Your life...before Star Trek....

[Anika Hanson]

Not really I've been into trek since I was about 8 or 9 so I dont really remember much about life before it lol But it probably was a lot less fun. I have some really fond memories of going to conventions with my mum (dad doesnt like Trek or sci fi) as a child/teenager.

 

[Warped9]

I find it a little amusing that so many have few memories before Star Trek. I don't have exact memories, but I do recall quite a few things from the "before time."

 

[WillsBabe]

We all had a life before Star Trek. Do you remember what it was like?

Honestly? No. One of my very earliest memories was watching Mudd's Women. I think I must have been about 10 or 11. I can't recall a time when I wasn't watching TOS.

 

[MANT!]

I was 5 when I saw the premiere in 1966 in color...before that I have memories of the Outer Limits (my mom set me down in front of that show first run too) and many a monster movie ...after Star Trek,(each kid got to pick ONE primetime show in my family) my viewing was limited to Saturday mornings.. Space Ghost, Jonny Quest, and Herculoids were my faves..

After cancellation, we didn't see Star Trek again until the 70s..when a local station in the Bay Area ran it at 6PM every weekday..when we moved to the Gold Country, we could get it sometimes when conditions were right at 6 PM on some days..but I got the records and the models and made audio tapes of the episodes we did get....and we regularly received the nighttime showings of Creature Features who's host Bob Wilkins often announced the Star Trek conventions on his show
http://www.youtube.com/user/bobwilkins
...And when I was in High School I went to em...


good times ..good times..

 

[plynch]

Get this: I was born on 22 Sept. 1966, the same day (according to Memory Alpha) that "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was originally broadcast on NBC "in living color". The show was in reruns as far back as I can remember. Either I was too little to remember a time before the reruns started, or if you go back to when I was a little tyke, the show was being aired for the first time on NBC.

So for me TOS has always been there.

I was born 5 days away from you. My mother believes it possible I witnessed Trek as a baby. Since I wish it to be true, it must be so.

One of my earliest drawings was the E also: 1971-2, Lansing, MI area (whatver tv station it was, thank you): white crayon on black construction paper.

 

[Anji]

Before Star Trek, my life was a miserable, lonely, depressing place.

Now, it's a miserable, lonely, depressing place with a cool space ship.

Me too...it's awesome, isn't it!

 

[StarCruiser]

I discovered Star Trek when I wasn't quite 3 years old... First run 1966. I don't remember very much before that point so I've pretty grown up with Star Trek.

Might explain why the newer stuff doesn't 'rock' my boat like the original.

 

[skylark14]

I think before Star Trek, I was constantly searching for Star Trek, though I didn't know that was what I was looking for. Always staring up at the moon and stars and wondering. Read whatever sci-fi I could get hold of in a small town library, mainly early Heinlein and Bradbury, even stumbled on the old Skylark of Space stuff from the 1920s. As others mentioned, I was devoted to anything remotely related to sci-fi; good or bad, I'd be there in front of the t.v. - Time Tunnel, My Favorite Martian, It's About Time (I'd totally forgot about that one till somebody mentioned it here), Lost in Space, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits. Even as a kid, I could see how awful some of it was, but still I stuck.

When I sat alone through the Star Trek premiere in black and white in 1966, it felt like I was having a religious experience or something (it didn't hurt that I was nearing puberty and that Spock character sure was compelling!). They actually seemed to be trying to make the show good! The early ones were so much fun when they were still experimenting with the characters, sets and how a starship crew interacted. I stuck with the show through the entire 3 year run, though sometimes in the last year it felt more like dutifully visiting a senile relative than actually having fun.

So I grew up and somehow did manage to have a life and would sometimes catch an episode and wonder what on earth had held me so spellbound as a teenager. Then about a decade ago, I happened to see the unedited series on Sci-Fi and realized I still loved it. Not being the proverbial rocket scientist, I had failed to realize the syndicators had been cutting out all the most fascinating (to me) scenes of the talky-talky stuff to make room for advertising. So I've come full circle to find myself a fan again.

 

[Magnum]

I think I was under 5 years old when I started watching TOS reruns for the first time. TNG wasn't even around then. At that time, I liked both Star Wars and Star Trek. But since all the kids I knew had Star Wars action figures and I don't remember having any Star Trek toys, I tended to think more about SW.

Even in the golden age when we had TNG, DS9, and VOY in such a short time, I thought more about Star Wars. Now that I'm a bit older, my interest in SW has since waned, now I'd say I'm more of a trekkie.

But back to the question, I have very little memory of "before Star Trek". Maybe Sesame Street?

 

[Harvey]

I was born during the summer of 1987. My parents were already watching weekly re-runs of Star Trek at that time, and they would begin to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation when it premiered a few months later. If I had a life before Star Trek, it was quite brief, as I'm sure I was watching it on syndication every Saturday night with my parents as soon as I was old enough to watch television...

 

[Lord Garth]

Saying Star Trek was always around in my lifetime would be a cop-out. I did have a life before I discovered it... not much of a life though because I became a fan when I was 11.

On TV there were the cartoons of the time, most of which would make me cringe now, and reruns of old shows from the '60s and '70s. A lot of Norman Lear shows, where most of what they talk about went straight over my head. I used to watch ALF Mondays night at 8:00. Monday was the only night I was allowed to stay up passed 8:00. I had strict parents.

I didn't have video games, or a computer, obviously no Internet. We still played outside. A lot of toys too, most of which I broke. I'd throw them against the wall, and was really rough with them in general. I had a water-gun with no neon coloring crap and when I rode a bike it was without a helmet. Riding with one would've never even occurred to me.

Then I discovered Star Trek around the same time I started puberty and everything changed. Over the next three years I grew a foot-and-a-half, I was up passed midnight, challenging my parents' strictness at every turn, determined to become as grown up as possible, and wouldn't be caught dead playing with toys or watching cartoons.

In a strange way, Star Trek was the beginning of my growing up, if that makes sense. It was my first real post-childhood interest.

 

[Maurice]

I think I saw Star Trek a few times when it was still on NBC. I know for a fact I saw it in 1969 on Friday night at least once. I was 5. I don't have much recollection of watching the show, though, but clearly I did. I even drew the Enterprise when I was about 7. We moved in early 73 and the place we ended up ran the show every weekday afternoon at 3:30: that's where I really got hooked.

 

[scout]

It was always there...I was born in 1987 the year they started to air TNG and of course, TOS was always around as it was avidly watched by my mother.

 

[GeorgeKirk]

No life before Star Trek for me. I was born in '78, and some of my earliest memories are watching Trek reruns on our black-and-white TV. It used to come on at 6pm on the local independent station. Once a year, one of the radio stations would sponsor an all-night Star Trek marathon on that channel, with their DJs doing little skits to introduce each episode. One year, a friend of ours with a VCR (which was still somewhat of a luxury item in those days) actually taped the Star Trek marathon and gave the tapes to my grandmother for me to watch when I was at her house. I used to spend a week or so during the summer at her place, and if I wasn't watching Star Trek, then I was outside pretending to be Captain Kirk. In fact, whenever my mom would drag me someplace I considered to be boring, I would imagine that Mr. Spock and I were undercover on one of those alien planets that bears a striking resemblance to 20th-century Earth, looking for Klingon agents.

I didn't really like TNG when it came out. It seemed rather talky and boring compared with TOS.

 

[TrekkieMonster]

We all had a life before Star Trek. Do you remember what it was like?

I was just reflecting on this. For me it's long, long before the internet and being able to discuss the latest projects and news with people all over the world.

For me it was the 1960s and I wouldn't encounter Star Trek until 1970 when it was already out of production and well into syndicated reruns. The only vague memory I have before that was my mother switching channels (no remote) and she stopped ever so briefly at the scene of an odd looking spaceship orbiting a planet and the next scene of a group of characters in some unusual control room. And it was in b&w.

Before Star Trek for me there was The Adventures Of Superman, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and Zorro on The Commander Tom Show broadcast out of Buffalo. There was the Adam West Batman series (I loved that as a 7 year old, but I was a kid so what did I know? ) There was also Lost In Space, Land Of The Giants, Time Tunnel, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. There was animated Superman and Batman and other characters, most particularly the animated Spider-Man series. My space adventure of choice then was Space Ghost.

It was also a time when I was just being introduced to comics. I read numerous characters then, but Batman and The Amazing Spider-Man loom most largely in memory of that time. I also recall when DC started to make Batman more serious again--it was like a light went on and I could never look at the Adam West or the animated series the same ever again.

Before Star Trek for me superheroes loomed largest. After finding Star Trek superheroes took a back seat to a different collection of heroes.

Anyone else?

ummmmm ...,

First, this is an interesting thread topic. But, second, I could have written the post above for myself.

I remember first seeing Star Trek in the summer of 1969. My "best friend" and his brother would always stop whatever we were playing and go inside to watch this "stupid space show". And, one week I finally followed them. I was intrigued only because I recognized the guest star as the same woman who played Cat Woman in the above-mentioned Bat Man series. I later discovered that I was watching "That Which Survives", of course, and that it must have been a repeat of that Season 3 episode.

Very shortly thereafter we moved to a different state, and Star Trek sort of dropped off my radar for a couple years after that. During that time, just like Warped 9, remember watching most if not all of the shows he mentioned, in addition to Speed Racer and The Thunderbirds. I loved The Thunderbirds!!!

We moved back to my home state in 1971 and I became friends with 2 kids who were really into Star Trek. I can remember playing Star Trek on the playground at recess (they always got to be Kirk and Spock, cuz it was their game but, as the johnny-come-lately, I was always Sulu or Checkov or a random red shirt.) Somewhere around that time was when we got cable for the first time and I began watching Star Trek in syndicated reruns. By 1975 I can recall being able to watch at least 3 episodes back-to-back every weekday afternoon after school. And the rest is history.

 

[Jeri]

Before 1966, I was into the secret-agent shows with techno-gadgets, like Wild Wild West and Man from UNCLE and the spoof, Get Smart. My dad was a big Twilight Zone and Outer Limits fan, so we had speculative drama going on before Star Trek showed up.

I was kinda into the military thing, too, which Trek also has, with enjoying shows like Twelve O'Clock High and Combat. Maybe that sounds strange on the surface for a teenybopper; but those shows were replete with athletic, heroic guys.

 

[T'Girl]

It was always there...I was born in 1987

I was born in 1987 too. I attended my first Star Trek convention went I was nine, that's nine months.

My mother dressed me in a little red miniskirt costume, complete with red diapers.

 

[James Wright]

I was born before Star Trek took to the air on NBC, can't recall seeing it in its' original run but enjoyed the reruns in the 70's!

James

 

[Nerys Myk]

I was born before Star Trek took to the air on NBC, can't recall seeing it in its' original run but enjoyed the reruns in the 70's!

James

I can remember playing Star Trek with friends back in the Sixties. I also remember liking to wear a certain shirt because it looked the one Will Robinson wore in "Lost In Space". I was an equal opportunity viewer.

 

[James Wright]

I was born before Star Trek took to the air on NBC, can't recall seeing it in its' original run but enjoyed the reruns in the 70's!

James

I can remember playing Star Trek with friends back in the Sixties. I also remember liking to wear a certain shirt because it looked the one Will Robinson wore in "Lost In Space". I was an equal opportunity viewer.

I had a couple of shirts that looked like those worn by Kirk and Spock, yellow & blue, mom bought them for me to wear to school, had my picture taken in the blue one!

James