Well! This informal query certainly caught on, and I'd like to thank you all for coming along with me on this trip down Memory Lane. However, the findings remind me very much of a lesson learned in marketing class: when creating a market survey, avoid such questions as "When did you eat your first hamburger", because many people don't actually remember (or
care to remember) when they did. These posts made for some great anecdotes, no question, but the high degree of supposition involved probably doesn't speak well for its validity in an empirical context
Of course, life wouldn't be nearly as much fun if we had to apply scientific rigour to
everything, now would it?
Can I be sarcastic and give Home as my first Star Trek episode?
Nice to hear from you again, Lizzie - did you ever get a chance to watch the original series? Because if you haven't yet, the first episode you watch
will be the first episode you've seen
(And since you live in the UK, you apparently still have the opportunity to watch the episodes broadcast in their original form, for which I greatly envy you.)
That's me. I mean, I saw TOS fairly early on as well (maybe 8 or 9), but I started watching
[REDACTED] when I was a toddler (well, not actively watching it - it just happened to be on while I was playing or whatever). I know a lot of people my age whose mental image of Star Trek is not Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Scotty, but
[REDACTED]. Seeing Klingons
without ridges was a shock.
Sorry Brainbin!
Well, to be fair, Klingons with the forehead ridges were an innovation of the
movies
But I understand what you're saying. And since we're all confiding, I'll admit that I've been there too. Honestly, in a very real way, the modern spinoffs of
Star Trek were my childhood - I was born the same year the first of them premiered, and I reached my majority the same year the last of them was cancelled. Not that I actively
watched any of them as they were in first-run, mind, but there's no question the first of the
Star Trek series I was exposed to was the same as yours, in much the same circumstances.
In fact, one of the things I've always hoped for with
That Wacky Redhead is that it might be able to help my fellow Millennials appreciate the original
Star Trek more.
A Question...Space Seed goes as OTL or were more pre-production changes(not only about the Supermen being nordic or khan but about background and which will be the date, OTL they wanted even more later like 2400 or 2500 IIRC), so how goes that thing in that regard?
The episode aired in substantially the same form as IOTL, including the "200 years" reference (which is consistent with most chronological references in the show as it aired, with the glaring exception of "The Squire of Gothos"). Canon (in the miniseries
The Next Voyage) eventually proclaimed the five-year mission to have been set during the period 2165-70, which makes the "200 years" a lowball estimate (or rounding; IOTL, Khan says in
Star Trek II that "200 years ago, I was a prince", when it actually would have been nearly
300 years ago by that point). The progress of the space program had already slowed considerably by the early 1980s IOTL, which is why they declared the five-year mission to be
300 years into the future (2265-70) instead of 200 years; by 1978 ITTL, people are far more optimistic about that sort of thing.
The first episode I watched would have been the first episode aired, as I remember planning to watch the series when it first aired. I had forgotten which episode it was, but according to Memory Alpha, it was "The Man Trap".
So, Chuck, you were watching the night it all began: September 8, 1966, a Thursday, at 8:30 PM. Although, technically,
Star Trek made its world premiere in Canada, on CTV, two days before, for whatever reason. And if I'm not mistaken, you were on the West Coast, which means that you would have seen it three hours after everyone on the Eastern Seaboard. Still, I'm so tickled that one of my readers witnessed that historic event that I decided to look up the station you were watching it on at the time:
KCRA-3 Sacramento, is that right? If so, I hope you enjoy this blast from the past
I have no clear memory of which ST:TOS episodes I saw in their first run either; I know I watched many of them but I couldn't tell you which ones.
Do you recall
when the show began airing in New Zealand? I can't seem to find out via Google search; I
did learn that
Australia began airing the show in July of 1967 (two years ahead of the UK!
) but I'm not sure if those broadcast signals would have crossed the ditch.
Of Star Trek in terms of the series that started it all... I honestly don't remember. I think it might have been The Devil in the Dark, but that is very shaky.
Well, at the very least, that's the first episode that made a strong impression on you, so it deserves a special mention all the same. I am curious, though; was the original series subtitled, or had it been imported to Sweden before subbing became the standard practice?
1974 and Space Seed-I know too late
I already have your year of birth logged, JSmith, but thank you anyway. (Even if I hadn't, I would have included my final survey results among my closing posts.) That said, if you have
other favourite episodes beyond "Space Seed" (hopefully five or more?
) I would love to hear them.
The first Star Trek episode I remember to have watched must have been Charlie X, because I only remember the end of that episode. I was eight when we watched it on TV in 1984. I did not like it (or Star Trek) at that time.
This changed with Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan a friend of my did have of videotape. We did watch it often in 1988. And since when I was a Star Trek fan and taped every single Star Trek episode (except TOS) and movie shown on TV in Germany.
Thank you for your recollection! (And for providing your age as well - very efficient
)
TOS was on so often growing up (BBC2 and C4) that I have no idea which was my first episode.
Fair enough, Professor. Your experience is by no means a unique one, as has become obvious by now
I'm not sure about TOS, as it was always on the telly in the background when I was growing up, as was TAS. The earliest TOS episodes I recall seeing include "City on the Edge of Forever", "The Ultimate Computer", "The Doomsday Machine", "The Alternative Factor", "And the Children Shall Lead" and "The Devil in the Dark". I'm assuming the channel in question must have been using a random broadcast order because I seem to recall all of those being on around the same time.
Interesting. Three of the best episodes and two of the worst (Along with "The Ultimate Computer" - I'd call that upper-mid-card).
Belated Happy Anniversary, by the way.
Thank you, Falkenburg
The first Trek I ever saw was Star Trek II:TWOK when it was shown on the BBC sometime around the mid-80s, when I was about 7. The Ceti Eel scared the crap out of me (I used to fast-forward our taped copy through the part where Khan puts them in the helmets), but loved everything else. That then drove me to watch STIII, and hire TAS from the local video store, which I enjoyed at the time.
Really? Do you recall if the video store had the original series available (given that
Star Trek was one of the first shows to appear on virtually all home video formats, at least under NTSC), or did you (or perhaps the parent/guardian who was paying for the rental) feel that a cartoon would be more "suitable" given your youth?
However, I believe I mentioned in my top 10 that one memory which stands out is the shock of seeing Captain Kirk alive at the end of Amok Time because I wasn't old enough to realize they don't kill stars off; I couldn't have been more than 7 or 8. And, I think I put "Amok Time" fairly high on my list so that's definitely true about early memories playing apart. (Though it can't be the first since I know that I knew Kirk was one of the stars.)
There does seem to be a moderately strong correlation between the primacy effect and episodes appearing on best-of lists, yes.
That's basically the position I'm in, except that I'm sure that I saw many of the TOS episodes during their first broadcast on BBC1. I know that because I remember watching
Miri which was part of the first run but dropped from subsequent reruns.
For the
first run on the BBC, the episodes were mixed together to produce four seasons. I remember watching Trek on Monday evenings, but not on Saturday afternoons, so the first episode I saw is probably from the BBC's second "season". It could well have been
Court Martial.
That's very interesting, Nigel. Would you happen to recall what the BBC aired in those ten minutes before
Star Trek? I know there's no advertising because it's funded by the licencing scheme, so I wonder if they filled the ten-minute gap with anything in particular, or if a program that started prior to 7:00 was finishing instead (because the first "season" aired at 5:15, which meant that the show wouldn't finish until 6:05). ITTL, the series probably would have run for six "seasons" of about 22 episodes apiece.
My earliest Star Trek memory is "Kirk and a landing party beam down to a planet", which is a little harder to pin down...
You know, that inspired me to revive an old idea of mine: a
Star Trek cliches episode checklist. You've already got me working on the template!
Out of curiosity, am I the youngest demographics contributor?
Indeed you are, wolfram. Thanks for helping to make the half-century readership range possible!
