{"id":44429,"date":"2016-09-08T11:51:47","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T18:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=44429"},"modified":"2016-09-11T04:31:32","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T11:31:32","slug":"my-star-trek-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2016\/09\/my-star-trek-reflections\/","title":{"rendered":"My Star Trek Reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago, Star Trek<\/em> made its debut on American television. Yet I was not viewing it, unlike many kids my age (I was eight). Why not?<\/p>\n

Well evidently my parents didn’t like the show. I remember them mocking it at some point when I was a kid. This made no sense, as they watched just about every other cheesy sci-fi series of the 1960s (Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, It’s About Time<\/em>) and I watched along with them, but alas no Star Trek<\/em>. To add insult to injury, Trek was only halfway over when it was my bedtime so even had they watched it, I’d have been booted out of the room at 8:30. Yeah, parents were stricter back then.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to junior high, say 1971. A friend of mine was into sci-fi and she brought the James Blish<\/strong> books to school and talked up Star Trek, which was in syndication then. I read one of the books and was immediately interested in seeing the show. I had always loved science and anyone who was a child in the 1960s loved the idea of space travel. Plus – I had grown up on 1960s TV sci-fi (minus Star Trek<\/em>). The show was airing in my city on weeknights from 5-6 PM and I tuned in and became a great fan. I was lucky enough that some of my friends really liked it too, so unlike many Trek fans, I was not alone in my love of the show. I devoured those Blish books!<\/p>\n

What attracted me to Star Trek<\/em>? Hope. My first non-family memory was JFK’s funeral and I was in front of the TV to see the announcements of the 1968 assassinations of Robert Kennedy <\/strong>and Martin Luther King<\/strong>. Riots and Vietnam War news were daily fare on the evening news. There was the ever-present threat of nuclear armageddon courtesy of the U.S.S.R. It was a real fear back then.<\/p>\n

But Star Trek<\/em> provided hope for the future and that was very appealing to a young teen. In their world, humanity had finally got past the bad stuff and somehow they hadn’t nuked themselves into non-existence. Humans were explorers now, and meeting all sorts of cool aliens. To someone wondering if she would ever get to grow up in a dangerous, chaotic world, Trek was uplifting.<\/p>\n

And who could beat the combination of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy? The three characters meshed together perfectly. As a teen, lost in a confusing world, Spock appealed to me as another outsider in the game of life. Personality-wise, I was (and still am) all McCoy.<\/p>\n

I must confess, in 1971, I thought I had missed out on the heyday of Star Trek<\/em>. How wrong I was. The adventure had only got started. Fifty years on, it’s still going strong.<\/p>\n

Happy Birthday, Star Trek<\/em>. You HAVE lived long and prospered!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago, Star Trek made its debut on American television. Yet I was not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4351,1],"tags":[8414],"class_list":["post-44429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-star-trek","category-uncategorized","tag-50th-anniversary"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/StarTrek50-090816.jpg",580,225,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/StarTrek50-090816-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/StarTrek50-090816.jpg",580,225,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/StarTrek50-090816.jpg",580,225,false],"large":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/StarTrek50-090816.jpg",580,225,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/StarTrek50-090816.jpg",580,225,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/StarTrek50-090816.jpg",580,225,false],"newsphere-slider-full":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/StarTrek50-090816.jpg",580,225,false],"newsphere-featured":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/StarTrek50-090816.jpg",580,225,false],"newsphere-medium":["https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/StarTrek50-090816.jpg",580,225,false]},"author_info":{"display_name":"T'Bonz","author_link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/author\/tbonz\/"},"category_info":"General Star Trek<\/a> Uncategorized<\/a>","tag_info":"Uncategorized","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44429"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44433,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44429\/revisions\/44433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}