Evolution of a Star Trek fan

Over at TrekBBS, we were asked to track our evolution as a Star Trek fan. Mine was quite a gradual awareness.

* Kids at my primary school collecting Scanlen's "Star Trek" bubble gum cards (Topps in the USA). My grandmother owned the household's only television set, so "Star Trek" must have clashed with one of "her" shows.

* My Year 5 teacher's wall chart where we kept score of our weekly spelling and dictation results. It was our "Star Trek" chart and Mr Brown dispensed gold, silver and coloured gummed paper stars, depending on our results (1969).

* Filmation's animated Star Trek series (TAS) on b/w Saturday morning TV, and then daily breakfast TV TAS repeats "for the first time in colour" a few years later. The highlight of "The Super Flying Fun Show".

* Also a few TOS episodes, which were selected for presentation on a Saturday evening(?) "for the first time in colour", when colour TV came to Australia in 1975.

* Five serialized b/w daily liftouts in a Sydney nightly newspaper in late 1979: "My Week on the Star Trek Movie Set!" by Aussie journalist, Jim Oram. At my 21st birthday party a few weeks later, a friend boasted how he'd just been to the gala premiere, where half of the cinema had fans in costume, and they applauded all the characters' entrances.

* Finding the ST:TMP novelization in a rack at the checkout of my local supermarket. Read it in one weekend.

* Spending a 21st birthday record voucher on Jerry Goldsmith's TMP soundtrack LP, having still not yet seen the movie. (All those cool aliens on the inner sleeve!)

* Seeing TMP on the big screen. By myself, because no one else I asked wanted to go.