The Starship Enterprise Has Been Flying for 60 Years, Carrying a Message for Us

The promise landed like lightning in 1966: “The Starship Enterprise ventures into galaxies that no human has ever seen.” Millions of viewers suddenly wanted to be nowhere else but on the bridge of the Federation flagship.

There, extraordinary things happened. The crew traveled faster than light, while space and time lost their usual meaning. Parallel universes appeared in which villains became heroes and heroes became villains. Humans made their first intimate contacts with extraterrestrials.

The crew itself was exceptional. Captain Kirk was a charming daredevil who could dish it out and take it. With communications officer Lieutenant Uhura, he shared what was then the most famous kiss in film history between people of different races. Scotty, the brilliant engineer, could repair a faster-than-light drive with little more than wire and chewing gum if necessary. After actor James Doohan died, his ashes were even sent into space in an urn.

And then there was Spock, the pointy-eared Vulcan whose uncompromising logic captivated viewers. His friendship with Kirk quickly became legendary. They saved each other’s lives repeatedly, each in his own way: Kirk through earthly improvisation, Spock more often through the Vulcan nerve pinch.

The loyal viewers who soon called themselves Trekkies valued another quality in the Enterprise crew. However deeply alien villains pushed the crew into trouble, the humans escaped through ingenuity and intelligence. However powerful the aliens seemed, they ultimately proved as vain and fallible as humanity itself. The danger became more complicated when it came from within the crew. One officer and friend of Kirk gained overwhelming powers and nearly destroyed the ship in a fit of human grandiosity. On another occasion, a deceitful scientist cloned Kirk, and the aggressive duplicate began causing havoc.

Gene Roddenberry’s achievement was to tell humanity that it deserved a place in the universe as long as it showed its best side. We are all made from the same stardust. The ship and its 430-member crew traveled 79 times to worlds no human had seen before, until the studios’ earthly financiers cut off its funding. By then, the Enterprise had become impossible to remove from popular culture. Today, Starfleet continues to explore not only the universe, but has itself become one.

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The Starship Enterprise ventures into galaxies that no human has ever seen.