How/When did you discover Gene Roddenberry's playground??

[BarryWaddle]

That's self explanatory, I think...How did you discover Star Trek?

For me, it was a TOS episode...The Tholian Web...And then my stepfather recorded Wrath of Khan off the TV...I think it was 1986-ish...And then of course, TNG premiered a year later. I was 8 (in '86).

 

[Mistral]

I vaguely remember watching it the last season it was on-couldn't narrow it down more as I was only 3.

 

[Gepard]

It was during TNG's first run, back during the first season, I think. I was about 4 or 5 at the time, and sometimes when my parents weren't around, I'd turn the TV on and flip around the channels; at some point, I must have stumbled on TNG. I recall being fascinated by the bright colored uniforms and the laser beams that shot out of people's fingers (thank you, Type 1 phaser! ). For some reason, I had the impression that my parents wouldn't want me watching something like that; I was wrong in that a few years later, my dad began watching regularly with "Yesterday's Enterprise," and I started watching with him.

The rest, as they say, is history...

 

[Mr. Fergy]

I said this before I was watching TOS re-runs , since I was 5, in 1977. My big brother turned it on, and I guess it stuck from some 31 years later.!

 

[zenophite]

i'va always been a sci-fi nut. fortunately i grew up in a time when a kid would still say he wanted to grow up to be an astronaut. anyway, somehow i always found the shows about space and aliens...i can't recall a time when i didn;t know about trek, buck rogers, dr who, or some other thing. one of my earliest memories is running behind the couch during a dr who episode (and that would be doctor #4).

 

[Tattooed_Trekki]

Voyager and DS9 hooked me in during the 90's when it first premiered and re-runs of TNG kept me here.

 

[Shaw]

For me, Star Trek has been ubiquitous... It was there before I could walk, before I could speak, before I could differentiate fiction from fact. From birth Star Trek was present in my life, and by the time I could communicate my likes and dislikes to my parents, they were quite well aware that Star Trek was very important to me.

For example, when other children were playing with wooden horses or wooden cars or wooden trains or even wooden planes, one of my relatives made me a wooden shuttlecraft to play with (I was about 3 at the time).

And even my earliest drawings as a child were of the Enterprise... unfortunately I haven't gotten much better at it in the intervening years.

 

[Cicero]

My first memory is of watching Riker and an away team beam somewhere during the first season of The Next Generation.

(I remember being very confused by The Empire Strikes Back shortly after that. I didn't realize the movie was sci-fi until I watched it for what I thought was the first time about a decade later (I'd watched Star Wars and Return of the Jedi - which I thought was the second film - innumerable times in the intervening years). Only after I mentioned that the movie seemed eerily familiar despite my not remembering any of it as I watched did my mother tell me that my parents had taken me to see the Star Wars trilogy during a film festival commemorating the opening of a new movie theater. A week or so later, everything clicked.)

I couldn't say when I first saw Kirk and the rest of the original crew, but I suspect it was in Star Trek IV or Star Trek V, the latter of which I'm sure we saw in the theaters at some point during its original run. Star Trek was so much in the background of my life growing up (and was so popular in my then home region of the country, which I didn't realize at the time was populated largely by geeks similar persons on various cultural fringes) that it didn't occur to me until after we moved to Chicago that not being a Star Trek fan wasn't what was unusual.

 

[Hermiod]

My father is/was a fan and he introduced me to it.

A bit later in life the BBC started showing TNG and I got hooked on that. Then they stopped after "The Best of Both World, Part Two" and started showing TOS so I watched that every week.

Then I got a copy of the Star Trek Chronology for a birthday present and read that cover to cover. TNG came back shortly after that and I was trapped forever.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

According to my mom, I'd always watched Star Trek (the original) as far as she can remember. So I guess it would've been in my toddler years (2-3). At 32, TOS and Superman are the two things that I still gravitate toward. It makes me feel like a kid again.

 

[Locutus]

I remember watching this weird show with guys in yellow, blue and red shirts running around a ship, going up into these funny crawlways, and then seeing them on two ships (although one was REALLY messed up) being chased by this long think that kinda looked like it was a piece of ...

I never even saw the titles, only caught the last 45 mins of the episode, and I was hooked by "The Doomsday Machine".

 

[137th Gebirg]

It was 1974 - living in Arkansas, 4 years old, I saw the Animated Series for the first time and thought it was fantastic. "Slaver Weapon" is still my favorite. I had no idea there had been a live action version years before at that time and I was pleasantly surprised when I did. Been watching ever since.

 

[J.T.B.]

I remember TAS first, when I was maybe 4. Then the toys, my friends on the street had the transporter playset with the trick door. I got a Capt. Kirk figure when I was probably 6. I don't really remember when I started watching the TOS episodes, but I know I was pretty familiar with them when I saw TMP around my 10th birthday. The way the re-runs were shown in my area, though, was heavy on Season 1 and usually gave short shrift to S3. I didn't see "The Lights of Zetar" and "The Cloudminders" till I was in my mid-teens.

--Justin

 

[PKTrekGirl]

I started watching TOS as a toddler, and continued during my grade school years as TOS reruns where on after school every day.

TMP was a HUGE event when I was a kid - everyone went to see it....and went to see the first several TOS movies as well. They were huge, even if you weren't a 'Trek Nerd' or whatever.

I was wary of TNG at first, wondering it there could actually be a Star Trek without Shatner and Nimoy...but TNG worked out okay, so the rest is history.

 

[Dr_Daystrom]

I was watching first run episodes of Lost in Space in the sixties and then I discovered Star Trek (probably around season 3). Then it was Star Trek in reruns, then Space:1999, UFO, etc, etc.

 

[Lindley]

I saw a few TOS and TNG episodes at a friend's house. Part of DS9's "The Way of the Warrior" too, I think. But that didn't really hook me.

Then I ran out of Star Wars novels to read. There were no more, and a new one wouldn't be out for a month or more! And I was at Children's Hospital in Boston----not a whole lot of stuff to do there. So I decided I'd try a Trek book. I don't recall my exact reasoning at the time....I guess I was still confused as to the difference between "the one with the yellow shirts" and TNG, and saw Kirk on the cover and figured what the heck.

But I ended up liking TOS: The Rings of Tautee, so I ended up buying more. As a good little perfectionist, inside of a year I'd bought out about an aisle's worth of Trek books from my local used bookstore. It even bumped Star Wars to the back burner for a time, until I decided to revisit that some years later.

Oh, and eventually I started getting the TV shows from Columbia House too. But Trek was originally about the books for me.

 

[Lonestar]

My very earlies memories of Trek are the dodgy hair-dos from the Apple and the 4-way split screen starships in the Ulitmate Computer. I can't remember ever not being aware of Star Trek.

 

[misskim86]

Well I had always liked the TOS movies, especially the 2-4 arc and part 6, also movie 1, 7 and First Contact. So anyway my friend a huge trekkie almost forced me to watch TNG from start to finish and in the end I actually liked it.

He then proceeded to force me watch DS9 from start till finish and that was it.

Certified Trekkie

 

[Smellincoffee]

I was raised in a cult that didn't allow (among many other things) television sets, but when I dislocated my arm I had to go to the hospital, where I spent three weeks waiting for it to heal. While I was there, I was able to watch television pretty much all day. I was only seven, but I discovered TOS re-runs and Next Generation shows and became a fan. Years later I would obtain a small black and white television that allowed me to pick up CBS, and at this time they had Deep Space Nine on on Saturday nights. Although my parents would make me destroy the set, I was then hooked and started reading books whenever I could.

I left my parents' cult when I was nineteen or so, and buy seasons on DVD whenever I can. In addition, when university is in session I can watch Star Trek on cable channels up there.

 

[Carpe Occasio]

I was raised in a cult that didn't allow (among many other things) television sets, but when I dislocated my arm I had to go to the hospital, where I spent three weeks waiting for it to heal. While I was there, I was able to watch television pretty much all day. I was only seven, but I discovered TOS re-runs and Next Generation shows and became a fan. Years later I would obtain a small black and white television that allowed me to pick up CBS, and at this time they had Deep Space Nine on on Saturday nights. Although my parents would make me destroy the set, I was then hooked and started reading books whenever I could.

I left my parents' cult when I was nineteen or so, and buy seasons on DVD whenever I can. In addition, when university is in session I can watch Star Trek on cable channels up there.

What cult, if you don't mind me asking.