Last week, I went to Paramount to film some host wraps for the Star Trek:TNG DVD documentary, and discovered that the old cliché is true: you can't go home again, especially when your home has been torn down and replaced with sets for a Farrelly Brothers movie.

It wasn't the first time I'd been to Paramount since Wesley Crusher turned into a magic ball of light and floated out into the galaxy to fight crime and save amusement parks from evil developers with The Traveler. In Just A Geek, I wrote,

When I worked on Nemesis several years ago, returning to Paramount to put on the uniform and immerse myself – if only for a day – in Wesley Crusher's goofy grin and wide-eyed excitement (I wrote at the time that I couldn't tell where Wesley ended and I began) it was an emotional experience. I felt genuine regret for not appreciating Star Trek more when I was on the series every day, which morphed into a general regret that when I was a teenager, I acted like . . . a teenager. Some of Just A Geek is about this, and the catharsis that came from writing it is a large reason why I was able to accept and embrace my small role in the Star Trek universe.

I went to Paramount last week to go onto our old stages and walk a camera crew through the Guardian of Forever into 1987. I didn't expect it to be particularly emotional. I was wrong.

I live in a different part of town now, and while it's faster to go through Silverlake and across Beverly, I wanted to put myself in a place where I'd be most receptive to emotional sense memories, so I added twenty minutes to my drive and went down the 2, up the 5, across Los Feliz and down Western before cutting across Sunset to Van Ness. I took this route every single day, once I got my driver's license (and a license plate frame on my Prelude that said "My other car is the Enterprise" – awesome), and at one time could probably do it with my eyes closed. I told my iPod to shuffle my '80s Alternative playlist, and after an hour of Boingo, Depeche Mode, OMD, Squeeze and The Smiths, I was, as they say, really feeling it when I pulled up to the guard gate on Melrose.

I turned down Only a Lad and rolled down my window. "Hi," I said, "I'm Wil Wheaton, and I'm going to Stage 24 for the Star Trek documentary."

The guard, who was probably in elementary school when I was piloting the Enterprise, nodded.

"May I see your ID, sir?"

Though I'm “sir” to a lot of people these days, it was bizarre to hear it in a place where I was used to being “The Kid” or “The Boy.” I pulled it out of my wallet and handed it to him.

"Okay, you're all set, Mr. Wheaton." He said. "Just pull up to the valet there. I'm sure you know your way around here?"

I smiled. "Yeah, I do."

He handed me back my ID and leaned down toward me.

"We're not supposed to do this, but I'm a big fan," he said, conspiratorially. With anyone who really was a big deal in Hollywood, he was probably risking his job.

"Really?" I said. "You seem a little young for TNG."

He grinned. "Not Star Trek, your blog."

This took me completely by surprise. I don't think that my blog has been anything special recently. I'm so unhappy with it that I've frequently considered putting it on hiatus for a few months.

"That," I said, "is totally awesome. Thank you."

He smiled and then looked over his shoulder at the other guards. He turned back to me, nodded tersely, and waved me onto the lot.

I traded my car for an orange ticket with some numbers on it and headed toward stage 24. A few minutes later, I walked past the Hart building, where TNG's writers and our fearless leader Gene Roddenberry lived while I was on the series. I stopped for a minute and looked at what had been Gene's first-story office window. I was hit by a rapid-fire montage of all the times when I walked past that window and he called me in for a visit. I looked at the empty spot on the sidewalk where Gene's golf cart used to be – the same one I frequently got in trouble for racing around the backlot. I felt the first of many tugs at my heart.

Oh boy. This is going to be one of those days, I thought, as I pulled myself back into the present and walked to stage 24 to meet the crew.

"Glad you could make it, Wil," the producer said, as my eyes adjusted from the brilliance of the day to the darkness of the empty stage.

"Me too," I said.

I looked around for a moment. Something about this place was incredibly familiar.

"Hey, you know what I just realized? I shot Family Ties here right before I started Star Trek."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I was cast as Tina Yothers' boyfriend. I only did one episode before I booked TNG, but the word on the street at the time was that Gary David Goldberg was going to write me in as a recurring character before I went into outer space." I said. "And, uh, the future."

The stage was completely empty, except for a couple of work lights and the bleachers where audiences once sat. This stage, once filled with laughter and the energy of filming "live, before a studio audience," was now little more than an empty room. My whole life, I've been in love with the magic that goes into creating the suspended disbelief of movies and television, but it wasn't until I stood in that empty stage that I fully appreciated the effort that went into transforming 12,000 square feet of soundstage into the Keaton's lives for eight years.

"So I thought we'd head over toward stage 9," the producer said to me, "and we'll shoot our host wraps in there."

"Wait." I said. "You mean we get to walk into stage 9?"

"Don't get too excited," He said, " there's nothing left from Trek in there."

Though I knew that there was no way they'd preserve our sets for twenty years, and though I knew that someone else would eventually move into our stages, just as we'd moved into the original series' stages, I still felt a little sad.

"Nothing at all?" I said. It was a stupid question. Of course there wouldn't be anything there. But like a kid who just learned that Darth Vader was just a guy in a suit, or that KITT didn't really talk, I had to ask again, just to be sure I hadn't somehow misunderstood the cold hard reality.

"They're building sets for some reshoots on a Farrelly Brothers movie," he said, "So we'll just shoot outside." I was struck by how blasé he was, which also shouldn't have surprised me. How could I expect anyone else in the world to have the same emotional attachment to those stages as I did?

"Well . . . okay," I said.

The crew got the camera and sound equipment together and loaded it on a cart that looked heavy and awkward.

"Do you know a fast and preferably easy way to get over there from here?" the camera man asked me.

I couldn't suppress a smile. "Yeah. I do."

Next Week - Journey's End:

Wil Wheaton is going to Reseda, someday, to die.