My mother began her “higher learning” at a later age than most. I was in junior high school when she attended Sarah Lawrence studying philosophy and I was in high school when she attended the school of anthropology at the University of Virginia. I got to meet a lot of interesting people associated with academia: students, professors, writers, thinkers and do-ers. Generally at that age, I was bored by their discussions, uninterested in their high-art movies, theatre, and book readings, but there was one morsel of media with which we all could concur, one passive activity which satiated a teenager’s desire for adventure as well as an anthropologist’s hunger for discovery, a sociologist’s curiosity about humanity and a philosopher’s quest for truth — we could all agree on Star Trek.

Whether it was the original series, The Next Generation, or any of the Star Trek Movies, or other incarnations, there was something in each chapter that could be enjoyed by intellectuals as well as… people like myself. In fact, Star Trek has been inspiring the brightest among us for 43 years, since Gene Roddenberry’s creation premiered in 1966. Its fans include quantum physicists, medical doctors, futurists, science fiction writers, and the esteemed Stephen Hawking himself. It is credited with inventing the idea of cell phones, tasers (set to stun), PDA’s, and MRI’s, as well as the protocol for dealing with alien life forms…namely, the Prime Directive.

Star Trek’s vision hasn’t just been technological and procedural; there was a cultural importance to Star Trek that changed the way we saw and see the future. As I’m sure we all know, science fiction was the original way, and still the most popular way, to predict the future. If life keeps going the way it is, where will we be in 5 years, 10, years, 1000 years? It was easy to foresee certain things like high tech global surveillance, wars over limited natural resources, the melding of the human body and modern technology, but what will happen after atomic/nuclear holocaust, after our first meeting with intelligent alien life, after the invention of faster-than-light-speed travel? Most sci-fi writers had grim predictions, but Roddenberry was an optimist. Even in the hottest moments of the cold war, Roddenberry foresaw global unity. As civil rights unrest spread throughout the country, Roddenberry envisioned a future that looked past race.

Before Star Trek, the future was white. There were no Blacks or Asians on The Forbidden Planet. Buck Rogers never ran into a person of another color in the future. Ming the Merciless was the closest to an Asian the sci-fi world could imagine, and that was not a very flattering portrayal. Apparently, Stanley Kubrik didn’t think there would be diversity in 2001. Even Star Wars had to add Billy Dee Williams to get ONE non-white actor on the screen in its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back.

But Star Trek showered our imaginations with not only black people (OK, one black person), but Asians, Russians, Scotts, women, and alien races (many of which were coincidentally familiar to the racial stereotypes of the time). When inter-racial relationships were a no-no on TV, Star Trek was showing inter-racial relations as well as inter-special ones!

Finally, beyond creating a lone, unique, optimistic vision for the future of humanity, Star Trek also laid out the blueprints of how to get to our one-world utopia. It seemed like each planet visited, each dimension explored, each time continuum experienced, was a parable that reflected our troubled times. There were references to the Vietnam War, the Cold War, civil rights, women’s rights, Constitutional rights, environmental rights, religious rights.

Star Trek may be a worn-out franchise that is being rebooted with the new movie Star Trek, but it will always have a place of honor in American mythology. The reason why it has such a cult following is because of the hope and inspiration that it gives us. After a long 8-year period where our future looked bleak (could you imagine George W. Bush being the emissary to our first contact with an alien race??), we now once again have hope. We now once again seem to be moving towards the future that Rodenberry envisioned. Now is the perfect time for a new Star Trek. Whether it be economic crisis, environmental peril, or political animosity, we know that when people band together, think outside the box, and continue to move towards new destinations with the highest of intentions, we as a race can boldly go where no man has gone before.

 

Cinema this week appears every Friday at noonish.

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