Growing up with Star Trek

[T.D. Possum]

I was thinking this morning about people who watched Trek with their parents when they were growing up and who are now watching Trek with their own children. I'm lucky to be among that number, and I think it's interesting to see how Trekkie-ness gets passed down from generation to generation.

Are you from a Trekkie family, too? How many generations of Trekkies does your family have? Come on and tell us a story! Here's mine.

I was watching Voyager this morning. My 2.5 year old son looked at the TV, pointed at the captain, and said "Janeway". It was totally unprompted and really surprised me.

I immediately thought of how I got my aunt to help me learn to do the Vulcan hand salute when I was six years old. I wanted to surprise my dad by greeting him with it. My aunt got a marble and wedged it between my fingers for me so I could train my muscles to hold that position.

There is no real point to this story. I just wanted to share it and ask other people to share their tales of growing up Trekkie.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I started watching TOS reruns as a teenager. I watched it twice a day. No one else in my family watched it but my parents dutifully purchased the Blish and Foster box sets of the books for me that Christmas and I was super happy about that.

Fast fwd a few decades and I have now passed down Trek to my offspring. I have older ones and we have gone to geeky con things together dressed up, they have watched every bit of Trek there is. They are fluent in Trek and Trek infuses our conversation. We just started rewatching VOY together, which was their first Trek (and a good starter for younger ones I think). Movie Night for years has meant "which double VOY ep will we watch?" The younger one will be watching Trek as soon as he is past it being scary.. my daughter still shudders at certain eps remembering how terrifying they were when she was 10, lol. The young one has watched some TAS already. I am looking fwd to starting the indoctrination all over again!!

We began the family Trek journey borrowing videos, went through VOY first and then DS9. When we bought the DVD sets there would be scenes I didn't remember because the videos could be so blurry with rolling visuals etc.. that some of it we never saw! I remember that the video of Trials and Tribbleations did not work at all. I told them this and they just put it back on the shelf so we ordered another copy from a different branch. Took a while to come in.. we were full of anticipation.. that one didn't work either! The tape was, iirc, actually broken. So (being at this point in my life an impoverished single parent in a country where Trek videos were 40.00 a video) we lamented this gap in our Trekdom. But OMG one day I found the video with Trials and Tribbleations at second hand music store, in a pristine case. Bought it, rushed home, gathered the troops, sat down.. and it was broken. TOTALLY BLURRY. Maybe it was all the tribble hormones corrupting the tape. We didn't see that ep until some years later when I finished paying off the DVD's (tax changes had dramatically reduced the cost of entertainment here). It was the first one we watched when I took that big set home.

I'll also add that my older kids have all read some Treklit, I pass on the particularly good ones. Mosaic, Pasthways, Homecoming, Farthest Shore, A Stitch in Time, Destiny and I'm getting them to read Terok Nor next (the first one being the best Trek book I've ever read).

We saw ST:XI repeatedly when it came out! What a great event that was! And they are making their friends watch the DVD and they are getting converted and borrowing VOY from us! This is so awesome.

So yes you can have a Trek family.

 

[plynch]

Yup. I watched Star Trek with my mom, though not real together-ly. She would be in the room and knew the shows. I was a kid in the '70s and I love it still.

My wife and I watched all the Berman era ones together.

My elder daughter was a VOY fan, wrote to Kate and got an autographed pic. My elder son was a Data/movies fan, though he really has gone more for Star Wars. My twins, a boy and girl watch it all with me, esp. Star Trek and VOY.

When the flick came out last year, I and my younger son dressed for the opening. When I asked if he wanted to see it again later, it was like the best day ever for him; we usually don't do movies twice in our fam. I used the DVD as a reward/bribe for something I forgot. We're joining "StarFleet" on a family membership.

There ya go.

 

[Willieck]

I can remember the first Star Trek episode shown in the UK. I was not hugely impressed at first but soon became an enthusiastic fan. I was about 26 by the way. My youngest daughter who is now 38 is also a fan. I have DVDs of all the episodes of every series and also every film AND I still watch them every day. I am half way through Enterprise at the moment. My wife is very understanding but does not share my enthusiasm.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I grew up with TOS in second-run syndication, where it used to air on my local independent station on Saturdays and Sundays.

I was the only Trekkie in my family, but my mom took me to see all of the first six Star Trek movies because she knew I was a Star Trek fan. My grandma also bought me two Star Trek children's uniform shirts when I was little that I wore until I couldn't wear them anymore. Both of them also bought me tons of Star Trek toys to play with--from action figures, to model kits, to role play accessories. It's only now that I realize that they fostered my love of Star Trek, even if they really weren't fans themselves. I guess they figured there were far worse things I could get into...

 

[sbk1234]

I was the only Trek fan in my family, but I've tried to pass it on to my kids. The best I got to was my son likes other sci-fi, like Star Wars. At times, I can get my younger kids to play Star Trek in the car. They are a little young. At one point, we were playing that the ship got damaged, so my daughter called for Handy Manny to come fix it.

 

[T.D. Possum]

At one point, we were playing that the ship got damaged, so my daughter called for Handy Manny to come fix it.

Oh, I didn't realize Handy Manny was in Starfleet.

That was really cute.

 

[Mary Ann]

I was the only one in my house who watched ST while growing up but I married a Trek fan (coincidence, but it helped ) and our teenaged daughter was converted to Trek a few years ago. My younger sons still aren't interested but the 12-year-old is slowly becoming interested in movies like X-Men, so there's hope. What's sad is that my daughter is too embarrassed to tell her friends that she's a Trek fan, while her friends watch crap like Twilight!