Search for Spock might be the first movie (in general I mean, not just Trek) that I can clearly remember watching. It was 1990 and I would have been five years old, was at West Coast Video with my mom and she must have randomly picked it off the shelf to rent.
Watched it, loved it, was hooked from there on out. Rented the other movies, even rented Encounter at Farpoint and the uncut The Cage that goes black-and-white during certain scenes. TNG became appointment television every week. Saw TUC in the theater and was blown away. Didn’t even get into Star Wars until around '92 or so, but I knew of them as Bart would say.
What I remember finding out very early on was that ILM worked not only on Star Wars but also several of the Trek films. It felt very cool to realize these two franchises shared that connection.
Oh, and thank you for bringing up Oberth class, SwissArmyTin. I was going crazy back in September trying to remember the name of it without looking it up first.
I live and breathe the Tech Manuals. Ship classes, designs, and layouts are one of my favorite parts of Trek to be honest.
Oh, speaking of that black-and-white version of The Cage, I don’t own the Bluray or DVD of TOS, just a handful of the 80s-run VHS tapes, including that version of The Cage. It has a really neat featurette at the beginning with Roddenberry himself walking along the dimly-lit sets of the Enterprise (circa III). It ended with him in Engineering, which I believe was the last time that set was filmed on before meddling by the TNG crew. Total shame, as that configuration of the set has always been my favorite.