combos? Finally, if these NASA eggheads had paid even the slightest bit of attention to Star Trek, they would have known that this is a heinous violation of the spirit of the Prime Directive, if not the letter.

I never thought I’d say this, but I think I’m with Cheney on this one. There’ll be a biohazard suit in my trunk first thing tomorrow morning.

Aside from the obvious contradictions, and the questionable wisdom of lining up with a vice-presidential punchline, what brought this on? And when will she finally speak out against AfterMASH? (h/t Media Matters)

Media Matters is having a grand old time picking Palin’s new book apart, but the Murphy Brown reference was so counterintuitive and random, it really jumped out:

Hollywood elites take it on the chin for not being “commonsense constitutional conservatives,” including a few you weren’t expecting, largely because you haven’t thought about them in years.

Case in point: Candice Bergen and Murphy Brown:

Standing up for the family wasn’t fashionable then and it is even less fashionable now. Many of us remember one of the early and epic clashes of the American heartland versus Hollywood over the role of the American family.

It was May 1992, and thirty-eight million Americans watched as a fictional television journalist named Murphy Brown, finding herself over forty, divorced, and pregnant, decided to have the child alone. Without the baby’s father. On prime-time television. [Page 116]

Palin goes on to attack former astronaut Steve Austin, whom she labels “The Six Million Dollar Boondoggle,” and takes a swipe at Mr. Spock‘s practice of very unsafe sex.

You’re probably wondering why Palin, who laudably admitted to agonizing over whether to terminate her own over-40 pregnancy, would chide a fictional character who decided to keep her baby. Like Quayle, it’s possible that Palin glossed over the fact that the fictional father wasn’t willing to help her fictionally raise the child. Palin certainly isn’t suggesting that Brown should have had a fictional abortion.

You may also wonder what the difference is between Murphy Brown and Bristol Palin, arguably the most famous non-fictional single mother in the world. Is it just a case of “You say potato, I say potatoe?”

According to Palin, “I’m biased, of course, but given a choice of role models between Bristol and Murphy Brown, I choose Bristol.”

Fair enough, but Bristol and Candice Bergen‘s Murphy Brown share something in common that most women in this situation lack: the financial means to ease the burden of that decision. “Chosen” or not, I wouldn’t dream of questioning the “worthiness” of Palin’s “grouping” to call itself a family, and neither should anyone else. Including Sarah Palin.

While it’s hard to imagine that the photo, attributed to the Associated Press and CBS, escaped the notice of any number of editors, it is equally bemusing to contemplate where Newsbusters places its outrage. After the jump, exclusive reaction from CBS.

The obvious explanation for this photo, other than that it’s a tribute to Frank Gorshin and Star Trek, is that it is meant to illustrate the shift in the balance of power in Congress (with Democratic Senators to the President’s left, GOP House members to his right), and that the racial subtext was inadvertent. If so, the photo’s creators and subsequent editors suffer from a tone-deafness to rival Jon Stewart.

However, Newsbusters explains that the real outrage here is not the manipulation of the President’s skin tone, but this:

As one can see, the darker Obama is on the left with the Democrats, and the lighter Obama is on the right with the Republicans.

Are CBS and AP not so subtly implying the GOP are all white?

So, when they reference a “racist picture of Obama” in their headline, they mean it is racist against whites.

We reached out to CBS, and a CBSNews.com spokesman told us, “Our intention with the “ripped paper” overlay effect down the middle was to convey a divided Congress and nothing more.”

Misplaced outrage aside, Newsbusters’ interpretation certainly jibes with popular conceptions of the two parties, and seems to reinforce stereotypes about both sides. However unintentional the subtext, this is an elegant coincidence.

Lost in all of this is the fact that the photo also diminishes the tangerine hue of presumptive House Speaker John Boehner. Is CBS prejudiced against badly-tanned people?

While it is fair to point out the photo’s underpinnings, as many conservative blogs did, it is telling that, in their zeal to paint CBS in an unfavorable light, none of them bothered to contact the network for their side of the story.

In this edition of Inside the White House Press Corps, Chip speaks frankly about the role of the Press Secretary, compares the Obama White House to the Bush administration, and much more.

In part 1 of our interview, Chip talks about being a good reporter, why he’s harder on Robert Gibbs than he might otherwise be, and what the Bush and Obama administrations have in common.

Transcript:

I’m Chip Reid, I’m with CBS News and i’ve been here at the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration. I also covered the Clinton White House on and off but did not cover George W. Bush at all, so it’s back to the future for me.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD WHITE HOUSE REPORTER?

Persistence. You work long hours..uh..eager to make contact with anyone and everyone who knows anything about what goes on here; old friends, new friends, people who used to work here. Everybody you can be in touch with at various departments. You know, having covered the hill for a long time, and worked on the hill for a long time before that, I’ve got a lot of friends up there. You really don’t just cover the White House, you cover Washington, so someone who has a lot of experience covering all the different branches really helps. But more than anything else, it’s just persistence.

CAN YOU THINK OF SOMEONE BESIDES YOURSELF WHO REALLY EMBODIES A WHITE HOUSE REPORTER?

Back when I was covering Clinton, I thought that…my gosh, the name escapes me…but there were a couple print reporters with the New York Times back then, and they were constantly working it. Constantly working the story, and I kind of used them as role models. You don’t just cover what the White House is giving you; you’re always looking for some other angle on this. If you’re going to sit here and get spoon fed by the White House, then you’re going to feel really stupid.

YOU TEND TO SORT OF PROBE A LITTLE HARDER, SOMETIMES YOU TAG-TEAM WITH HELEN, THERE.

Yeah, Helen and I do tag-team questioning sometimes. She loves to jump in if I’m not getting an answer to a question, and I try to do the same with her. I think it really helps in this briefing room for people to jump in and help each other and make Robert Gibbs realize that a question he may be treating as absurd or unfair is not, and I think it helps to show some unity in the room.

WHAT ONE THING WOULD YOU DO TO IMPROVE THE BRIEFING PROCESS

More openness, obviously. I understand that Roebrt’s got a job to do, and Mike McCurry had a job to do, and Dee Dee had a job to do, and all the people I’ve seen here and fought with here have a job to do. They work for the president and their job is to protect the president, but their job is also to inform the American people through us and by answering our questions. I understand the tension for them–that protecting the President comes first–but informing the Aerican people is also part of their job. They work for the American people, too. And we’re trying to get information for them–for our viewers and readers.

I may be saying something that’s going to be laughed at behind those closed doors, but more openness is what it’s all about. And it shouldn’t be a briefing where at the end, we walk back to our office and say “Well that was a waste of time.” And it can be deeply frustrating that no matter how hard we probe, sometimes very little comes out in these briefings. Some days, I would be better off working the phones for that hour than being in here.

I NOTICE VERY OFTEN WE END UP ASKING THE SAME QUESTION 8 or 9 TIMES WITHA LITTLE VARIATION TO PULL EVERYHTING OUT. DO YOU THINK IF I ASKED ROBERT OR BILL THAT PROTECTING THE PRES WOULD COME FIRST?

That’s a good question. I’d like to hear their response, but certainly that’s what their job is. Robert’s in an interesting position, and I think it’s one reason people get a little more frustrated with him; because Robert knows so much. All of the other press secretaries I’ve worked with were not in the tiniest little circle, but Robert is. Robert knows what’s going on here. And I think that’s where people push him especially hard. It’s why I do. Because I know he knows. So I’m trying to get in that inner circle more than he wants us to get. He’s in the little meetings, in the big meetings and everything else. He’s in the inner circle, which was not true of Bill McCurry, it was not true of Danny Meyers or Bill Lockhart or any of the people I worked with in the Clinton years, but Robert Gibbs is right in there.

DOES THAT TENSION CARRY OVER INTO YOUR PERSONAL INTERACTIONS WITH ROBERT GIBBS?

I actually like the guy a lot. I think he’s really dedicated to protecting his boss, which I can understand. There’s a lot of loyalty in this White House; it’s a little more like the Bush White House than the Clinton White House.

That was one of the nice things about covering the Clinton White House; people would talk to you out of school more than they do here. It was a different operation, wider open. Clinton didn’t have–I’m not sure if it was the loyalty, that was part of it. But Clinton didn’t have the control.

Partly because Obama is a meticulously organized guy, and he wants information to come out in a meticulously organized way, but there’s also an intense loyalty here–kind of like there was with George W. Bush–which is why you’ve got to go to so many other sources to get the information.

Next: Part 2 -

But Grunberg has other careers, despite being more than busy enough with this one thanks to all the work that comes his way via the J. J. Abrams space-time continuum – yes, that was him in Star Trek, too). He is, like  his Felicity character, a rabid entrepreneur, and has recently launched Yowza!!, a hyperlocal iPhone app that tells you where to find nearby coupons and deals – meant to give a boost to both merchants and customers in a hurting economy. He’s also an activist and philanthropist, having launched the site Talk About It! to raise awareness and money about epilepsy, with which his son is afflicted; in addition to being a great initiative, the site is very cool (Sony seems to have been inspired by it, actually) and populated by his pals in the biz from across his shows and initiatives – yes that’s Jennifer Garner, Kristen Bell, Chris Pine & Zachary Quinto,  John Mayer, Milo Ventimiglia, Hayden Panettiere, and even Arvin Sloan popping out of an shadowy subway system just like the new SD-6 offices (or the Alliance, or Rambaldi’s lair, whatever – hard for an Alias fan to see Ron Rifkin as anything else). He’s also got a band. With people from TV. Called The Band From TV. Including people like Hugh Laurie, James Denton and Teri Hatcher (on vocals – really!), also for charity. He also Twitters like a maniac and has the 1 million-plus followers to show for it.  You’d think he’d be super busy, but clearly he’s blessed with superhuman energy as well, because he sent back his answers to our questions inside a day. We are welcome him to these pages as the latest in oure ongoing series 5QQ- Five Quick Questions.

1. How do you get your first news of the day?

After checking Twitter (@greggrunberg), it’s actually Huffington Post that I click on for the latest. Then the FutonCritic.com for all things TV.

2. What’s the biggest story the media has missed this year? (Or last week):

The Economy is incredibly important, of course, but just showing the jobless rate is not the important story to me. Losing health insurance for all of these families is the real story. I fear for so many that have been laid off and have to face the unthinkable after Cobra runs its course of finding and paying for health insurance in the event a loved one falls ill. That is the real story…

3. “Either, Or” Question: (you gotta pick one!) (answers can be pithy, or as long as you want):

(a) Diane Sawyer or Katie Couric?

Diane Couric… what can I say, I have TiVo!!

(b) SNL or The Daily Show?

Tough one. Again TiVo to the rescue!!

(c) Network TV audience of millions once a week or Twitter audience of 1,132,151 million all the time?

Since Heroes ratings are dipping dangerously close to my number of followers on Twitter, I’ll say Network TV with a Twitter tie-in!!

(d) Alias Nerd Question: Sylar or Sark?

Both have 9 lives. Great actors both… But I’m going to say Sylar (for now) just so he doesn’t kill me off the show.

(e) Felicity Nerd Question: Ben or Noel?

I hate the fact that SEAN was never a part of that equation. Ben or Noel or Sean? Come on!! And funny because Keri Russell and I were having an affair the ENTIRE TIME we shot the show.

(f) J.J. Abrams Nerd Question: Crazy Rambaldi Mythology or Crazy Lost Mythology? (Or, Star Trek)

Just trying to answer this question is giving me a headache. I just want to turn on the TV and stare at the pretty blue light… is that so WRONG?!

(g) Yowza!! or Shmegan?

Yowza!! will save the world!! Tons of Cash!! BEST. FREE. APP. EVER. (http://GetYowza.com)

4. Obligatory Twitter Question: Describe yourself in 140 characters or less:

I AM Twitter. I RULE the Twittersphere. Sorry… yes, I am on Twitter as @greggrunberg with over a million of my closest personal friends laughing with me everyday.

140 on Me, huh? : Family Man, 4th Year Mind Reader, Ex-Pilot Oceanic 815, Drummer/Founder BandFromTV.org, Co-creator Yowza!! & Smoothaise, Fun loving ex-CIA Agent, DILF, Kirk’s Evil StepDad (use Tweet-Shorten if you need to)

5. Our usual question here is, “Are you nervous or excited about the future of journalism? Why?” In your case, I’d ask “Are you nervous or excited about the future of television? Why?” (Your answer may include the word “Docuventary“).

I’m more excited than nervous about the future of television. Up until now, you could count on the fact that there were a bunch of very smart people in towers with a plan as to where the world of entertainment is headed. And it was up to us creative types to think of things to fit into their master plan. NOW… anything goes. I’m excited at the fact that I can create a show and go out and shoot it and it could have just as much of a chance of getting an audience and catching fire as something I develop through the network process. That’s exciting to me. That some kid in Kansas can make me laugh my ass off using his parents camcorder and posting it to YouTube is not a threat, it’s exciting. Technology is our friend…

Follow Greg on Twitter here, rock out with him and his teevee friends here, get caught up on Heroes here, download Yowza!! here, and for God’s sake, TALK ABOUT IT! here.

But this year it really seems like something has changed.

It’s no longer news that we have moved past geek-chic to something akin to post-geek, but when people who I wouldn’t expect to know a Viper from a Raptor mused aloud about what to expect from the 39th annual Comic-Con International last week, I realized that this year, you are all paying attention.

Last year, an estimated 126,000 people attended Comic-Con’s four day San Diego event, and passes were sold out weeks ahead of time; similar numbers were estimated this year.  Compare that to the approximately 445 die hards that attended related events in 1970.  Somehow something that started as a gathering place for a bunch of like-minded oddball outsiders has become, according to the New York Times, “an event that has acquired major importance on the [entertainment] industry’s calendar; major studios promote their biggest coming projects, and television producers for shows like “Lost” and “24” try to stoke interest in their approaching seasons.”  Last year, Comic-Con was our go-to for content related to such (ex)-obscurities as Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog; this year, Dr. Horrible is not only nominated for an Emmy, but hosting them. It’s no wonder everybody is talking about Comic-Con.

Note the lack of reference to comics.

Here’s a secret: That was built into the DNA from the start.  Comic-Con became the festival of pure geek joy that it is (and one of the, if not the, defining entertainment industry events of the year) because since day one, name notwithstanding, is it has always been pan-geek.  Sci-fi authors and Star Trek personalities have been there since the start.  Luke Skywalker himself even made a movie set there.

But that is also why, with an entertainment industry that is interested in sequels, franchises and the already-proven value of any new investment in an entertainment property, Comic-Con has become the center of both the entertainment-industrial complex as well as the countless fan-universes that each franchise has created. It is no accident that the first modern blockbuster also provided the protoype for the merchandising and cross-promotion models driving franchises like Transformers to blockbuster status despite the barest critical assessment of their quality. Of course it was. It was custom-built for the Con.

Make no mistake ye cool kids, when it comes to how we spend our entertainment dollars, we are all geeks.  Star Trek, Harry Potter, Twilight and the Dark Knight don’t lie; we all want larger-than-life escapism and a little zombie terror here and there.  We want the other, the strange, the fantastic and the far off, and we vote with the dollars we spend on books, DVDs, downloads, movie tickets, toys, collectibles, miniatures and cosplay props (not to mention the clicks we spend on bittorrent trackers and blog posts). The SciFi Channel has even become the kinder, gentler SyFy, in an acknowledgment of how mainstream geek really is. (3.5 million viewers for the debut of their latest, Warehouse 13, is acknolwedgement too; that’s 1.1 million more than the Battlestar finale. Word spreads, eh geeks?)

Like some alien gestating to life in a slimy pod, geek culture ripened over the years in its (our) own obscure cons, from back when the cancellation of the very first Star Trek spawned modern fandom (and fanaticism).  And you know how that alien springs to life and starts spreading its seed all over the place? Right: cue the modern entertainment franchise of comics, books, films, blogs, series, webisodes, collectibles, podcasts and any other format yet to be dreamed up. So, with that in mind: how could the convention at which you most expect to see somebody wearing fangs without the slightest hint of self-consciousness not become ground zero of the entertainment world?

Because, importantly, it’s also establishing itself as a leader within it. Back to Dr. Horrible: An indie labor-of-love project launched on the side during the writer’s strike, launched on the web, became a critical and financial success — entirely outside the traditional models. In its initial limited run, it got over 2 millions streams in five days (and would have had more had demand not crashed the servers); a year later, its Amazon sales rank is #87 for Bestsellers, Movies & TV; with top five rankings across all its sub-categories. Like Comic-Con, Dr. Horrible is pan-geek: comic-book, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, musical theater (two words for you here: Rocky Horror) — with the heroes, villains, inventors, outsiders, romantics and strivers plus the crucial morality play that underlies the best of each genre. The storylines may be fantastical, but the impulses couldn’t be more visceral.

Which is maybe why it’s all finally catching on. It’s a phrase us geeks know well, from bad zombie movies, from Twilight Zone episodes, from the collective subconscious that geekdom has shared since at least the first Comic-Con in 1970, and that should resonate with anyone that has consumed the smallest morsel of popular media in the past half decade or so: “One of us, one of us, one of us…”

Related:

Comic-Con 2009: The Hero Complex collection [LA Times]
The Winners & Losers of Comic-Con 2009 [Seattle PI]
Who Won Comic-Con’s Buzz Wars? Our 10 Picks [i09]

Ash Kalb is the general counsel of a New York-based telecommunications and technology company and an instrument-rated pilot.  He will be writing a weekly column on geek culture for Mediaite. He wishes he went to Comic-Con.