While celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘s monumental episode duo “Past Tense (Parts 1 & 2),” our sensors picked up an anomalous reading. Our second Star Trek Super Fan! Trek Central caught up with Alexander Barnes of San Francisco, California whose entire life has taken inspiration from Star Trek. Back on September 1, 2024, Alexander marked the beginning of the Bell Riots. An event that in Star Trek is a change-inciting, yet disastrous point in history. To make the date, Barnes joined a group of other Star Trek Super Fans. They planned to serve the homeless population in San Francisco to mark the date.
Trek Central: When did your love for Star Trek first begin?
Barnes: It wasn’t even love… it was normal life. My parents were fans. I remember, being about 4 or 5 years old and being in Winnie the Pooh pajamas at a drive-in theater. And I was sitting in between my parents and I recognized Captain Kirk (William Shatner). He was climbing a mountain and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) was there with jet-pack shoes. I just knew who they were.
When Star Trek: The Next Generation came out, one of my parents would watch it. Either my mom or dad, and I would sit there with them almost every night. The original series’ reruns would pop up and I would watch those with friends. When everything else (series and movies) would come out after that – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise – it was just normal. I loved them all and it changed my life. It’s hard to explain but it’s what kind of started my career working in tech. Star Trek is also the reason I moved to San Francisco – Presidio, right where Starfleet Academy is (set).
Trek Central: How did Star Trek inspire your career?
Barnes: So I do UX design. When it comes to UX design, or user experience design, it’s kind of like building a blueprint for a house or a city where you start laying things out. What’s interesting about UX is it’s all visual. And some of it is based on certain types of research or data. You’re able to grab that data from a company or publicly, like twenty people who started using this alternative app. And then you ask “Why did they start using it?”
Then from user experience, you build a map of where the buttons go and what the features will be. For user interface design, that’s when you start making it look like something. You know, with icons and colorizations, and what type of images you use, how you lay them out. And you feel good when somebody uses it. I accidentally fell into that career!
Trek Central: Sounds like a wonderful accident, how did that happen?
Barnes: When I was a teenager, Star Trek: Voyager had finished and Enterprise had started. There was a channel – I can’t remember what it was but it was on cable – that pretty much showed all of Star Trek‘s 24-hours a day. While that was happening, I was trying to become a 3D modeler, just because the new series graphics were amazing. I started learning 3D Studio Max. I was actually learning it while a Junior in college, taking classes taught by one of the founding members of Pixar. And then I started building video game content. Back in the ’90s and early 2000s, if you bought a game on the computer they gave you the tools to start editing things.
I did not come from a wealthy family. When I was in my early 20s, I was basically living in the back of a beat-up truck. I had a laptop and put together a little website with my skill sets. One day, this recruiter reached out to me and pulled me in for an interview. He had a research and development office in downtown San Jose – and that company was called Samsung! I was hired by the vice president of research and development, because he saw my website and the 3D work that I had done. He said, “Oh, this stuff will be easy for you, right?”
Trek Central: What are your lasting accomplishments inspired by Star Trek?
Barnes: Working for Samsung, I was able to work on what would become the Galaxy S series of phones. I 3D-modelled the phone so the rest of the company could understand what they were doing. While working full-time, I was still dedicated to Star Trek and began writing a science fiction novel.
This led me to design another brand-new app – what we now know as Docusign. I was one of the very first UX/UI designers for it. After, I became one of the very first UX/UI Educators in San Francisco. I also went on to work for Wells Fargo Bank, the City of San Francisco, and then I ran my own company.
Trek Central: Tell us more about your science fiction novel!
Barnes: The first book came out in 2017 and I have a couple of novellas out right now. I’m also working on a sequel. My friend and I wrote the book. It’s called The Amaranth Chronicles: Deviant Rising. Part of the story definitely takes place here in San Francisco, hundreds of years in the future when we’ve already found ways of traveling faster than light. Basically it’s about… imagine an AI (artificial intelligence) that is inside of a device that people are being pressured to wear around their ear, like a big earring. The AI knows what they’re feeling, what they’re thinking, what they’re most likely to do – all beginning here on Earth.
Barnes: Earth starts pushing it on other colonial planets. We don’t have any aliens yet in the story – it’s not that important. Imagine people out in the frontier who have colonized these new worlds and Earth is trying to push the concept of them having to use what is called the Helix AI. The people in the frontier, say, well, we don’t have anything against AI but we’re not gonna wear it. As the story goes on, different things happen and there is this battle of resisting something that is being pushed onto them.
I was training to be a 3D designer from when I was a teenager, I kept doing it as a hobby. So I was able to get some concept artists to design the different spaceships, and the characters. And then I was able to 3D model them.
Trek Central: ‘Bell Riots’ Day’ was a pretty big landmark in Star Trek‘s timeline. You and a group of people did something pretty special that day, right?
Barnes: About six months prior, I randomly ran into more Trekkies. I always knew this city had Trekkies. We have a Comic-Con up here, and it was about 90% Star Wars fans. I just happened to find a handful of Trekkies, they had their own booth and I was like, are we the only Trekkies here? We both laughed. I hung out with them for a while and then I got invited to their San Francisco Facebook group. They’re called the USS Golden Gate. Evidently, they’re one of the most famous Trek communities out here and I joined them.
I always knew that the Bell Riots date was going to come up. Years ago I remembered thinking, ‘If I live in the city, I’m gonna put on a uniform and I’m gonna do something. You know, donate stuff… anything.’ Then about a month ago, people started getting together on different Star Trek fan groups on social media and I was inspired. I went downtown to the location where we met and we all began donating things. It was just so amazing, meeting other Star Trek fans, some of whom were even out here from the East Coast!
Trek Central: How has Star Trek inspired you to do other things in your community?
Barnes: I’ve always been more independent. I remember two Thanksgivings in a row when I just grabbed a bunch of food, brought it to my apartment. And I was cooking everything from tacos to pizza. It’s not exactly Thanksgiving food but it’s something you can cook a lot of, very rapidly, right? I would be able to fill the back of a truck and drive down to the homeless encampments. I would give them a bottle of water with the food. It’s great when anyone volunteers but I was more independent about things and it felt really good.
Trek Central: Do you have any favorites in the Star Trek universe?
Barnes: That’s a great question because I’ve wondered that myself since I was a little boy. I don’t think it’s an individual character. For me, it was more about the mindset of the characters and actors, and the incredible writers. It was more like this feeling of – how are human beings this creative? And how are they constantly able to capture the Star Trek audience? What does that say about their capacity? You know, it’s not like just an individual character actor. It’s the whole idea.
I think Gene Roddenberry might have been one of the most brilliant human beings on the planet. Even though he had some problems from the beginning. When you learn about that guy, he is beyond amazing. It’s humbling, and I wonder what Gene Roddenberry would think if you put this device in his hand that we call a cell phone and he got to talk to an AI on it.
“It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching, not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions.”
– Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks).
Trek Central: In keeping with Star Trek’s vision of humanity’s future, what change would you want to see in the world today?
Barnes: One of the biggest values that the writers come up with, is the idea of questioning… questioning basically everything. And trying to understand why things exist. It’s a form of exploring things with your own mind. What it comes down to is that I wish more people realized how important it is to question things. Even if you can’t find the answer. If you do find an answer, that’s not where you’re supposed to be. It’s about having more questions basically, right? Anything you learn leads to more questions.
If the entire human race had it… well we can’t even imagine what it would be like. Even in Star Trek‘s concept, there’s so much more in this universe that is just around us all the time. It’s no longer about little green men or Klingons or the Borg. It’s something we can’t even imagine. If we could all just question things cooperatively… it would justify our existence. Around the world, people are just so unique no matter where they come from. I wish the human race appreciated and accepted that more.
Do you know someone who is a Super Fan?
Many thanks for taking the time to chat to us and for sharing his insights, and love for the Star Trek Universe.
Are you a Star Trek Super Fan? Do you know someone with unequivocal collections, or who’ve used the ideals of Star Trek to make the world a better place? Do they have epic “Faith of the Heart”? Unparralled knowledge of the series? And epic Star Trek-related tale to tell? Well we want to hear from you! Please reach out to Trek Central via social media or contact us, and submit your nominations!
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🔍️ – Trek Back: ‘Past Tense’ 30 years later
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