When Did You First Discover Star Trek?

[edisraf]

When the original series was on, I was in High School and two busy doing things to watch anything. I don't recall ever seeing even one episode.

I my second year in college, I got tired of driving from home through city traffic, so I moved into a dorm. Every week day, at 5:30 pm, the TV room filled to capacity and at 6:30 it virtually emptied. I wondered why. Star Trek reruns was why.
So guess where I was on week days at 5:30. That is how I got started.

raf

 

[Captain Verata]

My parents are Star Trek fans. I was born in 1986. Grew up with Star Trek: The Next Generation.

 

[Trilliam]

Whenever it was that TOS started its frst run airing in Australia in the 60s. 68? 69? Our kids (born, 85, 86, 88 + 93) have watched (and read) all their lives, starting with TOS in reruns on the old Capital 7 station in Queanbeyan, and reading the young adult novels.

 

[6079SmithW]

My dad is a huge trek fan and I was born in '87 so I grew up watching TNG and reruns of TOS. I've seen all the other series first run.

 

[GNDN]

Syndicated TOS growing up in the '70s and my parents took me to all the movies.

Also my Great Uncle was the first person I knew to own a Laserdisk player (way before we even had a VCR) and he had TMP on disk and some episodes taped off TV. I'd watch them on his big TV which had a ZOOM button!!! I'd zoom in on the Enterprise especially when looking over the saucer to see an object in front of the ship.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

My first contact with Star Trek was an audio play cassette of the TNG episode "Haven". I was, like, 5 years old, and up until then, my idea of a spaceship was what Lego and Playmobil had shown me. Small ships that only contain cockpits, room for two or three persons (figurines) at best. So, now I was being told a story (without any images to go with it) that took place on a spaceship with a bridge, a transporter room, a holodeck, and dozens of people (as far as I could tell) on board. As you can imagine, I had to get my head around that one.

When I was eight, TOS and TNG were on tv weekday afternoons (not at the same time, mind you), but my mom only allowed me to watch one episode per week. Thanks to that (and the incredibly high prices of the DVDs) there are still episodes of TOS and TNG that I have not yet seen.
But our local library had the German editions of James Blish's novelizations of the TOS episodes, and at a flee market, I bought a copy of the TNG novel "Masks" by John Vornholt. Back then, I didn't get the distinctive "The Next Generation", it was simply Star Trek to me (or rather "Raumschiff Enterprise" as it was titled in Germany back then). Still, I understood that there were two different Enterprises with two different crews, so I figured that one was by James Blish and one was by John Vornholt. Just so you know, I have learned better by now.

So, "Star Trek" was the biggest thing for me in my childhood, reading James Blish's novelizations, watching an episode per week, playing with the TNG action figures and my own Star Trek toys build with Lego.
Well, I lost interest in my teenage years, but I've rediscovered my love for it since.
I still have that Playmates model of the Enterprise D with lights and sound I got for christmas back when I was nine. And I truely treasure it. Hey, maybe I should get myself some Lego and start building a bridge again.

 

[lurok]

Voyager first run. (But have since watched all series - and movies - apart from TAS)

 

[Greg Cox]

I have dim memories of watching TOS on its original run on NBC. My dad was a science fiction fan who exposed me to Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, etc.

It was a big deal if I got to stay up past bedtime to watch Star Trek . . . . .

 

[estar9821]

On May 16th, I will have been watching it for a year.
I just randomly decided to watch an episode of TOS last May, and haven't stopped watching since

 

[Smellincoffee]

I dislocated my elbow and fractured my arm back when I was seven, and so spent three weeks in the hospital. There I watched lots of reruns of the original series, and TO THIS DAY I still associate hospitals with the original series. In my last week there I saw an episode or two of TNG, and I remember feeling disgruntled about the bald imposter and that guy with the gold sunglasses trying to be cool.

 

[BillJ]

Been a fan longer than I can remember.

 

[The Wormhole]

I first discovered Trek through TNG as a child.

 

[WisTrekFan]

Being just four years old in 1966, when Star Trek began its original run on NBC, I was aware of the show, but at the time was more interested in Lost in Space. The Robot was cool and as a youngster I probably identified with the Will Robinson character.

I really discovered Star Trek in the fall of 1973 when one of our local stations began airing it weekday afternoons after school. I would get my paper route done as fast as I could, so I could get home to watch at least the second half of that day's episode. The first episode I saw in its entirety was Turnabout Intruder. Later, in the mid-70's, another station aired Star Trek on Sunday afternoons for a couple of years and that is when I really began to learn what the show was all about and really became a big fan.

 

[DFScott]

Before I could write complete words or sentences, I tried desperately to copy the incredible moving images I saw on television -- specifically, from this 12-inch diagonal portable GE color TV (one of the first) that my mother kept in her art studio. Mom couldn't always keep everything I drew, because I drew something every day.

Among the items she kept were a few of my attempts to draw a figure of a man (at least, I assume it was a man because men, in my earliest drawings, had square heads while women were triangular) who appears, at least at first glance, to be going up in smoke. I swirled a mass of spirals around his body, and I attempted to write the word LITS. Mom probably asked me what the smoke was, and I said no, Mom, it's not smoke, it's lights. The man went up in lights and disappeared. Things like that fascinated me at three years old.

I also liked to draw over and over again the things that terrified me, such as tornadoes. (I grew up in Oklahoma, so you can imagine.) I drew the MGM lion because I was scared of big, roaring cats that could one day break into my house through the toilet. The toilet was round, and so was the thing that the MGM lion roared through, so I made the connection. The Wizard of Oz, which contained both the MGM lion and a tornado, was a double-whammy for me.

I was also scared of something I called a ghost, who also appeared at the end of a TV show. Mom didn't know of any production company logos that included a ghost, so she didn't know what I was talking about, and thought I was making it up. No, I evidently pleaded with her, and proceeded to try drawing its face. Since it was triangular, it had to have been a girl ghost, I concluded. I may also have drawn at roughly the same time (though Mom separated the pages from time to time, so they weren't always in order) the man who went up in LITS.

The "girl ghost," in 20/20 retrospect, was the Balok dummy who was borrowed for the ending credits of Star Trek during the second and third seasons. The man disappearing in lights, obviously, is someone beaming up. The year was probably 1968.

DF "Friday Night at Ten, Nine Central Time, on NBC" Scott

 

[edisraf]

Interesting story! Cat through the toilet!

Did you draw your avatar? It is very good. I am going to guess, and please blame me, not the drawing if I am wrong, but it looks like Gary Seven from Assignment Earth, last episode of season 2, played by Robert Lansing, one of my favorite actors (also one of my favorite episodes).

raf

Before I could write complete words or sentences, I tried desperately to copy the incredible moving images I saw on television -- specifically, from this 12-inch diagonal portable GE color TV (one of the first) that my mother kept in her art studio. Mom couldn't always keep everything I drew, because I drew something every day.

Among the items she kept were a few of my attempts to draw a figure of a man (at least, I assume it was a man because men, in my earliest drawings, had square heads while women were triangular) who appears, at least at first glance, to be going up in smoke. I swirled a mass of spirals around his body, and I attempted to write the word LITS. Mom probably asked me what the smoke was, and I said no, Mom, it's not smoke, it's lights. The man went up in lights and disappeared. Things like that fascinated me at three years old.

I also liked to draw over and over again the things that terrified me, such as tornadoes. (I grew up in Oklahoma, so you can imagine.) I drew the MGM lion because I was scared of big, roaring cats that could one day break into my house through the toilet. The toilet was round, and so was the thing that the MGM lion roared through, so I made the connection. The Wizard of Oz, which contained both the MGM lion and a tornado, was a double-whammy for me.

I was also scared of something I called a ghost, who also appeared at the end of a TV show. Mom didn't know of any production company logos that included a ghost, so she didn't know what I was talking about, and thought I was making it up. No, I evidently pleaded with her, and proceeded to try drawing its face. Since it was triangular, it had to have been a girl ghost, I concluded. I may also have drawn at roughly the same time (though Mom separated the pages from time to time, so they weren't always in order) the man who went up in LITS.

The "girl ghost," in 20/20 retrospect, was the Balok dummy who was borrowed for the ending credits of Star Trek during the second and third seasons. The man disappearing in lights, obviously, is someone beaming up. The year was probably 1968.

DF "Friday Night at Ten, Nine Central Time, on NBC" Scott

 

[MLJames]

I have dim memories of watching TOS on its original run on NBC. My dad was a science fiction fan who exposed me to Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, etc.

It was a big deal if I got to stay up past bedtime to watch Star Trek . . . . .

Amen! The only episode I remember seeing on NBC was "Spectre Of The Gun", only because my dad let me stay up to the horrendously late hour of 11:00 on a Friday night. According to my older brother, we watched a number of other episodes, but that's the only one that sticks out in my mind. I became more familiar with TOS during the syndication years.

 

[Shatnertage]

I've got no conscious memory of discovering it--first watched TAS/TOS in syndication as a very young kid, so it's always been a part of my entertainment world.

 

[scotpens]

I was a month shy of my thirteenth birthday when Star Trek premiered on NBC in September of 1966. That makes me part of First Fandom — a Trek übergeek. I was constantly doodling pictures of the Enterprise and the shuttlecraft, and sketching hypothetical interior plans of the ship years before the Franz Joseph set was published.

At first, I thought Leonard Nimoy’s last name was stressed on the second syllable, George Takei’s name sounded something like “Tacky,” and phaser was spelled “fazer.”

 

[nightwind1]

As a five-year old in 1966.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Weirdly enough, I don't remember. I was about four years old, and my next oldest sister (11 1/2 years older than me) has told me that I was the one that insisted we all had to watch Star Trek. I can't imagine four year old me bossing around the whole family, including many teenaged siblings and my parents, back when there were just three networks plus maybe a couple independent stations, but apparently that's how it all began...

The "girl ghost," in 20/20 retrospect, was the Balok dummy who was borrowed for the ending credits of Star Trek during the second and third seasons.

I was scared shitless of that thing! When I starting watching Trek in reruns years later (which is how I really remember it), I had to change the channel before it came on!)