Star Trek means a lot of things to a lot of people. For some it means that it is something else for nerds to get into. To counter that I would say: Well, everyone is a nerd about something. Some people collect stamps.Others love to go hear a classical orchestra play. Still others love sky diving. I never have understood that obsession.There is an element of danger in that. I have friends who enjoy repelling. But I have artificial hips so I can't participate in anything like that. Now I am 60 and I have to cope with arthritic problems so very physical activities are out of the question so I have resorted to other pursuits (gee, now I even talk like Spock!).
When Star Trek first debuted in 1966 I was eleven years old. At school, after the series had been airing for a few weeks and the talk among my friends at school was mainly about this new show called "Star Trek" I hesitantly decided to try it out. I had been a major Bewitched fan and that was Star Trek's competition at that time slot and I had watched that show since it started so breaking away from it was hard.
But when I finally watched Star Trek I thought, Wow! The only other show I had ever felt anything like that for was a 50s series that I had seen in reruns called The Adventures of Superman starring the late great actor George Reeves. He was not the first actor to bring the comic book hero to life but he will never be forgotten either. More about him and his impact on my generation later.
But I did get Star Trek fever and I have had it ever since. The episode where Kirk and company landed on a world that was modeled after a 20th Century Roman Empire got to my imagination. The landing party received help from a religious cult called The Children of The Sun. And one of them, who looked very athletic, was a run away captured slave who had been forced to fight in their games. At the end of the episode when all was well they were all on the bridge trying to sort out everything they had been through.
They were all curious about The Children of The Sun cult because there were no sun worshipers in ancient Rome so Uhura (the communications officer) explained to all of them that they had it all wrong.She had been listening to some of the radio broadcast from the planet and an announcer tried to make fun of the cult and could not. Kirk looked bewildered. Then Uhura said," Don't you get it. They were no talking about the sun up in the sky. But the Son of God."
Then Kirk mentioned both Caesar and Christ. That they had had them both. And the news was just then spreading.
It took me years to get the significance of that episode. But Star Trek had clearly mentioned Christ and not used that word as a curse word like it is today. Now I respect every and everyone's beliefs. I do this because this country was founded on the principle of Pursuit of Happiness and Disestablishment of Religion. In other words, no one religion would have power over all of the others. This is what was happening before the Revolutionary War. England was only endorsing one certain Church as legitimate and paid its staff through taxed money. That is why we have our freedoms today. Naturally it was the Anglican Church.
Well, I learned a lot of history watching Star Trek as well. Some think us fans have made Star Trek into a religion. It is true that there is a certain philosophy mentioned in Star Trek called the IDIC: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. That simply means that human races or alien races are all supposed to be treated equally and with respect. That does not mean that we have to agree with each others opinions but we can try to get along with each other and it really looks like we need to do that now in our time because just as Star Trek spoke to the generation of the 1960s it can speak to this generation which is apparently experiencing some of the some problems as were happening then. Live long and prosper.
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