[Dion]

Now 50, "Star Trek" continues to live long and prosper

There, among the Kirks and the Spocks and the Hortas, Salie found perhaps “Star Trek”’s most important fan of all: 83-year-old Bjo Trimble.
Trimble told Salie that, upon sitting down in front of her TV on September 8, 1966, “We were thrilled to have grownup science fiction finally. Not, you know, ‘There’s an ugly monster, let’s kill it!’”

That night, Bjo and her husband, John, discovered a sci-fi show they could warm up to, in the middle of the Cold War.

Salie asked, “What kind of message did ‘Star Trek’ give to audiences who were worried that the world might be blown up in the next ten years?”

“Well, the message was, maybe it wouldn’t be,”Trimble replied.

Trimble said of her husband, “We talked about it. And he said, ‘There oughta be something we could do about that.”

Using 20th century technology of pen, paper and postage stamps, Trimble boldly went where no fan has gone before, and began a letter-writing campaign to save “Star Trek.”

Letters were sent not just to NBC, “but to all the NBC affiliates, to all your local TV stations and, most importantly, all the sponsors,” she said.

It worked! “Star Trek” was renewed for one more season. Though officially cancelled after that third season, Trimble’s efforts meant that “Star Trek” now had enough episodes (79 of them) to live on in reruns.

“Things like a communicator-cell phone, the use of computers, flat-screen monitors, iPads,” said Mike Massimino, a special advisor to the Intrepid Museum in New York City. He grew up watching “Star Trek.” A few decades later, he explored the final frontier for himself, as a NASA astronaut.

But it wasn’t just the technology that was ahead of its time. “If you look at the space program in the ‘60s when it came out, it was primarily white male test pilots who were there,” Massimino said. “Then it expanded -- they took civilian scientists, and then men and women of color. And even big Italian guys from New York, me!”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/now-50-s...g-and-prosper/