Revisiting The Meaning of Star Trek

In perhaps the most famous "Star Trek" episode of them all, Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Cmdr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) stand in their stretchy mock-turtle uniform shirts, lady-pleasin' tight pants and pointy-toed boots on one of those studio-lot sets designed to evoke a prewar American city. People shuffle past in shabby clothes, and a black automobile with large, curved fenders crawls down the street. "I've seen photographs of this period," says Kirk. "An economic upheaval had occurred."

"It was called 'Depression,'" says Spock, raising one painted eyebrow in archetypal distaste. "Circa 1930. Quite barbaric."

As many of you will have spotted already, this is from "City on the Edge of Forever," a time-paradox yarn written by science-fiction legend Harlan Ellison. In it, Kirk falls in love with a kittenish Salvation Army type, played by Joan Collins, who envisions a future of space travel and peaceful global cooperation, and wants to rescue the world from the threat of impending war. Kirk comes from that future, of course. Not only can he not tell her that, he must also allow her to be run down by a bus to avoid a fatal disordering of the space-time continuum that would result in Hitler conquering the world and the Starship Enterprise never existing at all.

In its narrative ambition, its talky, theatrical density, its high-minded moral tone and its nerdy philosophizing, that episode captures a great deal about what made "Star Trek" such a potent cultural force. I guess that's why it's included, along with three other episodes, on "The Best of Star Trek: The Original Series," a new DVD/Blu-ray release presumably meant to lure new viewers of J.J. Abrams' hit film back to the source material. No "Star Trek" fan could possibly be happy with such a mini-collection -- where, I ask, is "Mirror, Mirror"? "The Doomsday Machine"? "The Devil in the Dark"?.

Watching "Star Trek" in 1970s syndication was such an important part of my childhood and adolescence -- I've seen every episode at least 30 or 40 times, and some many more than that. Star Trek

stands out, even after all this time, as something unique in television history. Of course "Star Trek" can never be the cultural monster it once was. Having spawned four official follow-up series, 11 feature films (and counting) and countless non-canonical works -- and inspired an entire genre of serial intergalactic futurism from "Space: 1999" to "Babylon 5" to "Battlestar Galactica,"  Gene

Roddenberry imagined a radical-progressive, enlightenment-fueled vision of the human future, one in which the conflict between capitalism and communism had been long transcended, along with eliminating other earthbound forms of racial, ethnic or religious strife. Strikingly, there is no religious or mystical dimension to the "Star Trek" universe at all. It was based around the chronic tension between reason and emotion, represented of course by the tension between Spock, Kirk & McCoy. Roddenberry

worked with the best writers he could get. Ellison wrote "City on the Edge of Forever," and Theodore Sturgeon, another big-name sci-fi author, wrote "Amok Time", the famous episode in which Spock goes into some kind of Vulcan craze and must return to his home planet in order to mate.

When it debuted in the late 1960’s "Star Trek" was new and startling in several ways: a science-fiction series that was literary and imaginative and heavily allegorical, that ladled out historical and political messages by the quart and that delivered a distinctive undertone of adult sexuality.

Roddenberry's attention to great and meaningful writing continues to make the original "Star Trek" relevant to contemporary viewers. CBS/Paramount has re-mastered the whole entire original series in  brilliant high-definition, and made them available on Blu-ray, iTunes, XBox Live and no doubt other platforms yet to be devised.  In the end, Star Trek depicts a

future where we would all agree that war and poverty and economic depression were barbaric, and where the girls would all wear miniskirts and nylons.