How One Fan Saved Star Trek for All Generations

Without Bjo and John Trimble, Star Trek might have drifted into the quiet obscurity of Space: 1999, remembered as a forgotten two-season sci-fi relic instead of the 60-year pop-culture empire it became. When NBC was ready to pull the plug in 1968, the Trimbles refused to let it happen quietly. Their grassroots letter-writing campaign helped convince the network to give Star Trek a third season, with the media focusing on Bjo as the public face of the effort. That extra year turned out to be incredibly important. It gave the show enough episodes to enter syndication, where it found the audience that would keep Star Trek alive for generations.

Season 3 wasn’t exactly a victory lap. The budget was cut, the production was squeezed and the show was operating under very different circumstances. Even so, it produced some memorable science fiction and several episodes that became part of Star Trek history. If you want to see why the Trimbles’ campaign was worth every 6-cent stamp, these six episodes make the case.

• “The Enterprise Incident”: Kirk and Spock head deep into Romulan space on a dangerous mission to steal a cloaking device. It’s espionage, deception and tactical maneuvering wrapped up in one very tense Star Trek episode.
• “Plato’s Stepchildren”: This is the one people remember for its place in television history. The episode features the famous Kirk and Uhura kiss, widely recognized as the first interracial kiss on American television, making an already strange episode impossible to forget.
• “The Tholian Web”: This one has atmosphere to spare. Kirk disappears into another dimension while the Enterprise becomes trapped inside a geometric energy web, leaving the crew with a ticking clock and an increasingly eerie situation that feels more like a ghost story than a typical space adventure.
• “Day of the Dove”: The Klingons are back, Kang is back and everybody is ready to fight. The problem is an alien entity that feeds on hatred and keeps both crews locked in an endless cycle of violence. It’s classic Star Trek because underneath all the action, there’s a pretty good lesson about what happens when nobody can stop fighting.
• “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”: Star Trek takes prejudice and puts it right in front of the camera. Two alien survivors are divided by something as ridiculous as which side of their faces is black and which is white, making the episode’s message about racism almost impossible to miss.
• “All Our Yesterdays”: A dying planet, a trip through time and a surprisingly emotional story make this one of the strongest episodes of the final season. It also feels like a fitting emotional goodbye to the original Star Trek crew before the series disappeared from NBC.

Trimble’s impact didn’t stop with saving the show. Bjo and John were involved with Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett Roddenberry in establishing Star Trek Enterprises in 1967, the company that later became Lincoln Enterprises. The operation helped turn growing fan interest in Star Trek into an organized business built around merchandise, publications and fan materials. The Trimbles were also deeply involved in the fan community that kept the show alive after its original NBC run.

Bjo later authored The Star Trek Concordance, a remarkably detailed fan-created reference to the original series that was published by Ballantine Books in 1976. It gathered episode information, characters, planets, technology and other details into one place, becoming one of the earliest major reference books for Star Trek fans. For a fan community trying to keep track of an increasingly complicated fictional universe, it was an important book.

That’s the part of the story I really like. Star Trek didn’t become a cultural institution because one person at NBC suddenly decided it was a great idea. It survived because fans cared enough to fight for it, and Bjo Trimble was right there at the front of that fight. Sometimes a television show gets cancelled and disappears. Sometimes somebody refuses to let it disappear. Bjo Trimble made sure Star Trek got another chance, and television history was better for it.

Recommended Reading

More from Sandbox World

• Peanuts Creator Was Asked to Save Star Trek the Original Series — Another fascinating part of the 1968 campaign to keep Star Trek alive, involving Peanuts creator Charles Schulz.
• Star Trek Turns 60: Was This the Anniversary Fans Were Waiting For? — A look at why The Original Series continues to find new audiences six decades after its debut.

Further Reading

• Bjo Trimble: The Woman Who Saved Star Trek — The official Star Trek account of Bjo Trimble and the campaign that helped save the original series.
• John Trimble’s Contribution to Saving Star Trek — The companion story documenting John’s important role alongside Bjo in the campaign.

Tony M.

If this article made you think, brought back a memory, or made you see something differently, I’d love to hear from you. Send me an email at sandboxworld@gmail.com. I read every message personally and, with your permission, may feature your thoughts in a future article because the best stories are the ones we share.