Hi, this is Steve. Fans have been a part of Hollywood since the beginning.

Teenage girls swooned over Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks, and nobody

was more beloved than America's sweetheart Mary Pickford.

Since then there have always been stars whose popularity was so powerful that it seemed as if they

would go on forever.

Until, of course, it didn't. And then the fans who were so obsessed one day turned their

attention to a rising star, leaving that other actor to wonder what exactly just happened.

But there is another kind of fan out there, one connected not to a particular

performer, but rather to a fictional character, world, or even idea.

The first and most important example, at least in terms of copyright, is Disney's Mickey Mouse

whose simple design has delighted generations long after its original creators were gone.

Superman has found his way onto every kind of media and merchandise since his debut in 1938,

and while we might all have our favorite James Bond, it is the character, not the actor, that keeps the fans coming back for more. Of course in all those

cases it was the corporate owners that kept those characters alive not for any

altruistic reason of course but simply because they saw them as money-making machines.

Star Trek, on the other hand, is different.

Paramount at NBC thought Star Trek was worthless, a failed TV show who barely made it to a third season.

It didn't even have the hundred episodes usually required for syndication.

Star Trek was, in 1969, essentially dead.

It was the fans that kept Star Trek alive.

With only 79 episodes in the can,

many of them not exactly great,

...