Your Trek moments...

Besides the excitement of discovering Star Trek itself we probably all have Trek related moments that linger in memory for how they touched or moved us.

- the Christmas Eve (1970) I got my first model of the Enterprise and Klingon battle cruiser.
- my first readings of Spock Must Die and The Making Of Star Trek.
- getting Franz Joseph's blueprints and the Star Fleet Technical Manual.
- the release of TMP.
- my first Trek convention (1976).
- meeting John Colicos in person.
- getting TOS on DVD in the clamshell season box sets.
- FINALLY an accurate model of the Enterprise in 1/350 scale from Round2.
- release of the entire series soundtrack.

There have been others, but those are the ones that really resonate.


Anyone else?

 

The moment itself is long gone by now, but I do have a post-it note with a message in my copy of the Star Trek encyclopedia from my dad who gave it to me for Christmas one year. Dad's still around but still something I'll always remember.

 

Summer 1982, watching The Wrath of Khan for the first time in a theater. I would see it three more times over the course of that summer.

Seeing James Doohan at a con in the early 90's, sadly it was only for a few minutes.

Seeing the 11 foot Enterprise model at the NASM in 1982. Somewhere I have about two dozen slides, shot from every possible angle.

Watching The Best of Both Worlds at a theater last year with several hundred fellow Trek fans.

Reading The Making of Star Trek and The Star Trek Compendium in the early 80's.

 

I made a scratchbuilt Galileo model and attatched two safety pins to the roof. Then I strung a string from halfway up our TV tower to the base of our backyard fence. When I hooked the safety pins onto the string and gave my shuttlecraft a push it flew away perfectly downward in a sweeping arc to land softly at the base of the fence.

It was just like watching it fly away on television.

My dad thought I was nuts.

Good times.

 

Finding a 3-d model of the Enterprise for my non-standard animation software 14 years ago. Once in a while, I still do beauty shots with it.

 

This summer, at the Chicago convention. I waited in line 3 hours to get Shatner's autograph, as well as having a conversation with Anthony Montgomery at the same convention.

 

- The DS9 premier and the marathon preceding it. It was the first time I ever saw early TNG, as I had been watching it from around Season 3 on. I was too young to realize it was mostly terrible.
- Getting my first model after that. A Romulan ship TOS style.
- First time watching The Inner Light

 

• Reading The Making of Star Trek in Jr, High. It opened my eyes to how TV shows and movies are made, and that interest in film production never left me even as my interest in the show's sequels and spin-offs waned.
• Watching TMP twice in a row on opening weekend because my ride didn't show up on time, so I went back in.
• Interviewing Ronald D. Moore on Paramount lot, and...
• Having Mike Okuda show me the TNG Art Dept. and getting to play with Picard's desk computer.
• Rick Sternbach nicely sending me DS9 stage plans and blueprints for the Sega Genesis DS9 game I was working on.
• Becoming buddies with Andy Probert and getting to go to his house and actually flip through his sketchbooks(!!!).
• Getting involved with Starship Exeter and making some really good friends from that, including Admiral Dennis Buzzkill.
• Taking Grace Lee Whitney to lunch in 2012.

 

You really hit a lot of the notes here. I never met Colicos, but otherwise my list would be very similar. I met Walter Koenig briefly at a small convention.

Also, seeing the show in color for the first time (dazzling when all you've ever had is a b&w TV), and seeing the 11-footer at NASM in 1977, hanging from the ceiling.

 

...reading "the Making of Star Trek" for the first time
...receiving the blueprints and technical manual for TOS
...the "Friend" scene in ST II Khan
...my first attempt at assembling the Original Enterprise model
...Enterprise D
...Avery Brooks as a Star Fleet Commander/Captain
...Janeway's first hair flounce
...the First Contact scene in "First Contact"

 

* Playing "name that episode" with my college buddies. A game that was usually measured in micro-seconds:

"Stardate 243. . . "
"A Taste of Armageddon!"

* More college memories: staying up to the wee hours debating the philosophical implications of the transporter. "But is it really you . . . or just an exact duplicate of you, and you're actually dead?"

* Making a road trip with my entire SF Club to see TMP on opening night.

* Getting Robert Wise to sign a copy of STARLOG for me. (I recently stumbled onto that magazine while clearing out my parents' house.)

* Doing my first science-fiction convention panel alongside the late, great Theodore Sturgeon.

* Briefly meeting James Doohan at a special showing of ST III at the Lewis & Clark Theater near Sea-Tac, WA.

* Searching NYC for a VHS copy of "Assignment: Earth" for research purposes. And having to do the same for "The Counter-Clock Incident" a few years later.

* Watching the first ep of TNG while cat-sitting in the West Village.

* Watching the premiere ep of "Enterprise" with a local Trek fan club on my very last night as a New Yorker . . . .

* And, yes, finding out that The Q Continuum had hit the NYT Bestseller List. As I recall, I let out a whoop and ran through the halls of the Flatiron Building, waving a fax of the List in the air . . . .

 

Great topic.

Watching Star Trek the day I graduated from kindergarten. (I don't remember the episode, but I do remember watching the show).

Watching Star Trek III with my parents. I remember a model Enterprise hanging over the popcorn stand, and the place was PACKED.

Meeting George Takei in 1990, (he had a mustache that he grew for a movie), meeting him again in 1994 for his autobiography.

Meeting Walter Koenig, James Doohan, Rene Auberjoinis, Michael Dorn. Seeing but not meeting Jonathan Frakes.

Melancholy that Star Trek VI was it.

Checking out Star Trek books at B. Dalton and Waldenbooks in the mid to late 80s and early 90s. Actually, I found a flier about the Takei 1990 convention at Waldenbooks...

Participating in The Star Trek Adventure at Universal Studios.

 

Not a specific moment but just how excited my brother and I were that they showed TOS in syndication right after we got home from grade school in the early 70s. That was when I first discovered it and have never left. Good memories.

 

One that really stands out for me (which I've talked about before, so forgive me) is not because it was unique or momentous, but because it was a feeling that doesn't happen anymore: Seeing the last "new to me" episode in reruns. In 1986 (age 16) I got a book that listed all the season and episodes, so I knew what was out there, but my local station seemed to re-start TOS every time it moved its timeslot. Which was fairly often, so season three episodes were hard to come by. I read the synopses and imagined what these few unseen episodes would be like, and tried not to miss any when they were getting close. The last three were "That Which Survives," "The Cloud Minders" and "The Lights of Zetar." I can remember telling a church teacher, whom I knew as a fan, about finally seeing "The Cloud Minders." "Oh, yeah," he said "the one with the troglytes, I haven't seen that one for a long time." Ultimately it took about two more years to catch "The Lights of Zetar," in my senior year of high school. I had been watching TOS for over two-thirds of my life by then!

It was such a sensation of anticipation combined with what seemed like pure luck, I've rarely felt something similar. In fact once in a while still I will have a dream that I'm seeing an unknown TOS episode for the first time.

 

My top moment was holding my newborn son while Balance of Terror was playing. He was only a few hours old and was sleeping away. When the episode ended he started crying.

 

Moments within a moment.

When TMP debuted and when I saw it for the first time there were moments that really grabbed me.

- the opening sequence with our first sights of the new Klingon battle cruisers.
- the initial appearances of Kirk, Spock and McCoy and the thunderous applause and cheering that erupted with each.
- the reveal of the newly refit Enterprise. A genuine "OH MY GOD!" moment for so many in the theatre. Hushed awe followed by yet another eruption of applause and cheering.

 

Scoring a copy of The Making Of Star Trek at a shop in the basement of the James Dean museum in Fairmount, IN.

Then I lost it somehow.

Then I bought another one at a used bookstore in the area.

 

While not TOS, my wife was in labor with our oldest son when the Voyager episode "Scorpion, Part I" aired the first time. The doctor and I watched the episode while my wife was having contractions.

She hasn't let me forget to this day.

 

That is hilarious!

My wife was zonked on meds after her c-section.

 

*Recalling seeing Nichelle Nichols speaking at a con (from several feet away) in front of a very huge audience in Southern California.

*Seeing the Ligonians in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode 'Code of Honor.' (And it was a Tasha Yar episode!)

*Seeing "Star Trek: The Next Generation"come alive in 1987.

*Seeing 'The Menagerie' special on Channel 5, KTLA....for those of us familiar with that Southern California channel. (Of course, now I feel the episode is flawed, but back then at - what - 6? 7 years of age? I was just watching it for the adventure!

*Seeing Avery Brooks as the lead in a "Star Trek" show.

*Being scared of the Ceti Alpha Eel scene from "Star Trek II" (the real one) for many years.

*Being excited for and enjoying 2009's "Star Trek," and hearing a young kid whistle Michael Giacchino's theme during the end credits behind me in the theater.

*Changing my last name to 'Kirk' around 2000/2001. (And not just because I was a fan of "Star Trek").