Word: trek
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Like an insidious alien spore spreading outward into the unsuspecting countryside from a crashed alien spaceship, it infested the land. Letters flooded in. Clubs sprang up. "Fanzines"--mimeographed, dittoed, hand cranked publications filled with anything remotely Trek-inspired followed. Then came conventions: panels, huckster-rooms filled with interstellar trinkets and Federation paraphernalia, speeches by the high priests of Trekdom, trivia quizzes and singalongs and most important, the inevitable all-night parties, frequently featuring "Blog," a rare nectar imported to Holiday Inns and Sheratons across Nielsen-land by the viciously mercantilistic spice barons of Aldebaron IV. And whenever the fans...
...what have they got? Let's start at the beginning of Western civilization. First came Sumeria. Then Star Trek. On September 8, 1966, after four million years of cranial evolution, man (and Desilu Studios) produced a television series about "Space, The Final Frontier," an NBC show featuring a starship called the USS Enterprise that could on a good night travel quite a few times faster than the speed of light, and a crew of 430 human and other beings ("carbon-based units" as they came to be called) determined to "explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life...
...impetus for Star Trek came from Gene Roddenberry-- also known as "The Great Bird of the Galaxy"-- who first proposed the show to execs from all three networks back in 1964. Two years, two pilots and many hassles later, he had his series. Others had tried to bring science fiction to the screen, with little success...
...talented production crew, and sought out some of the best science fiction writers around, men like Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, instead of relying on the usual hacks who specialized in cop shows and dumb westerns. At a cost of $200,000 for each episode, Star Trek at least strove for excellence and intelligence, if it came up short sometimes...
...disbanded, the model of the Enterprise was put in safe storage. But ten years later, after massive amounts of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of Trekkies brought nothing but frustration until Star Wars showed that a science fiction movie could make money, lots of money, Star Trek returned...