Alexander and Me
By Dan Madsen
“Alexander, where I come from size, shape or color makes no difference.”
Believe it or not - those words rocked my world! When I was 14 years old, I had never watched a Star Trek episode. One day, as fate would have it, I sat down after school and decided to watch a Star Trek rerun. The episode that day just happened to be Plato’s Stepchildren. My life would never be the same….literally.
Growing up with a form of dwarfism that stopped my growth at 4 feet 2 inches tall made life more difficult. Not only did I have to endure multiple surgeries on my legs and hips but I also had to endure the points, stares, and, occasional ridicule that kids can sometimes launch at other kids who are different. That’s not to say that I didn’t have a lot of wonderful friends who stood by me, but the world looked at me a little differently back then and I was painfully aware of that.
So when I sat down and saw a “little person,” like myself, on an episode of Star Trek, I was keenly interested. I saw how Alexander was treated differently, how it made him feel, and how he felt living in that world of the Platonians. The moment where Captain Kirk shared with Alexander what the world was like where he came from was almost as if he was speaking to me. I now dreamed of a future where I would be accepted for who I was, not how tall I was or how I looked. The Star Trek world now presented to me was one in which every human being was treasured for who they are and accepted for their uniqueness. It didn’t matter if you were tall, short, fat, skinny, blue, green or even if you had a human body – you were an appreciated member of the universe and, as such, respected and valued.
At the end of the episode, the moment Kirk flips open his communicator and says, “Mr. Scott, prepare to beam us up. I have a little surprise for you,” the look on Alexander’s face and his excited smile mirrored mine at that moment watching it. As a 14-year old kid, imagining myself in Alexander’s shoes, beaming up to the Enterprise and finding a whole new world where he could be anything he wanted to be and the experiences he would have set my dream world on fire. This was a message for me.
I began watching every episode of Star Trek and realized that there was much more to this show for me than just Plato’s Stepchildren. I grew up with Star Trek helping to form my values and ideals and, from a real life perspective, a career. As many of you reading this may know, I started the first official Star Trek Fan Club which was licensed by Paramount Pictures and supported and endorsed by Gene Roddenberry. In fact, Gene had become a good friend over the years and was always supportive of my “enterprise.” He told me how he had originally envisioned Spock as a little person and told me privately and for printed interviews some of the most inspiring stories I had ever heard in relation to Star Trek.
My Star Trek fan club business at its peak reached over 200,000 people all over the world through its magazine, the Star Trek Communicator, while membership in the club topped 85,000. I employed over 120 people and created hundreds of exclusive collectables for fans before selling it to