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Star Trek fans have held the national stereotype of being way too rabid about things for decades but they’re probably the nicest fan base in all of science fiction and the one least likely to have a large faction of them absolutely lose it over a torpedo being fired by a woman or dumb shit like that
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I have a theory:
Star Trek fans were some of the earlier cosplayers. Trekkies were wearing Starfleet uniforms and Vulcan ears to conventions decades before the word “cosplay” was a thing. My father has a book called the Starfleet Technical Manual published in the 70’s that is basically an official guide for fans to build screen accurate costumes and props from, including sewing patterns for the various tunics and wrist-length dresses and a page of color swatches, plus dimensional drawings of tricorders, phasers and communicators.
And the public at large in the 1970s wasn’t ready for that yet.
People were cosplaying Junge Werther in the 1800s, it’s just a thing people do.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the ancient Greeks were cosplaying their favorite characters from the Trojan war or something. But the word cosplay is only attested from like 1993 in English and 1983 or so in Japan
I have that book! It’s super cool. It’s themed as a document made by the military about information on the Federation that leaked into the past.
There’s also diagrams of space stations and ships, and small things, like how to properly decorate sleeves and badges for rank and division.
I read my dad’s copy cover to cover as a kid, it’s a great bit of fluff for fans combined with a useful prop reference. It’s also fun that it’s basically all hand drawn, even the text pages look l Iike a draftsman hand lettered them.
Oh man those technical drawings are MY SHIT. I got all the Star Wars ones. I’ll definitely see if I can track this down
I used to have the original black cover version. Long lost, sadly. I have it as an ebook though. The one Star Trek book from my youth I had to buy once when I saw it used was this one, which used to be canon until TNG threw almost all of it away. But Rick Sternbach illustrated it and the ideas are pretty fun.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Spaceflight_Chronology
I think my favorite part is when an Earth expedition to Alpha Centauri meets Zefram Cochrane (TOS says he is from Alpha Centauri and there’s a lot of headcanon to explain it) and learns to communicate to him through mathematics. At the beginning, Cochrane draws a circle with a symbol next to it, the Earth mathematician realizes that it means pi and they move on from there.
Looks like someone scanned in every page if you’re interested: https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/spaceflight-chronology.php
Edit:
As much as I love First Contact, in terms of world building, I like that so much more.
Same man created the brilliant Star Trek Blueprints, the first detailed deck plans for the Enterprise. He did all this after his daughter took him to a Trek convention and he saw how passionate the fans were and what a need there was for material like this. It’s a great story.
http://www.trekplace.com/franzjoseph.html