Editor's Log, Star Date, August 11th, 2021.

To Mark, what would have been the 100th birthday of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of one of my favorite shows,

we are replaying a piece I made all the way back in 2006.

I'm Brooke Gladstone. I am a trekker.

Get a light, 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 was not so much a utopia as a kind of galactic great society,

...