Fandom Firsts/First Introductions have been on my mind a lot this summer. It’s been the kind of summer where work-life balance is a joke when it comes to my day job. All I’ve done besides work is ponder stuff and occasionally watch something on television. Mostly rewatching comfort stuff because that’s all I’ve had the spoons for. I was rewatching Babylon 5 season one with my dad and it hit me when we got to the first Bester episode that this show was my first introduction to Walter Koenig as an actor. My parents knew him first as Chekov from Star Trek, but I wasn’t introduced to the Star Trek movies and original series until several years after I’d found B5. Seeing him as Chekov was a hell of a headtrip that first time, I kept expecting him to be working some kind of angle or having a shady plan (Dad was particularly amused by this).
Same thing happened much later on as my nerd household started watching Falling Skies and it took me a couple of episodes to place where I’d seen Colin Cunningham who played John Pope before ( I keep forgetting IMDB is a thing ya’ll. I remember a time before it) and that was an even bigger headtrip. Cunningham played Major Paul Davis on Stargate SG-1 who is a character that was a direct opposite to Pope in just about every possible way. It’s still kind of a headtrip when I watch episodes of either series. Cunningham’s range is great.
Or how, since I was a Disney Afternoon kid, getting introduced to the “Indiana Jones” kind of character via Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers years and years before I ever actually saw Raiders of the Lost Ark. Same with the “Magnum P.I” character type. Granted 90’s Cartoons were a million times smarter than they had to be (and a lot of them still hold up which will never not be hilarious and amazing) and a lot of them were packed full of references and visuals that would not necessarily make sense to the target demographic but would be fun easter eggs or references to their parents. I mean The Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series had several episodes that were spoofs or parodies of popular movies (including but not limited to Die Hard and Pulp Fiction). In a cartoon. On the *Disney* Channel.
These are all just a handful of examples – this post could go on forever if I tried to list them all out. Tell me about some of your Fandom Firsts/First Impressions in the comments!