Dave's Star Trek Page
Anybody who has looked at this web site design and hasn't figured out that I'm a Star Trek fan probably isn't interested in looking at this page.
I thought long and hard about what Trek-related stuff I could put on this site that doesn't exist a thousand other places on the Internet. Thing is, there isn't much that falls into that category. So, I decided that the best thing I could do was share (with anybody who would care to read about it) my personal connection with Star Trek--how I became a fan, my accounts of some of the conventions I have attended, and how I actually got to (in a small way) shape a bit of Star Trek history.
When I was seven years old, I went to a friend's house to play one afternoon. When I got there, he was watching Star Trek (the original series...remember, this was 1972). I watched the episode with him--it was The Galileo Seven--and I was positively enthralled. That night, I went home and told my parents about this great "new" show that I had watched at Mike's house. From that point on, I caught every episode I could. It was in re-runs on one of the local UHF stations, so it didn't come in all that clearly--but I strained my eyes and watched every snowy episode. It was safe to say I was hooked.
My friends and I played Star Trek a lot. I started off being Chekov, but when I had seen enough episodes to realize that Chekov wasn't exactly the coolest character to be (sorry Walter Koenig--but that's the way a seven year old thinks), I graduated to being Spock. Mike, who introduced me to the show, was Kirk, and my friend Barry was usually McCoy. There weren't exactly a ton of Star Trek toys on the market at the time, so I ended up building my own phasers, tricorders, and communicators out of Legos (well...Brix-Blox, the cheaper Lego equivalent) or cutting them out of scraps of plywood. I also used my Brix-Blox to build miniature versions of all of the sets--the bridge, transporter room, engineering, and so on--to scale with my sister's Fisher Price Little People, and I used them to crew my starship (which was set up on two TV trays to create a multi-deck effect).
Long story short, I quickly grew out of the "playing Star Trek" phase...but I never lost my love for the show. I hung on every moment of the animated series in the 70s, the movies, and eventually Next Generation, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise. I went to more than my share of conventions as well. But even more than that, I have gotten to go where no...or at least most...Trek fans have gone before. More on that later.
As a kid I was mesmerized by Star Trek. Obviously, I was too young to remember the show in its initial run--I caught the re-runs. So, I guess I was really one of that new wave of Star Trek fans that moved the show from cancelled curiosity to unprecedented phenomenon. Not that I knew it at the time.
It wasn't until I was a teenager that I found out that I was hardly alone in my infatuation with the show. And when I found out, I dove headfirst into the fan scene.
In the fall of 1979, I found out that the Parkville-Carney branch of the Baltimore County Public Library was having a "Star Trek Day." This was an entire Saturday of viewing episodes (on 16 MM film--these were the days before VCRs), blooper reels (something that I had never heard of--actual outtakes from the show!), and trivia contests. Some of my friends and I attended, and it was a total blast! This was something I had never experienced--a room full of Star Trek fans reveling in geekdom.
For me, the highlight of the day was the trivia contest. Everyone (about 25 people) participated. I won. I proved myself to be king geek. (Hey...it was a really big deal to me at the time!) I only missed one question--one that my friend Andy still brings up from time to time nearly 30 years later--"Who was the engineer who accompanied Scotty in the landing party in the episode The Doomsday Machine?" (The answer, in case you were wondering, is "Washburn." It is forever seared into my brain.)
The event was sponsored by the Randallstown Association of Star Trek (RAST), and its two founders--a mother and daughter named Kim and Lita Drapkin--were in charge. At the end of the day, Kim said that, since I had done so well in the trivia contest, she thought I should come to their convention in the spring at the Hunt Valley Inn--they were having a trivia contest there as well. I had never heard of a Star Trek convention before--and I was stoked at the idea of thousands of fans coming together in one place. Obviously, I had to go.
I joined RAST--I never attended a meeting (no way to get there) but I have a couple of their newsletters to this day--and I prepared myself for my first convention: Starbase Baltimore.
Conventions I've Attended
I've been to a lot of conventions over the years--some of them more memorable than others. As I have time (and we all know how frequently I update this site...), I'll add descriptions for more cons. Click the name of the convention below to read my account of the event.