How old were you when Star Trek beamed into your life?

[thatcrazycajun]

This topic originated today in the startrek community, but it's too good to leave there: How old were you when you first watched the original Star Trek television series? On NBC during its oh-too-short run? In syndication, when stations around the country aired it at times far more conducive to its target audience than NBC had? Or were you an Animated Series, Next Generation or DS9 baby? Or are you such a Johnny- or Janie-come-lately you only started watching with Voyager or Enterprise? Or was it one of the theatrical films that hooked you?

I know full well some Trekkers, Trekkies and Trekfen hide amongst my readership (some not all that hidden, actually), and my curiosity just said, "Engage!" Post your earliest Trek memories here; mine are back of the cut.

I'm what's sometimes called a "second generation" TOS fan, in that I first became interested in Star Trek when reruns of the original started showing up in syndication on weekday or weekend afternoons, or early evenings. (I was born in '63, so I was way too young for the network run.) I'd been reading science fiction half my life by then already, but hardly ever watched it on TV, the offerings then being generally execrable ("The Vegetable Rebellion" on Lost in Space was probably the worst such example).

My earliest memories of the show are watching Saturday afternoons when I was around 12 or so, and audiotaping the episodes with my old Radio Shack portable cassette recorder. Then it was on to reading James Blish's Bantam Books novelizations, buying and building the AMT model kits, and finally discovering conventions, clubs and fandom through the books Star Trek Lives! and The Making of the Trek Conventions. Then the Animated Series came along, and I watched that too (and bought the Alan Dean Foster Logs), so religiously not even getting hit by a truck and hospitalized overnight could keep me from getting my fix of Kirk, Spock and the gang the very next day.

When ST:TNG came on in 1987, I was two years out of college and watched the premiere at a house party with a bunch of other SF fans. My then-girlfriend was with me, and when we saw Data guiding "the Admiral" through the new ship's corridors, you could have heard me in the next parish over yelling at the top of my lungs in stunned delight, "IT'S BONES!!!" I had been skeptical, but that moment made it obvious that Great Bird Gene was still in command and this thing was worth giving a chance. It took them a season or two to get their space legs under them, but they did; and since then I have watched every new series and all 10 movies. (I did let a few eps of Voyager and Enterprise go by, but I'm catching up.) And I plan to give J.J.'s new film a chance as well, when it opens next May.

Come what may, regardless of age and new passions, I am a Trekker first, last and always. I found SF fandom because of it...and I am a better person for experiencing Gene's vision of "the perfectibility of the human race."

Comments

[poltr1]

I first remember seeing ST:TOS in syndication on Buffalo's Channel 29 (WUTV), which aired the program on weeknights at 8. Then I met a friend in junior high who was a big Trek fan and wrote about the Star Trektennial (which took place in 1976) for the school newspaper. I didn't consider myself a fan of the original series until around 1984, when I "officially" got involved in SF fandom.

[scs-11.livejournal.com]

I am an original.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I'm second gen, too... I don't remember where or when I watched TOS, but I remember being young and naive enough to actually *like* ST:TMP when it came out... I got better! I was in college when TNG premiered, and watched it on a regular basis; I remember how BAD S1 was (see, I'd gotten better by then!) and then being really impressed when Paramount paid attention to the deluge of letters and did some serious improvement in S2.... I remember standing in line for the midnight debut of STVI:NA at Lenox Square... and then when DS9 came out a snotload of us had a party at zeekar's place up on Buford Raceway.... vernard arrived mere minutes prior to airtime, and the lot of us salaamed him...

I also remember when Jimmy died... I was pissed as hell that I had something else going on and couldn't attend the wake here at SFM... but I remember writing a eulogy... and I still tell the story as to what happened the first time George took him out for sushi. *EG*

I didn't watch it nearly as religiously as say, B5 (see icon :) but I do consider myself a trekkie.... but not a trekker. *You* are a trekker. Death does not release you, you know. :)

Live long, and prosper.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

1967. I was four. And I have clear memories of Kirk talking about his brother, so it had to be Operation:Annihilate.

[mshollie.livejournal.com]

My mother was more of an original fan than I was, watching TOS back in 1967 when it first aired. I didn't get into fandom formally until 1980. I still remember my first con.

I enjoyed TNG and DS9, but didn't care much for Voyager. Never saw Enterprise.

[beki.livejournal.com]

I watched the original series. I believe I had to have been in the 3-5 age range.

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

The first episode I watched was "Amok Time" the first time around.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

I missed the first season of Classic Trek in its first run. I was living in a college dorm at the time, and IN a time when no appliances larger than a popcorn popper were allowed in the rooms.
When I got home for the summer, though, I started watching the reruns. There are still several first-season episodes that I've never seen, though.

[ericavdg.livejournal.com]

First episode, first run. I'm 52. I watched the reruns religiously, and would have hitchhiked to the first Trek con had I known it existed, without parental approval if need be! I didn't discover organized fandom till much later in life, but I love it and it has truly been my home.

We watched "Lost in Space," too, which my 7-years-younger brother greatly enjoyed. I remember him bouncing up and down when the theme music came on, yelling "Ra-ra boom-boom!" because rocks so frequently crashed around on that show. He's the head of the Geography Department at U of Alaska now; bet his students would love that story!

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

First generation here. And a week or 2 past the 42nd anniversary of seeing my 1st episode ("Tomorrow Is Yesterday").

Even at age 9, I realized that if someone was making a TV show about all the things I loved that made me "weird," there must be other people like me out there somewhere. This was literally the 1st evidence I'd ever had that I wasn't crazy & I wasn't alone. ST:TOS not only changed my life -- it may very well have saved it.

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

Apparently like you, I'm of in the age demographic that was a bit too old to watch Sesame Street when it first began but a bit too young to watch Star Trek when it began :-)

I was first alerted to it by some aquaintances half a dozen years older than me, near the start of the 1970s. By my mid teens I was aware that some episodes were very good and others were realy awful, and was amused by the cheese factors like the actors rolling from side to side when the ship was attacked.

Junior year of high school a couple friends and I wrote a parody play that we put on as part of the school "Follies". (I played the Dr. McCoy part)

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Original, first-run. I don't remember specifically what eps I saw then, having watched so many in reruns. But I think I may have seen the first runs of -- at opposite ends of some scale -- "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "Spock's Brain".

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

First episode, ST:TOS here. Watched it because I had been reading Analog SF since I could read. It was 2 weeks before my 16th b'day, I was 1)thoroughly entranced and 2) immediately bummed because, since I liked it, I knew it would not last a season. Imagine my surprise and delight that it lasted for 3 seasons.

I have enjoyed all incarnations of the ST-verse except the animated series and ST:The Motion Picture (even though I got to meet James Doohan in person because of that).

And I am looking forward to seeing JTK portrayed as something more than a two-dimensional caricature.

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

Origianl series as it came out in Britan. My folks like it so much that we ate our dinners on trays in front of the Telly. (This Never happened) I assume that moving dinner would have caused a disturbance in the fabric of the universe. And I always had a shilling for the box just in case. My freind Fiona had a Colour TV,,I got to go to her house one night and it was the episode where we see Spock bleed green, I WAS SO EXCITED!

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I'm told I saw the original run, but don't have any direct memories of it. I wore out the TV watching the next run in syndication, though.

[janeg.livejournal.com]

I watched the original. If that started in '67 as others have said here, I would have been 16.

Although I saw all the original ones more than once, and most of the TNGs more than once, my watching trailed off and I never did see all of Voyageur or DS9, or all the movies. I do not consider myself a Trekkie, but I am proud to include Trekkies among my friends since Trek brought them to fandom and to filking.

Imagine, for example, how much weaker the filk community would be without the Hayman! Dave started and continues to run the Hall of Fame; would someone else have stepped forward. They were part of the founding of Interfilk; would it have happened or been as strong without them? I know FilKONtario and the filk community of southern Ontario would be much weaker. They hardly knew Phil and I when they first invited us to their place for New Year's Eve. That event made us part of the community rather than just attendees.

[cedorsett.livejournal.com]

I remember watching reruns of the original series in the 80's. It was one of the most formative experiences to shape my imagination.

Star Trek shaped the way I see the world, and how I like to tell stories. I am grateful for Gene teaching me IDIC.

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Let's see, Star Trek debuted in 1966 IIRC, so I would have been eleven years old. At the time I was nuts about radio (still am) but had taken to occasionally reading SF. I particularly remember an anthology my parents gave me for Christmas the year before entitled "Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum" which included stories by Guy Endore ("Day Of The Dragon"), Theodore Sturgeon ("Shadow, Shadow On The Wall"), and Manly Wade Wellman ("Desrick on Yandro"), among others.

We were faithful Star Trek viewers at our house. By that time we had a color TV and got to see the whole series in glorious NBC peacock color.

[mysticfig.livejournal.com]

It was 1967 during the original NBC run, so I would have been 8. When they moved the show to 10 PM on Fridays, my parents broke their previously unbreakable bedtime rule and let me stay up to watch it.

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

I first saw the original series when it was running opposite "Lost in Space". I'd alternate between the two week after week until one summer of re-runs (remember those?) when my mother (who read the stuff before I did) finally said, "Why don't you watch Star Trek? At least that's more intelligent."

Thanks, Mom.

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

I remember watching the first season of Lost In Space, back when that was pretty much all the SF (such as it was) there was on TV. When Star Trek came on that was all she wrote; I don't remember watching a single episode of Lost In Space after that.

Quick aside: I remember reading someplace that Roddenberry pitched Star Trek to CBS and they turned it down, saying "We already have a science fiction show." Meaning, of course, Lost In Space. Ummmmm, yeah.

Trekkie to the bone

[dsthomas.livejournal.com]

I am a second gen. 1968 was WAY to late for the first airing. I hopped on the bandwagon when it started in syndication, but only in fits and spurts, as I was the young kid... Didn't get to choose the channel much with 5 kids in the house, me being the 'quiet' one. Yeah.. no one believes THAT.

I have watched each ep several times and almost every time they came on for a long time! I've seen just about every ep of all the series (excluding the animated), every movie (not all in the theater first time thru, but working to see the rest on opening day ON the big screen! I predict there will be more too... even after the next one coming. I CAN'T WAIT TILL MAY!!!

I gotta say my fav captain is Janeway with Sisko following. Sadly, I've only met one captain, Mulgrew.. on my honeymoon at a con in Cleveland no less!

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I saw most of the original episodes when they first aired, I think - may have missed one or two at the very beginning, but have since caught up - not particularly proud of this or anything - I think, in retrospect, I'm more proud that I got most of the jokes in Bullwinkle when I was a kid and supposedly not old enough to understand it on the level I did. And when are they EVER going to release the boxed DVD sets of seasons 4, 5 and 6 of Bullwinkle?

[filkferengi]

I hate to break it to you, Matt, but you were not either too young for the original run. I well remember seeing an episode when I was 4 & knowing something was wrong, because Spock wasn't supposed to have a beard.

The James Blish collections rocked!