When and how did you become a Star Trek fan?

I’m relatively recent to Star Trek. I saw one episode from TOS on late night TV in 98 and gave Next Generation a chance a few months ago on Netflix. Now I’ve seen TNG and just about to finish DS9.

 

I was also 9. The first episode I watched was The Man Trap on Thursday, September 8, 1966, 20:30 Hrs PDT. Broadcast on the NBC affiliate Channel 24 in Fresno, CA. In 1963 my dad bought a 21 inch RCA Victor color TV, made in the USA. It was in a big Walnut cabinet. The picture tube was rounded on the sides and slightly flattened on the top and bottom.

 

I was 8, just a month before my 9th birthday. I first watched Star Trek when I visited my cousin's house. The first episode I saw was Who Mourns For Adonais? which I figured out must have been during its rerun on May 10, 1968. Scotty made a big impression on me, so, I got to role play him as my cousin and I would re-enact the scenes; I got lightning bolted over and over again. My family didn't watch the show, so, the next time I saw the show was during syndication reruns in the 1970's.

 

Age 6. Mom was asleep on the couch and I was flipping around on the TV, and landed on NBC which was airing the Star Trek episode, "Elaan of Troyius" (didn't know the title at the time I was watching it I just know that I liked what I saw on the screen, because at that age I was really interested in space and the NASA missions leading up to the moon landings); and I was hooked.

I didn't really get a chance to watch it regularly until it went into regular syndication a few years later. I really got into Star Trek at around the age of 12, which was when I found our local channel 5 was showing it daily in the evenings; and over the next year or so, I finally managed to catch all the episodes. (This was circa 1975-76, a few years before home VCRs were available, not to mention affordable; so yeah kids if you didn't catch it when it aired, you had to wait until they got around to repeating it again.)

When the animated series premiered in 1973 (I was 10); I made sure to catch every episode every Saturday morning it was on.

 

My dad and his siblings watched reruns of the original series growing up in the 70s. Same with my mom and her siblings, especially her brother. I think me, my dad, and my brother started catching some episodes on tv when I was in 4th grade. He showed me "Arena" and "The Corbomite Maneuver". He also bought The Undiscovered Country on VHS, and I really enjoyed that when I saw it in 5th grade, so I was around 10 years-old. A friend at school introduced me to the Star Trek card game, and I started playing that with him. We saw some TNG at his house, some Data episodes I think.

The next year, I borrowed the TOS movies from the library and watched them (except TMP, which I couldn't make it through when I was a kid). I also recorded some TNG episodes on VHS and started a collection - Encounter at Farpoint, The Big Goodbye and The Royale, which I found interesting and fun. During this time I would watch TOS and TNG reruns. Then I bought the All Good Things... novelization, which I really enjoyed. Didn't see the episode until years later. It also made me think Riker and Worf had a feud throughout the show, even though it was only in that alternate future.

My dad also bought the playmates TOS bridge crew set "for me" - ha, more like for both of us! In middle school, he got me, my brother, and our cousin TOS communicators. I remember seeing Insurrection in theaters, which was cool to me as a kid - Star Trek at the movies! I also bought First Contact on VHS - saw it for the first time and loved it. Got Wrath of Khan too! Later I remember seeing Nemesis in theaters and having mixed feelings.

Meanwhile, I kept playing the Trek card game with my friend from school. I think in sixth grade we saw another Trek I hadn't seen before - a two parter with new characters: Improbable Cause/The Die is Cast. Then, I started catching DS9 reruns on tv, starting with season five. I was hooked. The DVDs started coming out then, and I bought them out of order (woe! - now I remember how crappy that packaging was!). I saw seasons 5-7, then worked my way back. The show, along with many other things, also encouraged me to write. It was the first show where I really started paying attention to the writing credits on episodes.

During this time, I was also watching more and more TNG and TOS reruns. When Enterprise came on, I watched that with my dad. I also rewatched DS9 with him, my brother, and my cousin in high school. It became my favorite show. I then started watching Voyager, and bought season four on DVD. I then got into the DS9 relaunch books, which I thought were amazing.

As the years passed, I'd do two other DS9 rewatches - first with my wife, when we first met, and later with a close friend while I was working on my graduate degree. Over the years, I’ve gotten six or seven different people really into Trek and DS9 in particular - sometimes I joke I’m spreading my religion: my love for Trek, DS9 especially.

(Btw, I have this beauty hanging up at home!)


My wife loves Trek too - together, we saw the Kelvin films in theaters, and all of TOS, TNG, and now this year Enterprise, all of which we enjoyed. We caught up with all the new Trek shows, which we enjoy as well. I think this season of Disco will be the best yet! Next we'll do all of TAS and Voyager, along with the TNG films. Someday I'll show her STV...the only TOS film she hasn't seen....someday...

We have a baby now - born this year! - and am excited to introduce him to Trek one day! I'm a teacher, but I worked as a freelance journalist for a long time as well. I'm branching out into creative work (comics), and sometimes toy with the idea of writing some Trek someday!

 

That is how children should play—not the least bit self conscious of how they look...seeing everything as new and different. I never got to go to any real theme park...and today would only see a mascot as some poor underpaid bastard about to suffer heat stroke.

I loved plastic bits I could glue together to form spacecraft, lasers-but only certain shapes. Oh well.

 

When it premiered in 1966, by watching it.

 

Watching repeats in the mid-nineties on BBC 2. The Next Generation on Wednesdays, Deep Space Nine on Thursdays and Voyager on Sundays.

I also have happy memories of recieving The Search for Spock and Generations on VHS for Christmas 1998.

 

My dad was a fan of the franchise, so he got me started watching TOS in the late 80s and early 90s. We had a copy of The Voyage Home we watched on VHS a lot. At the same time I was watching TNG in syndication. So both series were a part of my childhood, and each made me a fan.

 

Both my parents loved TOS, and me and my brother would watch TNG with them when we were very little. It wasn't long before I became the biggest Trek fan in the house. I ended up watching DS9 and VOY alone in my room, on my tiny TV, using a rotor antenna to watch bad-reception UPN. I joined the AOL Trek Message Boards in '96 and started writing fanfiction.

These days I still write, though no longer fanfiction! And I'm very happy to say after living through one Trek franchise heyday that we seem to be in another. I got thirsty those many years between ENT and the premiere of DIS (I am not a Kelvinverse fan). And S3 of DIS has been wonderful so far, really reminds me of the really well-written seasons of DS9.

 

This year, I was just flipping through channels when I stopped on Projections(tho I didn't know it was Projections at the time) The beginning teaser was interesting enough to get me to wait for the commercials to see how it would progress. I ended being so interested and entertained by The Doctor and the story, that I wanted where I could watch more, I had only known Star Trek through the main TOS characters and few from TNG. I knew of AOS and nothing else really. But then I found out what character The Doctor was and where he came from,Voyager. My first trek. I binged it and had a blast, falling in love not only with the characters and story but the universe that they were in, After some finishing it(and rewatching episodes soon after) I immediately wanted to start talking with ppl about it, I joined the trek discord, this board and started following trek accounts on other platforms. Eventually I began to watch the mainly whatever came on H&I while I was drawing and random TOS & TNG episodes out of order(and of course VOY rewatch or two ) just see more this franchise. And now I'm here not only typing this up but on S7 of DS9(and planning to watch ENT next!). It's weird to once think I barely knew much about this franchise to now where I can't imagine a day where I wasn't thinking about it. All I can say now is that, I Love this franchise warts and all, its crazy to look back in see how it's became such big part of me.

 

Watching "The Man Trap" with my father when it was first broadcast. He loved Science Fiction and we never missed an episode after that. Until then the best we could hope for was the Irwin Allen shows, then Trek showed how it could be done without camp...

Edit
One episode I did not see first run- 'The Lights of Zeta'. My mother thought the glowing croaking woman in the previews was a bit too creepy. She bribed me by letting me build a cool model kit, the two ship "Space Pursuit" set:
https://images.app.goo.gl/18m78N75Ut2yZ5VY8
Vividly remember hearing that episode in the next room as I built. My imagination was more horrific than what was on screen