Star Trek Inspires People ‘to Boldly Go’

They used to say that if man was meant to fly, he’d have wings. But he did fly. He discovered he had to. —Captain Kirk, Star Trek, “Return to Tomorrow”

In the 1960s, the idea of using a computer to effortlessly find any piece of information was unheard of. But Star Trek (1967–1969) depicted just that: a computer plugged into a galaxy-wide database that could answer all sorts of questions, from the dates of historic events to the weather on distant planets.

Star Trek had a small, albeit dedicated, audience during its original run, but it grew more popular when it was rebroadcast and sold abroad during the 1970s. One of the many fans it gained was Amit Singhal, a computer engineer growing up in India at the time. Inspired by the Star Trek computer, Singhal pursued a career in information retrieval. By the year 2000, he was working for a then little-known internet start-up called Google. Singhal designed Google’s search engine algorithms, which made it practically everyone’s go-to resource for information. He later recounted his journey “from a little boy growing up in the Himalayas dreaming of the Star Trek computer, to an immigrant who came to the United States with two suitcases and not much else, to the person responsible for Search at Google.”¹

Whereas the computer in the original Star Trek could only respond to basic, clearly phrased voice commands to search its database and solve problems, the sequel series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994) depicted a conversational computer that could understand natural human speech and do such things as locate people on the ship or identify objects in the room. Toni Reid, who oversaw the development of the Amazon Echo and its Alexa interface, sought to emulate the Next Generation computer with her product. “The original inspiration for the Amazon Echo was the Star Trek computer,” she said, a machine that is “easy to converse with in a natural way, and people can ask it questions and request it do and find things for them.”² That project would have been impossible without Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, a lifelong Star Trek fan. He used a large part of his fortune from developing Amazon to achieve his Star Trek-inspired dream of making commercial spaceflight a reality. In a beautiful celebration of Star Trek’s influence on his work, Bezos gave a seat on one of his company’s first flights into space to William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk on the original series.³

Fiction has enormous power to inspire, and Star Trek has inspired countless inventors, astronauts, scientists, writers, activists, and more. Why has it had this effect on people? It’s not just the futuristic technologies Star Trek depicts that make it inspirational—it’s also the philosophy and sense of life it conveys.

That sense of life is perhaps best captured by an exchange in an early episode of The Next Generation between Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and a powerful alien named Q (John DeLancie), who puts the Enterprise crew through a series of trials as a test of humanity itself:

Picard: “What Hamlet said with irony I say with conviction: ‘What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!’”

Q: “Surely you don’t see your species like that, do you?”

Picard: “I see us one day becoming that.”⁴

This optimistic depiction of heroic human beings using their minds to build a grand interstellar civilization is what makes Star Trek really stand out. Gene Roddenberry, the mastermind behind the series, put it this way: “Star Trek speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow—it’s not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans.”⁵ When Star Trek aired—in the middle of the Cold War, only a few years after the Cuban missile crisis—this was a refreshingly positive outlook. Instead of a story about war or violence, Star Trek was about exploration and discovery. The opening narration to every episode described the Enterprise’s mission as being “To explore new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no man has gone before.”⁶ In Star Trek, technology was depicted as a force for good, something to be thankful for, not something to fear. Candy Torres, a Star Trek-inspired NASA software engineer, explains: “Technology and the future were positive. The world would be better because we had science and technology to make things better and solve problems.”⁷

Another thing that made Star Trek distinctive in the 1960s, a time when racial segregation still existed in America and some careers were still not open to women, was its depiction of men and women of various races and nationalities working as equals. The original pilot episode, “The Cage,” featured a woman as first officer on the Enterprise. This was a radical idea in America at the time. The studio claimed audiences wouldn’t buy a woman in a position of authority and made Roddenberry drop the character in later episodes.⁸ But he managed to keep a woman on the main crew—and not just a woman, but a black woman, to the shock of many contemporary viewers: Nichelle Nicholls as Lieutenant Uhura.

NASA astronaut Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space, later credited Uhura’s character with inspiring her to believe that, despite social norms to the contrary, she could become an astronaut regardless of her race and gender (NASA flew only male astronauts until 1984). Jemison later noted that Uhura, and Nicholls herself, inspired numerous black Americans to pursue careers in science, saying that Nicholls “used her celebrity to bring in applications [to NASA].”⁹ During her spaceflight, Jemison began every transmission with “hailing frequencies are open,” Uhura’s most recognizable line from Star Trek. She later appeared in an episode of The Next Generation, becoming the first real-life astronaut to appear on Star Trek.¹⁰

Star Trek has not only inspired people to become scientists, adventurers, and innovators—it has shown people that unchosen qualities such as race, nationality, and gender shouldn’t be a barrier to pursuing those careers. When Nicholls was considering leaving the series, her self-proclaimed “biggest fan,” Martin Luther King Jr., encouraged her to remain, telling her, “Don’t you understand for the first time we’re seen as we should be seen? You don’t have a black role. You have an equal role.”¹¹

Star Trek’s crew also included a Japanese character (at a time when Japanese people in America were still subject to prejudice left over from the Second World War) and a Russian character (albeit played by an American). In doing this, Roddenberry was depicting a future in which people are evaluated as individuals, not as members of a racial or national group. Having served as a pilot in WWII’s Pacific Theater and seen the human suffering and hatred of the conflict firsthand, he came to the view that a peaceful future was possible only if people could learn to see the differences between themselves and others as fascinating rather than frightening: “If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear.”¹²

Many enemies the Star Trek crews encounter represent some form of collectivism: they treat their race or group identity as more important than the lives of individuals. A notable example from the original 1960s series is the supercomputer Landru in “The Return of the Archons.” Landru forces people into an obedient collective called “the Body,” telling them that “your individuality will merge into the unity of the good, and in your submergence into the common being of the Body, you will find contentment and fulfillment. You will experience the absolute good.” Observing the society Landru has created, Spock (Leonard Nimoy) comments, “This is a soulless society, Captain. It has no spirit, no spark. All is indeed peace and tranquility—the peace of the factory; the tranquility of the machine; all parts working in unison.”¹³

The most notable collectivists in Star Trek are the Borg—also known as “the collective”—a race of cyborgs (half-biological, half-mechanical beings) wired into a collective consciousness through an “assimilation” process that overrides their individual identities, thoughts, and values. Introduced in The Next Generation, the Borg became the basis of numerous stories about the nature of the individual. As Enterprise engineer Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton) explains to one Borg “drone” who gets separated from the collective, “We are all separate individuals. . . . I choose what I want to do with my life. I make decisions for myself. For somebody like me, losing that sense of individuality is almost worse than dying.”¹⁴ Later, in Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001), the crew rescues Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), a human who was assimilated by the Borg as a child. This begins a four-year story arc about her rediscovering her individuality. These stories inspire viewers to contemplate their own individuality and evaluate what values and traits set them apart from others.

In contrast to the Borg, who mindlessly follow the collective’s directions, Star Trek’s heroes are principled, efficacious, and defiant in the face of adversity. An excellent example of this is Voyager’s Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). When, in the first episode, her ship is stranded seventy thousand light years from Earth, she sets the goal of getting her crew home, even though the journey would take more than seventy years at the ship’s maximum speed. Despite her dedication to this goal, she repeatedly passes up opportunities to get home faster when doing so would involve supporting oppressive regimes, stealing technology, or harming innocent people. Not only is Janeway an inspiring model of determination, but she also demonstrates how to balance that with a fierce commitment to moral principles.

As the franchise has evolved, Star Trek’s philosophy has changed considerably. The original series was conceived as a kind of space Western, a “Wagon Train to the stars,” that would capture the frontier spirit of classic American Westerns.¹⁵ As such, it embodied a great deal of American values (one episode even involved Captain Kirk reading the preamble to the U.S. Constitution), which one commentator complained gave the series “an infuriating undertone of pious Republican morality.”¹⁶ For many, however, it imbued the series with an inspiring message not only about the future of humanity in general, but about what individuals can achieve when left free to pursue their goals. It fostered a spirit of exploration, discovery, and determination in the face of challenges—just like the classic Westerns.

These ideas are present in every subsequent Star Trek series, but some, especially The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999), move away from traditional American values. They depict a moneyless society, in which people no longer pursue material wealth (ironic for a show set on a starship called “Enterprise”). This idea is entirely absent from the original Star Trek. According to Captain Picard, people in the future, no longer in need of material things thanks to the huge abundance technology has created, are instead driven by a challenge “to improve yourself. To [spiritually] enrich yourself.”¹⁷ The idea that people would be so motivated is definitely inspiring—as is the idea that future technology will create such abundance that hunger and poverty no longer exist. But it is through pursuing material wealth that people develop and maintain such technology, a fact that this idea overlooks, and it is a shame these series discourage wealth creation in how they belittle money and capitalism.

The prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–2005), set before the abolition of money and during the early human exploration of other worlds, notably returns to the frontier spirit of the original series, even featuring a Western-themed episode. Had Enterprise not inspired me to stay firm in the face of challenges and explore the idea of a philosophy based on logic, I would not be writing this article today.

Star Trek’s many inspirational qualities far outweigh its occasionally dismissive attitude toward entrepreneurship. A notable feature of most Star Trek series is their use of allegory to explore moral and philosophic questions. This often involves using story lines about alien races to stand in for issues on contemporary Earth: The original series episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” famously used aliens with faces that were black on one side and white on the other (except for a minority, which had the colors inverted) as an allegory for racial discrimination. A few other examples are the Next Generation episode “Who Watches the Watchers?,” which explores the morality of spying on people without their consent; and the Voyager episode “Scorpion,” which explores the question of whether to ally with and aid an evil faction (the Borg) to defeat an even greater threat. All seven seasons of Deep Space Nine deal with the aftermath of a brutal military occupation, exploring how justice applies to the perpetrators and enablers of such atrocities, how to evaluate acts of revenge on the part of the victims, and the morality of benefiting from work done by the occupiers during their savage rule. By exploring issues in this allegorical way, Star Trek encourages viewers to think through such questions critically, without bringing to the table preexisting opinions on specific examples from Earth. Although the philosophic messages of these stories vary, in most cases characters give strong arguments for multiple sides of the issue in question, and the debate is dramatized in an even-handed, rational manner. Unfortunately, the recent series Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2023) and the first two seasons of Star Trek: Picard (2020–2023) faltered in replicating this balanced exploration of moral questions, with certain episodes containing direct, unchallenged assertions of the writers’ political and social views. However, the latest series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022–present), and the third and final season of Picard have done a much better job and have captured Star Trek’s optimistic spirit and heroic characterization much better than other recent installments.

One last important sense in which Star Trek has inspired people is through influencing other creators of fiction. Several other philosophically rich works of science fiction television, such as Babylon 5, Stargate SG1, Farscape, and The Orville, were directly influenced by Star Trek, and the writers of all four incorporated explicit references to it in their episodes. Brad Wright, cocreator of Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, and Travelers, called Star Trek “the show that made me want to write for television.”¹⁸

Although its vision for the future is sometimes imperfect, Star Trek has, with its unabashed optimism, celebration of science and technology, and exploration of philosophic and moral questions, inspired countless people to achieve wonderful things. The second series of Strange New Worlds is now airing on Paramount+. Hopefully it and future Star Trek productions will continue inspiring the next generation “to boldly go.”

About Thomas Walker-Werth

Thomas Walker-Werth is associate editor at The Objective Standard and a fellow at both Objective Standard Institute and Foundation for Economic Education. He is currently writing his first full-length book, Reason for Living: A Rational, Fact-Based Approach to Living Your Best Life. See more of his work at walker-werth.com.

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