And this brings me back to one of
my personal favorite subjects: Star Trek and to a broader extent the science
fiction and futurism of from the 1960s. Now if you go back just a few years
earlier to 1956 and look at the film Forbidden Planet it represents a very
monocultural view of the future — in fact the crew of the C-57D starship could
have been identical to an Elizabethan naval vessel from the 1600s. While the
film looks good the cultural setup of it feels like its trapped in the 50s.But
then just ten years later with Star Trek we see an international and
multicultural crew — and to me this was a direct result of both the civil
rights struggle and the world itself becoming a smaller place. And this shift
didn’t happen by accident: In the case of Star Trek it was because Gene
Roddenberry stuck to his vision of an inclusive future even if it put his show
at risk.