On Thursday, September 8, 1966, I probably got home from school around 4.15pm. My family lived on a dairy farm in Southern Wisconsin, and I rode a yellow school bus. I don't recall whether I did any farm chores that afternoon. We usually ate supper (dinner was the noon meal at our house) between 5 and 6pm, after which my dad milked the cows. I was eleven years old then and would have my twelfth birthday later that month. I distinctly remember reading a column called "TV's Best Bets" in The Wisconsin State Journal, our daily newspaper delivered by the post office. This was a listing of recommendations for that night's viewing and included a short description of a new show on NBC called Star Trek. I don't remember the exact wording, but I believe it included the words "space travel" and "science fiction". "Looks interesting," I thought. This was the first time I had heard of it.
I'm pretty sure that at 6.30 I watched Batman. This was a half-hour show. I don't remember what I did between 7 and 7.30. In any case, at the appointed time, I had our black-and-white TV set tuned to Channel 15 in Madison. The first image was that of a spaceship orbiting a planet. The vessel was neither a rocket nor a flying saucer. Then came a voice that I would learn to recognise as William Shatner's. He began "Captain's Log: Stardate ...". When he mentioned Mr Spock, the image changed to a strange looking man sitting in a chair in some sort of control room. The image dissolved too quickly for me to notice the ears. Then the scene shifted to the surface of the planet. Three men materialised out of thin air. Fortunately, I had read enough science fiction to recognise teleportation. "Mantrap" was the name of that first episode, and it concerns a salt vampire who menaces the crew of the ship, called "Enterprise". I later learned that this was a second-rate and rather atypical episode. It didn't matter. Shows such as My Favorite Martian, Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea had set my standards for television science fiction. By the time the opening credits started to roll, I knew I was seeing something special.
In the next few months, I would count the number of days between shows. If it was Monday, I would remind myself all day, "Only three days to Star Trek". The week between the first and second parts of "The Menagerie" were pure hell. I couldn't stop wondering what would happen to Spock and what had happened to Christopher Pike. The episodes of the first half-season are still my favorites. The first year I watched the show religiously. For its second year, the show moved to Friday night. Social life in our farming community revolved around Friday nights for the school year. This was the night of football and basketball games, and there were no VCRs back then. Consequently, my viewing during the second and third seasons was irregular, although I did see "Trouble with Tribbles" during Christmas vacation. In the middle of Star Trek's second season, Laugh-In displaced it as my favorite TV show. Nonetheless, I was sorry when NBC cancelled it. Now I can see that the years of Star Trek's original network run marked my transition from childhood to adolescence.
Over the next ten years, I went to high school, college and graduate school and began my career. During that period, I had many opportunities to watch the Star Trek reruns, and I took advantage of them. I got caught up on the episodes I missed and thoroughly etched all of them into my memory. Even today, I can invariably tell the name of the episode, the season, the story line and the guest stars within a few seconds of viewing any scene. I was a voracious reader and bought any book that said Star Trek on the cover. I even watched the animated episodes, although I only found a few to be interesting. With great interest, I followed the stories about a revived series or even a Star Trek movie.
When I first saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I was relieved that Roddenberry and his associates had not screwed up. The movie was largely a remake of the episode "The Changeling". While that was a good episode, stretching it to two hours made for boring scenes and weak lines such as "The cloud is over 12 AU in diameter!" But I enjoyed it. Afterward, I collected the entire eighteen issues of the Marvel comic book and, of course, any book that said Star Trek on the cover.
In the next two years, I settled into my career. Also, I followed reports of another Star Trek movie, especially when they mentioned the death of Spock. Thus, I was prepared when Spock dies at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Having read Leonard Nimoy's book I Am Not Spock, I understood his reasons for wanting to leave the character behind. I loved the whole movie and thought that, given the situation and the character, Spock's death was quite logical.
The following year, I joined science fiction fandom. I found a club called the Chimneyville Fantasy and Science Fiction Society in Jackson, Mississippi, where I was now living. When Star Trek III: The Search for Spock came out, we all attended it as a club function. Afterward, we each wrote up a one paragraph review that the club published in its fanzine "Smart-Ash".
I had been quite dubious of the notion of bringing Spock back to life. It always irritates me when someone ignorant of science fiction says "In sci-fi, you can do anything!" However, producer Harve Bennett and director Nimoy handled the resurrection so well that it became my favorite of all the Star Trek movies. The destruction of the Enterprise did not bother me, because I thought it was an appropriate price to pay to bring Spock back from the dead. The movie has always reminded me of the story of Orpheus, but with a happy ending. Kirk is Orpheus, Spock Eurydice, and the Genesis planet is Hell. (I only heard of slash fiction years later).
In 1985, I made my first contact with Trek fandom, a Jackson club called Federation Outport: Dreambase One. This was the beginning of a love-hate relationship that I have never resolved. Some of my best friends are Trek fans, but they can also appreciate Robert Heinlein or Blade Runner or Raiders of the Lost Ark. The ones with whom I have had problems are those who consider Star Trek to be the only science fiction worth considering or who came to Trek without any other knowledge of science fiction. I consider watching television to be almost a vice, but Trekkies are proud that they watch TV.
It was during this time that I bought my Star Trek uniform. It is a red commander's shirt. I combined it with a pair of black pants and books I bought at Wal-Mart. On the other hand, around this time I stopped buying all the books that said Star Trek on the cover. I was getting my Star Trek fix regularly now, and there were more books coming out than I cared to read.
1985 also marks the only time I ever attended a Star Trek convention. Deltacon in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My con report in "Smart-Ash" states that I attended Walter Koenig's (Chekhov) birthday party and that he cut some cake for me. It was a good thing that I wrote this down, because I did not remember it when I started this article. DeForest Kelley (McCoy) was also a guest. Koenig mingled with the fans, but Kelley only appeared at the scheduled times. On two occasions, we've brought Star Trek guests to Jackson as part of science fiction conventions. I was glad to see that the years have been kind to Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman Rand). However, she disappointed me when I learned she's a born-again Christian and disapproved of the people playing Dungeons and Dragons at the con.
As a club, Dreambase only survived for five years. Its high point occurred at the Jackson premiere of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home on the night before Thanksgiving in 1986. It took place at the last remaining big screen movie theater in Jackson. Anyone who showed up in uniform got in free, and the club members passed out flyers to anyone interested in joining. I enjoyed the party even more than the movie, which I found entertaining, but disappointing. I realise this is a minority opinion, but I didn't agree with the only punishment being Kirk's demotion to Captain. At the very least, I wanted the crew dismissed from Starfleet. I felt that Spock's resurrection should demand that Kirk and the others give up something important to them, like their careers.
Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered the following year. I watched the episodes regularly, but if I missed one, I didn't worry about it. There have been some excellent episodes and none worse than the worst episodes of the original series. However, after twenty years, I was different. No one is the same person at age thirty three as they were at twelve. Furthermore, after thirty years of watching television, it has become rare for any TV series to engage me, particularly one that competes with my all-time favorite. In fact, the episodes I enjoyed most featured James Doohan as Scottiy and Leonard Nimoy as Spock. Later, I found I preferred Deep Space Nine, because it wasn't afraid to show conflicts between regular characters. Voyager still hasn't clicked for me.
William Shatner's directorial debut in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier actually made me feel angry and cheated. First, there was no way that they were going to meet the Creator of the Universe. To state it as a goal was fundamentally dishonest. Second, Shatner repeated one of the worst plot devices of the old show, the hijacking of the Enterprise. In over two hundred years, how many times has a US or British Navy vessel been hijacked? Third, if the ship was in as poor a condition as they said it was, why was the crew given a furlough? They should have been working at flank speed to bring it up to snuff. Fourth, all the background material about the show flatly stated Spock had no siblings. Changing the show's rules was unfair to the viewers. The movie deserved to have the worst showing at the box office of any of the Star Trek movies.
On the other hand, I liked Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country very much. I think between Nicholas Meyer (director and co-author) and Leonard Nimoy (producer and co-author), they have a thorough understanding of how and why Star Trek works. I was also pleased that Sulu finally got to be captain of his own ship.
Finally, there was the death of Kirk in Star Trek: Generations. Like Spock's death, I thought it was proper considering the situation and character. In fact, I was sorry that they didn't kill off off Kirk as they originally filmed it. In the first version, Soran (Malcolm McDowell) shoots Kirk in the back. In John Wayne's last two movies, The Cowboys and The Shootist, his characters are killed when someone shoots them in the back. If it's good enough for John Wayne, it should have been good enough for James T. Kirk.
Looking back, I see the first episode of Star Trek as marking the end of my childhood and the beginning of my adolescence. It looks like Star Trek: Generations will mark the end of my young adulthood and the beginning of middle age. I've grown up with the show. Now I'll grow old with whatever form it takes from here on.