Judging by the air date of the first episode, I must have been at least 9 years old. Dad bought me one of those Book-And-Cassette Combo Packs which featured Star Trek: The Next Generation. The basic idea was that you would read the book while the tape played at the same time, reading the same text. That way you could improve your reading skills. Of course I didn’t need the teaching, by that age I had already been reading for several years. However, I don’t think I had ever seen any Star Trek show before Dad purchased me that book. I was so used to seeing images of flying saucers, however, that I felt the Enterprise looked rather stupid with those warp nacelles attached. Why did they decide to make a flying saucer look so ugly? I wondered. As time passed I got used to the nacelles and now they seem completely natural.
One of the first episodes of The Next Generation that I remember was “Conspiracy,” the one where bug-like parasites infected various members of Starfleet Command and started subtly guiding the institution to nefarious, unspecified goals. I seem to remember I was sitting in trailer watching it with the two little Dennis the Menaces I mentioned in a previous entry. I was horrified to think of insects crawling down my throat and embedding themselves in my neck, and the graphic scene where Picard and Riker blast the head off of Remmick and reveal the parasite within him, only to blast that one apart as well, stuck with me for many years. I see here on the episode’s Wikipedia page that it created quite a bit of controversy when it aired due to its graphic nature, with a warning placed before it in Canada and an outright banning in the UK. It was also a very controversial episode among Star Trek fans, with some outright hating it and some calling it one of the best. I personally think it’s one of the better ones due to the suspense, and I wish they had done more with the “conspiracy” in later episodes, instead of completely abandoning it.
In the 90’s I started watching The Next Generation regularly, although I forget what channel it came on. I was almost religious about the show at about the time Deep Space Nine premiered. I watched a little Voyager as well, but I kind of petered out after the first season.
As a big Star Trek fan, I told myself about two years ago that I would watch all the series’ and movies with the help of Netflix, and I got all the way through The Original Series, The Next Generation, and season 5 of Deep Space Nine before giving up. I particularly have fond memories of watching The Original Series because I was really big into frying up bacon cheeseburgers at the time, and I would always eat one while I watched the show. My side items would be baked beans and macaroni & cheese, with perhaps some potato chips or French fries. I called it my “indoor barbecue.”