“Star Trek not only shows us a realistic and believable future with us in it, but it also shows us an optimistic one, and it paints a picture of who we could be one day.” 

— Rod Roddenberry, producer and son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry

By Robert Edelstein

In 1996, William Shatner, who’d played James T. Kirk, stalwart captain of the USS Enterprise, stood in a Cleveland airport making a call. He’d recently been gifted one of Motorola’s first-ever StarTAC flip phones, which greatly resembled the communicators on Star Trek: The Original Series that Shatner had fronted during its three-season run, followed by years of syndication and increased popularity. As he flipped the phone open, “not at all conscious of what people might observe and identify,” he found himself surrounded by smiling fellow air travelers who saw comfort and beautiful sci-fi irony in the gesture. 

“It was really laughable,” Shatner recalled.

It also smacked of a kind of blissful continuity. One year earlier, Shatner’s Kirk had bravely perished at the end of the film Star Trek Generations, doing so after once again helping to save the universe. Among his dying words, he’d asked his future counterpart, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart): “Did we do it? Did we make a difference?”

Yet more irony. Here, in 2026, with this most  popular, motivational and instructive entertainment canon now celebrating 60 years, one is compelled to ask, “Did Star Trek, the beloved television and movie franchise itself, make a difference in the lives of millions of viewers for several generations?” And the answer, as Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock might have loudly answered is, “Affirmative.”

Bridge to the Future

The idealistic and futuristic television show, which was created by writer-producer Gene Roddenberry and premiered on NBC on Sept. 8, 1966, has blossomed from its original 79 episodes to now include 13 theatrical films, one TV movie and 13 series, countless novels and collections of fan fiction, video games, nonfiction books, comic books and merchandise. And while it may have generated more than $11 billion in total revenue, its fame is best measured by an incalculable worth as an inspiration for philosophy and technology, for peace and inclusion and for the promise that we will — as one prominent 19th-century human once expressed — always find the “better angels of our nature.”

“Star Trek not only shows us a realistic and believable future with us in it, but it also shows us an optimistic one, and it paints a picture of who we could be one day,” said Rod Roddenberry, producer and son of the franchise’s creator. Added Sonequa Martin-Green, who, as Michael Burnham on the 2017–24 series Star Trek: Discovery, became the first-ever woman of color to command a Federation starship: “It speaks to deeper levels of humanity. It shows us what we dearly want to be and that is always going to be irresistible.”

Gene Roddenberry had pitched his idea to wary network execs as a “Wagon Train to the stars,” suggesting the show would have Wild West-level action. Once green-lit after a rare second pilot was filmed, the man eventually dubbed the “Great Bird of the Galaxy” gave Cold War-era audiences a 23rd-century spaceship led by an Iowa-born captain. He was aided by pointy-eared Vulcan first officer Mr. Spock and Southern chief of medicine Dr. Leonard McCoy, along with a bridge that included Russian navigator Mr. Chekov, Japanese helmsman Mr. Sulu and Lt. Uhura, a Kenyan woman handling communications. The show had adventure, but it also had pathos, inexpensively made but brilliantly conceived and constructed future tech and plots that reflected the sensibilities and conflicts of the era. On that series, “Good does not always prevail, nor is evil always defeated, but it’s more typical than not,” said Oscar-
winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who also co-created and was co-showrunner for three Trek series, including current iteration Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. “I think that was done with intelligence and moral complexity, and that’s what Star Trek is.”

“It speaks to deeper levels of humanity. It shows us what we dearly want to be and that is always going to be irresistible.”

—Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays Michael Burnham on Star Trek: Discovery

Living Long and Prospering

During its series run and subsequent syndication, the show maintained a rabid fanbase (Goldsman himself attended an early Star Trek convention) which, after the success of the film Star Wars in 1977, led to 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the first of six movies starring the Original Series cast, and the birth of Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV. After TNG’s 1987–94 run, that cast — led by Stewart — starred in four films. The J.J. Abrams reboot movies followed, while 10 other TV series took the concept to Trek’s future and past, in each case continuing to break barriers, introduce new life-forms and new civilizations and, as the famed opening narration declares, boldly go where no one has gone before in both the outer reaches of the galaxy and the expectations of earthbound entertainment.

And now, at 60, Star Trek holds a vaunted place of honor in space travel (NASA named its Space Shuttle prototype Enterprise), in the vernacular (no phrase expresses deadline stress better than “Beam me up, Scotty!”) and innovation (the show’s tricorder, transporter and replicator have influenced scores of scientific developments). And even as its parent company continues finding ways to keep its message strong through future versions, Star Trek remains a beacon of, as Shatner puts it, “a quality of wonder and curiosity. It’s that nature of discovery.”

And that’s what will keep Star Trek poised in its continued exploration of the Final Frontier. It has to. Any other path would not be logical.