Its been quite a ride, Star Trek. 45 years ago, the first series aired its first episode (not the first filmed) to an unsuspecting audience. The result, after the three years of the “five year mission” was nothing short of the bginning of a revolution in television, movies and popular culture. And sprinkled in among the five different series and many movies are frequent stories about mind controlling aliens, telepathic control, hypnosis and even the Vulcan Mind Meld (created because the Standards & Practices department objected to Spock hypnotizing a patient, saying it was a medical procedure and that McCoy should do it.)
And, of course, I must post a shout to Bjo Trimble, the lady who was most responsible for the letter-writing campaign that got the original series’ renewal for the third season. Failing that, the series might not have been run in syndication (not enough episodes to market) and therefore never achieve the popularity it did. Because of her and the thousands and thousands of people who deluged NBC with letters, it survived long enough to finally find its place, and now phrases like “beam us up” and terms like “transporter” and “warp factor 9” are part of everyday slang.