Us geeks have good lives. Tons of entertainment: TV shows, movies, comics, games to give our lives meaning and purpose (must live to see Episodes 7-9). But not everything can be as amazing as the Buffy Musical. Sometimes, the people we trust to entertain us betray us. They take what we know and love and shoot a missile right through our 2-meter exhaust ports. Here are the 7 biggest insults to our geekdom.

7. Canceling Firefly

A show about underdogs got beaten down by the big guns. One of the could-have-been-best-sci-fi shows ever was canceled for poor ratings before even airing all the finished episodes. And as an added insult, the Fox network aired Firefly’s episodes out of order causing mass chaos around the galaxy. Yeah, it’s all Fox’s fault. At least we got the kick ass movie out of the deal.

6. Star Trek video games

Still, to this day, we’ve yet to see a game deserving of the Star Trek moniker. And what’s worse is Star Trek appeals to so many different game genres. There’s conquering (or bringing peace) to the galaxy or just straight dogfights and exploring the galaxy. But each game looks like some gaming student’s long-procrastinated homework assignment, often filled with bugs and lacking all the features that could make the game cool. There’s the crappy attempt at a strategy game in Birth of a Federation to every bad SNES game where you just go on dumb away missions. Remember, away missions were boring on the show and they’re boring in the game. I must say, Star Trek: Bridge Commander has been the one white dwarf of light. Unfortunately, the recent Star Trek Legacy pales in comparison (I’m assuming white dwarfs are pale).

5. E.T. video game

Don’t feel bad, licensed video games always sucked. And the worst of the was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Atari released this broken shell of a game in 1982, rushing its development to make the holiday rush. The game so an impressive 1.5 million copies, but Atari had shelled out almost $25 million for the license of the blockbuster fill and produced 4 million copies of the game. The game’s resulting failure partly led to Atari’s bankruptcy and the crash of the video game industry. For the rest of the 1980s. Thanks a lot Atari.

4. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Sometimes Captains are better followers than leaders. William “Captain Kirk” Shatner was a strapping young captain who explored new worlds, wisely listening to directors who knew more than him (like Leonard “Spock” Nimoy). But by the fifth Star Trek movie, Shatner not only had the brilliant idea to direct, but also to help write the god-awful screenplay (more on that in a bit). With a stroke, Shatner decided to make this Trek movie suck like none before. The production was rushed with crappy special effects and a joke of a storyline involving Captain Kirk fighting God. Yes, a big, blue being known as God…who was defeated by a dinky Klingon Bird of Prey. Yeah, and you thought Nemesis was bad.

3. Clone saga

Spider-Man’s cool, right? And if you’re around 20-25 years old now, you’ve grown up knowing the married, moderately successful at life Peter Parker. Well, for a while, the Spider-Man you knew and loved was in fact an imposter. Yes, to solve all the continuity crap that forced Spider-Man to age from a college student to full grown adult, Marvel Comics decided let’s pretend the last 20 years or so happened to a clone and the real Spider-Man was in hiding or something. Yeah, this didn’t go over too well.

Originally intended to be a quick replacement story blew into a multi-year epic dominating most the 1990s and eventually being undone by, someone, bringing back the first Green Goblin (who also, coincidently, was in hiding). Yeah, so if you see any Spider-Man comics from the 1990s, just to be on the safe side, skip it and read some X-Men. They’re also insane, but somehow it worked for them.

2. The Force is a bunch of bacteria

For more than 20 years, Star Wars fans fantasized about how awesome it would be to have the powers of the Force. We’d make girls like us and Comic Book Store Guy to give us free stuff. Aside from that we’d use our powers for only good.

Then creator George Lucas decided the Force was actually too cool. It seems the Force not some awesome, magical powers. No, it’s a bunch of microorganisms who float around in all living things called Midi-chlorians. And some people, I believe we call them wackos, can hear the Midi-chlorians talking to them, and that’s the Force.
Screw this, I’m going to pretend I’m He-Man again.

1. Bat-nipples

There have been bad comic book movies. There’s Halle Berry as Catwoman, an Italian Red Skull, and the warped idea that anyone wanted Richard Pryor in a Superman movie. But all these bow to the terribleness of the most terrible alteration to a comic book character’s movie persona. Director Joel Schumacher, who as we all know, considered the 1960’s Batman and Robin too tame, decided to give his Batman and Robin something they’ve never had before: nipples. Yes. Adoring their emblemized, leather meets plastic armor suits were rock hard nipples and overly compensating codpieces. For all the Christian Bale broodiness, geeks will forever be haunted by the Bat-nipples.

Every Monday, I force my opinion on you, my fearless readers, ranking the seven of something geeky.