{"id":524,"date":"2026-09-07T14:34:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T20:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beaucoupkevin.com\/blog\/?p=524"},"modified":"2026-09-07T14:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T20:38:10","slug":"my-obligatory-star-trek-is-60-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beaucoupkevin.com\/blog\/my-obligatory-star-trek-is-60-post\/","title":{"rendered":"My Obligatory “Star Trek is 60” Post"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before we get started, let me point you to the post I wrote for They Boldly Went <\/a>back at the fifty year mark<\/em>. It’s broader and probably better than what we’ve got here, but hey, you decid<\/em>e. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Arena”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

That was the first episode I saw. It was 1981, I was seven years old, and I had a fish bone stuck in my throat. This kind of mishap was not uncommon for a kid in the South at the time \u2014 at least four meals a month came from the local lakes \u2014 and I was stuck sitting on the floor of my parents’ bedroom, watching their TV and sipping vinegar to make the errant piece of calcium phosphate and collagen bend and move one way or the other. 1<\/a><\/sup> This bit of folk medicine has since been disproven, but it was Arkansas in the Eighties, which was basically the rest of the world in the Thirties.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Arena” hit me like a ton of bricks. It was colorful, it was fast,2<\/a><\/sup>Seriously, today’s kids have no idea just how glacial the pacing was on most TV in the Olden Times.<\/span> it was grown-up without being out of my reach, and in a moment that was positively galvanizing, it ended with a moment of compassion instead of the Gorn captain being killed by our hero. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This blew my mind.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They actually solved the problem with their brains instead of just doing what they were supposed to do. I rushed downstairs to tell my parents what I’d seen \u2014 they were watching something like Dynasty<\/em> or Eight is Enough<\/em> or The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island<\/em> \u2014 and my dad simply responded with “So, you swallowed the fish bone?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From that point on, I’d hoard my folk’s TV every Saturday and check in with crew of the Enterprise while they got some much-needed piece and quiet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Star Trek<\/em> Taught Me<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Yet, I know you can go get Jean-Luc Picard’s Guide To Upper Management<\/a><\/em> or whatever, but let’s make this about me and the original Star Trek<\/em>, okay? I learned a lot of lessons from Kirk and crew, things I still hold close some 40+ years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It’s obvious now, but for a kid who was growing up in the south in the non-anodyne versions that existed in the real world and not Stranger Things<\/em>, it was incredibly important for me, a shitheaded white kid, to see a Black woman, a Japanese man, and yes, a goofy Russian portrayed as actual professionals, people who had done the same work as anyone else to get where they were and who were trusted by their peers who looked more like me and the people I was growing up around. The show was created during the height of the Cold War and it successfully argued that a mix of cultures, a diversity of viewpoints, an array of backgrounds was necessary to reach a better future and it maintained that relevancy for the rest of the 20th century. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even when The Original Series<\/em> was ham-handed with things like “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”3<\/a><\/sup>All respect to Frank Gorshin in this one. What a powerhouse!<\/span> and the kiss in “Plato’s Stepchildren,” it was still doing more than any other TV show to help me be a better person. “The Devil In The Dark,” among the best first watches a viewer can have, features a misunderstood alien creature who’s killing miners in an isolated facility with a revelation that reminds the audience that just because it’s not shaped like a human, that doesn’t mean it’s not a person<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Spock says this in Star Trek II<\/em> and it may have done more to make me pinko leftist I am now than any number of stump speeches and political texts. It’s a simple statement that says so much. Outside of the obvious connection to the movie in which it appeared, it’s also a statement that helped allow the Federation as it appears in the series to even exists. Those that are selfish \u2014 Harry Mudd, Cyrano Jones4<\/a><\/sup>Both of whom are charming as fuck<\/em>, to be sure.4<\/a><\/sup><\/span> \u2014 are shown as criminals and scoundrels, people who are using the largesse of the society as a whole to benefit themselves.

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Star Trek<\/em> isn’t communist. There’s still trade, there’s still shops and markets and bars and private businesses, but most of the big problems were settled by the 23rd century by a socialist society who knew that it was better to lift up everyone instead of letting a few hoard everything. The Next Generation<\/em> made this more explicit, but the implications of a massive fleet of faster-than-light ships with civilian colonies and cultural relations among hundreds of worlds are obvious. You don’t get that by being Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.

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Risk is Our Business<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Surprising no one, I was an absolute maniac for NASA when I was a kid. My dad was an engineer, so he loved the technical stuff, my mom liked going to Florida for the beaches, so we made multiple pilgrimages to Cape Kennedy. There’s no place on the planet that better represented this philosophy, brilliantly brought to life by William Shatner in “All Our Yesterdays.” To this day, this phrase comes to mind whenever I think about the men who died on the pad in Apollo 1, the Challenger’s diverse crew (two women, a Japanese man, and a Black man and three white men), and those who left us when Columbia<\/em> disintegrated during reentry (again, diverse, with an Indian woman, an American woman, an Israeli scientist and a Black man.) They knew what the risks were but they did the job anyway.

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