This day, 50 years ago, the first episode of Star Trek was broadcast on TV. It’s been a wild ride. Who would have thought, that this science fiction drama, which Gene Roddenberry had such trouble selling to the network, would go on to be a world-wide cultural icon? What would he have thought, if he’d known we’d be celebrating the 50th anniversary today?
My engagement with Star Trek began when I was a kid. I don’t remember the year, but my parents gave me a book for Christmas – the Star Trek Annual. This hard-cover contained two original TOS stories in comic-book form. I remember reading them over and over again. It can’t have been much later that our local TV station starting showing repeats of Star Trek at lunch time on Saturdays. We’d watch while we ate each week. Spock quickly became my favourite character. I caught a few of the movies – Star Trek IV being one of them.
Then Star Trek: The Next Generation came along. We always got shows at least a year later in Australia, than in America, but since the internet wasn’t around in any real form at the time, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t sure how Star Trek would work without the original characters. Remember, the idea of spin-off, or a shared story world was unheard of in the eighties. Still, I sat down to watch Encounter at Farpoint. After all, how could I miss it? It was Star Trek. I was immediately hooked.
As TNG progressed, my love for Star Trek only grew. Deep Space Nine came about. Then TNG ended. Fortunately, we had Star Trek Generations to look forward to. A lot of people how low opinions of this film, and it certainly wasn’t perfect, but it will always have a special place in my heart. Seeing Kirk and Picard together – what a thrill!
It got a little harder to be an Aussie Star Trek fan in the mid to late nineties. Channel 9 seemed to be respecting the show less and less. They showed the episodes at 11:00 PM, so you had to stay up late or record them on VHS for later viewing. Plus, there was a time where we got a season of DS9 one year, then a season of Voyager the next year, putting us further and further behind. The internet was in full swing by now, so spoilers were rampant. Of course, by this point, nobody relied on TV anyway. If you were a fan, you bought all the episodes on VHS. It was the only way to keep up (still about a year behind America). It’s interesting that now the tables have turned. Americans will be watching the new show, Star Trek Discovery, on CBS All Access, while we in Australia are likely to have a better experience watching on Netflix.
I remember, in my university days, posting Star Trek fan fiction on usenet groups. Ah, those were the days. I was also an avid reader of the Star Trek books, put out by PocketBooks. I remember longing to be able to submit a story to the Strange New Worlds competition, but it was only open to Americans. I also enjoyed the various tie-in computer games. 24th Anniversary, Judgement Rites, TNG: A Final Unity, DS9: Harbinger. These were all point-and-click adventure games (another love of mine).
Star Trek predicted a lot of innovations, some of which have come about. People love to talk about mobile phones, and tablets being influenced by Star Trek technology. The thing that really sparked my imagination was the fact that the Enterprise computer had copies of all of humanity’s literature, through the ages. It was all there, freely available to be consumed. I remember thinking how awesome that would be – imagining that in the future, every episode of Star Trek could be available on demand, so I could catch all the stories that I’d missed. Today, I sit here with Netflix open. I have exactly that. All of Star Trek at my fingertips. It happened!
So many creative people have contributed to Star Trek over the decades, in so many different ways, so to all of them I say thank you, and happy birthday.
Live Long and prosper.
Make it so.
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