It started with one. Away back in the middle of the last century Gene Roddenberry began a special club, a club containing all those people who know something about "Star Trek." (Something now being anything at all but then being everything there was!) There for awhile (but also less than five years) the missions flew only in the brain of the Great Bird. No doubt soon the club grew by a member or two as his ideas evolved via casual discussion about the project. (Who do you think was the second person to know about "Star Trek?")

Anyway back around 1964 when the development deals were being signed, the size of the club blossomed up from a handful quickly through a dozen into the hundreds as production on "The Cage" commenced. (Opposite from today's situation, most club members at that point were financially compensated for their interest and likely didn't give their membership any other thought!) After that pilot led to where few shows had gone before (a second pilot), the attention drawn during production drove membership into the thousands and finally came the premiere. During the show's run many more were added to the roster, easily hundreds of thousands despite never finishing well in the ratings for any of its three original seasons.

At the end of the show's first run, at the end of the 1960's, the number would finally cross into the millions as syndication tractored recruits into the ranks. (The fact that millions of letters were received also supports this. Even granting for individual authors writing multiple letters, that would seem to compensate for other fans who did not take up pen to NBC.) By the time of The Next Generation and the movies, as Star Trek established its reputation as a "worldwide television phenomenon," the millions of regular viewers represented a mere tip of the iceberg for a roster that must have numbered on the order of ten to hundred times that many. The remaining series maintained if not expanded exposure to the club, much of which was swelling global.

The best estimates I could find for television markets propose nearly a billion television sets have been sold, with favored programs drawing billions of viewers occasionally. The previous exponential growth of the club is now clipped by the number of available humans, so the club of Trek today likely numbers in the hundreds of millions perhaps approaching one billion. Out of that, how many count themselves as fans? A lot. And there will be more.


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