Look up! Overhead other planets clutter the heavens, a wonderful sight made special this week as Luna takes an admiring stroll among them. From ancient times our ancestors no doubt enjoyed such shows, aware of the five solar siblings distinguished to the naked eye from the background of stars. Tiny Mercury (often hard to spot racing so close to the sun) out to somber Saturn, joined by Venus and Mars, all meet mighty Jupiter in close approach (maybe squinting to spot those two robots!). God willing in their time our descendants enjoy a similar show, connecting a growing body of humanity in common timeless awe. Carl Sagan once said something to the effect that mankind's best entertainment has always been the nighttime sky. That's very hard for a Trekker to dispute.

Unperturbed in their orbits the traditional wanderers might be amused at the arguments put forth by the carbon units infesting Terra. "Tiny Sedna has only now been noticed," they might say, "And yet this is treated as if it were something new." Few would contend that only the visible planets count, and thus today's schoolchildren learn a different number than that of their great-grandparents; undoubtedly both numbers will be wrong after including the discoveries of tomorrow. To try and hold to the conventional existing range of planets, our set of nine today, is an attempt inevitably destined to fail.

What makes a planet? A good definition includes the elements of internal cohesion and solar attraction. Internal cohesion is established as a planet's mass collapses, self-contained, under its own gravity. The second element of solar attraction is self-evident, common to all planets in that system. (This eliminates large moons as they orbit another planet and not the sun.) No matter the eventual disposition of Sedna, the planetary march will go on. The sky will continue to fascinate us no matter how many new "planets" remain to be "discovered."

What makes a Trek series? Why not also include an internal consistency and shared attraction? Recently have come frantic cries that if we don't renew Sedna for another season then the entire solar system will come to a grinding halt. (OK that was really said- seriously- about "Enterprise." And of course I don't believe that but it's not my claim, either!) No matter the fate of the latest if not last series, Star Trek will go on. Maybe not on the small or even the big screen; maybe more in terms of fan effort. It's beyond the sum of its parts anyway.


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