Editor's Log, Star Date, September 8th, 2016.

To mark the 50th anniversary of one of my favorite shows,

we are replaying a piece I recorded 10 years ago.

I am Brooke Gladstone, and I am The Trecker.

Get a life.

Will you, people.

For crying out loud, it's just a TV show.

When William Shatner said that on Saturday Night Live,

though to be fair he didn't write it, it stung.

I think a lot of fans feel like they are not respected.

They're almost ashamed to admit they're fans of Star Trek unless they hear two or three references to Star Trek in the conversation.

Not Barbara Adams. So moved was she by the series' optimistic, pluralistic vision of the future

that when serving on the jury in the Whitewater trial 10 years ago, she wore the uniform of a Starfleet officer.

If it helps to make people think a little more about what those ideals are, then I'll keep wearing this uniform, she said,

and then was promptly dismissed for talking to the press.

Those ideals were codified by Gene Roddenberry, a former flack with the LAPD, who cut his

teeth writing Dragnet scripts on spec for Jack Webb.

His enterprise was staffed by a crack multiracial crew, and though that crew was prohibited

by the prime directive from interfering

and developing societies, as they hopped from planet to planet, Captain James T. Kirk found

some way to stamp out race hatred, fascism, and religious extremism, wherever he went. As Tim Kavanaugh

observes in the current issue of Reason magazine, the world of Star Trek

...