Expanding the Geek Tree, 2014 Edition

The geek Christmas tree next to a television displaying the LEGO Clone Wars video game.
The Geek TreeĀ in all its glory. The video game on screen is LEGO Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Another Christmas, another couple of ornaments for the Geek Tree. This year sees three new ornaments join the fleet: the U.S.S. Vengeance from Star Trek Into Darkness, the xenomorph from Alien, and the flying DeLorean from Back to the Future, Part II. There’s also a string of TARDIS Christmas tree lights; they are too bulky to go on the tree this year, but there’s always 2015.

The Vengeance is what I expected. It’s big. It’s menacing. It’s from my least favorite Star Trek movie, but it is a nice looking ship, and the completist in me wanted it. As ornaments go, it’s far better than the Scorpion from Star Trek: Nemesis, but as I said before, it’s not nearly as cool as an Excelsior or Prometheus ornament would be.

The xenomorph ornament looks fantastic. It’s also likely to scare small children, so I’ve buried it deep within the boughs of the geek tree. It’s less likely to scare three-year-olds there and should make a nice surprise for anyone taking a close look at the tree’s interior (especially older kids and fellow geeks) are often inclined to do.

The flying time machine is my favorite ornament this year because it was a surprise. I missed out on last year’s Back to the Future ornament, which was the standard DeLorean with the addition of a Mr. Fusion for convenient energy production. I gambled on being able to pick it up at an after Christmas sale, but the ornament proved to be too popular, and none were left. This year I used some of my birthday cash to snag the ornament before Christmas, and thus add the Power of Time Travel to the Geek Tree.

Speaking of time travel… I’m not sure how I’m going to use the TARDIS string lights. They look really cool, but they’re a bit bulky. I think I’m going to experiment with adding them to the tree in 2015, and if they don’t fit, I’ll take them to work to deck the halls (or at least my office) there.

It’s possible I’ll add a few more ornaments to the 2015 edition of the tree; I haven’t hit the Hallmark after Christmas sale yet, and there might be a few more ornaments — like the Jawa Sandcrawler from Star Wars — worth picking up but honestly the Geek Tree is just about at capacity. Next year I might need to consider going with a theme — e.g. only Star Trek ornaments or only fantasy ornaments. The challenge there is while I do have a lot of geeky ornaments, only my Star Trek and Star Wars subcollections have enough ornaments to really pull off the tree on their own unless I start getting creative (comic book garlands anyone?)

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