How 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' ruled the internet

[NelsonG]

In Tales of the Early Internet, Mashable explores online life through 2007 — back before social media and the smartphone changed everything.

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From its earliest days, the Star Trek franchise has lent itself to parody, fan stories and all kinds of remixing. So it was only natural that its longest-running show would play a big role in the internet's oldest memes. 

The original series (1966-1969) was syndicated on roughly 200 TV stations in the 1970s. This led to an explosion in fan fiction, shared via snail mail before it migrated to early online message boards. The practice of calling erotic stories "slash" came from "Kirk/Spock" (as opposed to "Kirk & Spock," stories in which the captain and science officer were just friends). The humor potential was evident on Saturday Night Live, which poked gentle fun at the show from 1976 onwards. A parody song, "Star Trekkin'," was a number 1 hit on the UK charts in 1987. And in 1992 an Oregon radio station created " Read more...

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