50 years ago today, a little show called Star Trek first aired on American television. While the original series ended after just three seasons, the fans were so dedicated and outspoken that there were six spin-off series (and another, Star Trek: Discovery, due to appear in early 2017), thirteen feature-length films, and numerous books and comics.

And that’s not even taking into account the hundreds of thousands of fanfictions that have been written in the past fifty years.