Star Trek memories...

With Star Trek memories I am not referring to recollections of actors, writers or production staff, but one’s own personal memories before and after getting into Star Trek.

Back in the late ‘60s we were living in Etobicoke, Ontario and I had not yet begun to watch Star Trek. However, on some evening I do recall my mother flipping channels on our old b&w TV when she paused for a few seconds where I saw this very unusual looking spaceship flying over a planet. Then she changed the channel and that was it.

My next memory of Star Trek dates to sometime in 1970. The year before we had moved from Etobicoke to a larger house in Mississauga, Ontario and sometime during that year I saw that strange spaceship again and began watching the show. In seemingly no time flat I was hooked. I cannot recall precisely which episode I saw in entirety first, but “Balance Of Terror” and “Charlie X” seem to resonate the most strongly on that point.

That same year I was 11 and I started making cutout cardboard models of the Enterprise, stealing the 8x10 white cardboard inserts from my Dad’s newly cleaned work shirts to make my replicas. He didn’t really mind, but just wished I would ask him first. Nonetheless that year I asked my parents for an Enterprise toy for Christmas—at this point it was the only thing I wanted.

Imagine my surprise and elation when Christmas arrived and I received not only the Enterprise AMT model kit, but the Klingon battle cruiser as well! I was on freakin’ cloud nine!

One of my early memories of that model (besides the drooping nacelles) was taking the ship outside one evening while it was snowing. I held the model up to the sky, sighting along its length imagining it flying through space and the snowflakes were stars the Enterprise was whipping past at warp speed!

Man, good times!


The next stage, besides watching the show religiously whenever possible, was collecting books. There were occasional issues of the old Gold Key comics and (even better) the James Blish adaptations of the episodes. I was on a quest and in a few years we would start to get the first original novels from Bantam Books along with the nonfiction books The Making of Star Trek by Stephen Whitfield and The World of Star Trek by David Gerrokd.

It was a heady time even though I had not yet really realized how many others were into the show. I was dimly aware of what a convention was, but that experience was still some years in the future for me at Toronto Trek ‘76 at the Royal York hotel in downtown Toronto. For now the big new things were the debut of TAS and the new Star Trek Booklet of General Plans and the Star Trek Star Fleet Technical manual by Franz Joseph. Not long after was the Star Trek Concordance as a guide to all the televised Star Trek.

And I drew. I drew the Enterprise endlessly while struggling to get all the details right. I made a “flying” 3D model of the Galileo shuttlecraft out of cardboard (those shirt inserts again). The shuttlecraft flew by attaching two bent safety pins to the roof of the ship then running it on a long string fastened up high on our television antenna and to the backyard fence. Watching the cardboard model slide down the taut string (from the vantage point up on the antenna near the roof) was like watching the ship fly away on television.

My father thought I was crazy--seeing me run up and down the TV antenna tower--but, man, that was so much fun!

 

I was born in '73 and remember discovering Star Trek in '77. My grandparents had taken me to see Star Wars and some time after that, learning to read, I read "Star Trek" in the TV guide but only knew the word "star" and to my surprise, saw something other than the movie I'd been taken too. I was hooked right then, at 4 years old.

Growing up in St. Thomas, Ontario, not far from Lake Erie, we'd get WSEE Channel 35 out of Erie, PA and WUAB Channel 43, out of Lorain, OH and I'd tape the shows... on Betamax.

I remember once in public school our class got to put artwork in our small town art gallery and I made the Enterprise out of grey construction paper and used black and red markers for the detailing. I used popsicle sticks inside the nacelle struts for support and I was a pretty proud kid seeing it on the wall.

I read all the Bantam books and all the Pocket Books up until the early 90s... I think... Doctor's Orders is the last one I recall buying/reading.

TOS will always be my favourite. It's the only one I own on DVD and have the six TOS movies too. I've seen every episode of TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT at least twice (except one nameless ENT episode where once was once too much).

And I've introduced my wife. We've watched TOS, ENT, VOY and now we're working through TNG before DS9 (though she's seen random episode of both)... and she loves Star Trek now She makes the occasional reference, catches herself, looks at me and says I've turned her into a Trekkie.

It's funny that Star Wars lead me to Star Trek as a wee lad and I have zero interest in Star Wars. Saw the first three and that was it.

 

I could never get into Star Wars. I didn’t see any of the films until just before Return Of The Jedi came out. I went with a friend to see a double feature of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back before seeing ROTJ. It was meh although I did like some of the spaceships. I have softened a bit since and I have some curiosity to see the most recent trilogy. What I saw of the previous trilogy struck me as blah, but I saw Rogue One on television and it juiced my curiosity to see the most recent films.

Starlog magazine was an anticipated read for science fiction and things Trek, particularly in regard to Trek possibly returning to television or as a feature film. Before the internet media oriented magazines were the only way for so many of us to get news on our favourite shows and films.

I read about conventions throughout the ‘70s until I finally went to Toronto Trek in 1976 when I was 17. Man, what a rush! And I got to see George Takei, Walter Koenig, James Doohan, Mark Lenard and Grace Lee Whitney speak while they sat in a partial replica of the Enterprise bridge.

In the late ‘70s it seemed like we were getting so many big SF feature films. No wonder we were primed for ST-TMP in ‘79. It capped the decade when reruns and occasional merchandise was all we had to sustain us. TMP was a mixed experience, but Star Trek was back, baby! The Enterprise was massive and believable on the big screen. And I couldn’t wait to see more big screen adventures.

In some respects the ‘70s were the peak, the most intensely felt time of my fan interest. For me something turned in 1982 with the release of TWOK. It was a rollicking adventure, but I didn’t care for the changed look of the film. It was if they had gone too far another way after TMP. I still went to see every new film released and still read books but the intensity of interest was no longer the same.

With the debut of TNG it would take some years for me to see something of value in it. I liked DS9 in the beginning, but not long after that Babylon 5 interested me much more. I have never cared for any of VOY or ENT and the less I say about JJtrek the better. I haven’t yet seen much of DSC or Picard.

My interest in TOS is still there. Overall I enjoyed some of the fan productions such as Starship Exeter and Star Trek Continues as they felt new yet more like the Trek I loved.

I started drawing Trek ships in 1970 and I’m still doing it fifty years later only now realizing them through 3D modelling.

 

I remember your TNG rewatch thread in the TNG forum back around 2011. You rewatched every episode and reviewed each one. That discussion was a real highlight for me. I remember agreeing with a lot of your reviews.

 

Some of my very earliest memories from the late 60's and early 70's are of adults watching shows from the 60's, and I fell in love with Star Trek right from my earliest memories. Therefore, there is no "before Star Trek" for me. It's been a love of mine since I could remember.

When I was a kid I had most of the 8" Mego Star Trek dolls. I also had the bridge set. Downstairs in my parents' house is a closet with two slide-away doors with a series of shelves. I decided that closet would be a good cut-away view of the Enterprise. So I moved things off of the shelves and slid the bridge set into one of the highest shelves, and that was the bridge. I positioned everyone of the bridge crew at their stations on the bridge.

I decided a shelf midway down was sickbay. I put McCoy there. My parents had various card games. I used the card game boxes as beds in sickbay.

I decided Engineering was on the floor in one of the lowest shelves. I put Scotty there. I also opened up one of my Battleship game boards as a massive computer. And if an alien ship was in the area, I put a Battleship game piece on the game board like a big scanner monitoring the alien ship.

I also had 8" Mego DC and Marvel super hero dolls that I used for Star Trek. Iron Man was always a good robot, The Thing always a good rock creature. I used Tarzan for Chekov. My Aquaman had pointed ears, so he was always good if I needed a Romulan or another Vulcan.

I'd have battles with my models. My Enterprise and my Klingon battle cruiser would shoot at each other. Then I'd have the dolls do things for action on the ship. My Enterprise also had battles with the Romulan Bird of Prey, the generic glow in the dark alien ship, and the Seaview, which looked like an alien ship.

I remember before there was TAS, and loved watching that show new. I had all of Alan Dean Foster's TAS books.

 

The first glimpses of Trek I remember were TMP. My dad was watching it, and I was curious, so I peeked for a while. When that annoyingly bright probe hovered around on the bridge and the annoying alarm wouldn't stop beeping, I realized that Star Trek is not for me. For several years, I would tell other kids that Star Trek is boring. Weird people in a weird ship where weird stuff happens. I was 5 or so, so don't blame me for a narrow view
I even got a first grade pen case with the D on it cause all the others had even worse stuff on them, not cause I liked the D.
But then I watched a bit of TNG and got hooked for life. My first TOS movie was TVH, and since whales were my favorite animals, I liked it a lot! Then I watched all shows and movies many many times.
In my teens, I thought the one thing they should change about the TOS 1701 is the pylons, making them oblique like the TMP refit and more interesting. Now that they've done that, I hate it, and wish they'd left her as she was XD

 

I feel your pain. After getting hooked on TOS, I eagerly anticipated TMP. Half way through that klunker I fell asleep. Boring is an understatement.

 

I started watching Star Trek when I was 7 when TNG premiered. I liked it a lot but I wasn't a "trekkie" until around 1990. That's when TOS got a new syndicated run on my FOX affiliate. The episodes were rerun in their production order from Where No Man Has Gone Before through The Turnabout Intruder. So I probably saw my first episode of the original series in 1990. I liked it immediately and I had trouble deciding whether I liked TNG or TOS more. TOS could be a little hokey and it was so 60's but the stories were inventive and weird, and at times more more interesting than some of TNG's softer stories. It felt more like a western and more like real science fiction. The relationship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy was always what made the show so appealing to me. I really liked the look and feel of the original show from the uniforms to Kirk's gelled hair and pointed sideburns to the exterior of the original ship. I began to buy every Star Trek card, comic, magazine, and toy that I could afford. I even bought some of the Pocket novels, not because I wanted to read them but because I loved the cover paintings of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

While TNG and DS9 compete as my favorite series overall nothing can top TOS for its sense of awe and wonder. I just rewatched the entire first season and it holds up very well today in 2020.

 

I honestly can't remember when I wasn't a Star Trek fan. I have dim memories of my dad letting me stay up past my bedtime to watch STAR TREK with him during its original run on NBC, and, of course, the syndicated reruns were playing constantly the whole time I was growing up.

Jumping ahead a few years, I have fond memories of going to see the first movie with pretty much my entire college SF club, which was pretty much my introduction to organized fandom.

 

Before Star Trek my exposure to science fiction and sci-fi was The Adventures Of Superman, Flash Gordon, Lost In Space, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, Time Tunnel and Land Of The Giants. Around the time I got into TOS I also got into UFO and not long after there was Kolchak: The Night Stalker and The Six Million Dollar Man. But no question that Star Trek stood head-and-shoulders above all of them and would for decades to come.

 

The original series has always been my favourite of all the Treks and still stands above all of them! The other three series I mean and the films and cartoon show!
JB

 

Yes, sir. To boldly go where no man has gone before!

 

It has been a part of me my whole conscious life. Helped form me. I write too often that it gave me heroes who went about doing good. I thank God, no exaggeration, for Mr. GR, Coon, Justman, Ms. Fontana, the actors, composers, everybody involved. It 's just been a huge blessing I have had had the immense joy to share with my wife and pass on to my children.

 

When I think about Kirk, I think about how he would use only the amount of force necessary to stop the bad guys. He killed when he had to, but he didn't kill unnecessarily or gratuitously, and he was always willing to show mercy to his enemies. He consistently displayed compassion, willing to break the rules in order to save lives. He was a man's man, able to beat up the bad guys and get the ladies. He was quite a hero to grow up with.

 

Unlike his many enemies, including the Klingons who wouldn't of spared him and taken his ship as a trophy, he did show mercy to his living opponents! If you were a computer or rampaging Berserker though, forget it!!!
JB

 

I dimly remember getting to stay up late and watch Star Trek because I had been sick (it might have been because I had had surgery to correct the umbilical hernia i had been born with). I liked Star Trek, and then when the weekday showings began, I became a big fan. I bought Spock Must Die! and The World Of Star Trek as first or second editions at school book fairs in third and fourth grade. I had some good parts to growing up, I must admit.

 

I remember my Sunday afternoon lineup.

Star Trek
Solid Gold
Dance Fever
Sha Na Na

Ha, I just made a connection: I came home from kindergarten graduation (around 1980-1) to watch TOS. Later in 1994, I came home from high school graduation to watch the premiere of All Good Things...

 

Star Trek was such a huge part of my life growing up. I remember being a fan as far back as 4 years old (my earliest memories) in 1972, totally obsessed with it with a set of gold Star Trek pajamas. Most of my TV memories revolve around summer days, bright sunshine outside, playing Trek on my bike with my friends. I was literally a Mego commercial – those kids playing Star Trek (one was even named Scott and I had friends named Jim and Steve if you know the commercial). At home, I’d watch the series daily. In 1975, Space:1999 premiered and would run back to back with it on WPIX and I got sooooo into that show. I would put together the AMT Enterprise and make up my own episodes, humming the music as I would have my Mego guys go on missions.

In 1979, my whole family went to see TMP (I turned them into Trekkies – and we had NO problem with that term). We loved it. Yeah, it was slow, but we all really enjoyed seeing everyone back together again.

As I got older, my love for the series only grew. I watched the Channel 44 showings of Trek on Saturday nights. WVIA was (is?) a Pennsylvania PBS station that my cable provider carried and they ran it without commercials from 11:30 to 2am, playing three episodes in production order. At first they ran uncut 16mm prints, but then switched to the Paramount provided 45 minute cut episodes. This pissed me off because PBS had NO commercials, so that made little sense to me at the time.

Then I bought the series on VHS. First on Columbia House tapes (in Stardate order!) and then the individual Paramount black box tapes. Each movie was HIGHLY anticipated and there wasn’t a Trek film I didn’t enjoy, either loved endlessly (TSFS) or just “liked” (TVH), but they were all gifts to me and I always appreciate gifts. Even the ugly sweaters.

To this day, I miss that time, when I would scan TV Guide to see what episodes were coming up, audio taping them so I could memorize every episode. Using a rotor on our rooftop antenna to get Connecticut stations which ran the show uncut and audio taping THOSE. Sitting with my sister (6 years older than I) and watching I Dream of Jeannie and then Star Trek and discussing them. Such great times.

Star Trek will never be old or outdated to me. It doesn’t need CGI or audio enhancement, it’s perfect as is. It is, for me, the greatest TV Series ever made and I will never, ever get tired of it.

 

I’ve probably seen each and every TOS episode at least a 1,000 times and it still never gets old.

 

The only time Trek was on daily here in the UK (excluding now) was in the mid seventies and the BBCs Christmas Holiday Trek as it was known! Most of us stayed in to watch that every morning before we went out to throw snowballs! I think even back then I noticed the odd BBC ordering of the episodes! With Kirk one day having short greasy hair and wearing his shrunken uniform and later wearing his silky outfit with much longer hair and sideburns and the next day back again!
JB