You might think that religion and holidays don’t exist in the 23rd, 24th, or 32nd Centuries of Star Trek’s shared future, but in the first season of The Original Series, Kirk totally has flashbacks to a Christmas party on the Enterprise. Plus, who can forget when Picard fantasized about the giant Christmas tree in Star Trek Generations? Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or the Bajoran Gratitude Festival, you’re going to need some gifts this year. We don’t have replicators or programmable matter yet, so for now, you’re going to have to do some shopping.
Here’s a smattering of the best of the best gifts for the Star Trek person in your life. But, probably best to use the Spore Drive to grab all this stuff before it gets sucked into a wormhole. Hit it!
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Star Trek Holiday Sweaters
It’s shocking how few people actually wear sweaters on Star Trek. Sulu could have certainly used one on that cold planet in “The Man Trap.” Luckily, on our planet, there are some excellent Star Trek holiday sweaters. The Picard “Make It Snow” sweatshirt is pretty dope, But, if you want something a bit newer, there’s the Star Trek: Discovery, “Merry Trekmas” knit sweater, too.
Mr. Spock’s Little Book of Mindfulness
This one might be good for a stocking-stuffer, or a gift you mail to someone you haven’t seen in a while. Between the politics and the pandemic, everyone could stand to end 2020 behaving a little bit more like our favorite outer space stoic. The illustrations here are adorable, and the sentiment is something we certainly all need. Spock can save your soul by helping you retrain your mind.
Star Trek: Voyager: A Celebration
This gorgeous coffee table book is exactly what it claims to be: a celebration of 25 years of Star Trek: Voyager. Over the past few years, it’s become increasingly clear that Voyager’s popularity isn’t just a fluke, and that this particular Trek has a special place in the hearts of Trekkies everywhere. Eaglemoss editor Ben Robinson and author Mark Writing conducted a mind-boggling number of new interviews for this book. This is the only complete picture of the entire history of Star Trek: Voyager.
Star Trek Wine 3-Pack
Although the official Star Trek wine shop is sold-out of the excellent Chateau Picard red, there are several other good Trek wines you can snag. The “Ultimate 3-Pack,” gives you Klingon Blood Wine, United Federation of Planets Sauvignon Blanc, and UFP Old Vine Zinfandel, which is a red. Having drunk two of these wines personally, the good news is that this is legit wine.
Vulcan Salutes Only T-Shirt
Social distancing can feel like a bummer still, but luckily, Star Trek invented the most perfect touchless greeting of all time, years ago: The Live-Long-and-Prosper Vulcan salute! There are a few variations of these kinds of shirts floating around, but this one, that simply says “Vulcan Salutes Only” is a friendly, logical way to avoid shaking hands with someone, and, also, gives you an excuse to flash the Vulcan salute whenever you feel like it.
XL USS Defiant Starship Model
The Eaglemoss starship collection is, at this point, somewhat legendary. But if you’re buying a Star Trek ship for a super-fan, you might be worried they’ve got a few spaceship models already, right? In other words, how many Enterprises can you have? Well, the 85-inch USS Defiant from Deep Space Nine might be the answer. Captain Sisko’s warship that was designed to fight the Borg, but later fought the Dominion, and even time-traveled a few times, is one of the sleekest, most underrated Trek ships ever.
Eaglemoss collaborates directly with archive materia from Paramount and CBS to recreate 100 percent accurate models. In other words, these ships are the real deal.
Okay, maybe your Trekkie is a little more contemporary! Maybe they do need a starship model gift, but it needs to be from the newer era! The Eaglemoss USS Discovery will fit the bill. Also, probably a good time to snag this version of the ship, since you know, it uh, just got a pretty big upgrade.
Buying a Star Trek prop is some serious commitment, and nothing really says hardcore Trekkie like some Klingon weapons. First seen in Deep Space Nine, this smaller blade, wielded by Worf is probably most remembered for the scene in First Contact in which our favorite Klingon sliced off a Borg arm. Buy the Mek’Leth. Don’t slice anyone’s arm off IRL.
If you need to take a break from cutting Borg arms off, and instead, you want to slice some cheese or cured meats, then the Chateau Picard cutting board is certainly the way to go. Although the fictional Chateau Picard is in a different part of France than the real Chateau Picard, it’s still fun to pretend like we’re all buying stuff from a vineyard that will, some day, be owned by the Admiral himself.
Need some Star Trek art? Want it to not exactly look like Star Trek art? How about a painting that Mr. Data created on the Enterprise? Yep, the MacGuffin from Star Trek: Picard Season 1, a painting called “daughter” made by an android in the future. But, you know, it just looks like a regular painting.
And, if you’re looking for some wall art that goes in the other direction, but still celebrates the TNG crew, how about this “ad” for Riker’s Pizza! To be clear, Riker only seems to make pizza for his family on the planet Nepenthe, but maybe, for a certain kind of person, this will make things feel like home.
Okay, there are a lot of Star Trek mugs and tea cups out there. We mean a lot. But the coolest one seems to be the kind that recreates what an actual tea cup (or mug) might look like on an actual Federation starship. A hidden gem among all the Star Trek cups and mugs then, is this one, a cup and saucer set designed to look like something from the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D. They’re calling this a “Star Trek: Picard” cup, but we all know this is from the TNG-era all the way.
There’s a shocking dearth of good Phaser toys on the market at the moment, at least new ones are kind of hard to find. While Entertainment Earth has a new TOS Phaser coming out next year, that doesn’t really help if you want a Phaser for the holidays. Right now, there’s an unofficial Discovery-era Phaser made by Cafele. It looks pretty legit!
First introduced in the episode “Lethe,” the off-duty t-shirts worn by the crew of the USS Discovery have been a hit among hardcore Trekkies and casual fans alike. If the Trek person doesn’t have this in their life yet, it’s time to correct that.
Back when some of us were kids, we couldn’t just watch Star Trek whenever we felt like it, unless we had the VHS tapes. So, that meant that Star Trek novels often filled that void. The thing is, the tradition of great Star Trek novels hasn’t gone away one bit. Two of the newest Trek novels are also fantastic. If you’re buying a Trek novel for a TOS fan you’ve got A Contest of Principles by Greg Cox, a novel about the classic crew trying to help an alien planet hold free elections! Really!
But if you’re more of a Voyager person, you also must check out Kirsten Beyer’s new novel, To Lose the Earth. For fans of the new shows, Beyer is probably best known as a writer on Discovery and Picard. But, she’s been a novelist, writing Voyager books for much longer. Her latest Voyager book is also one of her best.