My fellow Star Trek geeks have been celebrating First Contact Day (FCD) for a few years now (I was trying to figure out when this started – about a decade ago?). Other than noting it on my calendar and “liking” a pile of FCD related twitter and FB posts, my day is sadly going to be like any other normal working Monday. I meant to spend the weekend baking insignia shaped cookies, but it was so nice outside I wound up spending most of it working on my garden (which was not well cared for in 2020 — I promised myself I’d do better in 2021).
For those of us who geek out on multiple franchises… it’s fun to note that we have 42 years until FCD. 42. Could it mean that this is the year we figure out the true meaning of life within Star Trek? Or is this the year we are first noticed by an alien race as a planet with (cough) intelligent life on it and they spend the next 42 years studying us? If I was into numerology, I could probably find a lot of connections between 42 and Trek. But I’m not, so I’ll leave that as an exercise to the interested reader.
Instead, I want to bring forth another post I wrote on a short-lived blog I had going last year. I was taking part in the SmithsonianX’s “Star Trek: Inspiring Culture and Technology” on edX.org, and one requirement of the class was to create a public “starlog” blog. I haven’t finished the class and am not sure I’m going to at this point — there are simply so many other things to do and write about.
But this particular story is a “first contact” of sorts – my first contact with Star Trek beyond it being a random show that I liked a little.
There’s an excellent chance I’ll be mentioning Trek or dropping references to it in this blog, so I was already trying to think of an excuse to re-post this story, to explain how deep my love for Trek goes and where and when it started. I love tons of sci-fi, but I always explain it to others like this: I majored in Star Trek, minored in Star Wars*, and received certificates in everything else from Battlestar Galactica, to Firefly to, well… everything. (* Although I was a big Star Wars fan playing with Star Wars action figures and fantasizing that I would grow up and build droids like R2 and C3PO — who were my first favorite droids — long before I was a Trekkie.)
Hope you enjoy my Trekkie origin story. It’s also worth mentioning that I love and appreciate ALL Trek. Yup. All. Every series, every movie. I’d also love to hear other people’s “first contact with Star Trek” stories so feel free to post in the comments or on my social media links. LLAP. PALL. IDIC.
Star Trek and me
(originally posted Sept 2020)
It dawned on me sometime over the past week that there is no reason I can’t write non-Star Trek Course posts on my little starlog right here. As someone who loves to write, you’d think this realization would have hit me sooner, but as I’m sure you know, it’s been a long 2020.
I thought it might make sense to give a little of my personal history with Trek, especially for those who might wonder why a woman in her mid-40s with a hubby and kids, in a well-established professional and technical career, would choose to spend her free time taking a class and creating little blogs posts on something as frivolous as Star Trek.
Well, the people who know me best won’t (or they shouldn’t) be shocked by this: Not a day has gone by in my life since the summer of 1988 that I haven’t had at least some brief thought about something Star Trek related. Not. One. Day.
Prior to that summer, I liked Star Trek. I was a fan. My early memories of Trek were of watching re-runs of the original series and asking my parents questions about it, and of watching the early movies. I remember going to see Star Trek IV in the theater with my dad. I remember when ST:TNG came out, and it was weird that there was going to be this second Star Trek show so many years later than the original, and could it possibly be any good?
I watched every episode of that first season of ST:TNG in its first run (except for one that I missed because our family went out to dinner. The episode I missed in its first run? “Skin of Evil“).
But the summer of 1988 turned me into the Trekkie I’ve been for over 30 years.
We took a vacation “out west” that summer. “Out west” could mean anything west of New Jersey to us Long Islanders, but in this case, it meant we took a road trip through 10 states starting and ending in Denver, CO. I didn’t want to go. I was turning 14 and what 14-year-old wants to spend 4 weeks away from home with her family? I was miserable and made sure everyone knew it.
…until we got to LA and spent the day at Universal Studios. They had a performance attraction called “Star Trek Adventure” where they selected a few people from the audience to participate. I don’t know why, especially given how shy and prone to stage fright I was but I HAD to be in that. I waited at least a round or two to get up front to get called to participate while my family did other fun things in the part. It worked. They chose me, put me in an engineering suit from Star Trek II and… well… I choked to death in engineering.
We bought the resulting video, of course. In the gift ship, I also bought a Star Trek Technical manual (seen to the right – click here for a quick video flip through of the manual) and one of the novels, and well… I was hooked. I’ve been a Trekkie ever since.
LLAP.
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