The 2014 edition of the Geek Tree is up. As has been our tradition for years (exactly how many years I can’t recall) I setup a dedicated Christmas tree for all of my geeky ornaments. It typically goes up the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and is packed with all manner of genre ornaments representing Star Wars, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, Loony Tunes, The Hobbit, the Marvel universe, and many more.
View this year’s Geek Tree gallery on Flickr.
The big change this year is the lights. The racing Buck Rogers-style lights of yesteryear are dead, having flickered out last Christmas. They’ve been replaced by slow pulsing, light-changing star lights from IKEA. They serve the same purpose, which is to add some motion to the tree, while at the same time bringing me one step closer to the holy grail of Star Trek: Generations-style nova lights.
I’ve tried similar lights before, but they tended to flicker and pulse too quickly. The geek tree sits next to our television in the library, so the lights can’t be distracting. The IKEA lights slowly transition from one color to the next and a relaxing, mesmerizing way. In addition to making the tree feel less static, they do a good job of adding color while also illuminating the armada of geeky ornaments on the tree.
There are a few other new pieces I’m hoping to add to the tree this year. There’s the obligatory Star Trek ornament, which this year is the U.S.S. Vengeance from Star Trek Into Darkness. I was hoping for the U.S.S. Excelsior (one of my favorite ships) or maybe a cool break-apart version of the U.S.S. Prometheus so the Vengeance, which is from a subpar Trek movie, is something of a disappointment. Still … tradition.
The Star Wars vehicle ornament this year is the sandcrawler, which I’m not quite feeling at the list price of $29.95. I’m putting that on my December 26 discount shopping list. Here’s to hoping that The Force Awakens inspires a whole new generation of Star Wars ornaments next December.
One I have to get (if I can find it) is the Alien ornament. This little guy would look great nestled in the depths of the tree … and that’s probably a good place for it given that it might scare the crap out of small children. It will add to the diversity of the geek tree nicely by branching out into horror (unsurprisingly, I don’t have any other horror-inspired ornaments on three … though maybe next year they’ll release a Predator ornament!)
Surprisingly, I have no Doctor Who ornaments on the tree; I’m looking to remedy that by getting the Doctor Who Christmas light strand from ThinkGeek. I have no idea how I’ll actually fit them on the tree, but it would fill the tree’s empty British science fiction niche nicely.
A particular challenge with geek tree this year is our one-year-old cat Zorro, who thinks that the tree is great fun to play in. My wife took this picture of Zorro hiding in the Geek Tree, right next to the Borg Cube. We’re trying to train him to go elsewhere by playing with him before he can get to the tree … but training cats is difficult at best.