Fandom: The Next Generation

We were about halfway through “Encounter at Farpoint,” the first episode of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), when I knew I’d truly lost him. He was trying because (1) he knew I cared and (2) it meant more screen time, but he was gone, fidgeting around on the couch and asking how much longer the episode was. It might have been the first time in his life that he hoped bedtime would come sooner.

This wasn’t the first attempt to get my then 10-year-old son into Star Trek, but it was the night that I finally came to the conclusion that he might just not like Star Trek at all. For most, that’s a pretty innocuous statement, but for me, it was a flat-out rejection of my biggest fandom—a fandom I grew up in, shared with my mom, and wrote professionally about for years. The moment shook me a bit more than I was ready for. 

As a Millennial Elder Millennial Xennial parent who was born in 1983, awash in “How to Parent” books and a never-ending stream of social-media parenting tips, I am acutely aware of all the psychology behind trying to get your children to like what you like. And I want to make it very clear at the outset that in no way do I want to force Star Trek upon my son until he loves it like some sort of Star Trek brainwashing experiment (“THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!”). That would, in fact, feel antithetical to everything I’ve ever learned from the franchise. I understand he is his own being and gets to choose what he will and won’t enjoy and invest time into. 

He does not have to like what I like…but it would be really nice if he did.

I’d been trying to seed in my son a love for the franchise since his birth (putting him in a Trek onesie had to rub off somehow). I’d started seriously watching around age ten, so when I showed him “Encounter at Farpoint” at that same age, I was very confident that he’d reached the perfect moment.

I probably went too hard to begin, when, around age seven, I showed him Star Trek: The Original Series episodes before anything else. That…did not stick. The hokey special effects, boxy 4:3 screen ratio, and Shatner’s acting all bounced right off him; the more cerebral aspects and social commentary flew right over his head. He called the show “old” and was dishearteningly uninterested in it. If you ever want to truly understand just how many times people talk around tables in the Star Trek franchise, just sit next to a child as you painfully watch the interest slowly drain from his eyes through yet another bout of exposition.