Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from “Star Trek”

Thanks to these two bloggers for sponsoring the annual Blog Discussion Challenge:

• Nicole at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
• Shannon at It Starts at Midnight

Here in the U.S. today is national science fiction day, observed annually in honor of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who was born on January 2, 1920.

I didn’t read science fiction as a teenager or young adult. To the best of my recollection, I discovered science fiction through television rather than books. My introduction came through the original Star Trek series, which was first broadcast from 1966 through 1969. However, I didn’t watch it until I was  in graduate school, by which time it was in syndication, around star date fall 1970. The show came on around 5:00 PM, and we watched it while eating dinner.

The series fascinated me, even on a black-and-white television, and awakened me to how science fiction uses a future setting to illuminate current situations. One memorable episode presented two inhabitants from the same planet, one who was white on the left side of his body and black on the right side, and the other who was black on the left side and white on the right. These two representatives of their kind were doomed to travel eternally through a bubble of time fighting each other for supremacy. In another memorable episode, a transporter malfunction split Captain Kirk into two halves, one who was arrogant, selfish, and aggressive, and the other who was indecisive and ineffective. Fortunately, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott was able to repair the transporter, and a second run-through reunited the captain’s two halves. The moral of the story: leaders must be brave and decisive while also displaying compassion and empathy.

In addition to individual Star Trek episodes, I loved the overall series setup, with its cast of disparate characters and their ongoing interactions. At the center was Captain Kirk, with his two best friends, science officer Mr. Spock and ship’s doctor Leonard McCoy. While the captain, of course, ultimately made most decisions, he usually received advice from the other two. Spock was half Vulcan and had been trained to suppress emotion and solve problems solely through logic. McCoy, on the other hand, although technically a scientist, employed the full range of human emotions in his advice. The  crew aboard the Starship Enterprise got along by respecting and appreciating each others’ individual differences and common humanity. Overall, between the discrete episodes and the series’ narrative arc, Star Trek covered just about the complete spectrum of life issues. 

Some time in the early 1990s, the magic of cable television arrived in my suburb and introduced me to Alien Nation, another science fiction show, which lasted for only one season (September 1989 to May 1990). (The series was based on a 1988 movie with the same title, but I haven’t seen it.) In this series, set in San Francisco, humans had to integrate with aliens who arrived on earth from another planet. Much like in Star Trek, the two peoples had to learn to accept and respect their differences. In one episode that stands out in my memory, a human macho police officer allows his alien girlfriend to teach him how to knit. The general consensus about Alien Nation is that it was ahead of its time and should have extended beyond a single season. 

A few years after Alien Nation, I discovered Quantum Leap, a series that lasted for five seasons (March 1989 to May 1993). As with Star Trek, I watched the show in syndication rather than when it was originally broadcast. The series features a physicist, Dr. Sam Beckett, who leaps into a time-travel experiment he has created and gets caught in a time loop. In each episode he is propelled into the body of another person in order to correct some wrong that has occurred in that person’s life. Beckett has no control over when or where he will leap, and when he lands he has to figure out who and where he is and what problem he needs to solve.

After these three television shows, I must have realized that I might enjoy reading science fiction. Since I was intrigued by the notion of time travel, I started with Jack Finney’s 1970 novel Time and Again, which my reading spreadsheet tells me I read in 1997. 

From these experiences I’ve learned two lessons. The first is the power of stories, especially stories of individual lives. In fact, writing this piece has just made me realize that the development of my appreciation of science fiction probably unconsciously contributed to my interest in Life Stories in Literature.

The second lesson I’ve learned is this: Science fiction isn’t about the future; it’s about the present.

Recently I’ve been interested in memory and how it shapes our sense of identity. Novels such as The Blinds by Adam Sternbergh and Recursion by Blake Crouch explore this topic. Another identity-related topic currently much in vogue is the quantum physics hypothesis of the multiverse and parallel universes, which novelists such as Blake Crouch (Dark Matter) and Matt Haig (The Midnight Library) have used as metaphors for exploring the nature of life and what it means to be human. 

I’ve learned a lot from reading novels such as these. And to think: I owe it all to Star Trek.

Study Notes

20 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Look Forward to in 2025

This list by Natalie Zutter for Lit Hub includes horror and fantasy as well as science fiction, so be sure to read the descriptions.

Does Science Fiction Shape the Future?

© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown