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DEAN SIMONS: I was not born a Trekkie. My family has absolutely no interest in sci-fi. I only really gave Star Trek a shot in more recent years. It is strange considering I love sci-fi and pursue it in my literature and comics. I just tended to look at anything else but Trek. There was also a bizarre schoolyard stigma about it, I think. My first awareness of Star Trek was TNG in the 90s and I only recall the ends of episodes because it used to be right before Buffy would air on BBC here in the UK (or Enterprise before Stargate SG-1 on Sky One, as my parents had cable). I must have been around 10 years old. I had no interest in the show at the time. It seemed too weird or too impenetrable.
The Star Trek reboot movies were fun enough to get me to reconsider, but Discovery convinced me to start giving the TV shows a shot. I still haven’t seen much of The Original Series (yet), but in the years before the pandemic I had watched all of TNG (with the guidance of a friend to convince me to persevere through seasons one and two). I have seen a season or two of DS9 and a few episodes of Voyager. More recently I have been regularly watching Enterprise. About one episode every night. Enterprise I recall being interested in checking out because of the most important part of the crew – Captain Archer’s dog Porthos.
