Here's to 50 years of
Star Trek, in television, movies and beyond.
September 8th, 1966 saw the premier of
Star Trek on network television. The episode was "The Man Trap" (the Salt Monster one). The show lasted for three seasons and blazed trails before spinning off into weirdly wild success in syndication. Of course,
Star Trek: The Next Generation cut out the middleman and went straight into syndication.
I am not a real Trekker, and I'm okay with that. I never really watched much
Deep Space Nine,
Voyager or
Enterprise. Not the way I watched original series or
Next Generation. I like all the movies with the original cast for one reason or another, even if I mostly enjoy
Star Trek V as camp. I even liked
Star Trek Beyond quite a bit (Karl Urban was fantastic).
Where
Star Wars broke me circa 1999, ending it's drought in 2015 with
The Force Awakens, there's always been enough
Trek to keep me invested, willing to go to bat and try another movie, TV show, episode, what-have-you. But I've never felt fan enough to attend a
Star Trek convention or the like. Which is weird. I guess I've just always been aware that I'm a fan, but I've seen the real fans, if you know what I mean (I do not know a single word of Klingon, for example).
The original show sparked my imagination when I became a regular viewer of episodes at 5:00 PM on the local UHF channel when I was about 10. The idea of moving through space, of not just constantly fighting some antagonist over and over, but exploring, of discovery - that got my interest. Also, Lieutenant Uhura. But flying around in a ship I still haven't gotten over, not necessarily shooting or punching to solve the problem of the week, of trying to find a better tomorrow out on the edge of known space...? Sign me up.
