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Why I Love Star Trek

I was coming home after dinner with friends, and I couldn't get it out of my head. It was a melody composed by Jay Chattaway, written for what would become the most popular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Both the episode and the piece are called, "The Inner Light." It's a simple, haunting melody, and it's the sort of thing you hear, and immediately want to hear again. The emotional power of the episode has something to do with it. I'll not tell it here. Let's just say that it's the epitome of Star Trek in its relentless optimism, and its abiding humanism. That was Roddenberry's vision. Star Trek has room and the creative forces to go beyond that vision to a point, but not to repudiate it. And I think that if there was a criticism I could level with those who carry on the tradition of Star Trek, it's that it flirts with being too gritty, too present-day. I'm the furthest thing from a secularist, so it could always rub me wrong, and hit false notes. But whatever the Christian tradition conserves, and the revelation of Jesus Christ means for human limitations in a certain sense, it has never been misanthropic. Christianity is humanism writ large. Jesus Christ reveals Man to himself.

When I was a kid, I wanted adventure. I needed to be unbound from certain limits of everyday life. Star Trek touched that need powerfully. No matter what's going on, you are more than this. You have more to give and to be. It's transparently aspirational. This is why the atheist-humanists get weird about aliens and space: You can repudiate any "religion" you like, but we are made to give ourselves totally to something--Someone--bigger than ourselves. I would say this Saganist (Saganian?) quasi-religious vision only scores points against Christianity when that faith is conceived fideistically. A closed, incurious faith is no match for the enormity of what humans could, and do, know. I digress.

If you think it's just a geeky TV show, consider that this one show aired 47 years ago, spawned 5 spin-off series, and 12 films. And don't even begin to think it's over. This is not just a niche; it's a bonafide cultural touchstone. Star Trek has power because its storytelling fuels are the questions of meaning. What does it all mean, and what does it mean to me, and for me? Depending on what you find therein, it may not be the right answer. But you have to appreciate anything that inspires the right questions.

The whole body of ideas and stories is littered with literary allusions, historical references, and insights from every field of human inquiry. You can snare a boy with any good adventure. It takes something special to make something that grows with him, that inculcates a life-long curiosity and openness to learning. That's why Star Trek is special.

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