Exemplification Essay

STAR TREK

"Space, the final frontier..." It's been over thirty-five years since those words first echoed out of American television sets on September 9th, 1966.  Despite their proposed "five year mission,” the show only ran for three seasons due to poor ratings.  People at that time just couldn't believe it.  I remember watching the first episode with my dad and some of his friends.  They were all college students at California Polytechnic Institute at Pomona, one of the leaders in science and technology with close affiliations to Jet Propulsion Laboratories.  These were serious men, with slide rules and natural logarithm tables, pocket protectors and thick glasses.  These were guys who, someday soon, could very well be putting people on the moon.  And they were laughing hysterically at the program, saying things like: "No way, it'll never happen," or "It can't be done.”  Despite the show’s poor ratings and the scientific community’s dismissal of the concepts the program illustrated, Star Trek was a remarkable portrayal of the future to come.

For example, at the time of the show’s release, the American/Soviet cold war was becoming hot and tense.  Not long before the show aired, the Soviet Prime Minister, Nikita Khrushchev, took off his shoe in an assemblage of the United Nations, and pounded the podium with it.  Demanding to be heard, Khrushchev told the world, “Communism will prevail,” before he stormed out of the meeting and headed back to the Soviet Union.  The Cuban Missile Crisis/Bay of Pigs incident was still fresh in American minds.  The Cuban Communist leader, Fidel Castro, armed with Soviet nuclear missiles, had broken off all relations with the United States and begun setting up missile silos within striking distance of American targets.  China, too, was starting to become a threat.  The Chinese people were becoming Communist, arming themselves with Soviet technology, and expanding their boarders.  The conflict in Viet Nam had become an American interest, also, with American advisors and equipment being sent overseas to help establish a foothold for Democracy.

World tensions at the time of the show’s release were at an all time high.  Peace was not something that was looming on the horizon.  Reconciliation of the political differences throughout the world did not seem forthcoming.  Yet, here was a television program showing the aftermath of all that.  Here was a program showing us that Russians, Chinese, Americans, Europeans and Africans could indeed work together towards a common goal.  Today, world tensions are still on shaky ground, but since the show’s release the Berlin Wall has come down, the Iron Curtain has dissolved, President Nixon went to China to open a dialogue, and the African nations are attempting to unite and overthrow Apartheid.  Along with that, the American and Soviet governments and space agencies have joined hands on more than one occasion to further the exploration of space and the advancement of science.  Who would have thought, at the time of Star Trek’s release, that Apollo/Soyuz would become such an immediate reality?

Another touchy subject here in America at the time of the show’s release were the issues of Women’s Rights, Minority Rights and Race Relations.  Shortly after the show first aired, Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered for proclaiming that blacks and whites should be treated as equals.  A new Women’s Liberation movement was also underway here in America as women began to organize and demand a fair shake within the system.  At that time in American television history, minorities were depicted (if they were depicted at all) as inferior second-class citizens, usually shown as the servant or the bad guy.  Women were usually depicted as the housewife, secretary or sex object, and rarely shown in positions of power, authority or responsibility.  Inter-racial relationships simply did not exist on television at that time.

And then along came Star Trek, where one of the lead characters, the first officer onboard the vessel, was the child of a human mother and an alien father, explicitly introducing the premise that inter-racial relationships are indeed taking place in our future.  Another lead character, the white male human captain of the vessel, is shown having relationships with alien females where the female was the instigator of the encounter.  Females were often depicted as equals to men with their own sexual desires and shown possessing a strength and independence that was uncommon for television female characters of the time.  Human women, too, were not portrayed as second-class citizens.  For example, a senior bridge officer was not only a woman, but also a black woman.  In two different episodes this woman was given command of the ship and was responsible for the safety and well being of over 400 crewmembers.  In every other episode of the show her high profile position helped to serve as a positive roll model for black men and women around the world.  Further ground breaking territory was explored in an episode in which a white male kissed a black female fully on the mouth in what was, at that time, television’s first ever "inter-racial" kiss.  That one episode of Star Trek generated more mail (both pro and con) to the producers of the show than any other television show in history to that date.

Today’s society is still far from the egalitarian society portrayed in Star Trek.  However, women and minorities do hold positions of power, authority and responsibility within the corporate field, the educational environment and the political arena.  Inter-racial relationships have become an issue of the past, or, at the very least, much more main stream a concept, as gay and lesbian groups march onto the scene demanding equal and fair rights.  And where as television still portrays minorities as servants and women as housewives, they also portray them as movers and shakers.

The last concept viewers found so difficult to believe when the show first aired was the technology.  Star Trek was resplendent in fancy gadgetry and out of this world gizmos.  At that time in world history, computers were housed in spaces the size of Grand Central Station and they required a fleet of scientists and engineers to keep them operating.  They were programmed by miles of magnetic tape or stacks of punch cards and then, after hours (if not days) of computing, they would finally spit out their findings on reams of ticker tape.  The concept of programming a computer by simply talking to it wasn't merely science fiction, it was pure fantasy.  And yet today, voice recognition software is available off of the shelf, at a relatively inexpensive price, for any one with a home PC.  Portable computers that could easily be carried were another flight of fancy, seemingly impossible to achieve. Today lap top computers and Palm Pilots have become readily accessible and commonplace. The communicator was another laughable item.  At the time the show first aired, the most sophisticated portable communication device was the military field phone.  It was a device weighing many pounds, with a very limited range, and required a backpack to carry it and all of its component parts.  Today, cell phones are seen in the hands of twelve year olds.  In fact, the cell phone of today is smaller and more sophisticated than the communication devices portrayed in the original television series.  The medical facilities as depicted on the television show were also deemed beyond belief.  Obtain complete medical readings from a patient simply by laying on a table?  Administer medications without a needle?  Perform surgery without a scalpel?  "Impossible!" shouted critics of the show.  But today, medical telemetry is a thing of the past.  Use of Cat Scans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging and sonograms are common practice throughout the medical community.  Hypo spray inoculations are the preferred method for performing mass immunizations.  Many people owe their vision to laser surgery, and many more people owe their very lives to having calcium or plaque build ups removed from soft tissues and organs through the use of sound waves.

Star Trek was not a popular program when it first came out.  Critics and skeptics found many reasons to laugh the show off the airwaves.  Society at large was not ready for the egalitarian concepts portrayed within the stories.  Yet, despite being canceled, despite the poor ratings, Star Trek was indeed a remarkable portrayal of the future yet to come, the future we live in now.