Star Trek’s Original Series Shows That Science Fiction Has Always Been Political
It’s a strange thing to see whenever a new Star Trek series or character is announced and revealed to have some form of current social commentary in it, that there’s inevitably a comment from some disgruntled person. Such comments come in various phrasing, but often amount to someone saying they’re no longer going to watch Star Trek because it’s gotten so political.
The original series (known as TOS-era Trek) came out during the 1960s, a time of upheaval in the cultural fabric of the United States. Campus kids protested the war in Vietnam, hippies were expanding their minds with all sorts of new drugs, and America was in an uproar over the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. Star Trek was birthed into this world. Like all great sci-fi, it was a reflection of its time, not just simple speculation about the future.
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Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, schlepped the show all over town. He pitched his concept as a combination of Horatio Hornblower (high-seas adventures; think the original Master and Commander) and Wagon Train, about a gaggle of different space explorers, all part of a unified crew. The characters would take the risks explorers of old did, but in the vast frontier of space itself. It was finally the production company Desilu, helmed by the first lady of television comedy and a bold entrepreneur, Lucille Ball, that took on the show, and the rest was history.
When Star Trek debuted, it broke new ground in all sorts of ways. The first and most obvious was in the makeup of its core cast, the bridge crew of the Enterprise itself. There was a black woman, Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols); there was a Japanese man, Hiruku Sulu (George Takei). This
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