Jerry Goldsmith, “Ilia’s Theme”

Because in the dark and the chill of a New York City night I can feel my heart soar. I’m carried away on the wind to a thousand different worlds, my mind drifting to imagined places and impossible ideas. There is comfort in your own creation, in turning the world into a brand new place with a single thought. It links you back to a time when you thought anything was possible, and for a few minutes you reclaim that.

Your body is prostrate on the mattress, but you’re nowhere near it. You’re off and dreaming. Bring me back a souvenir from the new planet you conquer or the new civilization you discover or the new time you visit. Goodbye, good luck, and good night.

Today is the forty-fifth anniversary of Star Trek. On September 8, 1966, NBC launched its new fall programming with “The Man Trap,” a strange middling episode involving a space vampire who feasts on salt drawn from unfortunate victims. The hour elicits less than a shrug from viewers today, especially when compared with the pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” and the actual first episode produced, “The Corbomite Maneuver,” both of which have stronger science-fiction themes and a greater emphasis on briskly-paced action. This episode did have enough of the Star Trek hallmarks to demonstrate the potential of the series, relying on the old-country-doctor crotchety nature of Bones McCoy and the fantastic nature of the week’s villain to interest viewers in another go-around. That first season was unlike anything else on the networks at the time, and while the effects might appear somewhat campy to today’s discerning audiences, the ideas presented still have the ability to wow.  Godlike beings, time-travel, cunning and deadly alien empires: Star Trek was television bound only by the imaginations of its creators and the willingness of its audience to join them. The five-year mission of the USS Enterprise staggered along on a shoestring budget, especially in the oft-maligned third season, but the financial limitation never proved to be a limitation on the stories told. Yes, there were images that were out of their grasp; notice how the Klingon warships do not actually make an appearance until much later in the series, or how the aliens in the first-season finale “Operation: Annihilate!” look conspicuously like pancakes. Still, the original series presented some of the greatest science-fiction scenarios that have ever been seen on television.

Star Trek is the Guardian of Forever for its many fans, presenting a timeline of a galaxy that may still come to pass, a world where the human race pulls out towards the stars, finally united in the dream of bettering ourselves. It is, like the best of science fiction, optimistically cautious and cautiously optimistic. There are warnings out in those stars, reflections of our former barbarian nature and the animal who still resides within each and every one of us. But there is also the message that we all can rise beyond that, the idea that one day we will be greater than we are now. The evolution of the human race is not complete; our petty squabbles do not ultimately define us. The stories Trek has told, all seven-hundred-twenty-seven on screen and hundreds more in comics, games, and novels, have inspired the fans and in many cases pushed them farther than they ever would have gone on their own. I know that my life would be utterly different without it, and I’ve heard stories from devotees from one side of this world to the other that state the same thing. Trek, like the greatest stories, trains us to say “what if?” Forty-five years later, those that view it are asking the same dangerous question.  Our world, and perhaps one day the galaxy, is better off for it.