CD-Rom -- ''Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual''

"Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual" Simon & Schuster Interactive (800) 983-5333 Windows, Macintosh $69, $54 street -------------------------------------

After years of denial, I'm ready to admit the truth: I am a Trekker.

I've watched every episode of the three "Star Trek" television series, seen all the movies and once took my mother - even more of a Trekker - to catch a personal appearance by Patrick Stewart, the English actor who plays Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

So I was ready to go into warp drive with the new "Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual." But the CD-ROM seems to be stuck on impulse power, providing a surprisingly low-energy tour of the starship Enterprise.

True to the "Star Trek" spirit, the manual delivers cutting-edge computer technology through a feature called "QuickTime VR," which lets users guide themselves around 13 sets from "Star Trek: The Next Generation." You click the mouse button and hold it down; then, by moving the mouse, you change your view of the scene.

Extensive narration is provided by the "Star Trek computer," with the voice of actress Majel Barrett Roddenbery, who did the same job on the TV show. A five-minute "guided tour" through the manual is narrated by Jonathan Frakes, who played Commander William T. Riker.

Appropriate Star Trek sounds, from the beeping of communicators to the whoosh of automatic doors, fill the background.

For a supposedly "interactive" CD-ROM, however, the manual doesn't give you much chance to get involved. On the bridge, for example, you can fire a photon torpedo - but all you do is push a button, then watch a short video clip of a Romulan ship exploding into a fireball.

Navigating through the Enterprise is awkward; you're never sure whether clicking on an object will produce a close-up photograph, or where to locate one of the short animations. The text is difficult to read, too.

Finally, the manual doesn't fit well into the narrow confines of late 20th-century computer technology. There are long, annoying pauses between scenes while more data is downloaded from the CD-ROM.

With all these drawbacks, I'd only recommend the manual to deeply devoted Trekkers who've spent big bucks on their home computers.