Fifty years ago today
Genealogy is more than just a collection of names and dates and places.
Genealogy is the history of our families.
Genealogy is our own history.
The Legal Genealogist‘s. Yours. Ours.
And today… well… at least for some of us of a particular age… today is a milestone.
Cue in the music. Cue in the special effects. And cue in the voice:
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Fifty years ago today, the very first episode of the iconic television series Star Trek aired — The Man Trap, with (what a surprise) mysterious deaths occurring among the Enterprise crew.
William Shatner as Captain Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Spock, James Doohan as Scotty, George Takei as Sulu, DeForest Kelley as the ship’s surgeon and Nichelle Nichols as Uhura in “The Man Trap”… these were the people we watched for week after week. (We learned very quickly not to get attached to anybody wearing a red shirt …)
Any Star Trek fan will have favorite episodes.
Looking back, it’s hard to believe there were only three seasons. Adding the movies to the television series makes it so much larger in our minds, our memories and our hearts.
Happy birthday, Star Trek.
Live long and prosper!
My favorite episode of the TV show is “The City on the Edge of Forever”.
#StarTrek50. Live long and prosper!
Oh, that was a good one too…
I was alive at the time and old enough to be watching TV, but not quite old enough to be interested in this type of show. I started watching about 4 years later, so obviously in reruns, but it still showed weekly (if not daily) and I loved it! Seems cheesy now, but at the time it was state of the art. Hard to believe it’s been 50 years!
It’s stunning to realize it was 50 years ago. Then again I now remember something that happened 60 years ago, so…
It’s important to also remember that up until “Star Trek” aired, all aliens from outer space had been depicted as uniformly malevolent and evil villains, seeking to destroy the human race, if not the entirety of Planet Earth. Gene Rodenderry’s vision changed the course of science fiction entertainment and a generation’s attitude towards the unknown.
Yep, it was a major game-changer all the way around.
The Next Generation episode The Neutral Zone has Counselor Troi doing genealogy research to locate the living relatives of a lady who was frozen in the 20th century.
You have to loooove Star Trek…
I watched that episode.
One of the unfortunate aspects of television which has lived long and prospered only too well, is the length of the commercial breaks.
In the original episodes, you not only saw a whole episode but also scenes from next week’s show.
Nowadays, commercial breaks seem to have tripled or quadrupled. (I think the Fox Network pioneered this trend in the 1980’s, and everyone else has jumped on board since.)
Consequently, you cannot watch a whole and unedited episode in reruns unless it has been expanded to ninety minutes.
I’m irritated. (Ah yes, one of my earth emotions.)
Where’s the “darned kids, get off my lawn” part? 🙂
In Klingonese that’s “yIntagh kids, lItHa’ lawn.”
I was born the day before Star Trek first aired. Maybe it was on at the hospital. Although I doubt I was watching.
Infant! 🙂
I never quite grasped the whole Star Trek thing! But My closest friend throughout Grade School and High School would NEVER miss an episode. He also never missed a day of school during that entire time.
I’m not sure there’s cause and effect there, but… 🙂