I wasn’t around in the sixties, but it was clearly a decade of turmoil, domestically and internationally. Not to get all Billy Joel about it, but prospects for the future must’ve seemed bleaker with every morning edition.

In the middle of all that cultural turmoil and uncertainty came a piece of science fiction that had the audacity to say that in spite of everything going on right NOW, mankind could get through it. We could overcome the gravities of our planet and our cultures and explode into space with a spirit of insatiable curiosity.

Whatever it was on the surface, there was something about Star Trek that lit a spark in the imaginations of so many. They looked through their tiny TV sets into a window of one possible future. A future where society valued the pursuits of knowledge and wisdom above all else. A future where someone from the Soviet Union and someone from the United States might as well have been next-door neighbors. A future where people were truly judged on the content of their character.

Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them.

For the last 50 years, Star Trek has been a source of optimism against all odds, and it’s my hope that it will continue to be a source that will inspire us to do great things in the next 50 years, too.

Thomas Marrone

Ship and UI Artist

Star Trek Online



I was staring at the television set, sitting in my father’s lap in my parents’ bedroom in a fuzzy memory from the late 1980s. I was so young that I had yet to realize that the scenarios playing out on the glowing screen were fiction. To me, everything we were watching was happening live in some far-away land. And this futuristic account of men in bright-colored uniforms walking around a spaceship with equally bright-colored computer screens and firing beams of dangerous light from their weapons had captured my mind and thrust it into a world that no one at the time realized would ultimately shape a path in a future of my own.

As I watched and listened, I overheard one of the spacemen on the screen talking to a spacewoman about a book that was written “back in 1996”. Wait a minute. I knew very well that the current year was 1988 (or thereabouts), but my 4-year old mind had hit a snag. How was this man on the screen talking in the past-tense about a book that hadn’t been written yet?

My father answered my verbal query with a chuckle. “This TV show isn’t real. It takes place in the future. It hasn’t happened yet.” It was at that moment that I realized that we were not watching live events, but instead we were observing dramatizations of some other man’s wildest imagination; a Great Bird of the Galaxy that had decided to make it his life’s goal to bring audiences his vision of a futuristic utopian society venturing deep into the stars, seeking out new life and going boldy where no one had gone before, with the help of clean, computerized technology.

From that moment on, I was enthralled. Over the course of my 32 years, I made it my goal to somehow be a part of telling those stories. And it all started on that little screen in that little room in that little house when I was introduced to the fantastic world known as Star Trek.

Donny Versiga

Associate Environment Artist

Star Trek Online



As a young child, in the early 80's, well after Star Trek had ended, but it was still in reruns on one of the 4 or 5 channels we got on our rabbit ears. I hated it. But my dad watched it. A couple years later, they started a NEW Star Trek, and he was there watching that too. I sat and watched with him sometimes. This new Star Trek was very different than the old one. I was immediately enamored with the ship, and the sleek computer interfaces, and the make-up, and – and – and . . .



Star Trek the Next Generation captivated my 7 year old self. By the second or third season, my dad had stopped watching. It wasn't the Star Trek HE remembered. But it didn't matter. TNG had its claws into me, and there was no way out. I fell in love with everything about it.

In 1990, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I underwent two surgeries for it. After recovering, I was referred to the Make-A-Wish foundation, and was granted a wish. In the end, my parent's pragmatism would prevail, and I would get a Computer. But the toughest decision I had made at that point in my life, was NOT to wish for a Next Gen Studio visit. That computer served me well, and it led me to a lot of great places in my life, but there are days when I still question that choice.

1994 was a tough year for me. I entered high school, two of my favorite Sunday comics writers retired (Watterson and Larson), I learned that my brain tumor had recurred, and, of course, the most devastating of events; Star Trek the Next Generation came to an end.

My Trek fervor had waned a bit by the Enterprise era. But when the 2009 movie was announced, and we got the Star Trek license here at Cryptic, my inner 7 year old came roaring back to life. The new movie actually inspired me to go watch all of TOS, a feat I had never accomplished before, and I found a new love for a series I had once despised.

Nick Duguid

Environment Artist

Star Trek Online



Star Trek was one of the first TV shows I can remember watching with my family. Star Trek: The Next Generation was my introduction into Scifi and adult Television. Sitting down with my Dad and Grandmother to watch this show about an organized crew flying through space solving personal and existential issues was mind blowing. My Dad came home one day from the video rental store with Star Trek: A Voyage Home. It was my first introduction to the IP. After that experience, Star Trek became something that existed that I didn’t really follow up on or care about. It became something that my dad watched. Come on I was a child, this was about the same time when Beast Wars really popular at school. Animals that can transform into robots, sorry Star Trek, but that totally won my childhood. What really matters to me is when I chose to be interested in it and care about it. I chose to be really interested in Star Trek in my last year of college when I sat down and watched all of Voyager, TNG, and then Enterprise. Watching all those inspired me to apply at Cryptic Studios to work on Star Trek Online, and the rest is history.

Cheers,

Samuel “Swallrus” Wall

Art Director

Star Trek Online