@The Old Building & Loan brings up an interesting point when they say:
Maybe growing up watching TOS wasn't part of your experience, but Gen X begins with people who might have been just old enough to catch some TOS in its original airings, and firmly includes plenty of people who grew up watching it in syndication in the '70s, which is when TOS became a pop cultural phenomenon.
Primarily because, I agree that TOS
does branch the generations.
Sure, the TV show was maybe a baby boomer thing originally, part of a particular period that includes a billion other much regarded TV shows. But once the good ship Enterprise launched itself into movie theaters in 1979, and followed that up with many successful sequels all featuring the same original cast that had steered her through 3 rocky television seasons, 'ownership' of TOS was not necessarily limited to those who'd seen it on original broadcast or even those who had joined it later in syndication, but was being owned by successive generations who eagerly followed each new adventure at the cinema.
In my own case for example, I have the VERY vaguest of memories of The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home on TV, movies that were released when I was between the ages or 2 and 4, but after TNG hooked me into the universe on its debut in 1987, I was there as a fully paid-up fanboy for the movie releases of The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country. Not once did my child self ever stop to think of it in terms of "old" Star Trek and "new" Star Trek, to me it was all part of one wonderful experience. That Shatner, Nimoy et al were part of some popcultural era/generation from before I was born never entered the equation.
I still feel this is all a sidetrack to the thread question, which is really, when was the franchise at the height of its mass market popularity. I don't think I could say hand on heart it ever truly achieved 'mainstream appeal' until The Next Generation, during whose run Star Trek was
everywhere .
