STAR TREK AT 60: I WASN’T THERE. I INHERITED IT.
How a Canceled Television Show Gave Generations of Nerds Permission to Imagine the Future
Sixty years ago today, on September 8, 1966, Star Trek aired its first episode.
Image: Star Trek Episode One. The Man Trap. Source: IMDb
I wasn't there.
Well, technically I existed, but I wasn't sitting in front of the television waiting to find out where the Enterprise would take us next. I wasn't following Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty, and Sulu week after week as their adventures unfolded.
And I certainly didn't have the luxury of opening a streaming service and bingeing the entire thing over a weekend while occasionally being asked whether I was still watching.
I came later.
I grew up in a house full of nerds who had already discovered this strange television show and were completely addicted to it. So Star Trek came to me through reruns.
I inherited it.
And somewhere along the way, something strange happened.
I became one of the people who wouldn't let it go either.
That may be one of the most fascinating things about Star Trek. The original series lasted only three seasons. Seventy-nine episodes. It ended in 1969.
That should have been it.
Instead, sixty years after its first broadcast, Star Trek is still here.
There have been movies, more television series, books, conventions, games and generations of fans. Characters who could have disappeared along with hundreds of other characters from forgotten television programs became cultural icons.
And a little girl watching reruns in a house full of nerds eventually became a writer herself.
Only then did I begin to understand something else about the show I had inherited.
Those writers were doing some crazy stuff.
They Weren't Afraid of the Question
I have tremendous respect for the writing in the original Star Trek.
Not because every episode was brilliant.
It wasn't.
Not because every idea aged beautifully.
Good Lord, no.
Some of it is very much a product of the 1960s. Some of the sets look like somebody had twenty-seven dollars, three pieces of plywood and access to a suspiciously large quantity of aluminum foil.
But the ideas?
Those could be enormous.
The writers used science fiction to take the political, social, philosophical, and technological questions of their time, move them a few hundred years into the future, put funny ears on somebody, and ask us to look at them differently.
Want to talk about racism?
Fine.
Give us two men who are both half black and half white.
In "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," Bele and Lokai despise one another because their colors are reversed. One is black on the right and white on the left. The other is white on the right and black on the left.
Image: Star Trek Episode. Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. Source: IMDb
To everyone else, the distinction seems absurd.
To them, it is everything.
Racism.
Literally.
In black and white.
And because Star Trek occasionally pulled somebody wonderfully unexpected into its universe, Bele was played by Frank Gorshin.
Yes.
The Riddler.
Image: Frank Gorshin as The Riddler. Source: IMDb
I love television.
Put the Problem on Another Planet
That became one of Star Trek's greatest tricks.
It could talk about us while pretending not to talk about us.
War.
Race.
Class.
Religion.
Authoritarianism.
Colonialism.
Technology.
Human nature.
Move the problem to another planet and suddenly the audience has enough distance to look at it.
One of my favorite examples is "Patterns of Force."
Image: Star Trek. Episode. Patterns of Force. Source:IMDb
A Federation historian named John Gill interferes with another civilization and introduces a system modeled on Nazi Germany because he believes he can use its organizational efficiency without reproducing its evil.
You can probably guess how well that works.
Apparently fascism does not come with a convenient setting marked:
EFFICIENCY: ON GENOCIDE: OFF
Once the machinery exists, people willing to exploit it emerge. Power consolidates. Another people become the enemy. Persecution follows.
The episode aired in 1968, barely more than two decades after the end of World War II.
That was not timid writing.
Neither was "Bread and Circuses."
Image: Star Trek Episode. Bread and Circuses. Source: IMDb.
The Enterprise discovers a planet where something resembling the Roman Empire never fell. Rome simply kept going.
There are cars.
Television.
Modern technology.
And gladiatorial combat as televised entertainment.
Bread and circuses indeed.
But the ending is what fascinated me.
Throughout the episode, there are persecuted people whom the crew believes are worshippers of the sun.
Then Uhura realizes they've misunderstood.
Not the sun.
The Son.
The Son of God.
This isn't Earth. Nobody carried Christianity from Earth to this civilization. Yet something recognizably similar has emerged.
What exactly are the writers suggesting?
That civilizations follow certain patterns?
That human spiritual searching is universal?
That something divine exists independently of Earth?
I don't know.
And that's precisely why I love it.
The story was willing to ask the question.
And Sometimes the Question Got Bigger Than the Answer
Then there is "Turnabout Intruder."
Image: Star Trek Episode. Turnabout Intruder. Source: IMDb
This was the final episode of the original series, and I have always found it fascinating.
Dr. Janice Lester, a former lover of Kirk, doesn't simply want to kill him.
She wants his life.
She believes being a woman has denied her the opportunity to command a starship, so she uses alien technology to exchange bodies with Kirk.
Let me make sure we're all following this.
A woman puts her consciousness into a man's body.
A man finds himself living inside a woman's body.
In 1969.
Hello, gender-bend.
The episode contains ideas about women that have understandably aged badly. But the premise also does something fascinating.
Lester believes Kirk possesses the life she wants because he is male.
So the story performs an experiment.
Fine.
Switch them.
Give Lester the male body, uniform, rank, and command chair.
Put Kirk in the female body.
Who is capable of command?
Kirk.
Lester doesn't fail because she's a woman.
She fails because she's a terrible commander.
She's vindictive, impulsive, paranoid, and increasingly authoritarian.
Meanwhile Kirk is still Kirk.
His body has changed.
His ability to lead hasn't.
She stole the chair without becoming the captain.
And then the episode gets even more interesting.
Lester has a lover, Dr. Arthur Coleman, who helps her execute the plan.
He knows the body exchange is intended to be permanent.
Think about that for a moment.
The woman he loves intends to spend the rest of her life physically as James T. Kirk.
And Coleman apparently intends to remain with her.
Excuse me, Star Trek?
Are we going to discuss this?
No?
Okay then.
But the question remains.
What does Coleman love?
Janice Lester's body?
Or Janice Lester?
The episode doesn't really explore the implications of the door it just kicked open.
But it kicked it open.
Sometimes Star Trek deliberately asked extraordinary questions.
Sometimes it constructed a story so provocative that the questions became bigger than the answers its own writers were prepared to give.
I respect that too.
Then There Was the Machine
Another episode I have always loved is "The Ultimate Computer."
Image: Star Trek Episode. The Ultimate Computer. Source: IMDb
William Marshall plays Dr. Richard Daystrom, a brilliant scientist who creates the M-5 computer, a system capable of operating the Enterprise while dramatically reducing the need for a human crew.
Yes.
We're talking about replacing human beings with intelligent automation.
In 1968.
Hello from 2026.
What makes the story interesting, however, isn't simply COMPUTER BAD.
Daystrom has used his own mental patterns as part of the machine.
And he has put more of himself into it than he realizes.
His brilliance is there.
So are his wounds.
The technology cannot be separated completely from the human being who created it.
That idea feels remarkably familiar today.
Great science fiction doesn't necessarily predict the future.
Sometimes it recognizes human problems that will still be waiting for us when the technology arrives.
What If We Were the Bad Guys?
Then there is "Mirror, Mirror." Oh baby!
Image: Star Trek Episode. Mirror, Mirror. Source: IMDb
What if the Federation wasn't an enlightened organization dedicated to exploration?
What if it were an empire?
Kirk, McCoy, Uhura and Scotty find themselves in an alternate reality where advancement comes through assassination and authority is maintained through fear.
And Spock has a goatee.
Image: Star Trek Episode. Mirror, Mirror. Source: IMDb
Never underestimate the cultural influence of an evil goatee.
But beneath the fun of seeing familiar characters transformed is another serious idea.
Even Mirror Spock can see the problem when Kirk forces him to examine the system logically.
An empire sustained through endless violence will eventually consume itself.
Once again, Star Trek doesn't merely introduce another enemy.
It turns the mirror toward us.
Hippies Made It to the Future Too
Not every cultural reflection was subtle.
There is "The Way to Eden."
Image: Star Trek Episode The Way to Eden. Source: IMDb
Space hippies.
They sing.
They reject mainstream society.
They distrust authority.
They search for a mythical place called Eden where they believe they can live differently.
It is gloriously, unmistakably 1969.
But underneath the dated presentation is an interesting question.
What happens to the counterculture when society has supposedly become utopian?
Apparently somebody still looks around and says:
Nah. Not for me.
There will still be outsiders.
There will still be people questioning the system.
There will still be young people searching for something more authentic than the world handed to them.
And wonderfully, Spock understands them.
Of course he does.
The outsider recognizes the outsiders.
And What Happens If You Take Civilization Away?
In "All Our Yesterdays," Kirk, Spock and McCoy travel through a portal into different periods of another planet's past.
Image: Star Trek Episode All Our Yesterdays. Source: IMDb
Kirk ends up in a society where his knowledge gets him accused of witchcraft.
Because apparently James T. Kirk cannot enter any historical period without immediately becoming somebody's problem.
Spock and McCoy travel much farther into the past.
And Spock begins to change.
The disciplined, logical Vulcan becomes emotional, aggressive, jealous, and increasingly primitive.
Instead of giving us a lecture about ancient Vulcan history, the writers make Spock experience it.
They peel civilization away.
What remains underneath?
Again:
Make the question happen to the character.
That is something I understand differently now that I am a writer.
And Then There Was Spock
I don't think you can talk about what the original Star Trek created without talking about Leonard Nimoy.
Image: Leonard Nimoy. Source: Wikipedia
He didn't simply play an alien.
He helped create one.
Spock became one of the most recognizable fictional characters in modern popular culture, but something even stranger happened.
A civilization grew around him.
Vulcan logic.
Emotional discipline.
Mind melds.
The Vulcan nerve pinch.
Rituals.
History.
Philosophy.
The Vulcan salute.
Live long and prosper.
Image: Star Trek Episode. Amok Time. Source: StarTrek.com
Other writers and actors would expand Vulcan culture enormously over the decades, but Nimoy gave it a center.
Sixty years later, writers creating Vulcan characters don't get to simply make everything up from scratch.
There are rules.
Expectations.
History.
A fictional culture created for a 1960s television program became durable enough to be inherited by generations of storytellers.
That is extraordinary.
The Future Escaped the Television
And the influence didn't stop with fictional characters.
Nichelle Nichols played Lieutenant Uhura at a time when seeing a Black woman as a professional officer on the bridge of a starship was itself significant.
Image: Nichelle Nichols. Source: Wikipedia
Then Nichols went beyond portraying that future.
She helped create it.
Through her work with NASA, she helped recruit women and minorities into the American space program.
Image: Nichelle Nichols at NASA. Source: Aerotech News
Think about how beautifully strange that is.
A woman plays a character helping humanity explore space.
Then the actor herself helps recruit people who will actually go into space.
At some point, science fiction stopped merely imagining the future and started participating in it.
Leonard Nimoy became far more than Spock, including hosting In Search of..., feeding another generation of nerds fascinated by mysteries and unexplained phenomena.
Image: Leonard Nimoy, In Search Of. Source: IMDb
William Shatner became Captain Kirk, then T.J. Hooker, author, performer, pitchman and eventually something that can really only be described as William Shatner.
Image: William Shatner as TJ Hooker. Source: IMDb
And then, at age 90, the man who played Captain Kirk actually went to space.
Image: William Shatner. Source: Deadline
Come on.
If I wrote that ending for a fictional character, somebody would tell me it was too obvious.
Seventy-Nine Episodes
The original Star Trek wasn't perfect.
That's important.
Some ideas haven't aged well. Some episodes work better than others. Sometimes its ambition exceeded its execution.
But those writers were brave.
They weren't afraid of an idea.
They weren't afraid to ask:
What if?
What if racism were made visibly absurd?
What if machines could replace us?
What if we built those machines in our own image?
What if gender and identity could be separated from the body?
What if love survived that separation?
What if fascism could seduce someone who believed they could control it?
What if Rome never fell?
What if faith appeared somewhere other than Earth?
What if our utopia still produced rebels?
What if the Federation became the empire?
What if civilization itself were thinner than we thought?
And what if humanity actually survived long enough to become something better?
That last one may be the biggest question of all.
I Inherited It
I didn't watch Star Trek when it premiered sixty years ago today.
I didn't experience those 79 episodes as something new.
I inherited them.
I grew up in a house full of nerds where this strange canceled television show had somehow refused to die.
I watched it.
Loved it.
Argued with it.
Remembered it.
And somewhere along the way, without realizing it, I absorbed something from those writers.
Permission.
Permission to make the question enormous.
Permission to build another world when this one isn't big enough to contain the idea.
Permission to use aliens to talk about humans.
Permission to imagine technology and then ask what it might do to us.
Permission to create civilizations, histories, beliefs and people who have never existed.
Permission to look at something everyone accepts and ask:
But what if...?
Sixty years later, Star Trek is still here.
New actors have stepped onto bridges.
New writers have inherited the universe.
New audiences have discovered it.
And somewhere, another nerdy kid is probably encountering the Enterprise for the first time.
They weren't there either.
That's okay.
Neither was I.
Some stories don't belong only to the people who were there when they began.
Some stories are meant to be inherited.
Happy 60th anniversary, Star Trek.
Thank you for all the great stories you have given us.
Thanks for the beautiful science fiction fantasy.
Thanks for the inheritance.
And, of course...
Live long and prosper. 🖖
Sources & Further Exploration
For the published version, I’d ground the historical material in official Star Trek/Paramount resources, NASA's history of Nichelle Nichols' recruitment work, Smithsonian/NASA material where appropriate, archival information on the original series and its syndication history, and primary or strong archival sources for Leonard Nimoy's contributions to Spock and Vulcan culture. The episode interpretations themselves should remain clearly your readings of the stories, because that's where this piece gets its personality rather than turning into Trek Wikipedia with better jokes.
Thanks for taking this trip back with me.
What do you remember? Were you there too, or did this story bring back a memory of your own? I’d love to hear it. Share your stories in the comments, and if this made you smile, laugh, cringe, or remember sitting in front of the television waiting for the Enterprise to appear, share it with another nerd who inherited it too.
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Until next time...
Keep the memories alive. Keep the stories coming. And whatever you do... turn it up.
— Dr. AY Heath (Angel)
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