I’m due for a rewatch, but I’m presently following someone reacting to it and they’re into the latter part of the fifth season.
Aridas Sophia and others fleshed out some of the cover-art ships, IIRC
A run-down
Remembering the 'The Best of Trek' Fanzine
The meticulous collections of articles and essays are yet another reminder that 'Star Trek' would be nothing without its fans.
www.startrek.com
There are two things I am nostalgic about from when I was a kid (1970s-'80s). First is the sense of the show in reruns being undiscovered. I had no idea about how many episodes there were, how many seasons, production or broadcast order, the two pilots, nothing. I couldn’t remember the time when all episodes were new to me, I was too young. As a pre-teen and teen, the TV guide in the paper didn't tell what episode would be on, so I'd tune in at the right time and most of the time I'd see an episode I was familiar with, sometimes more and sometimes less so. But once in a while, I’d sit down to watch, the teaser would come up and it was completely unfamiliar. Thrilling! Not only had I never seen it, I never knew it existed. How many new-to-me episodes were there? How long could this discovery of new episodes go on? When I was 11 or 12 my library got a copy of The Star Trek Concordance, so I got an idea, but the library had replaced the wheel cover with a hard binding, limiting its use as an episode reference. When I was 16 I got The Star Trek Compendium, 20th anniversary edition, and then I had the information to know what I had yet to see, which was a handful of season 3 episodes. They way I figured it, whenever my local station changed the time slot they re-started from the beginning. Or maybe the restarted at random. Anyway, it appeared that they rarely got through S3. I managed to catch the last new-to-me episode, “The Lights of Zetar,” about two years later.
The euphoric feeling of having a new, unimagined episode to enjoy is something I don’t think any other media has matched in my life. I waited with great excitement for The Empire Strikes Back, but I knew it was coming. The feeling was so impactful on me that I still sometimes have a dream where an unknown-to-me Star Trek episode appears out of the blue on TV.
Second, I miss the feeling that the world of Star Trek had barely been scratched at the surface. There were so many gaps and hints that your imagination could fill in. It seemed like the lists of starships and Federation worlds my friends and I made on school scrap paper were just as valid as anything else. And then I got TMoST, and sometimes I’d get a look at something from Franz Joseph or one of the Log books, but it still seemed like there were endless possibilities. Star Trek didn't feel like an unassailable corporate IP behemoth.
The euphoric feeling of having a new, unimagined episode to enjoy is something I don’t think any other media has matched in my life. I waited with great excitement for The Empire Strikes Back, but I knew it was coming. The feeling was so impactful on me that I still sometimes have a dream where an unknown-to-me Star Trek episode appears out of the blue on TV.
Second, I miss the feeling that the world of Star Trek had barely been scratched at the surface. There were so many gaps and hints that your imagination could fill in. It seemed like the lists of starships and Federation worlds my friends and I made on school scrap paper were just as valid as anything else. And then I got TMoST, and sometimes I’d get a look at something from Franz Joseph or one of the Log books, but it still seemed like there were endless possibilities. Star Trek didn't feel like an unassailable corporate IP behemoth.
As mentioned, WPIX channel 11 in NY ran Trek reruns every day at 6PM in the 70s. It was the perfect excuse for me to escape dinner table tensions (my mother's father had moved in with us, and my Dad hated him). So I retreated to the living room with my plate and ate at a tray table, watching Trek. Dad hated that too 
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So I retreated to the living room with my plate and ate at a tray table, watching Trek. Dad hated that too
My sympathy on that. Although I wouldn't say that my dad got into Trek, he certainly tolerated my enjoyment of it and even went to a convention with me in 1980. Fond memory.
You still have the copy you "borrowed" from the Bookmobile in 1969?! Not saying I wouldn't have done the same...
I think I was about 11 or 12 when I came across a copy of James Blish's Star Trek 8 and I was hooked. I began working backwards, looking for the previous anthologies.
You can imagine my delight when finally discovered the show itself on a now-defunct local channel that I could pick up with my little, bunny-eared TV in my room!
You can imagine my delight when finally discovered the show itself on a now-defunct local channel that I could pick up with my little, bunny-eared TV in my room!
I'd rather just re-read the original Lord Of The Rings Trilogy -- same basic plot, just told much better.
I think I was about 11 or 12 when I came across a copy of James Blish's Star Trek 8 and I was hooked. I began working backwards, looking for the previous anthologies.
You can imagine my delight when finally discovered the show itself on a now-defunct local channel that I could pick up with my little, bunny-eared TV in my room!
That's a route to the series that I hadn't thought of! Mine was TAS > toys/toy commercials > TOS.
Pretty sure I bought it. At least that's how I remember it.
I don't want to calculate THAT "late fee"!
I've told this story elsewhere, but I'm not sure I've told it here.
So, when I was four years old, in 1970, Star Trek entered afternoon syndication in my market on my local NBC affiliate. My mother tried to get me hyped and interested in it, but unsuccessfully. It conflicted with the Gilligan's Island reruns on the local CBS affiliate. I may not have been able to read or tell time by a clock, but I could tell time to the nearest half hour by the daytime television schedule, and at that young age, I was still all about the sitcoms, specifically Gilligan and the Paul Henning Hooterville trilogy. My obsessions with the Adventures of Superman, the Wild, Wild West and Lost in Space reruns were still a year in the future.
In September of 1972, Star Trek returned to the afterschool syndication schedule. This time, as a 6 year old, I was ready for it. For some reason, they started this run with the mid-to-late second season episodes, specifically "The Gamesters of Triskelion," and I was hooked.
The following September, the Animated Series debuted, becoming my favorite Saturday morning narrative adventure cartoon. Sometime during the 1974-75 school year, my mother noticed Volumes 7 and 8 of the Blish adaptations, and since I was already reading beyond my grade level, wondered if I'd be interested in them. Of course. Soon after that came Volumes 4 and 5 of the Alan Dean Foster adaptations of the Animated Series. During my fourth grade year (1975-76), I bought a copy of THE MAKING OF STAR TREK at my school's annual book fair. TMoST became my Star Trek Bible. For Christmas of 1976, when I was ten, I received Star Trek 11, a later printing of SPOCK MUST DIE, and the infamous SPOCK, MESSIAH! (Yeah, I read S,M! at the age of ten. Moral guardians, clasp your pearls now. The funny thing is, when I read it, I pictured every scene as part of a comic adaptation drawn my mid-seventies Mike Grell or a Neal Adams clone, not as Star Trek was shot and filmed for television.)
1977-1980 was a blur of whatever Bantam novels I could get a hold of. I missed out on Perry's Planet, Devil's World, and Marshak and Culbreath's second novel, but, since I didn't like their first, or their third and fourth, I don't think I missed out. (I did pick up a reprint in 1984, and I stand by my assessment.)
In sixth grade, I got my hands on the Franz Joseph Technical Manual, and the Mandell and Drexler Medical Reference Manual.
I purchased the Pocket Books novels religiously until 1991-2, stopping when it got to the point where I felt that Richard Arnold's edicts were hampering the authors' stories. The published version of Margaret Wander Bonanno's long-delayed PROBE in 1992 was my last straw. I could tell that the authorial hand was not hers, but it wasn't until years later that I learned more specifics about that particular situation. The spell was broken. Post-Arnold, I would pick up the occasional Trek novel from an author who had some critical buzz in the community, and would enjoy a number of them, but not enough to again commit to supporting the line in toto.
So, when I was four years old, in 1970, Star Trek entered afternoon syndication in my market on my local NBC affiliate. My mother tried to get me hyped and interested in it, but unsuccessfully. It conflicted with the Gilligan's Island reruns on the local CBS affiliate. I may not have been able to read or tell time by a clock, but I could tell time to the nearest half hour by the daytime television schedule, and at that young age, I was still all about the sitcoms, specifically Gilligan and the Paul Henning Hooterville trilogy. My obsessions with the Adventures of Superman, the Wild, Wild West and Lost in Space reruns were still a year in the future.
In September of 1972, Star Trek returned to the afterschool syndication schedule. This time, as a 6 year old, I was ready for it. For some reason, they started this run with the mid-to-late second season episodes, specifically "The Gamesters of Triskelion," and I was hooked.
The following September, the Animated Series debuted, becoming my favorite Saturday morning narrative adventure cartoon. Sometime during the 1974-75 school year, my mother noticed Volumes 7 and 8 of the Blish adaptations, and since I was already reading beyond my grade level, wondered if I'd be interested in them. Of course. Soon after that came Volumes 4 and 5 of the Alan Dean Foster adaptations of the Animated Series. During my fourth grade year (1975-76), I bought a copy of THE MAKING OF STAR TREK at my school's annual book fair. TMoST became my Star Trek Bible. For Christmas of 1976, when I was ten, I received Star Trek 11, a later printing of SPOCK MUST DIE, and the infamous SPOCK, MESSIAH! (Yeah, I read S,M! at the age of ten. Moral guardians, clasp your pearls now. The funny thing is, when I read it, I pictured every scene as part of a comic adaptation drawn my mid-seventies Mike Grell or a Neal Adams clone, not as Star Trek was shot and filmed for television.)
1977-1980 was a blur of whatever Bantam novels I could get a hold of. I missed out on Perry's Planet, Devil's World, and Marshak and Culbreath's second novel, but, since I didn't like their first, or their third and fourth, I don't think I missed out. (I did pick up a reprint in 1984, and I stand by my assessment.)
In sixth grade, I got my hands on the Franz Joseph Technical Manual, and the Mandell and Drexler Medical Reference Manual.
I purchased the Pocket Books novels religiously until 1991-2, stopping when it got to the point where I felt that Richard Arnold's edicts were hampering the authors' stories. The published version of Margaret Wander Bonanno's long-delayed PROBE in 1992 was my last straw. I could tell that the authorial hand was not hers, but it wasn't until years later that I learned more specifics about that particular situation. The spell was broken. Post-Arnold, I would pick up the occasional Trek novel from an author who had some critical buzz in the community, and would enjoy a number of them, but not enough to again commit to supporting the line in toto.
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I remember a book thing came to my elementary school as well. This would have been circa 1969. I got Scholastic paperback edition of Frankenstein with a nice cover painting of Karloff, and a movie tie-in edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey with a photo section. The books were spread out on a table near the principal's office and we could pick any two.
I have other versions of those books now, but I wish I still had those particular editions.
I still watch TOS every so often. Just my blu rays of course. I won't bother with streaming or meTv. I like the old effects better. I do leave the TV on every night while I'm sleeping (tinitus) it's usually left on Metv so Saturday nights I may be hearing some TOS in my sleep. 
Anyhow I still love the show but it doesn't hit the way it use to. When I was a kid I absolutely loved the way it made me feel. Adventurous, hopeful, excited for the future etc. But I grew out of that (around my late 30's) and realized the world or humanity will never be the way Roddenberry envisioned. So now with my life 60- 70% of the way done, I don't look at the show the way I use to. Not trying to be depressing or anything it's just the way it is.
So watching the show now makes me remember those feelings and I still love watching the show and it still brings comfort to me.
Anyhow I still love the show but it doesn't hit the way it use to. When I was a kid I absolutely loved the way it made me feel. Adventurous, hopeful, excited for the future etc. But I grew out of that (around my late 30's
) and realized the world or humanity will never be the way Roddenberry envisioned. So now with my life 60- 70% of the way done, I don't look at the show the way I use to. Not trying to be depressing or anything it's just the way it is. So watching the show now makes me remember those feelings and I still love watching the show and it still brings comfort to me.
Whippersnapper.
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