I am pretty lucky that my birthday usually lands near the early summer, blockbuster movies. This year, I had a little party at the new Cinemark theater in Orem with a few close friends, watching the new Star Trek movie. (I would have invited all of you, but I was paying for it). This new theater is all digital and has a party room. It had movie memorabilia all around, cake and ice cream, and my faithful friend Paul Green got me all 4 Star Trek movie glasses from Burger King (whohoo!).
Yes, I am a nerd. I like Star Trek for the endless story possibilities, interesting characters and also ways to instantly see other societies that may never exist and how they solve problems.
I never got into learning Klingon or memorize the stardate of each episode. But I mostly got into Star Trek when I was 14, I was aimlessly looking at the phone directory of our church congregation and noticed someone with the last name "Roddenberry". I couldn't figure for the life of me where I have seen that name before.
Finally, while watching a re-run of Star Trek, I noticed the producer at the end of the credits read Gene Roddenberry. I went to church and asked Tom Roddenberry if he was related. He was his cousin and he knew him well enough, being that he grew up with him, to just call him out of the blue.
Since I was already cementing my love for film by this age, I made up a reason for needing to talk to Gene. I had a film class I was taking in High School (the only one ever in my part of South Texas), and I decided to do a paper on him.
To set this up, this all happened in 1982, right before Star Trek II was being released.
So, a date was set for me to receive his phone call. I got home from school and the phone rang. Weirdly, it was a woman named Susan Sackett. The reason it's weird is that besides being Gene's assistant, she went on to write many episodes of The Next Generation.
Gene came on the line and all of a sudden I was tongue tied. It took a few minutes for me to remember why I was actually calling him. Finally I got my composure and got to the basic questions, how he started, what did he do besides Star Trek, how do you like your eggs.
I asked about the rumor going around that Spock is going to die in this film. He said it was true, that Nimoy wanted to move on. In fact, he went into how he wanted to make 5 or 6 movies, kill off or retire each crew member, but then have them replaced. Then he would start the TV show over again with new people that the audience could appreciate.
This is 5 years before The Next Generation, and obviously all that didn't happen. Fans were mad that Spock would die, Star Trek II became a big hit and (the rest you can either figure out or read on-line).
Since that phone call, I received several Star Trek things with Gene Roddenberry's signature on them, as well as a costume off of the rack of the first Star Trek film. Gene definitely loved his fans.
From that experience, growing up in South Texas, where film making was far from present, a seed was planted in me that continues to grow to this day. I will always have a space for Star Trek (no pun intended).
