Happy Birthday, Star Trek!

My first exposure to Star Trek (having been born after it had already ended) was in 1977 when the space shuttle Enterprise was undergoing testing and the media felt it necessary to inform us of the name’s history. It was a few years after that before Star Trek truly entered my life as syndicated after-school television. I would watch it every day while folding newspapers to deliver. Considering it was on for years, and that I delivered newspapers for over ten years, I got to the point where I could tell you within half a minute of any episode which episode it was. I went as Spock for Halloween one year, though thanks to our black and white television I had no idea my outfit was supposed to be blue, not yellow. I read a lot of the Star Trek novels.

And then the movies hit. The first movie was cool, mainly because it was Star Trek. I didn’t realize until I got older just how dull it was. But Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan cemented it for me–Star Trek was awesomeness incarnate. That movie remains as on of my all-time favorite movies. I eagerly consumed The Next Generation during my high school and early college years. I didn’t pay much attention to Deep Space Nine, though I should have, and Voyager lost me early. I never saw even a single episode of Enterprise, and I’ll admit the reboots leave me cold. So am I a true Trekkie? Probably not by popular standards.

But in some ways my interaction with Star Trek has been broader than most. Early in my childhood my brother discovered Starfleet Battles, a tabletop war game of starship combat based in the Star Trek universe. I got deeper into it than he did, focusing far more than I should have throughout my teenage years. My friends and I arranged sleepovers in order to play massive battles (that invariably ended far more quickly than we expected, either from boredom or from things degenerating quickly).

I discovered the Star Trek RPG in high school and, while my friends at the time didn’t get into it, I found my sister did. Though nine years older than me, she and I bonded over building our own little sub-section of the Star Trek world and populating it with a cast of characters that would make Game of Thrones envious. We expanded the lore much farther than was ever intended, I suspect, and we modified the game to suit our needs.

We made elaborate maps, and made cardboard game pieces to mark the location of every single character, and which we kept in an old pill bottle between games. I still remember my mother, making an audio tape to send to my brother in Japan, wandering into one of our games and asking us to describe what we were doing. At one point she asked us just how we could see all these characters we were playing and we told her we just got out the pill bottle. It’s been a family joke ever since.

We played the RPG well into my college years, and it only really ended when my sister moved away. I still miss that little corner of the Star Trek world we built and the deep, complex stories we told through the years. Many of those characters are nearly as real to me as any of my “real” friends during that time. Every so often I run across the boxes of materials from those sessions stored in my shed and the wave of nostalgia that hits is still quite strong. I’ve never found another RPG quite as satisfying.

So yeah, Star Trek has had a pretty strong impact on my life, probably more than any other Sci-Fi or Fantasy franchise out there, though Star Wars runs a pretty close second. I’ve never felt the slightest need to participate in the Star Trek vs. Star Wars debate; my love of both has never been mutually exclusive, nor have I felt it necessary to compare them. They’re different and amazing in their own ways, and such competitions seems as senseless to me as trying to decide whether chocolate or cinnamon rolls are better. Why would I limit myself to either one? I’ll happily consume both!

So today Star Trek is fifty years old. I’m not sure what I should think about that, other than the realization that soon I will be, too. That simply means I’ve been enjoying it for a long time. I’m glad it’s been around so long, and yet even if it had died off before The Next Generation resurrected it I’d still love it, and it still would have had nearly as large an impact on my life. I find the fact that it’s still around in some form or another largely irrelevant. My tastes have changed (I’d like to think matured), and it doesn’t offend me that Star Trek, repackaged for modern tastes, has gone in another direction. I feel no need to approve or disapprove of the reboot series or the upcoming series. If someone else enjoys them, great! I’ll sample them, and if I like them, great. If not, that’s okay, too. I won’t rail about how they’ve ruined Star Trek or any such nonsense. If I don’t stick with it, it’s my own fault as much as anyone else’s.

I’m quite grateful for the part Star Trek has played in my life–and it’s been a disproportionally large part. It’s not necessarily a part I need it to play any more, and that’s okay. Whatever may happen, Star Trek and I will always be friends, and I’ll always have fond memories of those years when it was one of the main bright spots in my life. We’ll always have Paris, so to speak, and I’ll be thinking warm thoughts as it gets on the plane and flies off with Victor Laszlo. I have been and always shall be your friend.