I’ve enjoyed and been glad of all the various series that came after TOS & TAS, from TNG onwards (and unlike some, I’ve basically loved the Kurtzman era). But at the same time… as an increasingly sad and nostalgic 57-year-old, I do also miss those for-me youthful days when TOS and its films were simply what Star Trek was. (And everybody was still alive.)
It wasn’t just TOS and the films. It was all the novels, comics, RPGs, fanzines, and reference books like the Concordance, FJ Tech Manual, etc. which expanded on the show and movies to a huge degree and created its own ‘canon’ before canon was a thing, until Roddenberry killed it all in 1987.
Sure (and The Best of Trek, never forget The Best of Trek), though TOS and the films was what it was centered around. I mean, we knew it wasn’t really canon, but it was easy (and fun) to pretend that a lot of it was.
But I mean more the sense of it, in the 70s. With posters and poster magazines in the stores, and the early conventions, and the MEGO action figures and toy sets, and the show on local stations all the time. (For a while, WPIX in NY had nightly airings of two back-to-back episodes.).
The FASA RPG is really cool, very interesting take on the setting.
I'm a year older.
Those were exciting times. When Star Trek meant a show about specific characters on a specific ship doing space shenanigans. Where you had to wait for one of the syndication stations to run an episode. If you didn't have TV Guide, you waited to find out which episode it was. And you sat through it, commercials, cut scenes and all.
You'd be at a drug store with your mom and in the books and magazine section see a James Blish volume or the Puzzle Manual and snap them up. James Blish and Fotonovels were your gateway to episodes before the next rerun. ADF helped remember the animated series. Reference books were just starting to come out and a lot of fan produced stuff was out of reach if you didn't do mail order.
Oh and the model kits and Mego stuff. They made after school playtime so fun (getting the Enterprise nacelles even was a hopeless task). The Donmoor shirts, along with the Remco utility belt or maybe the Walkie talkies completed what passed for Cosplay.
If you didn't live it, all of this sounds - at best- quint. At worst, limiting. "One show?" Yeah. One show.
If you did live it, those were magical days.
Personally, I miss the days when people remembered that Generation Y comes in-between Gen-X and Millennial and weren't erasing my identity because they think generations need to be 25 years long...
It would be very difficult for me to forget The Best of Trek as I had an article published in the BoT #15 anthology (I even used the word canon in my second paragraph).
Those were good days indeed.
Hey, good for you! I loved those books.It would be very difficult for me to forget The Best of Trek as I had an article published in the BoT #15 anthology (I even used the word canon in my second paragraph).
Those were good days indeed.
That is truly very cool. What was your article/piece about?
It was a review of TNG entitled 'Beyond the 23rd Century: What the future holds for the Next Generation of Trekkers'. The show had just begun its second season at the time, so the piece is pretty dated. I submitted the article to TREK magazine, but it wasn't until I laid my hands on the anthology that I found out they had published it.
Ah, that does bring back memories. Those covers were cool, even if they were several shades removed from established Trek images.
Sadly, #15 is the only volume I still have in my collection, along with my set of original Bantam novels.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, those were definitely good times, when each new novel or non-fiction book on Trek was like finding a gold brick.
Sadly, #15 is the only volume I still have in my collection, along with my set of original Bantam novels.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, those were definitely good times, when each new novel or non-fiction book on Trek was like finding a gold brick.
How did you survive such a massive blow?! I think that offense would’ve struck down a lesser human being!
For me the “good old days” were 1970-1987 for Star Trek. Yes, TOS, TAS and the early Trek films along with all the tie-in stuff was wicked cool. I could be generous and toss in the advent of TNG even if I wasn’t impressed with it early on.
I can look back and see different signposts where the awesomeness of it all started to get diluted. Yeah, the advent of TNG was one signpost, but it wasn’t quite so obvious then because we had yet to see TNG become a thing. The advent of DS9 and the TNG movies were another signpost. There are parts of TNG and some DS9 I mellowed on, but when they had two Trek series going on at the same time I felt it was too much. And in all these years I haven’t changed my mind about that. I know later series and films have their fans, but TNG winding down (on television), the TNG films, DS9 and finally the introduction of VOY marked the end of what I think of as Star Trek’s golden era. It was now too fucking much. Yes, I’m fully onboard with the thought 2009 is when Trek really went to hell, has gotten progressively worse and God knows when/if it will ever recover, I see the advent of VOY as when it really started going downhill and all the magic had evaporated.
Back in the ‘70s and early ‘80s we lamented Star Trek wasn’t respected and taken seriously. We loved it as something special most others just didn’t recognize. But TNG came along and turned Star Trek mainstream. With DS9 and VOY Trek was fully corporate and paint-by-number.
For me TOS will always rule, and when I think of the magic I felt it had I recall the 1970s-‘80s. Every new publication and collectible was an event. Now, and for quite sometime, it’s just content.
Back in the day any bit of Trek news was something to celebrate. Now it’s one big yawn. Trek as a franchise simply doesn’t exist for me anymore. They started buggering it in the mid ‘90s then finally put a knife in its heart in 2009, leaving us with a zombie corpse lurching mindlessly about.
The good ol’ days were so damn fun.
I can look back and see different signposts where the awesomeness of it all started to get diluted. Yeah, the advent of TNG was one signpost, but it wasn’t quite so obvious then because we had yet to see TNG become a thing. The advent of DS9 and the TNG movies were another signpost. There are parts of TNG and some DS9 I mellowed on, but when they had two Trek series going on at the same time I felt it was too much. And in all these years I haven’t changed my mind about that. I know later series and films have their fans, but TNG winding down (on television), the TNG films, DS9 and finally the introduction of VOY marked the end of what I think of as Star Trek’s golden era. It was now too fucking much. Yes, I’m fully onboard with the thought 2009 is when Trek really went to hell, has gotten progressively worse and God knows when/if it will ever recover, I see the advent of VOY as when it really started going downhill and all the magic had evaporated.
Back in the ‘70s and early ‘80s we lamented Star Trek wasn’t respected and taken seriously. We loved it as something special most others just didn’t recognize. But TNG came along and turned Star Trek mainstream. With DS9 and VOY Trek was fully corporate and paint-by-number.
For me TOS will always rule, and when I think of the magic I felt it had I recall the 1970s-‘80s. Every new publication and collectible was an event. Now, and for quite sometime, it’s just content.
Back in the day any bit of Trek news was something to celebrate. Now it’s one big yawn. Trek as a franchise simply doesn’t exist for me anymore. They started buggering it in the mid ‘90s then finally put a knife in its heart in 2009, leaving us with a zombie corpse lurching mindlessly about.
The good ol’ days were so damn fun.
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I have the same sentiments too. If I wanted to watch more TOS then my local newspaper or TV guide was my friend. Usually a repeat episode sometime over the weekend during the summer. No video cassettes or discs, no binge watching.
It didn't matter which episode it was or season, it was Star Trek.
I had some like minded friends that enjoyed ST as much as I did. We'd discuss everything in an episode. That was so much fun and we might disagree but never argued, like people do today.
Edit: Back then myself and other Trekkies my age, we never cared about canon or continuity or viewing orders or inconsistencies. I watched ST because it was a treat that at best could be watched once a week if that on antenna TV during syndication at that time.
Good times when Star Trek was appreciated by a niche of people for the positives it brought to science fiction.
It didn't matter which episode it was or season, it was Star Trek.
I had some like minded friends that enjoyed ST as much as I did. We'd discuss everything in an episode. That was so much fun and we might disagree but never argued, like people do today.
Edit: Back then myself and other Trekkies my age, we never cared about canon or continuity or viewing orders or inconsistencies. I watched ST because it was a treat that at best could be watched once a week if that on antenna TV during syndication at that time.
Good times when Star Trek was appreciated by a niche of people for the positives it brought to science fiction.
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Nice! I am no TNG fanboy (it's fine, just was never my favorite other than TOS—that would be Voyager) but I certainly know it and would enjoy such a piece, especially seeing your perspective now through the lens of ~1987. Is it available somwehere? I don't mind purchasing it or the wider BOT issue/volume if needed.It was a review of TNG entitled 'Beyond the 23rd Century: What the future holds for the Next Generation of Trekkers'. The show had just begun its second season at the time, so the piece is pretty dated. I submitted the article to TREK magazine, but it wasn't until I laid my hands on the anthology that I found out they had published it.
This is really pretty much a "get off my lawn" thread, but I don't care.
Exactly, which means something different than it does today. Today it's "whatever product with the Star Trek brand on it." Much different than the hunger for those same 79 episodes and more time with the characters within. We already knew the quality of them and looked forward to the reunion movies. Movies we looked forward to not because "new Star Trek product" but because they were reunions. More Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov.
It wasn't "I have to watch/like it because it's called Star Trek." Again: one show. And that made our little club, well, little. And that was the exciting part.
I have zero issues with people who look at the entire franchise that way. Actually, I wish I felt the same way they did. But I haven't gotten legitimately excited for new Star Trek in decades.
That's indicative of out Social Media/Internet mindset as a society. Not to mention that people are just more easily angered these days. But on social, you can tell by the comments, the parroting sentence structure and profile pictures that a lot of these people are socially disadvantaged.
In-person interactions with fans for me as always been a much more positive and rewarding experience (I'd probably have a great time with some of you folks on this thread). Before conventions were big business for studios, I went often and loved it.
Exactly, which means something different than it does today. Today it's "whatever product with the Star Trek brand on it." Much different than the hunger for those same 79 episodes and more time with the characters within. We already knew the quality of them and looked forward to the reunion movies. Movies we looked forward to not because "new Star Trek product" but because they were reunions. More Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov.
It wasn't "I have to watch/like it because it's called Star Trek." Again: one show. And that made our little club, well, little. And that was the exciting part.
I have zero issues with people who look at the entire franchise that way. Actually, I wish I felt the same way they did. But I haven't gotten legitimately excited for new Star Trek in decades.
That's indicative of out Social Media/Internet mindset as a society. Not to mention that people are just more easily angered these days. But on social, you can tell by the comments, the parroting sentence structure and profile pictures that a lot of these people are socially disadvantaged.
In-person interactions with fans for me as always been a much more positive and rewarding experience (I'd probably have a great time with some of you folks on this thread). Before conventions were big business for studios, I went often and loved it.
This here.
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