Star Trek Day: 2021

Star Trek premiered this week, 55 years ago, and tomorrow we will celebrate all things Star Trek, past, present, and future with a live, free, global streaming event that I can not believe I get to co-host.

I’ve read the entire script, and I’m about to leave for rehearsal, so I know most of the OMGAREYOUSERIOUS stuff that will be revealed. I’m not going to spoil anything, but I will tell you that if you love Star Trek the way I love Star Trek, you won’t want to miss it.

I mean … look at this:

I’m co-hosting with my dear friend Mica Burton. We’ll be coming to you, live, from the Skirball Cultural Center, starting at 5:30pm Pacific / 8:30pm Eastern. Star Trek Day will be streamed on Paramount+, YouTube, Facebook, and via Rutherford’s cyborg implant.

Star Trek: Lower Decks

That’s it. That’s the post.

Thirty-three years of TNG

A couple of days ago, in 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered.

I am one year older today than Patrick Stewart was when we filmed Encounter At Farpoint. I literally grew up on the Enterprise.

It’s been a long and complicated journey to get from 14 to 48. It’s been joyful and painful, and all of it has happened on the shoulders (and occasionally in the shadow) of this television show that is so much more than a television show.

I am so proud and so grateful to be part of Star Trek. I love my Star Trek family so much; they are the closest thing to parents I have in my life, and I am so grateful for them.

I am so lucky to be part of something that will likely endure for generations, inspiring kids whose parents haven’t even met, yet, to do great things with their lives.

I wish I’d been able to fully appreciate it when I was there, but I just couldn’t. I was young, immature, and in so much emotional pain, all the time, it kind of overwhelmed everything else in my life. Luckily, I was able to appreciate it from time to time, and because of that, I have some of my most joyful memories as a kid, and as an actor.

I met Anne because of Star Trek. I was on a Trek cruise when I was 18, and met my friend Stephanie, who was also on the ship, but not part of the Star Trek group. We became friends (still are, she was in our wedding), and years later, she introduced me to her friend from work.
I owe every bit of happiness I have in my life to Star Trek, and when I think about that, it kind of blows my mind.

Happy birthday, Next Generation. Happy birthday, to my space family. I love you.

Exciting and New

When I was … 22 or so, I bought my first house (very young, too young, to be a homeowner, but that’s a whole other story for another time).

It was a small house, built in the 30s. I bought it from the man who built it, which was really cool.

I didn’t know how to decorate my house, because I shouldn’t have even owned a house. I should have been in an apartment somewhere. Again, another story for another time. I decorated it the way a child decorates his dorm room, because that’s about how mature I was.

Anyway, I was at Hollywood Book and Poster or some shop like that, and they were selling cast photos from pretty much every television show that had existed to that point, so I bought a bunch of pictures of the cast from The Love Boat, and I put them in frames all over my house, like they were my family.

Not a lot of people noticed, or got the joke, but this girl I was dating at the time got the joke, appreciated the joke, and has been married to me for twenty years.