Star Trek homeSkip to main content

Trekspectives: A Journey of Fandom

Trekspectives: A Journey of Fandom


StarTrek.com is pleased to welcome C Bryan Jones of Trek.fm to our stable of regular guest bloggers. Today, Jones introduces himself and his new column, Trekspectives.

Every story has a beginning. Mine starts in my great grandparents’ living room. No, I wasn’t born there; but my Star Trek fandom was. My first encounter with the five-year mission of the Starship Enterprise occurred while sitting in front of the kind of television you never see today. This was as much a piece of furniture with a screen tacked on the front as a piece of home electronics. Heavy, wooden, bulky. Clearly not suited for the bridge of a starship. But Kirk had his viewscreen, and I had mine—a window to another world. As a five-year-old, I was captivated by these adventures.Around this same time, another adventure in a galaxy far, far away was landing on the big screen. I fell in love with that, too. For the next six or seven years, my fandom was split. But as I became a teenager, the core of Star Trek began speaking to me more loudly, with a force that could not be overcome. This core is the social commentary that powers Gene Roddenberry’s vision. Our teenage years are such a formative time, and as my view of the world began to change, the action-adventure veneer of Star Trek peeled away to reveal a layer of deeper exploration. Kirk and Spock weren’t just exploring strange new worlds, they were exploring us.



Star Trek
Star Trek


Hyperchannel
The Ready Room

Star Trek




Star Trek
Star Trek
Trek

Star Trek
Star Trek
Trekspectives


C Bryan Jones is founder and publisher of the Trek.fm podcast network, host of The Ready Room and Hyperchannel, and co-host of The Orb: A Star Trek Deep Space Nine Podcast. Here on Earth, he’s also Editor-In-Chief of Metropolis, a city life and entertainment magazine in Tokyo. And when prattling on there isn’t enough, he turns to Twitter (@cbryanjones) and his personal website cbryanjones.com.