Okay, look. I am in my 60s. Family lore insists that my sisters and I watched the very first episode of Star Trek on its very first airing -- only to have the show banned from the house for years because the "Salt Monster" gave us all nightmares.
A few years later, in the early '70s, I started watching Star Trek -- both the original, in syndication, and the animated series in its network run. I was already a science fiction fan, and I was immediately hooked. I owned all of the Trek-related reference books at the time, including Bjo Trimble's Star Trek Concordance. I attended my first fan convention when I was in middle school. I watched all of the episodes multiple times, memorizing trivia, and by the time I got to college, I could identify any TOS episode by title after glancing at the screen for thirty seconds.
Despite all this, at no point did The Premise ever occur to me, and when I first heard about it -- I was attending Star Trek conventions in the 1970s, after all -- I found it implausible. I was, alas, a product of my times, and while I don't think I was ever actively homophobic, I was far from Woke in those days.
Fast-forward to 2020 or so. I'd been actively involved in the furry fandom since the mid-1990s. I'd survived a marriage and a divorce. I'd become much more comfortable with both my own (a)sexuality and sexuality in general. I'd gotten more sympathetic to fanfic over the years (in large measure to the fanworks and cogent blogging of @paulgadzikowski).
COVID had hit, and the nation was in lockdown. My job already allowed us to work from home one or two days a week, so changing to a full-time WFH schedule took very little adjustment -- and suddenly, I not only had the two and a half hours of commute time back, I had a lunch hour in my own living room with my TV right there. With the announcement of Lower Decks, I succumbed to temptation of three new Star Trek series, and subscribed to Paramount+.
With every episode of every series at my fingertips, I sat down and started watching The Original Series again. It had been a long while since I'd seen more than an occasional episode, and I'd never sat down and watched them all in the original airing order.
And this time around -- Holy SHIT.
The Premise was RIGHT THERE. I couldn't NOT see it.
So, yes. I get OP's "oh my god has anyone else heard of these guys?" feeling, with the added fun of "how did I MISS this for five freakin' decades??"
