star trek convention 1973

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Video of the Day: Report From 1973 Star Trek Convention

| March 5, 2011 | By: TrekMovie.com Staff 74 comments so far

Star Trek Convention Flashback to 1973

Here is the clip from a 1973 Star Trek con at the Commodore Hotel in New York City (uploaded by beyondspock on on Youtube – via Ed Gross ).

Get a haricut, you hippies!

Wow! Asimov’s commentary is fascinating to watch. As a huge fan of his writing who hasn’t seen much video of him speak, just the fact that it’s an involved monologue by Asimov is pretty cool, but to hear him specifically discuss the character of Star Trek and its impact on science-fiction is really something else… As awesome a video as I’ve seen posted on here. I expect many folks who read regularly on here might have already seen it before, but first time for me.

(Was any of this in that movie “Trekkies”? I remember they at least covered the first ST Convention.)

ahh the good old days,,

Fascinating. And moving.

^2 Nope, not in “Trekkies”, although the fans in that one were just as smug…

That’s a joke, kids.

Bravo! I hope the “Court” pays attention to this clip.

Love these flashbacks. It’s the closest thing we have to time travel.

Pretty Groovey Flashback. Or is that Far Out. Lol. Anyway. Was some Cool stuff to see.

“The program is merely a way to entice you to watch the advertising” Spot on, Asimov!

Man, people had weird hair back then!

It’s always fun to see footage from years before I was born.

Hmmm….I think Ambassador X @0:30 may be the missing link between Klingons of TOS and ST:TMP that some have been looking for.

So the cure for Klingon augment virus lies in….tartar sauce?

I was 18 in 1973. My back hurts.

I was 11 in 1973. My back still hurts and I want to slap Red Dead Ryan.

Did the guy really glue a lobster to his face? How shellfish of him. (11, yours is better, but I couldn’t let that one pass w/o a snide comment.)

Love Isaac Asimov, mutton chops and all. One of the Big 4. But, don’t be making fun of my favorite split infinitive. Also love that Gene actually sold a few of his IDIC thingies. (Shat referred to them as being a warehouse full of junk.)

Is that a time-travelling Spockanella at the very end, sobbing over LN??

Slightly different topic, but what happened to the TOS/TAS episodes at CBS.com? They’re gone.

Oh dear, that weeping girl at the end………

Great, Great find.

I wonder what became of the Lobster Dude. Wish I could have been there. Then again, I would have only been a year old. . .

I lived that time, but I never got to the FIRST convention. It was FAN based, done by FANS FOR FANS! That convention moved from New York, down to Baltmore, and became two conventions. Farpoint and Shore Leave. They continue to exist. And THANK GOODNESS they do. FAN run conventions are the best because they know what FANS want, not only celebrities, but fan run panels for discussions, there are merchandise, but there are also other things. Without the FANS starting the ST conventions, there wouldn’t be any today

No. 13 – Read Shat’s book about his experience with attending a convention (not for the first time), but secretly in disguise. He wanted to know what it was all about, because the conventions he had attended were quick and dirty. He was ushered in then back out so fast by “body guards” that he never got a true sense of what a convention was really like. He didn’t spend time on the floor with the fans (and couldn’t because he wasn’t allowed to). When he did finally attend a convention where he disguised himself and saw it through the eyes of the fans, he realized just how much fun they were, and how much people really loved the show, and he apologized for his remarks on Saturday Night Live of “Get a Life” and that became the title of his book. It really was an eye opening experience for him. And I really respect him for that.

“brotherhood of intelligence”. I like that. Right on, brother Asimov!

wow. that last chick. Its like she was at a Beatles concert or something…

It’s a very pleasant surprise to see this video. I didn’t know it existed. I attended this convention as a child, with my younger brother who has since passed on. It was one of the most wonderful experiences I ever had with my brother and It lives in my heart forever. We were both big Star Trek fans and I heard of the convention on the radio, WABC in New York City, right after a Beatle song. I convinced my mother to bring my brother and I to the Commodore Hotel for the convention. She left me to take care of my brother at the event as she didn’t want to go and said she would be back in a few hours after she went shopping. Leonard Nimoy was not scheduled to be there. We were watching the film “Silent Running” with Joan Baez singing on the film’s soundtrack when a rumbling began in the room. The film stopped and the lights went up and the screen was pulled up. The folding chairs started moving forward and were closing in on my brother and I. We were both really frightened as we thought we were going to be crushed in some sort of disaster. Then everyone stopped pushing and the chairs stopped closing in. Out came Nimoy, Takei and Doohan exactly as you see them in the still at the top of this posting. It was a magical moment as my brother and I were stunned and felt like the luckiest people on earth. Hearing Leonard Nimoy speak was wonderful. My brother remembered it for the rest of his life and we smiled whenever we brought it up. It has remained a moment of extraordinary joy in my mind that I treasure forever. Thank you for posting this video.

..That’s what started it all folks. And this was before the Internet, or DVDs or VHS…all the fans had were a few scattered newsletters, some fanzines and 60 minutes of TOS, if you were lucky enough to have it run on one of your 3 or 4 local stations. Unlike today, where sometimes I feel fans are more a fan of fandom itself than the actual show.

This makes me wish I’d been born earlier. To have been around back then and at the right age to enjoy it. From what I’ve read though, major TV Executives (from the big three Networks in the US?) were confident enough to show repeats of Star Trek close to or during prime time throughout the 70’s, so it perhaps isn’t any wonder the fanbase grew massively. They could do with treating Star Trek like that now-a-days, rather than as a dispensable filler at odd hours of the day and night. Right alongside whatever lawyer/doctor/cop show currently gets all the attention.

I was just 4 when this happened. Became a fan just a couple of years latter. Some good times.

@ 22. Douglas

Thank you for sharing your special memories.

I am a New Yorker, and I remember Nimoy coming to an auto show in, maybe 1974. He had no cars to display, but he was a major draw to the show, and my dad told me to ‘wait here’ and he stood in the huge line, and got me his autographed (and personalized) headshot.

I used to go to comic cons in NYC in the 1980s, and there is still one per year, and I managed a few Trek Cons in the ’90s.

New York City used to be a major location for Trek cons, but, for some reason, Creation and its ilk now steer clear, now opting for Parsippany NJ, 60 miles away, putting NYC dwellers, who mostly do not drive, out of reach. Most of those I met in Parsippany in 2009 were from Jersey or PA.

It boggles that NYC (20m urban conurbation) gets no cons, and no visits from the traveling “Experience” collection, and it’s a massive bastion of fandom. Hell, we used to have a store called the “Federation Trading Post” on East 52nd Street dedicated to Trek.

Very good, as was Asimov’s point that the show was about encountering problems that humans had not had to face before.

That should offer some scope for fresh story telling in the future.

Enjoyed seeing Nimoy’s bit on the substance of the show. 40+ years later, all of the cast have been asked the same question about what makes Star Trek special so many times, their answers seem rote. (Not a criticism…but after all this time, the emotion of the response has “left the building.”) So it was great to see him delivering an impassioned and seemingly spontaneous response.

@28 – It’s astonishing to me that we have essentially the entire galaxy from which we could draw potentially unlimited types of stories, and yet we debate here how Trek has endured “franchise fatigue,” and have expressed concern here that Trek XII might just be a retelling of a TOS episode in the alternate timeline…

SoonerDave,

That same issue bugs me as well, especially as Ron Moore complained the ‘Star Trek Universe’ was too constrained in its depth to allow creativity, while Manny Coto’s season 4 of ENT went and had an absolute field day with that same universe.

VOY tried to take us away from the Alpha/Beta quadrant, and by ep. 1, we were introduced to the Kazon, a ‘warrior race’ with head ridges and clans. Game Over.

Coto found a wealth of material in the same existing lore that Moore bitched about. PLUS, as you say, we have the entire Galaxy as well.

13: Yeah, that was me (not). I was 14 in 1973. I’d have gone to the convention in a heartbeat if I could’ve, though. I did go to one in the early 80’s. Nimoy, Koenig, and Doohan were there. I missed meeting Koenig, and the folks in Nimoy’s line said (I kid you not) that we were not supposed to talk to him, just hand over whatever we had to be signed and move on. Of course a lot of us did talk a little anyway! And Doohan was a totally sweetie…he made sure to talk to everybody, smiled, seemed happy to be there.

Given that the last two movies were a collection of things already seen in Trek, one can’t help but expect another retread.

Never saw this clip before. What a great look back. I was 14 in 1973 and it makes me feel old (lol) when I see posters on this site who weren’t born yet. Ah the good old days when it was all starting. Yes there are many great stories to be told,and I am looking forward to the future of Trek.

#22 Douglas Thank you for the wonderful story about you and your brother.

These comments on this thread really hammer hown the fact that I am one of the youngest posters here. I wasn’t born until ’84.

in ’73 I was 10. Had seen some Trek but didn’t become a full-blown fan until a couple years later when it was on every day after school.

I’ve really enjoyed reading about everyone’s experiences! Truly captivating and fascinating!

I wonder, has anybody here ever witness a lunatic fan being thrown out or escorted away from the actors at a convention? Because there are always stories floating about a bunch of weirdos at conventions.

I’ve been to a few conventions myself, and everyone was cool and nice. I even had a nice chat with Marc Alaimo once!

Try lifting with your legs, not your backs! ;-)

You spoke with Alaimo! Luck-eee!

Yeah, we discussed if Sisko was able to come back, so too would Dukat, since they were opposites to each other.

Listen to Nimoy describe Star Trek. Entertainment. Provocative. Uplifting. He’s said that about Star Trek many times.

Thanks for the great clip. The best part is Asimov’s analysis of Trek. The grandmaster is still missed! How I would love to have been at one of these early conventions! But I was born in 1973.

My first con was at the Statler Hilton in NYC in ’76; that one was HUGE! The whole cast except Nimoy, plus Asimov. The Hilton cons petered out over the next few years, but that 10-year anniversary one was great. Anyone have any video of that??

Ah, plus ca change, plus cest la meme chose.

What a wonderful blast from the past. I didn’t get to attend 1973’s Convention, but I did go to New York’s 1974 and 1975 Conventions so I saw those folks from that era.

@ 18 @ 22 In the vernacular of the time, Right On Alisa and Douglas! The fan- based conventions were enchanting. Really. There was a lot of fan-based content like the art show, and things were really unpredictable.

I miss that, but The Talent is still The Talent. Bill Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Walter Koenig, bless their hearts, are still with us and they still come to conventions. So continue to go and see them. The feeling in the room, especially at the smaller conventions like Vancouver and Parsippany, is still the same. In fact, it’s kind of relaxed now. I saw Nimoy at another venue in 1975 and he didn’t really connect with the audience that well. Seeing him in Parsippany in 2009, however, he was really funny, like George Burns. And he really did connect with the audience.

Also I got to see him last summer in Vancouver at his “Secret Selves” photography seminar. We had him in a small room for 90 minutes. He gave a talk for 15 minutes. Then we watched the film on the Secret Selves Project for 30 minutes and then there was a 45 Q and A. As there were less than two dozen people in the room, we got to ask him several questions and explore another side of the man. We talked about psychology, art, Jung, Carl Rogers, and lots of things not related to Star Trek. It was really deep and very moving.

Nichelle Nichols spoke at the 92nd Street Y in New York this winter about her iconic role as Lt. Uhura, as part of the Women of Television lecture.

I just saw Zachary Quinto in “Angels in America,” and I’ve seen both Nimoy and Patrick Stewart on stage in New York.

So if you have the opportunity to see them talk, or perform, or show their art these days. Just go. They are still awesome!

P.S. @ 27 AJ. I don’t understand why the Star Trek Convention is now held in a rather dismal industrial park hotel in Parsippany. It is so wrong and counter-productive! I understand that booking a hotel in New York might be a very expensive proposition, but why hold it in a place that is only accessible to people with cars? The organizers should consider that they might have better attendance if they held the convention at other sites on the East Coast that city dwellers can get to, like Philadelphia (which has a huge convention center and lots of unsold hotel rooms) or Atlantic City. Besides who wants to spend the weekend in an industrial park?

Hmmm, sounds like the makings of a great DS9 TV movie to me. Too bad the chances of that ever happening are razor thin.

Must’ve been great to have been there at ST fandom’s grassroots beginnings. So much raw passion! These days, conventions and such have become so pre-packaged and commercialized that they’ve lost a lot of that old school heart and charm.

Wish it could be so again…

That last girl must have just emerged from her parents’ basement… truly an emotional experience!

Loved the whole video! I agree that Asimov’s statements should be mandatory viewing for anyone working on Trek in the future.

31. A J – “That same issue bugs me as well, especially as Ron Moore complained the ‘Star Trek Universe’ was too constrained in its depth to allow creativity, while Manny Coto’s season 4 of ENT went and had an absolute field day with that same universe.

VOY tried to take us away from the Alpha/Beta quadrant, and by ep. 1, we were introduced to the Kazon, a ‘warrior race’ with head ridges and clans. Game Over.

Coto found a wealth of material in the same existing lore that Moore bitched about. PLUS, as you say, we have the entire Galaxy as well.”

I completely agree with you about Voyager and the Kazon. The thing to remember about Ron Moore’s comments, is who was probably directing his words to. Sounds a bit like self-publicity about his involvement with BSG. Basically his writing is a reaction to 24th Century humanity and the characters an antithesis to all that. He’s saying that writing Gene Roddenberry humans were too much like a straight jacket. All the bad traits tend to be given to alien races on Star Trek, threatening to force us to decend to that level in order save the day. Back when Enterprise began, the promise was that the humans on the show would be “not quite as evolved”. Some of that was explored with uncomfortable attitudes held between some humans and vulcans. Then there’s Archer’s dillemma about placing the mission to save Earth, over the lives of his crew and his usual moral judgements. But I honestly couldn’t ever see humans the NX-01 crew behaving anywhere near as bad as some aboard the Galactica… not and belong in that universe anyway. The Mirror one, definitely!

48 (cont.) Basically, I don’t think Trek lore was Ron Moore’s beef with Star Trek. He’s a fan and so probably would loved to have fill in the blanks with a prequel show. Heck, he’s done that with his own creation… well, his and Glenn Larson’s. It would probably have taken a partnership with somebody else to reign in Starfleet characters, to prevent them from becoming completely unlikeable and the whole show a dystopia, where everybody is basically doomed. I liked how Manny Coto saw dozens of avenues left for Enterprise to keep it fresh (mostly plot driven admittedly) and not subvert it into something which was definitely not Star Trek. Ah, he should’ve been allowed to finish the 22nd Century off with a few more seasons…

Sulu looked like a chick with long hair lol LOVE IT

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Watch Footage From a 1973 NYC Star Trek Convention

Look how calm and polite everyone is! It seems so sane in comparison to Comic Con — like a slightly zany dentists’ conference.

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Equicon '73

Equicon '73 was held April 20–22, 1973, at the International Hotel in Los Angeles, CA . It was a regional convention which had added enough Star Trek programming that it was becoming a Star Trek convention . The GoH was Theodore Sturgeon and Toastmaster was Randall Garrett . Other guests included Gene Roddenberry, Majel Barrett, D. C. Fontana, Robert Bloch , Ray Bradbury , Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan George Takei, Walter Koenig, william Ware Theiss, Matt Jeffries, James Rugg, John Dwyer, Louise Wilhite, Betty Ballantine , Celia Lovsky, Tony Young, Barry Atwater, Ed Bishop, Larry Vincent (Seymour) and John Jeffries. There was a Masquerade with around 10 entrants. It was chaired by William Tuning and Clyde Johnson. Attendance was estimated to be 8000.

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International Star Trek Convention 1973 Information

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International Star Trek Convention 1973 February 16-19, 1973 Commodore Hotel   View on Map New York, NY

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25 Years of Star Trek Conventions, Present and Past

If you haven’t been giving much thought to your impending mortality lately, this should help: Star Trek: The Next Generation turns 25 this year. Remember how long ago your 25th birthday was? Exactly. The Next Generation is getting a great birthday party, too, in the form of Creation Entertainment’s Official Star Trek Convention this weekend (November 16-18) in San Francisco.

But this whole thing goes back much farther than a mere quarter of a century.

As shown in the excellent documentary Back to Space-Con , the first Star Trek convention in San Francisco was held February 25, 1975 at Lincoln High School:

At the time, the original Star Trek series had been off the air for five years, the underrated Saturday morning cartoon version had come and gone, and the fans were unsure if the show would ever return f’reals. This was also pre- Star Wars , so nobody was seriously considering the possibility that Star Trek would come back in the form of feature films, let alone that a new series with a new cast would debut in 1986. All they had was their love of the show and the creativity it inspired, and at Space-Con they had the opportunity to let that particular freak flag fly and meet other people doing the same.

Space-Con was there at the beginning of the show-specific fan-convention culture, one which still thrives today. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic conventions such as Everfree Northwest are spiritual descendants of Space-Con, and just like I got more than a few “There’s a convention for that show? LOL!” comments from non- Pony fans when I told them I was going to Everfree, the very idea of a Star Trek convention in 1975 was mysterious and downright laughable to most people who weren’t fans. (What I can’t fathom is how people today who’ve grown up knowing that show-specific conventions exist can still be surprised to hear about a new one. There’s a pattern here, folks!)

But while a direct line can be drawn between Space-Con and Everfree, both being homegrown conventions put on by the fans for the fans — for that matter, Everfree is a 501(c)3 non-profit which raised over $13,500 for Seattle Children’s Hospital this year — Creation Entertainment is a different beast: a big, lumbering corporate beast with decades of baggage (it predates Space-Con by four years ) and a front page which will make your corneas ache if you look at it too long, complete with an animated gif for email.

Web atrociousness aside, Creation has cornered the show-specific convention market, doing not just Star Trek but also Supernatural , Xena: Warrior Princess , Farscape , The Vampire Diaries , and other shows which you probably can’t believe actually have conventions. (I wouldn’t be surprised if Creation has My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic on their roster in ten years.) And these aren’t just conventions; these are the official conventions. But they can still be fun, as this weekend’s convention promises to be.

Though the 25th birthday of The Next Generation is a major focus, stars from many iterations of Trek will be appearing all weekend long, with original series actor George Takei getting top billing. According to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , his character Sulu was born in San Francisco — and besides who doesn’t love him on Facebook ?

Takei will be appearing on stage Sunday, but the bulk of the stars will be there Saturday, selling autographs and/or photo ops throughout the weekend — though you have to buy separate tickets for such things beforehand. It’s all tightly controlled and prearranged, surely to keep the whole direct-contact-with-fans thing from turning into a clusterfuck. And I wish them luck with that.

Personally, I’m more excited about the writers than the actors, and one of my favorites will be appearing: “ The Trouble With Tribbles ” scriptwriter and longtime Trek truth-speaker David Gerrold. His column in the January 1980 issue of Starlog about the financial prospects of the first Star Trek movie is brilliantly un-sentimental, and I read Gerrold’s nonfiction book The Trouble with Tribbles about the making of the original Star Trek episode dozens of times when I was a kid, instilling a lifelong love of reading film and television history. (I have distinct memories of reading it in church, when I was supposed to be paying attention to whatever it was you were supposed to pay attention to in church.)

Gerrold may or may not be doing a writing workshop on Saturday morning; at this time the official site is vague on the matter, and the actual schedule of what’s happening on what day hasn’t been posted yet, making it a bit of a crapshoot to buy tickets for individual days.

Almost certainly appearing on Friday is Morgan Gendel, whose multimedia presentation “Journey to the Inner Light” describes his struggle to make it as a freelance TV writer, and how that resulted in what may well be the best episode of The Next Generation:

And happening either Friday or Saturday (depending on which part of the page you’re looking at) is the Star Trek Video Game History panel, including “a look back at works from the past with synopsis from different games, artwork, and video clips.” Oooh, neat! As I’ve mentioned before , my truck with modern video games pretty much ended when the Atari 2600 was discontinued in the early 1990s, but I loved me the Star Trek arcade game back in the day.

Sherilyn Connelly is a San Francisco-based writer.

This piece originally appeared in SF Weekly . While we look for a new editor for Topless Robot, we’ll occasionally be publishing stories from Voice Media Group sites.

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The First Star Trek Convention, or How I Got my Geek Cred

Note that there are no references to "The Original Series" in these artifacts because there were no other series. In fact, in 1973 Star Trek itself was only available in reruns. And yet, tens of thousands of us gathered to ... I don't know, find support for our budding geekiness.

The last Star Trek Convention I attended was here in my hometown. It was a small affair, and featured a couple of Ferengis from Deep Space Nine as its guests. My oldest was only a baby, so I'm sure he doesn't remember it. The torch of fandom has yet to be truly passed to the next generation in my family.

Interesting side note: The first time my husband took me to meet his parents, someone pulled out a photo album. And there was a photo of his little brother sitting next to the exact same Mr. Spock paper mache manequin. I knew then I was marrying into the right family.

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Published Jan 20, 2012

Celebrating 40 Years since Trek's 1st Convention

Where were YOU from Jan. 21-23, 1972? This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of what is considered the first-ever major convention devoted to Star Trek , the one that set the stage (and the bar) for everything that followed. It was held in New York City, at the Statler Hilton Hotel (now the Hotel Pennsylvania), spearheaded by a core group of devoted and ambitious fans dubbed The Committee, and far more people than anyone ever imagined turned out for the event. The legend goes that 500 people were expected to attend and more than 3,000 arrived to share in the fun, which included a dealers' room and appearances by Gene Roddenberry and Isaac Asimov. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of that landmark Star Trek convention, StarTrek.com invited two now-very-familiar Star Trek figures who were there to recount their memories of the experience: Howard Weinstein and Robert Greenberger.

HOWARD WEINSTEIN

Nope. I was not at Woodstock. But I was at that very first Star Trek Convention in 1972. Really. Honest! I don't recall how I even knew about it – probably from TV commercials I'd have seen during Channel 11's week-nightly Star Trek reruns in New York. Which means I probably didn't even hear about the convention until I came home for my college winter break a month before the convention would happen on January 21-23 in Manhattan. Luckily, my Christmas vacation included that weekend, and I decided I could not miss this event. I mean, it would probably be the one and only Star Trek convention ever held, right?

Since I lived on Long Island, I was just a 45-minute train ride from the city. And the convention would be at the mid-town Statler Hilton Hotel, across the street from the Long Island Railroad terminal at Penn Station. So getting there would be easy. But who'd go with me? Nobody, as it turned out. By the time that weekend rolled around, most of my friends were already back at school or not interested. Well, dammit, Jim! I wasn’t going to miss it, even if I had to go by myself – which I did on Sunday, the convention’s final day. By that time, the committee had famously run out of badges – and space: they’d expected a few hundred fans and stopped counting at around 3,000!

I think the con was on the hotel’s 18th floor, and Star Trek fans filled every square inch up there. I made one round of the dealers’ room, which was packed like a rush-hour subway train. As for the ballroom where the guests spoke and films were shown, I’m sure I never got a seat through the hours of listening to Gene Roddenberry and Isaac Asimov, and watching the infamous blooper reel (which was hilarious, and the first time I’d seen anything like that).

My specific memories of that day are fairly hazy, and influenced by reading accounts of the convention in TV Guide and books by the late Joan Winston, a funny lady who helped run all five original New York Trek cons and was a welcome fixture in fandom for decades after. And I didn’t get to another convention until 1976, when I began my own long run as a guest speaker after writing a 1974 episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series .

Little did we know what would follow that first organized outpouring of love and loyalty for Star Trek , which was nothing less than a revelation of epic proportions. I think that ‘72 convention – and the intrepid fans who conceived it – literally changed the face of television and how fans interact with (and influence) programs and movies they love. Even though I did nothing more than enjoy the fruits of their labor, I’m thrilled that I was present at the birth of something special.

Howard Weinstein is a longtime Star Trek writer and fan whose credits include the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode " The Pirates of Orion " and many Trek novels and comic books. He’s now a co-founding member of www.crazy8press.com , an Internet-based publisher selling new books directly to readers. You can find his blog HERE .

ROBERT GREENBERGER

Forty years later, I can’t recall how I first heard there was going to be Star Trek -specific convention. Being a part of New York fandom, I presume I heard about it from someone, most likely at the very first Creation con the previous November. Regardless, there was nothing stopping me, at 13, from taking the train from Long Island to Manhattan for the con. Accompanying me that Sunday was my cohort Jeff Strell and we were stunned. Previously, we walked across the street from Penn Station to the slightly run down Statler Hilton Hotel, home to the July 4 weekend Phil Seuling-run comic conventions, and had little trouble navigating our way. This was clearly something different.

It was packed. The corridors and programming room were jammed with people of all ages, sizes, and shapes. We paid our $2.50 and managed to join the throng and were able to make our way around. The NASA exhibit was kind of cool but I was there for Star Trek and was far from disappointed. We somehow managed to get seats and in my mind’s eye, we were far back and stage right, but could make out the speaker. He was talk, stocky, and soft-spoken, but I recognized Gene Roddenberry. He talked, answered questions and made us laugh. Then we saw some of the episodes Paramount had kindly sent along. Did I see the Blooper Reel for the first time? I know I saw it repeatedly during the five years The Committee ran those first cons but couldn’t swear it was at the first.

I do know I brushed close to Roddenberry in passing, but it was also the first con where I actually met and spoke to Isaac Asimov, who was always counted on to appear at NY-based events. He couldn’t have been friendlier even if I wasn’t a pretty girl.

It amazed me, like it did everyone else, that there were these many people interested in the television series. At the time, I was hooked thanks to the reruns on WPIX, but this was at a time where it was not unusual for most everyone in attendance to have actually watched the original airings. Like the few other cons I had been too, people were friendly, regardless of age or gender, and we could recite favorite lines, crack jokes, and share our passion without any consideration of negative reaction. It was festive and the high volume of people was a positive we all embraced.

The experience certainly hooked me and when I heard there was to be a second such show a year later, I made a point of going back, swearing to never miss a single day again. Nor did I, going on to volunteer for the final three of The Committee cons where I got to meet many people who became friends and colleagues I still talk to today.

Robert Greenberger went from con attendee to editor of DC Comics’ licensed Star Trek comic for eight years in addition to writing several Star Trek novels and short stories for Pocket Books.

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‘Star Trek’ Conventions: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Trek’ Fan Gatherings

Even Star Trek captain William Shatner has poked fun at Star Trek conventions, those assemblies of eager fans that take place in dozens of cities around the world each year. But his famous Saturday Night Live Trekkie-mocking sketch aside (see below), Shatner would also be among the first to credit the audience of the Trek universe with ensuring that there is a Trek universe.

As Trekkies gather this weekend at Star Trek : Mission New York to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Gene Roddenberry-created sci-fi TV classic, we offer up a few facts you might not have known about Trek conventions, and how vital they’ve been to the series’ ability to live long and prosper.

1. The first official Star Trek convention was held Jan. 21-23, 1972, at the Statler Hilton hotel (now named Hotel Pennsylvania) in New York City. The gathering was started by a group of Trek fans who pooled their money and rented the hotel’s ballroom, expecting just a few hundred fellow Trekkies, as they would later be called, to come and share their Trek love. Instead, roughly 3,500 people showed up to see guests like the series’ creator, Gene Roddenberry, author and professor Isaac Asimov, and original series writer D.C. Fontana. In the wonderfully fun, now out of print 1975 book Star Trek Lives! by Sondra Marshak, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, and Joan Winston (used copies are available at Amazon.com, Half.com, and other used book stores), Winston — one of the original organizers of the first convention — devotes a whole chapter to the event, which included a costume contest, screenings of Trek episodes and a blooper reel, and, thanks to a surprisingly generous loan, more than 4,000 pounds of space-related exhibits directly from NASA.

Related: Ranking 50 Years of ‘Star Trek’ Series Premieres

2. It was during the 1972 convention in New York that most fans first learned what the “T” in James T. Kirk stood for: Fontana revealed that his middle name was Tiberius. In Star Trek Lives! , Joan Winston wrote that most fans at the convention thought the “T” stood for “Tomcat,” because of Kirk’s many romances.

3. Winston, who was on the set for what turned out to be the filming of the original series’ final episode, went on to help organize the first five conventions. She wrote Star Trek fiction, edited a ’zine devoted to Star Trek: The Next Generation character William T. Riker (played by Jonathan Frakes), and became a celebrity herself among Trekkies. When she died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2008, the New York Times ran an obituary , declaring her a “superfan” in its headline.

4. By 1974, the third Star Trek convention in New York drew 15,000 fans, according to The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years , a must-read by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman that came out this year. Six thousand more had to be turned away, and the conventions became such well-attended events that they began to spring up in other cities, like Los Angeles. The Equicon Trek gathering in L.A. in 1973 was co-organized by another fan heroine, Bjo (Betty Jo) Trimble , who shepherded the fan-letter-writing campaign that prompted NBC to green-light a third season of the original series, ensuring that there would be enough episodes to send Star Trek into syndication, where it cemented its status as a cult favorite.

5. In his 2016 book Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man , William Shatner credits the early fan conventions, which came after the original series’ 1969 cancellation, with keeping “the franchise alive and [leading] to the movies and the various TV series.”

6. Not that he was always that supportive of the fan gatherings. In a 1986 episode of Saturday Night Live , Shatner, as host, played himself in the sketch “Trekkies.” Facing a crowd of diehard fans, whose questions got a little too obsessive and specific for him, Shatner becomes frustrated and tells the Trekkies they need to “get a life,” move out of their parents’ basements, and realize Trek is only a TV show. After a scuffle with the convention host, Shatner returns to the podium and tells the relieved fans he was just paying homage to the “evil Kirk” from the episode “The Enemy Within.” But after years of being lukewarm, at best, about the conventions, the Emmy winner redeemed himself with his 1999 book Get a Life! , in which he took his convention appearances more seriously, interviewing his cast mates, convention organizers, and fans, and developing an appreciation for them as he finally began to understand their devotion to the Star Trek universe.

7. The first official Star Trek convention Shatner attended: the fourth one , in 1975, at the Americana Hotel in New York. “Did I mention that the first — and last! — notes of the musical scale are do?” Shatner wrote in his 2008 memoir Up Till Now: The Autobiography . “The money they offered me to attend this convention was… Do I dare? Yes, I do! Out of this world!”

Related: ‘Star Trek’ Flashback: Writer David Gerrold Talks ‘Tribbles’

8. The first unofficial Star Trek convention, known as “Star Trek Con,” which some fans insist was less convention and more just a simple gathering, took place in New Jersey on March 1, 1969, before the original series was canceled. Nearly 300 people gathered at the Newark Public Library, where, for a $0 admission fee, they viewed slides from the series set, sang folk songs — “filk” music — inspired by the show, heard a lecture about the science of Trek , and, of course, held discussions about why they loved Star Trek so much.

9. Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine producer Ronald D. Moore (also the executive producer on Outlander and Battlestar Galactica ) on the influence of Trek fan conventions, from The Fifty-Year Mission : “In the pre-Internet era, and being from a little town in central California, I didn’t have access to any of the stuff that was going on with Star Trek , so I had no idea what was happening out there in fandom. My knowledge of Trek in the ’70s was fairly limited to Starlog magazine. … That’s where I realized there were Star Trek conventions. … It was just this TV show that I loved, that I didn’t even know anyone else liked but me. Then I read there were these conventions and these people out there who did love the show, and that the actors went.”

10. There’s no Star Trek convention in space (yet), but there is one on water. Star Trek : The Cruise , the first official fan cruise event for the series, leaves from Miami in January 2017, and will sail for six days and six nights to Cozumel, Mexico, and Nassau in the Bahamas, with William Shatner, Jonathan Frakes, Robert Picardo, Marina Sirtis, and John de Lancie among the cast members on board. The bad news: It’s already sold out. The good news: You can join a waiting list, or start planning for 2018’s Trek cruise, hosted by George Takei.

Star Trek : Mission New York runs Sept. 2-4 at the Javits Center in New York City.

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The International Star Trek Convention, 1973; Commemorative, Feb. 16-19, 1973, Commodore Hotel, New York City - [Commemorative Program] Paperback – January 1, 1975

• Language English
• Publisher Tellurian Enterprises, Inc. , New York
• Publication date January 1, 1975
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B001R82LV0
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tellurian Enterprises, Inc. , New York; First Edition (January 1, 1975)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English

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Star Trek Lives! (convention)/1972

Star Trek Lives! 1972 was held January 21-23 at the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York City.

• 2 Guests of Honor
• 3 Con Staff
• 4 Tidbits and Anecdotes
• 5 The Program Book
• 6 Badges, Flyers, and Other Ephemera
• 7 Programming
• 8 Links to Photos and Videos
• 9 Articles and Further Reading
• 11 References

The Committee that organized the first New York convention in 1972 each earned $92.46 after all the expenses were covered. They were enthusiastic about trying again and took the hard-learned lessons to heart. They needed more space and for the 1973 convention headed uptown to the Commodore Hotel, adjacent to Grand Central Station. The show moved from January to Presidents’ Day weekend in February, where it remained through 1976. In her innocence, The Committee’s Elyse Rosenstein (nee Pines) wrote to the original cast, inviting them to attend. Doohan and Takei accepted, as did author Gerrold. There was a more expanded trivia contest and a masquerade. Two fans from Poughkeepsie, Art Burmaghim and Mike McMaster, had spent the previous two years building a bridge replica and spent countless hours reassembling it as part of the show. Jeff Maynard, who went on to a successful career in film, began his annual slide and multimedia shows. The legendary Phil Seuling , who ran the most successful New York Comic Conventions of the time, was in charge of the packed dealers’ room, featuring a growing selection of Star Trek merchandise, from glossy stills to tribbles. Programming included episodes of television shows starring the cast or written by members of the staff, and Katz was back, this time teasing Roddenberry’s latest project, CBS’s Genesis II. [1]

Guests of Honor

Gene Roddenberry , Majel Barrett , Isaac Asimov , Oscar Katz , Hal Clement and D.C. Fontana

The convention staff, as listed in the Souvenir Book was:

• Al Schuster , Co-ordinator
• Elyse Pines , Program
• Joan Winston , Dealers Room, NASA Display, Signs
• Eileen Becker , Registration
• Allan Asherman , Art Show
• Deborah Langsam , Costume Call
• Joyce Yasner , Displays
• Devra Langsam , Slide Shows, Program Asst.
• Regina Gottesman , Hospitality
• Steve Rosenstein , Auctioneer, MC
• Stu Hellinger , Program Assistant
• Chris Steinbrunner and Chester Grabowski , Visuals

Tidbits and Anecdotes

Devra Langsam , a member of The Committee , wrote about this con extensively in Star Trek Convention, or, how I spent my vacation, or What would I have done for aggravation if I hadn't been helping run a convention? . See that page for descriptions of the drink "Pon Farr," listening to an fan-made obscene audio tape at a room party with Dorothy Fontana , the ebb and flow of food, Hal Clement and a naked Spock fan art on a lampshade, and more.

Al Schuster introduced Isaac Asimov 's speech. A transcript of this speech is in Ragnarok #1. Schuster apologizes before the speech that his introduction of Asimov at LunaCon ("eight or nine months ago") was poorly done.

There is a (partial?) transcript of the D.C. Fontana - Majel Barrett panel printed in Ragnarok #1.

The Program Book

Badges, flyers, and other ephemera.

inside pages of the flyer advertising the 1972 convention, click for larger version

more flyer pages for the 1972 convention, the bottom reads: Late Flash: Gene Roddenberry will speak early Saturday afternoon

Tshirt from the 1972 convention

cover of 4 page flyer advertising the 1972 convention

"Star Trek Just Won't Die" is the title of this newspaper article reprinted in July 1972 by The Journal News. The article goes on to explain that the organizers of the convention expected 800 people to show up, but stopped counting at 3,000. Click to see larger version.

This March 1972 newspaper article printed in The Portsmouth Herald talks about two local high school students who attended the first Star Trek convention in New York and how another convention was being planned for the West Coast. Click to read.

Programming

There was a panel with D.C. Fontana and Majel Barrett . A transcript (partial?) was printed in Ragnarok #1.

Links to Photos and Videos

Articles and further reading.

• My Star Trek Scrapbook: 1972 ST Convention Report , Archived version
• William Marsano, " Grokking Mr. Spock ", in TV Guide March 25, 1972. Four pages of convention coverage describing Star Trek fandom as it was at that time, with many photos. Thanks to Mark's Super Blog , May 4, 2009.

Con Reports

The Star Trek convention was a hit. The guests of the convention were Gene Rod-denberry (producer of Star Trek) Majel Barrett, his wife (Nurse Chapel) Dorothy C. Fontana (script consultant) Oscar Katz (now with CBS) and talks with Isaac Asimov and Hal Clement. There was movies of the show, including the infamous blooper reels. Also, the original pilot. There was a costume contest featuring numerous Mr Spocks and blood worms. There was a well stocked, but a little "too small for comfort" huckster room, and an art display. All through the con, parents were coming up to coordinator Al Shuster [sic] and telling him how wonderful it was and how they were enjoying themselves. There were more that 3300 people attending the three days it took place. I was able to help out at the con, and in between, I recorded the panals [sic], hacked around with my friends, had interplanatary [sic] battles via some old papers laying around, ect [sic]. I will now relate to you, a few funny incidents: Since the panal room was full, people sat in the walkways and the committee could not get them to move. One of the members asked them what they would do if a fire started, someone said "We'll beam up to the ship!" People would enter the elevator and say Bridge please. And when I was acting, along with a friend, as a guard, we stopped a fellow from entering: "Hey, are you going to the Star Trek con?" "I AM Star Trek." "Huh?" "Roddenberry." "Oh, go a head, I guess," Well, everybody I talked to was enjoying the con, I think everybody was. Al did a great job, mostly everything went on time, even though he was sick for part of the time. I also learned that there may be another of this type of con. [2]

[from Devra Langsam]: Wednesday night, Jan 19, I picked up Maureen Wilson at Port Authority Bus Terminal. Thursday, after a restful half-night of sleep, we got to running 2,000 copies of various con things, like 2-page questionaire forms. At 2 PM we hastily zithered out to the airport to pick up Bjo Trimble and Richard Arnold , who had come from Ca. and St. Louis respectively. This should have been a warning to us. After depositing them at the hotel, we battled traffic homeward, where we gulped down omelettes and ran off the rest of the conthings. Joyce Yasner , as she helped with the paper cutter, remarked, "You know, if the man from the funny farm came to take us away, there'd be absolutely nothing we could say in our defense." This truthful comment proved added incentive. We got the printing done and finally came to rest at the hotel, for the fourth time, around 11 PM. The room clerk began things suitably by asking if we were from STcon, saying he knew I was because of my pointed ears. While heading for the room, we ran into a man who was wandering around saying, "Where the hell is 1051?” Since he bore a remarkable resemblance to Gene Roddenberry we took him with us, and the collating gave way to a mildly wild party, with Roddenberry and Majel and several very nice people interested in space travel in a practical way. Daring one of your periodic attempts to locate Bjo we missed seeing the private run of the bloopers. This was to be the leitmotif of the con...Maureen watching the bloopers. We did manage to stay awake long enough to watch THE CAGE. It was my first viewing of the complete show, and I must say it is probably one of the best ST episodes ever filmed, even at 2:30 AM. [3]

[Joan Winston wrote about the first convention in her 1977 Starlog essay So you want to have a "Star Trek" convention ]: "We started our planning about seven months prior to the January 1972 date. For the following cons we gave ourselves two weeks to recover from the previous one (most times that was not enough) and dived right into meetings and decisions for the next. That gave us eleven and a half months for all those monthly, then bi-weekly, then weekly meetings. This, of course, did not count all the meetings in our Chairman's print shop when, after a session of addressing, pasting, folding, and zip coding progress reports, you could see the sun rise over the printing presses." The 1972 con was a roaring success. We cleared something like ninety-odd dollars each after all the expenses were paid. That was great, because most cons lost money or just managed to break even. This was before certain people decided they could make a fortune putting on Star Trek conventions. Of all the cons we gave, I think this first was my favorite. Next is the 1976 one with the others falling into a kind of middle ground. Perhaps because both the first and the last con were loaded with Love with a capital "L." In 1972, we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into, and in 1976, we knew it was the last one and we could relax at the end of a long hard road."

Anthea, who was young fan at the time, recorded her memories decades later on September 27, 2010:

"My family and I jumped on the subway and breathlessly raced down to the westside of Manhattan. At the hotel the convention staff stamped our hand with an ink ‘tattoo’ and we rode the escalator to the second-floor ballroom. The place was packed. Then an unexpected party-pooper ruined everything—the fire marshall of the FDNY announced it was over capacity and thus a fire hazard and some people would have to leave. The FDNY proceeded to kick people out and a small riot broke out. Meanwhile, in the confusion of the combative crowd I ran into a school friend of mine. We both had our 35mm Pentax SLR cameras around our necks. He and I stood at the top of the escalator and watched a fireman trying to single-handedly control a bunch of angry Trekkies in the lobby. “A riot always makes a good shot,” he said, as he snapped picture after picture of flailing arms and bulging eyeballs in the crowd. Once the riot had subsided it was time to enjoy the convention. There were a few tables selling Star Trek memorabilia scattered around the room. My mother complained it was mostly junk, but yet she still bought a pair of rubber Spock ears. And she was right, it was junk. The damn Spock ears were impossible to get over your ears. There were people walking around dressed in full make-up and costume of various alien characters from the TV show." Read the full review here . [4]

Howard Weinstein writing almost 40 years later:

I was not at Woodstock. But I was at that very first Star Trek Convention in 1972. Really. Honest! I don't recall how I even knew about it – probably from TV commercials I'd have seen during Channel 11's week-nightly Star Trek reruns in New York. Which means I probably didn't even hear about the convention until I came home for my college winter break a month before the convention would happen on January 21-23 in Manhattan. Luckily, my Christmas vacation included that weekend, and I decided I could not miss this event. I mean, it would probably be the one and only Star Trek convention ever held, right? Since I lived on Long Island, I was just a 45-minute train ride from the city. And the convention would be at the mid-town Statler Hilton Hotel, across the street from the Long Island Railroad terminal at Penn Station. So getting there would be easy. But who'd go with me? Nobody, as it turned out. By the time that weekend rolled around, most of my friends were already back at school or not interested. Well, dammit, Jim! I wasn’t going to miss it, even if I had to go by myself – which I did on Sunday, the convention’s final day. By that time, the committee had famously run out of badges – and space: they’d expected a few hundred fans and stopped counting at around 3,000! I think the con was on the hotel’s 18th floor, and Star Trek fans filled every square inch up there. I made one round of the dealers’ room, which was packed like a rush-hour subway train. As for the ballroom where the guests spoke and films were shown, I’m sure I never got a seat through the hours of listening to Gene Roddenberry and Isaac Asimov, and watching the infamous blooper reel (which was hilarious, and the first time I’d seen anything like that). My specific memories of that day are fairly hazy, and influenced by reading accounts of the convention in TV Guide and books by the late Joan Winston, a funny lady who helped run all five original New York Trek cons and was a welcome fixture in fandom for decades after. [5]

• ^ The Early Days of Star Trek Conventions , Archived version , Robert Greenberger, unknown date
• ^ from Mark Collins in Ragnarok #1
• ^ the first part of a con report by Devra Langsam, printed in The Logbook #3; the next part of the report was promised for the fourth issue of that zine
• ^ reference link .
• ^ Celebrating 40 Years since Trek's 1st Convention dated Jan 20, 2102; archive link .
• Star Trek Conventions
• 1972 Conventions

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