In other words, Star Trek became something special in SPITE of Shat. And millions of people love(d) Kirk in spite of Shat's attitude. But I was 13 in 1966. I read everything that was written EVERYWHERE about the show and that set atmosphere and the cast. Fortunately, everyone else got along great. EVERYONE loved Nimoy and Dee, who were best friends all their lives. (Nimoy cried as he watched Karl Urban recreate Bones for ST 2009 - Karl was the ONLY actor in the new movies that had even watched, much less loved ST growing up. Nimoy said he captured Bones' character perfectly.) I admire the heck out of Nichelle because instead of hating 'Uhura,' she used her character to help NASA and inspire more women and WOC to enter the space program. 57 years ago, we didn't know we'd EVER get to see any of those episodes again. No VCRs, no cable. Just one and done (unless we caught the summer rerun, and that was the age of 24+ episodes a season, so they weren't all rerun.) If 13-year-old me had realized how deeply ST was going to affect my life and how 57 years later, TOS would no longer stand for "The ONLY Series" - and I'd own and wear out several copies of them and somehow love the show even more now than then, I'd have never believed it. But - here I am. Still watching. And sometimes still catching something I missed the other thousand times I watched.

Thanks for the interesting perspective. I've only seen the first ST movie with the new cast (playing the original characters) and I was also struck by how much the actor playing Dr. McCoy captured the essence of his character. The others were good, but I didn't get the same feeling from them. I never got into any of the other ST spin-offs, but to this day I still enjoy ST-TOS, no matter how many times I have seen it. My brother feels the same way. I just got off the phone with him and he had to mute his TV for some reason while watching an episode recently, but he said it didn't matter because he knew all the dialogue anyway. 😄

I believe had Chris Pine been born decades before 1980 and cast as the original James Kirk, TOS would have NEVER been cancelled - it would have lasted until the actors agreed they were done. Pine gets along with everyone on his films and is a very underappreciated actor, giving every role 1701% of his abilities, including physically. (His black eye at the end of Beyond was real. He had that in common with Nimoy, who accidentally received a black eye in the episode "A Private Little War" from Booker Bradshaw, who played Dr. M'Benga.) But Pine refuses to campaign for academy votes. He seems to just want to do what he wants to do, now that he has his own production company and has directed his first film. He often walks off one set and on to the other the next day - back-to-back-to-back projects for months on end. Anyway, with his experience, I wish CBS/VIACOM/Paramount would just sign Pine to direct ST 4. Their lack of $$ has lost them several directors already.

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That video was so funny. I had never seen it before. I used to hate the Gorn episode, but it has since grown on me.

(Same here, and seeing that video when it was new actually helped me finally like it. All the time, Spock's saying "GooOOOoooo. GooooOOOOooo..." as he watched Kirk on the viewscreen logic out how to create a weapon, runs through my head even now when I feel that way watching something working! BTW - there is an episode of "Hollywood Weapons" Fact or Fiction" that shows on Circle network of Terry Schappert testing whether Kirk's weapon would actually work.) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6914290/

Thanks for the link. I'll have to check it out. 🙂

😂