SPACE… The Final Frontier

I remember the very first time I ever saw Star Trek; it was 1974, I was 10 years old and my family had just moved to England where we had, for the very first time, a colour TV. One of the first colour shows I ever remember seeing was Star Trek, which I’d never seen before, even in black and white.

The bright primary colour scheme is obviously designed for the primitive colour TVs of the 60s/70s. Subtle it was not, but the comic book palette, hammy lighting, and the spaceships and aliens, made a vivid impression when I was used to black-and-white and only 10 years old. I was inspired to build a crude model of the starship Enterprise, using bits of junk around the house: 2 aluminium pie-tins as the saucer, some ’Smarties’ tubes as the nacelles, and a paper-towel roll as the fuselage, all connected with Icy pole sticks. Despite the hilariously naff image you must now have in your mind’s eye as a result of that description, the Pie-Tin Enterprise was the sleekest and fastest starship in the TeeveeRoom quadrant of the OurHouse galaxy.

The first episode of Star Trek I ever saw has the memorable image of the starship Enterprise being menaced by a giant HAND in space. The hand is attached to none other than the Greek god Apollo, who was in actuality merely another alien for captain Kirk to clash wills with. I credit this episode for a ‘Chariots Of The Gods’ fixation that kept me…