My love affair with Star Trek is more recent when compared to my love affair with Science Fiction movies & tv series in general. The first scifi series that I honestly recollect loving was the original Battlestar Galactica. This was first shown on Kuwait television in 1980 and perhaps the following year they showed Galactica 1980 (which was the spin off show of BSG). I must have watched reruns of it during 1981-83.
However I do remember seeing some of the TOS era episodes during my childhood but I can’t recollect them much. I remember during a summer holidays visit to India they were showing some of the episodes and I remember hearing about Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest during those years. Also I remember watching some of the Motion Picture (1979) during my childhood years, perhaps at the age of 9 or 10 in India – I vaguely remember my relatives being also interested due to former Miss India & Miss Universe the late Persis Khambata starring in the movie. So I know I saw it but can’t recollect much of it from that time. It would be 1988 or so when I first remember watching something Star Trek related – I remember selecting The Search for Spock from one of the two video lending libraries my family & I used to have membership at and I watched it on the VHS tape. I was 12. Cable tv was launched in India 3 years later and I got it at home another 12 months later but there was no Star Trek.
It would be 1995, aged 19 when I finally started watching Star Trek regularly. Star tv started showing TNG from the very first episode for the first time in India. I started watching from episode 2 and was hooked. Picard, Riker, Troi, Crusher, Data, LaForge & Worf were the characters that fueled my passion for all things Scifi & Star Trek in general. It became an obsession and I watched as many episodes & the reruns as much as I could. In 2001 Hallmark started showing Voyager and I started watching that – from episode 1 of season 1 all the way to the last episode of season 7 – missing just a few here or there. Just after that show ended it’s original run on Hallmark, Star World picked up seasons 1 & 2 of Enterprise and I was a regular viewer of that too. But I would miss the 3rd & 4th seasons of Enterprise on tv – because they didn’t show it. And then for a couple of years no Star Trek at all. In 2007-2008 I started trying to watch Voyager episodes online but they were sporadic since I had a very slow internet connection. 2009 all that changed. I got all 7 seasons of Voyager and watched them at a stretch. As soon as that ended I started watching DS9 too and finally Enterprise, TOS and TNG. I finished watching TOS on Jan 2011 and TNG was the last in Dec 2011. Of these I have seen most of Voyager 3 times, TNG twice and seasons 1 & 2 of Enterprise twice as well.
Somewhere during all of this I became a Trekkie. I’d have to guess and say it was probably in 1995-96 that I became an ardent fan and immersed myself in the Trek universe. It was hard – no internet at home – in fact I only took a net connection at home in 2006! But since then it’s been Trek online as well. Long may I continue to be a Trekkie.