Up Till Now: The Autobiography

residual payments. Two or three years later the Screen Actors Guild was able to forge an agreement with producers that actors would be paid each time a show was broadcast. So none of the actors on Star Trek ever received a residual check.
    After my divorce from Gloria I was just about broke—once again eighteen hundred dollars in the bank became my goal—and I began looking for work. I had three kids and an ex-wife to support. I had absolutely no idea that the show was about to become a much bigger hit in syndication than it had ever been on network television. There have been many attempts to explain the reasons that so many people connected so strongly to Star Trek. But certainly at the core of it there was one simple truth: It was fun. Just as sports serves as a common denominator for many people, and just as strangers can bond over discussions of their favorite movies, Star Trek became a language that bound together a large group of people with common interests. It became a sun with great gravitational pull that drew all kinds of people to it, where they could meet others just like themselves.
    Wearing costumes.
    The very first unofficial Star Trek convention apparently was held in the Newark, New Jersey, public library in March 1969, when a small group of Star Trek fans got together to celebrate the show. At this gathering they sang folk songs inspired by the show, showed slides of the Enterprise set, had a panel discussion about the Star Trek phenomenon, and gave a brief lecture about the connection between Star Trek and science.
    Around the country, and eventually around the world, small groups of fans of the show were getting together to watch the reruns or just talk about it. These weren’t commercial events, nobody was making any money from them, people just wanted to get together to honor the show. But in January 1972 the first official Star Trek Convention was held at New York’s Statler Hilton Hotel. GeneRoddenberry was there and NASA sent an eighteen-wheeler filled with scientific displays. The organizers were actually shocked at the number of people who showed up; at most they expected a couple of hundred people; instead, a thousand people were there. The vendors had brought enough merchandise for a weekend—but by Friday afternoon many of them had already sold out. The conventions took just a little longer to tribble. In 1973 three conventions were held, two years later there were twenty-three conventions. In Chicago, organizers planned for ten thousand people—instead, thirty thousand Trekkies—that was what they called themselves— showed up. A year later there was an average of a convention a week; security actually had to close the entrance to a convention at the Los Angeles Convention Center in 1976 because there was no more room inside. By the early 1980s as many as four hundred Star Trek conventions were held annually.
    I vaguely knew that these conventions were taking place but I really didn’t want anything to do with them. That was my past, I’d done that. Truthfully, I wasn’t in touch with anyone from the show—even Leonard. I certainly did not want the highlight of my career to be three years as Captain Kirk in a failed science-fiction TV show. My focus was on the future. The very near future. The end-of-the-month future when the bills had to be paid. And truthfully, the whole thing made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want anything to do with a group of obsessed people who paid to get together—some of them wearing costumes—to talk incessantly about a TV show that had been canceled. It wasn’t logical.
    ...autographs, certificates, trash cans, collector’s albums, calendars, lamps, bed covers, computer games, miniatures, Snoopy as Star Trek characters, wallets...
    I attended my first Star Trek convention at New York’s Americana Hotel in November 1975. Did I mention that the first—and last!—notes of the musical scale are do? The money they offered me to attend this convention was...do I dare? Yes, I do! Out of this world! I didn’t prepare any remarks. Just be yourself, the organizerstold me, Captain Kirk. But when I walked onstage to thunderous applause I was stunned. I had expected perhaps a thousand people, but the room was completely filled. As far as I could see people were jammed together, they were on the sides, in the balconies, sitting on the floor in front of the stage. They were ready to hear words of wisdom from James T. Kirk and I didn’t have anything