Some of those bacteriological diseases the crew caught were pretty scary too! I mean Miri was banned for twenty years in the UK and when you see those purple lumps growing on Yeoman Rand's legs you can understand why! Good episode though! JB
This becomes a loaded question given my age is directly tied to the launch year of TOS, so I'm dating myself to a very precise degree. I first became aware of ST when it was in syndication in the early 70's and watched reruns of TOS on a local station. I was so enamored with the show that I begged for a model kit of the TOS Enterprise, and was told by my mother that if I got good grades for that school year (I believe third grade), i could get the model. As it turned out I produced grades good enough to get that model, but as I recall I didn't have a very easy time putting it together and had glue and paint all over the place. Star trek was to become part of my life from thereafter. The original motion picture came out and I recall being awestruck by the first beauty shot of the refitted Enterprise on screen. I waited in anticipation for each movie release in the early to mid 80's leading up to ST:TNG. I remember being predisposed to not liking it - I mean, it's not Kirk or Spock, what could they possibly come out with that could compete with that? Of course I was proven wrong from the first episode. TNG was shaky the first couple of seasons, but had enough brilliant episodes to make up for it. ST became my companion throughout college and my young adult life. Each series holds a special place in my heart. Through the 90's the spinoffs kept me interested even though free time to watch TV became more and more limited. My favorite series, ST:ENT ran an all-too-short four seasons and I was really bummed out that ST was wrapping up for what I felt was going to be a very long time. During the ST hiatus, my daughter, age seven, begged me to watch ST:ENT, and so began a re-watch of of my favorite series, but this time through my daughters eyes. That began a journey in which my daughter and I spent almost four years watching all the series and movies. Her favorite was Voyager, with her reasoning being that Janeway was a woman and she liked that. She cried as each series would finish and then we'd start a whole new series. It really was a special time for me to be able to share this with her. A couple years ago the 50th Anniversary of star trek came around and my daughter and I planned a trip to NY to attend a ST convention at the Javits Center(first time for myself as well). She met Terry Farrel (Dax was one of her favorite characters) and I got to meet Conner Trinneer. My daughter is 12 now, and we both watched Discovery together last season. Although DISC wasn't what we hoped we continue to hold out that hope for next season.
ST09 drew me in! I saw it in theaters when I was 18. It was a great gateway drug for the world of Trek. From there, TOS, TNG, DS9 and now working my way through VOY and ENT simultaneously. Took me about 10 years longer than I expected to work through all these series. Don’t knock the new films! They’re broadening the audience to a new generation
Absolutely And reopening faith in the franchise to some of us older ones who'd become a little jaded about it, lol.
And keep 'em coming guys, I agree with @Brennyren, really fascinating hearing all of your gateways into the series!
The first Star Trek I saw where TOS repeats in the 80s, I don't remember which episode I watched first by I do remember liking it. A short time later TNG started (when I saw the first picture of the cast Imassumed Data was the captain because he wore yellow) and I was hooked immediately.
Star Trek has been on my life since I have memories. My dad used to sit and watch the old TOS episodes -we even go together to the cinema to watch ST:Beyond- ...and for years and years I developed a taste and love for those stories. I definitely felt in love with TNG and since then I have learned to love and enjoy every reborn of the saga.
The Squire of Gothos, first run. I was so young and this was such jarring input for me, but in a very good way, that I remember the feeling of my brain straining to catch up to it all and comprehend. I remember I thought Spock was the captain, since Kirk was down on the planet at one point, and Spock was in the big chair. As a kid very interested in astronomy, it was amazing to me when Trelane actually moves an entire planet to pursue them. I still have one of those Lincoln Enterprises sales pamphlets... they announce the cancellation (after s3) and ask for letters to be sent. They were hawking the "IDIC" pendant. ----------------------- I didn't end up becoming involved in Trek fandom. It always seemed excessively serious to me. I eventually went with Dr Who fandom in the 80s. I've never stopped seeing original Trek as my #1 program, with the other series sometimes rising almost that high for me.
I've been a star trek fan as far back as I can remember. My mom used to watch TNG when I was little and it just always stuck with me, to the point where I kinda wore my mom out with star trek lol
Fascinating recollections I do recall both TOS and TNG being available by subscription on VHS, I remember TV adverts. Was it via Time Life? They often did those kinds of things...
I looked it up based on the box art for the vhs tapes. It was from Columbia House, and it was called "Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Collector's edition". You can look it up on Memory Alpha, I'm just not sure if I'm allowed to post a link to it or not. EDIT: More information: I must've started ordering in 1996, towards the tail end of the run, but VHS tapes kept showing up at my door years later, even into the 2000's, and after two moves. LOL
TAS on the Saturday morning cartoons, around 1974, 4 years old. Next the toys, then I noticed there was a "real" version of the show (TOS).
I had a relatively sheltered early childhood in regards to media. So, up until I was six years old, my idea of a spaceship was what Lego and Playmobil sold as spaceships, which back then were basically stylized jetplanes and space shuttles. I remember owning a Playmobil Space Station, which was a octagonal one-room thing. Wait, found a picture: So, this was a station, with the ships having basically just a cockpit, and with that understanding, I one day found an audio cassette with the dub of a TNG episode ("Haven", btw) adapted into an audio play (something that was pretty popular back in the 80s and 90s here in Germany). The German title of the series was "Raumschiff Enterprise - Das nächste Jahrhundert" (the "Raumschiff" part, "Spaceship", being especially important). It was the bare cassette, no box and no cover which could provide a picture. All I had was the sound. So, you can probably figure that little me was quite perplexed about how many people were on this Spaceship, and they went from the transporter room to the bridge to the holodeck, etc.. But, even if the episode in question may be one of the weaker ones, I was hooked. I got my first glance at actual footage when my mom and I visited my little brother in the hospital (he had a broken arm or something), and he was watching "The Neutral Zone" on the telly. It was the scene in which Worf and Data find the frozen people. And my interest in this show grew. We didn't finish the episode, though. My mom was careful about what and how much TV we could watch. So, one day a few months later, my mother would leave for a while (going shopping or visiting a friend or whatever), leaving my older brothers in charge. And as usual at the time, once my mom was out the door, the oldest brother would turn on the TV to watch something we normally wouldn't be allowed to. And on that day, we caught a rerun of TOS, "This Side of Paradise", and I simply accepted that there was another "Raumschiff Enterprise" without any idea how the two were connected. That stayed this way for a long time. I found pocket books at the library with James Blish's prose adaptations of the TOS episodes, which I started devouring (as I still wasn't quite allowed to watch the show itself). On a trip to a flea market, I found a copy of John Vornholt's TNG novel "Masks". So that was how I distinguished between the shows, one was "Raumschiff Enterprise" by James Blish, and the other was "Raumschiff Enterprise" by John Vornholt. And when I was eight, my mom would finally give in and let me watch the shows (which wouldn't run concurrently, but one would finish its run, then the other would take its place in the Mon-Fri afternoon timeslot). One episode per week, which I nowadays quite understand, since we were five boys, and whenever one of us would be allowed to watch something, all the others would watch as well. So I'd choose the episodes based on the title (and maybe the brief synopsis, when there was one) given in the TV guide. This situation led to the fact that there were Trek episodes I had not yet watched up until a few years ago. But this all made me a huge fan, especially at that age. In fourth class, I got other kids (well, I'll be honest, other boys) into Star Trek, and we'd draw computer panels on sheets of paper and take them out in-between classes and play Star Trek, with the board being the main viewscreen in our imagination. I also eventually got some of the TNG toys from Playmates, with the model of the Enterprise-D being the oldest toy still in my possession.