Star Trek fandom

A Trekkie or Trekker is a fan of the Star Trek franchise, or of specific television series or films within that franchise.

History

In 1967, science fiction editor Arthur W. Saha applied the term "trekkies" when he saw a few fans of the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series wearing pointy ears at the 25th World Science Fiction Convention, on the day series creator Gene Roddenberry showed a print of "Amok Time" to the convention. Saha used the term in an interview with Pete Hamill that Hamill was conducting for TV Guide concerning the phenomenon of science fiction.

The first Star Trek fanzine, Spockanalia, appeared in September 1967, including the first published fan fiction based on the show. Roddenberry, who was aware of and encouraged such activities, a year later estimated that 10,000 wrote or read fanzines. Many early Trekkies were also fans of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1964–1968), another show with science fiction elements and a devoted, "cult"-like audience.

Perhaps the first large gathering of fans occurred in April 1967. When Leonard Nimoy appeared as Spock as grand marshal of a Medford, Oregon parade, he hoped to sign hundreds of autographs but thousands of people appeared; after being rescued by police "I made sure never to appear publicly again in Vulcan guise", the actor wrote. Another was in January 1968, when more than 200 Caltech students marched to NBC's Burbank, California studio to support Star Trek's renewal.

Chris Pine

Christopher Whitelaw "Chris" Pine (born August 26, 1980) is an American actor. The son of actor Robert Pine, he is known for his role as James T. Kirk in the reboot Star Trek (2009) and its sequels Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), Star Trek Beyond (2016) and has also appeared in films including The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), Just My Luck (2006), Smokin' Aces (2007), Unstoppable (2010), This Means War (2012), Rise of the Guardians (2012), Horrible Bosses 2 (2014), as Jack Ryan in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014), and as Cinderella's Prince in Into the Woods (2014).

Early life

Pine was born in Los Angeles, California. His father, Robert Pine (born 1941), is an actor who co-starred on CHiPs as Sergeant Joseph Getraer, and his mother, Gwynne Gilford (born 1946), is a former actress who is now a practicing psychotherapist. He has an older sister, Katie. His maternal grandmother, Anne Gwynne (née Marguerite Gwynne Trice), was a Hollywood actress, and his maternal grandfather, Max M. Gilford (born Max Goldfarb), was an attorney who was elected president of the Hollywood Bar Association. Pine's maternal grandfather was from a Russian Jewish family, while his other ancestry is English, Welsh, German, and French.