Fifty years ago today, “Star Trek” debuted on NBC.
I wasn’t watching it. I don’t recall why. Probably there was something on opposite it that my parents preferred to watch and since they controlled the television, that would be pretty much that.
I wound up stumbling onto one episode in the third season: “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” I was underwhelmed and didn’t bother to keep watching. However when I was in middle school, my friend Keith introduced me to the series through the James Blish-written books that were adaptations of the episodes. By that point the program had gone into syndication and I wound up watching “Who Mourns for Adonis?” I was totally hooked.
I met my first wife at a Star Trek convention. I met my second wife because she had made a Klingon puppet that I bought in order to use it as a prop during “Mystery Trekkie Theater,” the annual skewering of Trek that Bob Greenberger, Mike Friedman and I perform at Shore Leave convention. So basically my four children owe their lives to Star Trek.
I’ve become friends with some of the cast members. Attended George Takei’s wedding. Co-wrote Jimmy Doohan’s autobiography. Presented the Julie Award at Dragon*Con to Leonard Nimoy and, the following year, William Shatner. And I have an entire aspect of my career based on Star Trek novels.
Long live Star Trek.
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The first time I was aware Star Trek existed was when I saw a plastic cup for Star Trek The Motion Picture in my grandmother’s house. I vaguely remember watching STIII with my parents when they rent it on VHS but it was STIV the first time I understood and enjoyed what I was watching. I have been a fan of the franchise since. It was one of the few things that the whole family enjoyed together when I was growing up.
Long live ST
I just started re-reading ST New Frontier Treason this weekend. Man, I had forgotten how great these books are and how much and enjoy these characters.
Star Trek is one of those things, like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny (and a few others) that I don’t remember ever not knowing about. Strangely, or perhaps not, I seem to remember seeing the Filmation animated series before the actual live-action tv series. I remember having an old Star Trek story record (remember those?) whose title was “En Vino Veritas.” Unfortunately, that’s as much as I remember about it.
I remember first seeing it when I was a little kid (early 1970s) and was running around the house, pretending the main floors, attic, and basement were different decks. I lost interest for a while, then got back into it in college in 1990 when I was hanging out in the student lounge and saw the NEXT GENERATION episode “The Defector.” I’ve since seen every series since (suffering through VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE), run a very fun STAR TREK rpg campaign (using the Fasa rules), and have numerous games based on the franchise. Live long and prosper!
There’s a downside to everything, though. If it hadn’t been for Star Trek, you would never have met Richard Arnold.
(I still love reading that cleverly disguised takedown you did of him in Star Trek The Next Generation: Before Dishonor.)
Ouch. You had to remind me. I much enjoy Mr. David’s works. But, this one … what happened to the concrete windsock … Arrrggghhh!
“Star Trek” premiered with a “sneak preview” or some such thing a week before the rest of the 66 – 67 TV season began. I did watch the first episode aired, which was “The Man Trap,” not Roddenberry’s choice for a premiere. I thought it was okay, but I was under the spell of “Bewitched” at the time. I started watching it regularly in its second season, then caught the first season in syndication.
Interestingly, my dad watched the show a few times that first season. He could not stand “Bewitched,” and I think the “Wagon Train” aspect of the show appealed to him. Among other things, I remember watching the second part of “The Menagerie” with him.
BTW, real quick, a response I’ve come up with for people who complain about the quality of the Third Season: Don’t forget, the Third Season still had “The Enterprise Incident,” while the First Season still had “The Lazarus Syndrome.”
My first episode was in syndication, “The Lights of Zetar” it was weird and interesting and as a little kid… It left an indelible impression.
As I become older, I appreciated every episode, including, Heaven help me, “Spock’s Brain.” I watched the Next Generation, actually every episode except for the first half of the episode where Beverly’s Grandma dies and she’s macking with the Incubus Ronin… Yeah… Let’s keep it at half an episode… I Did watch some DS9, some Voyager, All movies except the recent one… I’ll wait for the Blu-Ray.
But I think the one thing that was appointment entertainment for me were novels by some guy named Peter… Or maybe it was David. I’m not sure. I just know he’s a writer. Of stuff. I devoured every novel he ever wrote for Trek… Figuratively, of course. And so While Shatner and Nimoy and Kelley and Stewart and Brooks and Mulgrew and Bakula and Pine have been there on our TV and Movie Screens for the past 50 years, I think that it wouldn’t be here today without the passion of us fans keeping it going all these years and I hope that this can go for another 50.
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Especially with a few more novels from Peter, time permitting… Hint, Hint, Simon and Schuster.
Grozit… 50 YEARS…
It overlapped “Bewitched”. My dad watched “Bewitched”.
I drove twenty miles one-way to watch “Star Trek” at a friend’s house.
I saw both pilots at WorldCon a week before the show began on the air.
To the best of my recollection, I first encountered Star Trek as a TV series at age 9. I got the Mego Enterprise playset for my birthday that year, but don’t remember having seen any episodes up to that point (we moved about a month after my birthday and my first memory of having seen an episode was in the new house). I suspect the playset was something my parents, who never watched Star Trek themselves, assumed (correctly) I’d like.
In my third grade class photo, I’m wearing a (green) Star Trek shirt, but, again, I don’t think I was fully aware of the show at the time (I don’t think I’d even seen the animated series). Given my later appreciation of Star Trek, my having that shirt at the time was an ironic coincidence.
I think I first became fully aware of Star Trek at around 14. There was some movie on TV about (I think) kids time traveling and I recognized their appearances in such and such a place as the exact same effect as a landing party beaming down.
As I said in a blog entry posted yesterday (primarily about the latest episode of Star Trek Continues), While Star Trek was, on the one hand, “just” a TV series, its impact on both popular culture and technology can’t be denied. The large Enterprise model isn’t in the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum “just because.” It’s there because it’s a cultural artifact.
Star Trek (as both a TV series and a cultural phenomenon) has both its good and bad points. Moments that come to mind among the good points are Walter Koenig showing kindness to me at my first convention (of any kind) in March 1984 (he was hanging out in the dealer’s room and I asked how things worked at conventions. Did people just mingle? He took a moment to explain about panels and such) and my Grandma having a great time at the June 1984 convention, attended by Mark Lenard. She knew nothing about Star Trek, but enjoyed herself because everyone else was enjoying themselves.
For the record, Lenard opened his presentation with an announcement from the Vulcan government that they weren’t sending anyone to the Olympics.
“We asked for a few days off for Pon Farr, but…”
I don’t remember the first episode I saw, but it’s interesting that Charles Waldo mentioned “The Lights of Zetar.” I do remember that the first time I saw it, it gave me a nightmare.
Years ago, there were buttons and bumper stickers proclaiming “Star Trek lives.” Not only is that very true, but, as I argued in a blog entry earlier this summer, the series has become analogous to Shakespeare.
How so? simple. I suspect that Star Trek will be like Shakespeare’s plays, with performances and adaptations (the various fan films and the reboot films are two current examples) going on for years and centuries to come.
Rick.
I had that same Mego Enterprise playset. I got it for Christmas when I was 4. For some reason, the TV commercials advertising the playset led me to believe the playset’s “transporter” actually worked. I was disappointed to learn it was just a plastic chamber with two compartments, and I wouldn’t be able to use it to make unpleasant foods and my sister disappear.
I also received as gifts the Mego Kirk, Spock, and Klingon action figures that same Christmas. I filled out the cast with Mego Batman and Penguin action figures, and a smaller Bend-N-Flex Robin figure. The resulting adventures were later ruled non-canonical by both Paramount and DC Comics.
I’ve never been unaware of Star Trek, but I seriously got into the mythos as a tween, after watching a rented VHS cassette of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” which, along with “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” remains in my Trek Movie Top Two. I started watching TNG with Season 3, right when it was on the verge of making a great leap in quality. TNG s3, s4, and s5 all have episodes I loved and still love (maybe s6 and s7 had their moments as well, but I mostly remember how smug, smirky, and self-impressed certain cast members started coming across by then — which I thought carried over to the First Contact movie; thus, I avoided watching the two TNG movies that followed. I went into DS9 with a chip on my shoulder because of Michelle Forbes turning down the chance to continue playing Ro (what can I say, I was a petulant, inflexible 20-year-old), and gave up on it early on, but I do plan to catch up with it via DVD. Never got into any of the subsequent TV series. Was rather underwhelmed by the Abrams Trek reboot movie, though I ultimately thought it a promising start, didn’t watch Into Darkness at all after finding out about the cheap, lazy return of a certain villain, and thought Beyond was just okay.
Love Peter’s New Frontiers novels, love his stories for the Trek comic books. Thank you, Peter, for bringing as much joy to Trek fans as Trek has brought to you.
BTW, the MeTV cable network shows the original STAR TREK series on Saturday nights. (Even when they shook up their Sci-Fi Saturday block, STAR TREK remained.) Normally the show airs Saturday night at 9; this weekend, to celebrate the 50th anniversary, the network disrupted its scheduled airing (which would be near the end of season 2) and skipped SVENGOOLIE to air “The Man Trap” and “The Cage.”
Oh, and they didn’t cancel SVENGOOLIE. It’s a “special” SVENGOOLIE where they show “The Cage” instead of a movie.
And you’ve also written the best TREK novels that I’ve read; VENDETTA and Q-SQUARED were brilliant.
I only caught the original TREK in re-runs on channel 11 (WPIX) after moving to the US with my family, but I had heard of it as a child. I became a hard-core fan as a teen when TNG began its run, but for me, DS9 is my favorite.
I’m not as much into TREK as I was, but I’ve liked the “Abrams-verse” films and I’m glad to see TREK make it to 50. Here’s hoping that it lives long and prospers for another 50.
My dad used to joke that he had the second half of every original-series episode memorized, because I watched it faithfully in syndication from 6-7 on WPIX for years, and he got home from work around 6:30.
I was certainly interested as a youngin’, but by the time I was in high school I was going to the films on opening day, and when TNG hit in my college years I was completely hooked. The rest led me all kinds of places, including here. Happy 50th, Star Trek — here’s to more.
I was born in 1970, by which time the original series was no longer in first run. I caught it on Saturday evenings, when it ran on one of our local stations following In Search Of, or during the Saturday afternoon “action block” on the same local station (I think) which also included reruns of the Lone Ranger. Soon after I discovered the live-action show, I discovered The Animated Series.
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I watched most of the episodes on an old black-and-white Zenith TV; we didn’t get a color TV until I was five or six, and my parents would use it to watch Lawrence Welk which some monster decided to run opposite Star Trek on Saturday evenings.
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None of that diminished the wonderment Star Trek brought to me at a young age. It was a gateway to imagination; it took me with the crew to “strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations.” It posed moral questions no other show I watched at the time did, and posed challenging dilemmas that required brainpower as much (if not more) than firepower to solve.
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I’ve since watched every episode of every TV series, and every movie. I admit TOS looks sillier to me now as my tastes and television and movie entertainment have matured. But I also understand the context in which TOS first aired; it was ground-breaking, not just for me personally but for the television medium in general.
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So I’ll always have a soft spot for Trek. It filled my childhood with imaginative stories, and a sense of wonder that never left me.
I don’t ever remember not knowing about or watching Trek. While there might be some Trek I’d like to forget, between TV, toys, comics, novels, audio plays, and movies it’s been a constant presence throughout my 45 years.
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Here’s to 50 more.
The first episode of Star Trek I saw in syndication was “Who Mourns For Adonais”.
As a kid, I had the Mego Kirk, Spock, and Gorn action figures.
I used to watch the syndicated episodes weekdays on KTVU Channel 2 on a color Zenith TV.
Saw you at the Mohegan Sun Terrficon. Got all of my Trek and New Frontier books signed. It was great to meet you in person and hope you show up for next years con. I never throught I’d get the opportunity to see you because a lot of the come are in major cities were it’s too expensive for me to travel. This one was right in my home town so I didn’t have to worry about getting a hotel room for all three days of the con.
While I saw most or all the animated episodes as a kid and have seen all the movies, I’ve only seen a few of the original series. I bought the 50th anniversary blu-ray set and have been watching episodes. Despite a few aspects that were of its time and some obvious budget restriction elements (the alien that’s obviously a dressed up cocker spaniel) the episodes hold up surprisingly well. Sometimes it’s the little things that make you really appreciate the series, such as Sulu’s room being full of plants; while that was partly there to advance the plot, it also tells you something about Sulu’s hobbies. And the scene where Spock is playing music that Uhura sings to. Some older shows cut to the chase plotwise, so seeing the downtime scenes makes you appreciate more how the show would have grabbed people from the era.
I’m one of the originals. That is, I became hooked with the first showing of MAN TRAP. Missed a couple first time out – The Alternative Factor and Savage Curtain – but, by the time TNG came out, VHS made sure this didn’t happen again.
Memory of those times is still sharp. This is why I still cringe whenever I hear Paramount bleat about their precious ‘intellectual property, the same intellectual property they gave up on partway through season 2 and which would have probably faded into obscurity if the fans hadn’t twisted their arms into a third season and, from there, into syndication. But, hey, says the studio, they don’t owe the fans anything, right? Feh.