My first exposure to Star Trek was in 1969 in my grandparents’ house in England. It was on one of the two available tv stations. I was immediately transfixed by it. One time, there was no sound at all (the rabbit ears weren’t working or something) but I watched it anyway.

We moved to Canada just in time for Star Trek’s prime time run to be cancelled. However, it was soon on daily at 5:00pm. Unfortunately, this led to one of the more bitter disputes between my sister and me. Ellen wanted to watch something else at 5:30. She figured that I could watch a show for half an hour and then she could watch a show for half an hour.

Putting my math skills to good use, I argued that it would be more fair to watch two-thirds of my show, 40 minutes, and then Ellen could watch two-thirds of her show, 20 minutes. This way, we would both be equally unhappy.

Someone later suggested that we could have taken turns watching all of our shows. Ellen could watch her show on one day and I’d watch my show on the next.

That does sound reasonable but at the time Ellen and I didn’t think that way.