"Get a life, will you, people? For crying out loud, it's just a TV show! When I was your age, I didn't watch television! I lived! So move out of your parents' basements! Get your own apartments and grow the hell up!"

Thus spake The Shat, on Saturday Night Live in 1986. It was Captain Kirk's network meltdown, his "mad as hell" protest against pointy-eared Trekkies. But the nerds had the last laugh. A quarter-century on, the box-office is stuffed with spandex superheroes and three-hour Tolkien flicks; Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica are slick TV flagships; San Diego's sweaty Comic-Con is a Hollywood fixture to rival Cannes. And Shatner grumps at not being included in J. J. Abrams' reboot of his youthful lark. Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, it's just a TV show.

Not all nerds are alike. My list looks deeper than the anoraks and the XL Starfleet suits, taking the baseline model as the shut-in who views reality through obsessive filters, be it jazz or taxidermy. The nerd crosses genres, from comedy to horror, though there's sadly scant recognition for nerdettes. Honours, though, go to Alyson Hannigan in Buffy and American Pie.

Nerds may be relentlessly mocked, belittled and given the verbal equivalent of atomic wedgies, but they grow ever stronger. Plus, they have their own unique rejoinders. So, frak off and get your own life!

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This top ten first appeared in Empire Magazine Issue 241.