Lets take a look back, way back, to the fandom of early years. Pre 1979.
Some around here were fortunate enough to have watched Star Trek from the beginning in September, 1966. Many of us came in later during the rerun syndication years of the ‘70s, and others still later.
My very first memory of Star Trek is dim from sometime in the late ‘60s, One evening my mother was watching our old b&w television in the living room when she got up to change channels (no remote then). She briefly paused at a channel where I caught site of an odd looking spaceship crossing the screen over a planet and then the shot of a man in a circular room. Then she changed the channel to whatever program she was looking for.
That’s it until sometime in 1970 after we’d moved into our new house in the burgeoning community of Mississauga. Sometime that year I finally came across Star Trek and was immediately hooked. I’m not certain exactly which episode was my first, but I most clearly recall “Balance Of Terror” or “Charlie X” as likely the earliest. I was 11 then.
After that, particularly during school, it was a race to get home before my younger sisters to lay claim to the TV before dinner and watch Star Trek rather then whatever lame thing it was they wanted to watch.
We only had one TV when we were kids and everyone had to share. Suffice to say that when I didn’t get to watch what for me were new episodes of my now favourite show (I didn’t yet grasp that these were reruns) I got really discouraged. And just before Christmas dad bought the family our first colour television!
I could sketch and draw from an early age and my favourite pastime (besides now watching Star Trek) was to draw an endless succession of spaceships of which now the starship Enterprise was prominently featured. It became my favourite thing to draw while I hummed the music from the show. The next logical step was for me to begin making cardboard cut-and-fold toys of the Enterprise. My dad worked for Canadian Linen Supply and they supplied his work shirts. I’d pinch the white cardboard inserts to make my cardboard models from. Dad got pretty exasperated—not because of what I wanted to do with the cardboard, but he’d rather I waited for him to open the shirts first.
The cut-and-fold models inevitably led to me wanting an actual three dimensional toy of the Enterprise. So like any kid with an obsession I began to bug my parents about it. I’d almost given up hope until the Christmas of 1970 when there under the tree I got my first AMT model of the Enterprise! And then a bonus as I discovered my parents had also gotten me the companion Klingon Battle Cruiser! Sweet doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. To date I think that remains was favourite Christmas present ever.
I still continued with cut out models as I eventually fashioned a pretty decent three dimensional model of the Galileo shuttlecraft. I attached safety pins to the top and then ran a long string from up on our TV antenna to the base of the backyard fence. I spent hours watching my shuttlecraft fly down the string to land softly on the grass. My dad though I was nuts.
I soon discovered Gold Key Star Trek comics alongside the Batman comics I got from the corner variety store. I had a Captain Action play figure and bugged my mother to somehow fashion a gold Captain Kirk shirt for it. Reading came rather easily to me and imagine my excitement when I discovered James Blish’s adaptations of the original episodes in a section of books at the corner drugstore. I was constantly on the watch for new volumes. The bonus was when I found Blish’s original novel Spock Must Die! which I’ve read several times since and it remains my favourite Star Trek novel. The ‘70s were a time of hunting out every one of the slowly released Bantam novels. And back then fullsize paperbacks ranged from only about 60 or 75 cents to about $1.25 or $1.50. We thought we were getting robbed when books began creeping up over $2.00! Today I still enjoy the scent that comes from flipping the pages of a new paperback book I’m engrossed in.
I didn’t know many others besides myself who were into Star Trek back then and in some ways it was a solitary interest for me. But slowly I began to learn of something called conventions where apparently hundreds and even thousands(!) of fans gathered to share their common interest. I found that mind boggling (hey, no internet yet for another twenty years or so). Eventually I got to my first convention at the Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto in 1976 when I was 17. I bought some stills and a couple of posters and got to see Mark Lenard, Walter Koenig, George Takei and Grace Lee Whitney speak while each in turn sat in a replica of the command chair and part of the bridge. That was the first time I recall going to downtown Toronto by myself, and downtown Toronto wasn’t the nicest of places back in the mid ‘70s. Still, my parents must have thought that even though I was on the shy and somewhat introverted side I was probably smart enough not to get myself into any serious trouble.
But before that came the new(!) adventures of an animated Star Trek series. New spaceships to draw and make models of! And then came Alan Dean Foster’s adaptations of the animated episodes that really fleshed out the stories so that they seemed more like the live-action ones. Note to any young’uns out there that if you’ve sampled TAS, but not ADF’s Star Trek Log books then I urge you to track down the omnibus editions reprinted not long ago. They really bring a welcome perspective on those TAS stories. In some ways I prefer ADF’s adaptations to the aired versions.
Also in the mid ‘70s came the discovery of schematics of the ships that fans were drawing. This came on the heels of finding a copy of Stephen E. Whitfield’s The Making Of Star Trek in the school library. Of course after poring through it I had to have my own copy (and I still do have a copy). Then came the manna of Franz Joseph’s Star Trek Blurprints and his Star Fleet Technical Manual. I then learned of Geoffrey Mandel’s drawings. The ‘70s for me were a time of tracking down every bit of printed materiel I could find. I learned of fanfic, but didn’t experience this directly until twenty years later! Back then I didn’t yet know the bad Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath novels were little removed from what I later learned was tame slash fanfic.
There were no DVDs or even VHS recordings or vinyl LP soundtrack recordings (that I knew of) to be had. I had to content myself with making audio tape recordings of the episodes and shared them with the few friends that shared my interest. Local construction sites and wooded areas were our alien landscapes and our bikes were our shuttlecraft.
I got teased at school mercilessly by some for my interest. I turned my frustration inward then not understanding how someone could mock something that was actually so wonderful. My parents tolerated my passion and perhaps on some level they understood that I was learning while also being entertained. It’s understandable because now as an adult I can look at TOS and see that it’s one of the most intelligent and thought provoking shows ever made for television. It didn’t spell everything out for you, but it piqued your curiousity and your yearning to understand. I was encouraged to learn more on my own about things that were referenced in the show. This habit still remains with me.
For me ‘70s fandom was excitement, anticipation and discovery. Star Trek opened new worlds and gave me a fresh perspective on the everyday real one.
The mid to late ‘70s were a time of diverse rumours regarding live-action Star Trek returning either as a new series or as a feature film. Whatever, bring it on(!) was all we could think. This was long, long before creative burnout and over saturation of mediocrity by TPTB. There was little argument about what was the best Star Trek beyond discussion of specific episodes. When the word finally came we couldn’t wait until opening night in December, 1979.
To the kids of today those days must seem as remote and antiquated and strange as the era of our parents youth in the 1930’s and ‘40s seemed to us. But it wasn’t just a supposedly more innocent age (hey, there was a lot of crap going on back then as there is in any age), but the media wasn’t so intensive and 24/7 and there wasn’t nearly as much cyncism. It was also a time when a family could be supported at a decent level on one parent’s income. No, we didn’t have absolutely everything we wanted (who ever does?), but we had what we needed and the stability and security of someone at home if needed. We may have been indulged to some extent by parents who’d grown up in the depression and wanted their kids to have what they hadn’t, but our parents also didn’t put up with bullshit. There were lines not to be crossed. And we still felt loved and wanted and came out of it reasonably adjusted. We learned that mom and dad sometimes telling us no eventually taught us when to tell ourselves no.
We were very lucky in another way. Parents today may bemoan kids hunkering in front of a computer monitor for hours and days on end, but secretly they’re probably relieved that they know their kids are not “out there” somewhere in the bad old world. But we’d periodically get shoved outside away from the television. We struck out on our own with friends to socialize with and explore the world on our terms with a growing sense of independence.
It’s often thought that today’s kids have too much freedom and no rules. We had rules but perhaps we had more freedom because we could be adventuring on our own more and not coddled protectively when small then expected to be independent overnight with no real background to build on. Today when I share stories of playing in the woods and fields and construction sites hours on end away from home and out of sight a lot of younger folks today find that hard to believe.
It was a great time, not just for the fun we had, but for what we learned and experienced.
In many respects I admire Star Trek more now as an adult then I did then when I was discovering it through young eyes. But I do miss the anticipation and thrill of discovery that had yet to be dulled by oversatuatiuon.
Some around here were fortunate enough to have watched Star Trek from the beginning in September, 1966. Many of us came in later during the rerun syndication years of the ‘70s, and others still later.
My very first memory of Star Trek is dim from sometime in the late ‘60s, One evening my mother was watching our old b&w television in the living room when she got up to change channels (no remote then). She briefly paused at a channel where I caught site of an odd looking spaceship crossing the screen over a planet and then the shot of a man in a circular room. Then she changed the channel to whatever program she was looking for.
That’s it until sometime in 1970 after we’d moved into our new house in the burgeoning community of Mississauga. Sometime that year I finally came across Star Trek and was immediately hooked. I’m not certain exactly which episode was my first, but I most clearly recall “Balance Of Terror” or “Charlie X” as likely the earliest. I was 11 then.
After that, particularly during school, it was a race to get home before my younger sisters to lay claim to the TV before dinner and watch Star Trek rather then whatever lame thing it was they wanted to watch.
We only had one TV when we were kids and everyone had to share. Suffice to say that when I didn’t get to watch what for me were new episodes of my now favourite show (I didn’t yet grasp that these were reruns) I got really discouraged. And just before Christmas dad bought the family our first colour television!I could sketch and draw from an early age and my favourite pastime (besides now watching Star Trek) was to draw an endless succession of spaceships of which now the starship Enterprise was prominently featured. It became my favourite thing to draw while I hummed the music from the show. The next logical step was for me to begin making cardboard cut-and-fold toys of the Enterprise. My dad worked for Canadian Linen Supply and they supplied his work shirts. I’d pinch the white cardboard inserts to make my cardboard models from. Dad got pretty exasperated—not because of what I wanted to do with the cardboard, but he’d rather I waited for him to open the shirts first.
The cut-and-fold models inevitably led to me wanting an actual three dimensional toy of the Enterprise. So like any kid with an obsession I began to bug my parents about it. I’d almost given up hope until the Christmas of 1970 when there under the tree I got my first AMT model of the Enterprise! And then a bonus as I discovered my parents had also gotten me the companion Klingon Battle Cruiser! Sweet doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. To date I think that remains was favourite Christmas present ever.
I still continued with cut out models as I eventually fashioned a pretty decent three dimensional model of the Galileo shuttlecraft. I attached safety pins to the top and then ran a long string from up on our TV antenna to the base of the backyard fence. I spent hours watching my shuttlecraft fly down the string to land softly on the grass. My dad though I was nuts.
I soon discovered Gold Key Star Trek comics alongside the Batman comics I got from the corner variety store. I had a Captain Action play figure and bugged my mother to somehow fashion a gold Captain Kirk shirt for it. Reading came rather easily to me and imagine my excitement when I discovered James Blish’s adaptations of the original episodes in a section of books at the corner drugstore. I was constantly on the watch for new volumes. The bonus was when I found Blish’s original novel Spock Must Die! which I’ve read several times since and it remains my favourite Star Trek novel. The ‘70s were a time of hunting out every one of the slowly released Bantam novels. And back then fullsize paperbacks ranged from only about 60 or 75 cents to about $1.25 or $1.50. We thought we were getting robbed when books began creeping up over $2.00! Today I still enjoy the scent that comes from flipping the pages of a new paperback book I’m engrossed in.
I didn’t know many others besides myself who were into Star Trek back then and in some ways it was a solitary interest for me. But slowly I began to learn of something called conventions where apparently hundreds and even thousands(!) of fans gathered to share their common interest. I found that mind boggling (hey, no internet yet for another twenty years or so). Eventually I got to my first convention at the Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto in 1976 when I was 17. I bought some stills and a couple of posters and got to see Mark Lenard, Walter Koenig, George Takei and Grace Lee Whitney speak while each in turn sat in a replica of the command chair and part of the bridge. That was the first time I recall going to downtown Toronto by myself, and downtown Toronto wasn’t the nicest of places back in the mid ‘70s. Still, my parents must have thought that even though I was on the shy and somewhat introverted side I was probably smart enough not to get myself into any serious trouble.
But before that came the new(!) adventures of an animated Star Trek series. New spaceships to draw and make models of! And then came Alan Dean Foster’s adaptations of the animated episodes that really fleshed out the stories so that they seemed more like the live-action ones. Note to any young’uns out there that if you’ve sampled TAS, but not ADF’s Star Trek Log books then I urge you to track down the omnibus editions reprinted not long ago. They really bring a welcome perspective on those TAS stories. In some ways I prefer ADF’s adaptations to the aired versions.
Also in the mid ‘70s came the discovery of schematics of the ships that fans were drawing. This came on the heels of finding a copy of Stephen E. Whitfield’s The Making Of Star Trek in the school library. Of course after poring through it I had to have my own copy (and I still do have a copy). Then came the manna of Franz Joseph’s Star Trek Blurprints and his Star Fleet Technical Manual. I then learned of Geoffrey Mandel’s drawings. The ‘70s for me were a time of tracking down every bit of printed materiel I could find. I learned of fanfic, but didn’t experience this directly until twenty years later! Back then I didn’t yet know the bad Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath novels were little removed from what I later learned was tame slash fanfic.
There were no DVDs or even VHS recordings or vinyl LP soundtrack recordings (that I knew of) to be had. I had to content myself with making audio tape recordings of the episodes and shared them with the few friends that shared my interest. Local construction sites and wooded areas were our alien landscapes and our bikes were our shuttlecraft.
I got teased at school mercilessly by some for my interest. I turned my frustration inward then not understanding how someone could mock something that was actually so wonderful. My parents tolerated my passion and perhaps on some level they understood that I was learning while also being entertained. It’s understandable because now as an adult I can look at TOS and see that it’s one of the most intelligent and thought provoking shows ever made for television. It didn’t spell everything out for you, but it piqued your curiousity and your yearning to understand. I was encouraged to learn more on my own about things that were referenced in the show. This habit still remains with me.
For me ‘70s fandom was excitement, anticipation and discovery. Star Trek opened new worlds and gave me a fresh perspective on the everyday real one.
The mid to late ‘70s were a time of diverse rumours regarding live-action Star Trek returning either as a new series or as a feature film. Whatever, bring it on(!) was all we could think. This was long, long before creative burnout and over saturation of mediocrity by TPTB. There was little argument about what was the best Star Trek beyond discussion of specific episodes. When the word finally came we couldn’t wait until opening night in December, 1979.
To the kids of today those days must seem as remote and antiquated and strange as the era of our parents youth in the 1930’s and ‘40s seemed to us. But it wasn’t just a supposedly more innocent age (hey, there was a lot of crap going on back then as there is in any age), but the media wasn’t so intensive and 24/7 and there wasn’t nearly as much cyncism. It was also a time when a family could be supported at a decent level on one parent’s income. No, we didn’t have absolutely everything we wanted (who ever does?), but we had what we needed and the stability and security of someone at home if needed. We may have been indulged to some extent by parents who’d grown up in the depression and wanted their kids to have what they hadn’t, but our parents also didn’t put up with bullshit. There were lines not to be crossed. And we still felt loved and wanted and came out of it reasonably adjusted. We learned that mom and dad sometimes telling us no eventually taught us when to tell ourselves no.
We were very lucky in another way. Parents today may bemoan kids hunkering in front of a computer monitor for hours and days on end, but secretly they’re probably relieved that they know their kids are not “out there” somewhere in the bad old world. But we’d periodically get shoved outside away from the television. We struck out on our own with friends to socialize with and explore the world on our terms with a growing sense of independence.
It’s often thought that today’s kids have too much freedom and no rules. We had rules but perhaps we had more freedom because we could be adventuring on our own more and not coddled protectively when small then expected to be independent overnight with no real background to build on. Today when I share stories of playing in the woods and fields and construction sites hours on end away from home and out of sight a lot of younger folks today find that hard to believe.
It was a great time, not just for the fun we had, but for what we learned and experienced.
In many respects I admire Star Trek more now as an adult then I did then when I was discovering it through young eyes. But I do miss the anticipation and thrill of discovery that had yet to be dulled by oversatuatiuon.
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