Over the coming months we’re going to be ramping up our coverage of the properties around some of the summer’s biggest tentpole films, and while we missed doing a proper tribute to Iron Man over the past few weeks, (ask any of our regular contributors about the Iron Man 3 trailer controversy. They’ll know what we’re talking about.) in the immortal words of Jean-Luc Picard, “The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!”

And so we bring you Two Weeks of Trek— a countdown, of sorts, (similar to our highly popular 30 Days of Bond we did last fall) counting down to the release of Star Trek Into Darkness, wherein we will watch all of the Trek films, many episodes of all of the various Trek series, and give reviews of our favorite bits from the vast Trek oeuvre.  We’ll even have a special “Saturday Morning Cartoon Corner” next Sat, May 11, talking about Animaniacs, Futurama, and maybe the Animated Series. But first I give you:

Why we love Star Trek

Speaking of Futurama. . .

Fry: You know what six movies average out to be really good? The first six Star Trek movies!

***

Fry: The world needs Star Trek to give people hope for the future.
Leela: But it’s set 800 years in the past.
Bender: Yeah, why is it so important you?
Fry: Because it… it taught me so much. Like, how you should accept people, whether they be black, white, Klingon or even female… But most importantly, when I had no friends, it made me feel like maybe I did.

Fry, I know that feel, bro.

I grew up with Star Wars from a very young age– I barely remember when it was first introduced to me. But I remember exactly when I first encountered Star Trek and became a fan.

A friend of my father’s joined us for Thanksgiving 1989 and brought along his VHS copies of the first 4 Trek films. We, the kids, wanted to watch the one with the whales, but the adults wanted to watch Wrath of Khan. Of course, something had happened to that tape, so as a “compromise” we watched The Search for Spock and then watch Voyage Home. Kind of a weird intro to the Trek universe, but I liked it.  But by the time Kirk beamed onto the Klingon ship, it was time for bed. So we didn’t get to see the whales. But in the coming months I ended up being able to see Voyage Home and the original motion picture (still no Wrath of Khan— believe it or not, I didn’t see it until I was 21) and saw pretty much the entire animated original series in syndication on Nickelodeon.

But I wan’t a real fan until September of 1990. I was sick. Really, really sick. I had terrible fevers that gave me bad nightmares, and hadn’t been able to go to school for over a week. My parents had moved a tv into my bedroom so I had something to do. And as I flipped around, I found a station playing a marathon of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, counting down to the “Season Premiere” of Season 4. Then they showed “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I” — the season 3 finale. I had never geeked out to television before. I went and got my parents and told them they turned Picard into a Borg and they were showing the next episode. . .and found my father already watching in the other room. From that time forward, we watched nearly every new episode of The Next Generation as a family– or at least my dad, sister, and I.

And from then on I was a Trek fan. I loved Deep Space Nine, and after enduring a two-year US media blackout while spending some time overseas, I returned to have a good friend tell me I had to watch the final two seasons, all of which I had missed, but she couldn’t even explain what had happened. I had a roommate who had the last ten or so episodes he had taped off TV– I stayed up all night watching them. And thanks to cable syndication, I was able to eventually see all of them, and all of the Voyager episodes I “missed.” And then I even stuck with Enterprise as long as I could, occasionally checking back in as I heard the series was improving.

And then with the 2009 reboot, Trek was back with a vengeance. And it was finally cool. All of the fun, the character, the morals– distilled down into a nigh-perfect summer popcorn geekfest. And we can hope for nothing less from Into Darkness, which is why we will be spending a considerable amount of time discussing the possibilities of Benedict Cumberbatch’s character. (Is it Khan? People said it was Khan!) I actually don’t know why the identity of the villain is kept under such wraps– at the end of the day, it’s Cumberbatch kicking ass and whether or not his name is Khan Noonien Singh is barely relevant to that. But over the next several days we’re going to give you Khan, Gary Mitchell, Arik and Noonyan Soongh, and talk about how those episodes and films make an important commentary on human nature — and maybe even prevented future wars?

Trek’s importance to our culture

But Trek has been important not just to my individual nerddom, no matter how epic that may be, but to our culture at large. Look around. Cell phones. Personal computers. Things forseen by science fiction like Trek, but a reality today. The first space shuttle? The Enterprise. And eventually someone is going to figure out the equivalent of warp drive, phasers, and the transporter/replicator.

Indeed, Star Trek shows a utopian future based on just a few basic principles: 1) The lack of scarcity of goods or energy. If you can convert matter to energy and vice versa, and power things with controlled matter/anti-matter reactions, you have unlimited resources. There is no need for anyone to go without. And look what happened to humanity — free from petty toiling, people were free to pursue all manner of artisanship (remember the episode where Picard returns home to his brother’s vineyard, or Ben Sisko’s father’s restaurant in New Orleans) but also scientific and artistic achievement (Jake Sisko’s writing, medical advancements pioneered by McCoy, Crusher, Pulaski, Bashir, technological ones by Scotty, O’Brien, LaForge, and even Harry Kim). And inherent in all of this is 2) The freedom of man to evolve past petty racism, nationalism, sexism in order to reach for the stars.

Important among all of this was a not-so-subtle commentary in the 1960’s that reverberates today: race and gender are no issue in the future. For the 60’s having an interracial crew was a big deal, as was the first ever interracial kiss on screen between Uhura and Kirk. And while not known at the time, George Takei has in the last decade become an important cultural icon as a leader for marriage equality. Or maybe he’s just good at Facebook. Who knows?

But one issue that came up over and over again in Trek both modern and classic was eugenics: the attempt to improve humanity through selective breeding or genetic engineering. We should remember that during the mid-20th century, eugenics was a real thing. (In fact, we fought a world war over it) Star Trek foresaw a bleak future, where a third world war would be fought during the 1990s– the Eugenics Wars. Led by genetically enhanced supermen like Khan, the world would be enslaved, as Spock put it, because “superior ability breeds superior ambition.”

No, in the world of Trek, mankind must make the long, hard evolutionary slog without fancy gene manipulation, lest the power corrupt them and our reach exceed our grasp. Even into Deep Space Nine, we see Dr. Bashir wrestling with his own genetically enhanced past and his attempts to rehabilitate a team of failed genetic modifications who had become institutionalized outcasts.

And then when we do meet the true Ubermensch, a god-like creature — Q — we see just how arrogant and corrupt (and irrepressible) absolute power makes someone. Several times in the series, humans are given a choice to take on the powers of the Q, learning just how complex that responsibility is. Just as many times, members of the Q continuum are brought to the humans to learn something– often, humility — showing that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the galaxy.

And in some ways, the Borg, the ultimate villain, is the culmination of this, as is their ongoing conflict with Species 8472, bred to be the most superior lifeform in the galaxy and the only think the Borg can’t assimilated. Instead, Species 8472 assimilates other species and places their genetics with their own. Wow. But the Borg represent another path to human improvement that is equally dangerous as simply endowing everyone with great strength or intellect– installing greater capacity through technology. While becoming more powerful, we would lose individuality and uniqueness.

The counterpoint to what could be considered fear of technology is the example of Data or The Doctor– artificial life forms whose main interest is in how to be more human.

So I’m not saying that Star Trek helped prevent any Eugenics wars it prophesied, but the results are clear: nowhere in 2013 is there an organized movement attempting to “perfect” humanity through genetics, technology, or other methods. For that we can be grateful.

Unfortunately, we have failed to learn other important lessons Trek tried to teach us: non-interference is the prime directive. (Hello Iraq) The lessons of the fictionalized Bell Riots in San Francisco in Deep Space Nine, which still seem like a distinct possibility for our near future. The episode of Voyager where they go to the planet where medical care is rationed based only on how much you can pay. Someday we’ll learn. Maybe we just need another Star Trek tv series to teach it to us.

Trek’s Importance to nerd culture

While I may be stretching a little to play up Star Trek‘s technological or cultural influence, I cannot overstate the importance of Trek to  geekdom.

Without Star Trek, I highly doubt there ever would have been Star Wars.

Without Star Trek, specifically Deep Space Nine, we certainly never would have had the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. Showrunner Ron Moore was involved in DS9, and his fingerprints are clear, especially as BSG went on to more fully tease out issues only dealt with cursorally on DS9: how do you fight an enemy who could be any one of us? (Changelings, Cylons) To what extent are we willing to give up our rights and freedoms to ensure this threat is not in our backyard? DS9 was the awesome first draft that made some of the best parts of BSG possible.

There are too many tendrils of Star Trek to count that have influenced pop culture in one way or another. But it is part of the fabric of what it means to be a modern American– possibly a modern human being.

For that, we thank Star Trek, and look forward to your most recent outing to once again boldly go where no man has gone before.