It was summer. My mom and her friend were having boring conversations. My little brother and a somewhat bratty neighborhood boy were out playing in the yard, and I’d had enough of them. So I did what any kid would do—I went into the front room and turned on the TV. I still remember the sound of the screen coming on, waiting for the picture to come on as the set warmed up.

The rabbit ears didn’t pick up many channels, leaving me with few options beyond re-runs. And there was no remote for this old thing, so the first channel that caught my eye was usually the one I’d end up watching. This day, I found a show I hadn’t seen before. These guys were wearing somewhat strange outfits and in the middle of a desert. That maybe was in Africa? But there wasn’t much sand. I wasn’t sure what was going on, to be honest. There were a few women there, but there was only one woman? What is going on? And why is that guy dead now?

I had never seen a show like Star Trek before. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of “science fiction” as a genre, nor space exploration as a theme. But then I think back, and remember watching Flight of the Navigator and Quantum Leap and Star Trek and realize that maybe I’m a fan after all. What I liked about these shows was the action and excitement! Stuff happened! And there were sometimes strange looking people and talking machines and it was so neat! It was like The A-Team or MacGuyver or Knight Rider, only instead of cars there were sometimes space ships. And instead of smugglers or political extremists it was… smugglers and political extremists IN SPACE!

I was hooked. I don’t think I even realized that Spock was supposed to be an alien. I mean, humans come in all different shapes and sizes, this one just had ears that were a little pointy. And the hairstyles and clothing were certainly unique. I guess I knew it was set in the future, but I didn’t give it much thought. To me it was just another show that I liked, right alongside The Love Boat and CHiPs. I didn’t realize it was ground-breaking or particularly special or even that remarkable.

It’s only now, looking back, that I understand what I was watching. I can see the social commentaries, the parables, the hope for the future. Truly, the show was so much more than killing or seducing alien life. It had meaning, and importance, and was critical in forming not just the face of space travel, but communities and shared ideals. Most of my friends grew up watching DS9 or TNG, but I’ve always preferred the originals. Perhaps the stories spoke to me more because most of the characters were more or less human, so I could more easily envision myself in those worlds.

Whatever the reason for my preference, The Man Trap is the episode that brought me to Star Trek, and remains a favorite to this day.

Maria Rosseau

Producer

Star Trek Online



I’ve had insomnia as far back as my memory goes. There was a short time when my grandfather lived with us and he would watch TV late into the night. Sometimes I would sneak out of my room late at night and watch TV with him and often it was Star Trek the Original Series. It was the first time I watched any Trek. I knew it was pretty old but it still was a very captivating story about people exploring space and I looked forward to watching it when I could.

It wouldn’t be until I was a little older and Star Trek the Next Generation’s third season was running when I became a much larger fan of Trek. When I watched the Best of Both Worlds Part 1, it was the first time I had watched a season cliffhanger. That combined with the main character becoming the villain blew my childhood mind. I was hooked.

It’s great looking back on those memories and now even better that for the last few years I’ve been able to work on Star Trek Online. It still excites me to know that in a lot of ways, I feel we are holding that torch of Trek that carries on after the last adventure of Picard and his crew of the Enterprise.

Jarrod Fisher

Associate Producer

Star Trek Online



I come from a family of Trekkies. My whole family watched The Next Generation together when I was growing up, before I was even old enough to really understand how profound the show was. My dad even used to play one of the first if not the very first Star Trek computer game with his coworkers. When he told me how they used to play it, it made me appreciate how far computer games have come since then so I want to share his story:

“In 1975 I was working for a company called A.O. Smith in Milwaukee Wisconsin. Our main product line was car frames but we also sold electric motors, water heaters and those big blue silos you can still see in farming country. We also had a small ‘timesharing’ business that let other companies connect to our IBM 165 mainframe to use computing resources. The 165 filled a large room and had a tiny fraction of the compute power of your cell phone. When at work we used punched cards or dumb ‘green screen’ terminals to communicate with the computer. Then we got these really cool Texas Instruments Silent 700 terminals that let us dial in from home.

The TI Silent 700 used thermal paper and had a built-in modem that let you use your home phone to connect at a whopping 300 baud (30 characters per second). Then one of the guys collected several text based interactive games that could be run from the terminals. Two that I remember were a Dungeons and Dragons game and Star Trek. For both you entered short commands and received text responses.

My fondest memory of these games came on a very hot night in July. I had just bought my first house and held a large housewarming party with about 60 or 80 guests crowded in. The good news was that my house was one of the few ones with AC so it was a very popular place to be that night. We had the traditional Milwaukee keg of beer and off in a corner I set up the TI 700 dialed into the mainframe and set up to play games. Nobody had seen anything like that before. Games on a computer? Wow! The AC, the keg, the games and friends all made it a special night, long remembered.”

Ariel Smith

Assistant Producer

Star Trek Online



I’ve been fan of Star Trek as far back as I can remember. My dad was a big original series fan, and even before I knew what Star Trek was I knew about Captain Kirk, the Enterprise, and I was using scotch tape to make the famous Vulcan salute. I had this background in trek before I actually knew what I was referencing.

My personal fandom really started when The Next Generation came out and I was able to watch new episodes live, as they were released. Watching the adventures of Picard and his crew was incredibly exciting, and aside from the new episodes, I remember watching reruns throughout the week while I was doing homework. Star Trek became something that was part of my regular routine, even though my local affiliate seemed to only play “The Royale” over and over again, it was something I always looked forward to.

Star Trek became something my brothers and my dad bonded over, we watched episodes, argued about the plausibility of the science, and went to the movies together whenever they were released. As we entered the era where TNG, DS9, and Voyager were all running at the same time it was just nonstop trek all the time. A moment I can clearly remember is all of us watching the classic DS9 two parter “The Way of the Warrior”, and just being impossibly hyped for that second episode to air after seeing the first. Would that fleet actually attack the station? How would it play out? Could DS9 actually defend itself against an invasion force that large and that determined? DS9 had definitely established itself before this two parter, but the absolutely epic space battle that took place there gave us just a glimpse of what the show would bring in its coming years. There would be more episodes, more debates, and more arguments about which show was best, clearly DS9, but no matter the outcome it all came from a love of this franchise.

I had always hoped I would someday get into games, and potentially one day work on a Star Trek game. I never knew if either of those would be a possibility, but I always felt like I could so I put in the time and effort required to possibly make that happen. I firmly believe that you make your own luck, but nothing is guaranteed, and to quote our favorite android from probably my most watched episode “There is a certain degree of random fortune involved. I believe that is why they call it ‘gambling’”.

Steve Ricossa

Executive Producer

Star Trek Online