Star Trek turns 50 today. Tonight at 8:30 eastern time, I’ll be watching the first aired episode of Star Trek. “The Man Trap” is that episode. It’s an episode I’ve probably watched dozens of times, if not more. It never gets old to me though. When I was a kid, I always felt sorry for the M-113 Creature and wish they didn’t have to kill it. The episode never states if the creature was of the same species that covered its homeworld with ruins. It was lonely and hungry. Poor thing.
I don’t remember exactly when I discovered Star Trek, but I’m sure my dad was involved. He loved the show. He was a teenager when it first aired on NBC in the late 1960s.
I seem to remember it was sometime during Season 2 or 3 of The Next Generation, and after that I became obsessed. It’s cool we were a Star Trek watching family. When TNG ended, it was one of the few times we were allowed to stay up past our bedtimes to watch. When I was a kid the original series aired Saturday afternoons at 4, followed by Baywatch, followed by The Next Generation. Even though we usually had to go outside on Saturdays if the weather was nice, I made sure I snuck back in at four to watch. The Original series also aired late nights on Fridays…I’d sneak downstairs to watch it.
I’ve loved every Star Trek series that’s aired---even Enterprise, with that theme song. Even Voyager, which suffered from neglect. Both are solid shows despite their flaws---I appreciate Enterprise’s exploration of the Vulcans as actual aliens, and not logical space-elves like in most of the other series. I’ve liked most of the movies too, even the new JJ-verse movies (I have not seen Beyond, so no spoilers please!) I’m even going to give CBS’s streaming channel a chance just to watch Star Trek: Discovery although, I really hope they decide to put it on regular TV. I’ve put money aside for it though. I even like the Animated Series. I love the fan shows on Youtube[1]. Oh yes, I’m a super fan.
I had Star Trek toys (never did get that fiber-optic USS Enterprise---maybe I’ll buy one). Action figures. Books. So many books—I had a Worlds of the Federation book, a Federation Travel Guide, many novels, the Starfleet Reference Guide by Franz Joseph, The Enterprise D Technical Manual (which explained how replicators worked!), episode guides, stuff like that. I wish I had a copy of the Klingon Language dictionary. Maybe I’ll buy one. I also had the electronic Encyclopedia and a couple other computer games. It’s Star Trek that introduced me to science fiction, which I read (and sometimes write) extensively.
My brother and I would play Star Trek---or a reasonable facsimile, with all our toys. Our games would last for days. Sometimes my sister would join in. When we played with her[2], invariably her dolls and Barbies would become Starfleet officers. We built model starships out of Legos. The effect on our imaginations was great. It still is.
Alas, most of my books fell part from overuse (I’ve reacquired some of fan books as PDFs from torrent sites and repurchased the novels that I remembered being good). I’m not sure what happened to the action figures and toys---I suspect donated. In my adult life, I collect many of the role-playing games that sprouted like FASA and Last Unicorn. They aren’t canon of course, but they fill out the universe Gene Roddenberry created.
Star Trek built the 21st Century[3], I say. Look around you. Did you have a flip phone? Star Trek. Computer monitors? Star Trek. Got an IPad or Tablet? That was Next Generation. Siri? Star Trek. 3D Printing? The Replicator definitely inspired that. Holograms at concerts? Oh, yeah, that also was inspired by Star Trek. All the various hardware in your smartphone that you don’t use, like its magnetometer and barometer? It’s kind of like the tricorder from Star Trek, right? NASA named one of its space shuttles after the Enterprise (NCC-1701, not A, B, C or bloody D!). I doubt Dr. Miguel Alcubierre would have written his now infamous proof that the warp drive is at least theoretically allowable in physics if not for Star Trek[4]. Dr. Sonny White at NASA wouldn’t be…doing whatever it is that he’s doing to prove that a warp drive[5] can actually be built if not for Star Trek. I don’t think the EmDrive would have ever been dreamed up if not for Star Trek[6]. There’s quite a bit---this is not a complete list by far.
Star Trek presents a future that’s hopeful. The Original Series was groundbreaking with integrated crews—in the 1960s, that was revolutionary. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a fan—it was actually the only show he and his wife let their children watch. He convinced Nichelle Nichols not to quit. While we rarely get a view of life outside of Starfleet in any series, it appears life by the era TNG is set is sweet if you’re a citizen of the United Federation of Planets. One doesn’t want for anything. The concept of money as we currently know it doesn’t exist[7]. It’s some kind of post-scarcity utopia, although how it works, we never really see. Deep Space Nine might have been a little darker but even there, the series ends on a hopeful note. The Federation isn’t punitive with the Cardassians despite all the death and destruction their alliance with the Dominion caused. Instead, they help rebuild their civilization (depicted in quite a few novels, most of which follow a coherent continuity if published after 2001.)[8]
It seems unlikely Dr. Alcubierre’s warp metric—and whatever it is Sonny White is doing at NASA, will ever result in a workable warp drive. Hopeful futures aren’t exactly in right now, in science fiction. Dystopia’s been the in thing for quite some time, pretty much because we live in one, and that seems to be what people enjoy reading these days. If no one liked it, they wouldn’t buy it, after all[9]. I still enjoy escaping into a future where infinite diversity in infinite combinations rules and people flit off to the stars just to see what’s out there. I think Star Trek captures the human drive for exploration—the reason we’re one of the most successful organisms on Earth[10]. People are still planning for interstellar travel despite reality suggesting it’s not possible. We still look for exoplanets, the most famous of which was announced a couple weeks ago. SETI still listens to the skies. All of that is good.
On Star Trek’s 50th birthday, I think its best message is hope for a bright and good future. Can it be done? Well, we’ll see, but let’s hope people 50 years from now will still be around to celebrate Star Trek at 100---and let’s hope that future looks a lot like the world of the United Federation of Planets.
And join in tonight at 8:30 eastern, when we watch the first episode ever aired.
[1] I resent what the Axanar people did, however, messing up a good thing we all had going just to make money on a property that wasn’t theirs. There’s a lot to be said about copyright, and I wish Roddenberry would have had the funds to buy it back from Paramount when they wanted to sell the rights back to him in 1970, but I don’t understand why they expected to win. Too bad, I was looking forward to Axanar, and they’ve probably wrecked the relationship all the fanfic film producers had with Paramount. Jerks all around.
[2] The rule in our house was we all had to play together, regardless of the alleged “gender” of the toy.
[3] Star Trek’s 21st Century was as bad as ours, if not worse. At least we haven’t had a Eugenics War, or a nuclear World War III, nor do we wall off homeless people into select sections of cities called “Sanctuary Districts”, as depicted in the DS9 2-parter episode “Past Tense.” At least, not yet. Gene modification of humans is pretty much here, I think it more likely than not we’ll have a nuclear exchange this century (if not this decade if Trump is elected President), and I can see the concept of Sanctuary Districts becoming a thing. Oh and there’s the whole unstoppable climate change thing—mostly unremarked on in Star Trek (because, well, it wasn’t really a widely known thing while the shows aired except maybe Enterprise, which is the series closest to us now in time. Perhaps they’ll work it into Discovery.)
[4] You can read Alcubierre’s metric here.
[6] I think the EmDrive is bullshit and a fraud and physically not possible, but good on its backers for trying. I’m cool with them going forward. Apparently they’ll be launching some sort of test soon! It’d be awesome to be proven wrong on this, it really would.
[7] Tons of books and papers and whatnot on this topic but I think it’s impossible to know what Roddenberry meant because people will read their 21st century personal ideologies into it. So I like “concept of money as we know it doesn’t exist in the Federation” since there are characters throughout most of the many series who are clearly more privileged than others are (like the Millers). Anyway, whatever your headcanon says, that's what it is :)
[8]The Pocket Books continuity is actually good, albeit a bit bleak in places in the stories set after the end of Deep Space Nine. I recommend anything by Una McCormack, Christopher Bennett, and Keith R.A. DeCandido.
[9] I’m actually seeing hopeful futures written about again. It’s not all the Water Knife.
[10] Unless we go extinct thanks to climate change, nuclear war, or both. But while the dinosaurs didn’t mark the strata the way we have, 60 or 250 million years from now, some creature that evolves after us will note how clear this era is marked on the strata. What will they conclude?