I took that picture of Captain James Tiberius Kirk’s uniform at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum on the Mall. And no, I’m not going to get into a discussion about Kirk’s middle name. But I should note that this is a uniform worn by Chris Pine, not by the eternally awesome William Shatner, though, after watching Star Trek: Beyond, which was the best of the ‘new’ Star Trek‘s and, dare I say, in the top fifty percent of all Star Trek movies, not to mention a rollicking good time, I now have a much better appreciation of Pine as Kirk, or how he has grown into the role. Real Star Trek fans will also have realized that Shatner could never have fit into that uniform, even at his youthful and swashbuckling best.

But that original series was just… awesome. And Wrath of Khan was one of the best movies of all time (I haven’t forgiven the first reboot movie from trivializing the motives that drove Kirk to cheat on the Kobayashi Maru simulator; the reboot made it a sort of joke, but in Khan, Kirk admitted that the simulation, which was intended to be training for how to deal with failure, triggered in him a deep feeling, beyond just being unable to accept no-win situations, but a terrible fear of failure).

So, not exactly happy birthday. But happy something. And thank you, Gene Roddenberry.