Boldly Live as You've Never Lived Before: A Bungled Book About "Star Trek" and Personality Types

     Since I am a "Sci Fi Guy" (though - and this is IMPORTANT - also a Christian), I sometimes can't help checking out some strange books geared towards the Trekkie in me.  Boldly Live as You’ve Never Lived Before by Richard Raben and Hiyaguha Cohen is yet another book using Star Trek as a backdrop for some part of life, this time for determining and dealing with personality types.  I really didn’t get too much out of it.  The book explained the four main personality types as "Leader" (such as Captain Picard), "Warrior" (such as Worf) "Analyzer" (such as Data) and "Relator" (such as Counselor Troi).  I already knew I would score high as a "Relator" and "Analyzer," and lower as a "Leader" and "Warrior," so not much help in that arena.

     The book didn’t do too much in the way of helping me to become a more well rounded individual, as I would expect an introspective self-help book about personality types might be, and I noticed it actually took a lot of annoying liberties with some of the characters and shows, even going so far as to suggest that Scotty, the Chief Engineer from the original series fit the Warrior profile!  I'm sorry, but in all fairness, that character has more in common with "Analyzer" Data than with "Warrior" Worf.  They said Scotty was always ready for battle, making sure his precious engines could handle any job the Captain requested, and would always come through for Kirk in a pinch.  I say that all of that was merely happenstance – Scotty’s an engineer, a tinkerer, and whereas Worf would welcome a good fight, Scotty would be more apt to hold up in his quarters with a technical manual; an "Analyzer," just like Data.  Take “The Trouble with Tribbles” for instance.  Scotty doesn’t want to go on shore leave.  He wants to hold up in his quarters with one of those geeky tech journals.  When he’s ordered to go, he does get involved in a brawl when a Klingon insults the Enterprise, Scotty’s “baby,” so to speak, but when Kirk reprimands him and confines him to quarters, he’s elated.  That’s really what he wanted to do all along!  Did the writers of this book conveniently forget that, or the fact that Scotty is a techie at heart?  I'm sorry, but techies (not to be confused with Trekkies) are basically "Analyzers."

     There are other questionable examples in this book, and that, coupled with the fact that they don’t really pull it all together to teach a person how to grow makes it all just some pointless endeavor.  In the end, it’s certainly an interesting idea, one that might actually mean something in better hands, but here, they kind of bungled it!