Over at Slate, blogger and fellow geek Matt Yglesias offers a strong defense of Star Trek and its various iterations. He argues that what continues to make Trek relevant is its firm grounding in progressive values. It offers a vision of a better future that has been made possible by hard work and a commitment to improving the condition of the human race. He then goes on to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of each series. He even says some nice things about the much-maligned Voyager.
While my cynicism can sometimes get the best of me, I’ve always appreciated the shiny future depicted in Trek. It seemed like it might be possible to live in a precursor to that world and, in many ways, we do. Star Wars is also wonderful, but its universe can be heavy on the feudalism (what with all the knights and princesses and mystical powers). In the world of Trek, success is determined by smarts and competence; everything else is secondary. That’s a world I want to keep visiting.
