Today Marks The 50th Anniversary of 'Star Trek' (ew.com)

Dave Knott writes: Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first television broadcast of Star Trek. The first episode of the science fiction series was aired on September 8, 1966. From its humble beginnings, Star Trek has gone on to become one of the best-loved and most successful television concepts of all time, an enduring pop culture touchstone that changed science fiction forever and spawned multiple series and movies that continue to this day. What does Star Trek mean to you? Are you a trekkie/trekker? What are your best memories of the series, and how has it affected your life?

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It was the day science fiction got real

[hyades1]

As a very young boy, I exhausted the children's area of our small-town library in no time. With my parents' permission and a wonderful librarian, I was allowed to start getting books from the Adults' floor. I was a complete science fiction addict. I went through the whole section. I was even allowed to read stories like Farmer's "The Lovers" and Sturgeon's "Venus Plus X", which at the time were considered very definitely not for children.

I was thoroughly familiar with concepts that are now almost trite, but at the time were pretty much limited to the science fiction community: preserving time lines to preserve reality, the implications of faster-than-light spaceships, matter transmission, parallel universes and a lot more. Television science fiction (except Outer Limits and Twilight Zone) bored me to tears, and Lost In Space made me sick. My parents couldn't figure out why I loved SF books so much, but had no time for "Fireball XL-5".

Then, just as summer was winding down, the networks started promoting the new TV shows for the coming season. And there was Star Trek. Even the very limited "trailers" made it clear this was going to be something different. It delivered in spades. All of the stuff I'd been reading about was brought to life, and I got to watch my family and friends catch onto the same things that had held me spellbound for a good part of my short life. And most important, Star Trek made it clear that we'd get through all the evil and ugliness we saw around us...Vietnam, the assassinations, the Cold War. It was looking pretty bleak there, for a while.

And it also did what science fiction was supposed to do: hold up a mirror to problems in our own world we didn't often discuss openly. Plus (huge bonus) some of the seriously imaginative science fiction writers whose work I loved were writing episodes. My mother, who was a tough, capable woman, cried like a baby at the end of "The City at the Edge of Forever", and my dad was very quiet. They'd both lived through WWII (my dad served with the RAF), and they both knew just how close Hitler came to winning.

But it was that first view of the first promo I remember best...when my sister and I were sitting on the living room floor playing a card game and I looked at the TV and just couldn't believe what I was seeing.

All these years later, I know how lucky I was to see it happen through a child's eyes.