Last week, forty years ago, Star Trek first premiered on NBC. The rest, as they say, is history…
…but my history with Star Trek begins in the summer of 1982.
Pay TV had been introduced to Canada for the first time, and my parents gave it a try. In due course, a big, bulky cable box was sitting on our TV, allowing us to watch the newly created SuperChannel. I was exposed to endless repeats of movies ranging from Urban Cowboy to An Officer and a Gentleman…but the one that made the biggest impression was Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan.
Even at the tender age of 8, I knew I was watching something powerful. Something made with great care and attention — a heady combination of action/adventure, friendship, tragedy, and lasting hope. The characters were funny, serious, and terrifying. It was my first experience of the “other” great trinity: Kirk, Spock and McCoy.
Afer four thousand repeats, I was hooked.
Then, as if I was on the receiving end of some magnificent payback of karma, the Buffalo independent station WUTV 29 (long before the arrival of the dreaded FOX Network) celebrated the release of The Wrath of Khan with a mini-marathon of classic Trek episodes: both episodes of The Menagerie (introducing the pre-Kirk Enterprise), and Space Seed, introducing Khan…the same Khan, older & crazier, that I watched in the film.
It looked older, and rougher…and the actors were younger…but the feel of the universe, the quality of the storytelling…it was still there. It was a crash course in Star Trek, and with the help of weekday repeats of all 79 episodes of the Original Series, across various channels, I was committed for life.
It’s hard to imagine now, with over 700 hours of Star Trek available to watch, that 1982 offered merely the Classic Series and the first two movies. But this concentrated supply would allow me to indulge over and over, until I knew the series…knew the characters…as intimately as I knew my own family. It was this early love that led to my first-ever trip to the Fairview Mall movie theatre, to see a Trek movie on opening weekend for the first time. It was this early love that led me to flip head over heels at the announcement of a new Star Trek series (The Next Generation) that would change the face of Trek fandom…and television history. It’s this early love that leads me to look back on my early days as a Trek neophyte, gobbling up new stories and new ideas faster than the warp engines that powered the Enterprise.
Star Trek might be off the air at the moment, but it will return. The human adventure always continues…
Happy belated birthday.
