"Space, the final frontier... these are the voyages of the star ship Enterprise, it's continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To Boldly Go... where no one has gone before."
Immortal words. Spoken by immortal actors and characters, Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and James T. Kirk (William Shatner). I often wonder what people must have felt when they first saw Star Trek in the 60's? The idea that man could put aside their differences, and move into broad, bright new worlds. Such an idea seems even today kind of ridiculous. I mean think about, in its day. The cold war was in full swing, Vietnam was heating up. The civil rights movement was in full swing. And here you had a show with a Black woman, a Russian and a Asian-American as senior crewmembers. Now there is one thing I found interesting, to my knowledge at least, there has never been an Arab on Star Trek (Bar Alexander Siddig as Julian Bashir in DS9 however most people don't know he's actually Sudanese born). But I'll touch that in another blog about Star Trek I'll do in the future, as it relates to todays politics.
I remember Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) talking about a story a woman told her about when she was a little girl, and she turned on the TV and saw Star Trek... and she ran through the house screaming "Mom come quick, there's a black lady on TV and she ain't no maid!" that woman was Whoopi Goldberg. Star Trek was one of the only shows on television that Martin Luther King Jr. let his children watch. I remember, James Doohan† (Scotty) talking about a woman who sent him a letter saying she was going to commit suicide. And this is what he said:
[video=youtube;vsSdLD_YodQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsSdLD_YodQ[/video]
That clip alone shows that not only the characters, but the people themselves had a tremendous impact on others, including myself. Why do I trek? Because I like the thought that humanity can put aside our differences and reach for the stars... as Picard put it in Star Trek: First Contact "The acquisition of wealth, is no longer the driving force in our lives... we seek to better ourselves and the rest of humanity". My thing in life has never been to get a Ferrari or anything like that. I don't want a mansion. I just wanna help people. I think part of that goes along with my career as an actor. I mean sure if you get big I could make a lot of money, but if I got to do this for the rest of my life, and make enough to live off of it, I'd be happy, and I'd hope somewhere, somehow I could change someone's life, as the actors I have talked about did, and those are just two examples.
But putting me aside, I think there is another reason why we trek. Because I think deep down we want to believe that, that is the way it could, and should be. That the politics of our day did not prevail, and that the chasms that divide us in our world, ceased to exist, and that we all, boldly went into the stars...
Immortal words. Spoken by immortal actors and characters, Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and James T. Kirk (William Shatner). I often wonder what people must have felt when they first saw Star Trek in the 60's? The idea that man could put aside their differences, and move into broad, bright new worlds. Such an idea seems even today kind of ridiculous. I mean think about, in its day. The cold war was in full swing, Vietnam was heating up. The civil rights movement was in full swing. And here you had a show with a Black woman, a Russian and a Asian-American as senior crewmembers. Now there is one thing I found interesting, to my knowledge at least, there has never been an Arab on Star Trek (Bar Alexander Siddig as Julian Bashir in DS9 however most people don't know he's actually Sudanese born). But I'll touch that in another blog about Star Trek I'll do in the future, as it relates to todays politics.
I remember Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) talking about a story a woman told her about when she was a little girl, and she turned on the TV and saw Star Trek... and she ran through the house screaming "Mom come quick, there's a black lady on TV and she ain't no maid!" that woman was Whoopi Goldberg. Star Trek was one of the only shows on television that Martin Luther King Jr. let his children watch. I remember, James Doohan† (Scotty) talking about a woman who sent him a letter saying she was going to commit suicide. And this is what he said:
[video=youtube;vsSdLD_YodQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsSdLD_YodQ[/video]
That clip alone shows that not only the characters, but the people themselves had a tremendous impact on others, including myself. Why do I trek? Because I like the thought that humanity can put aside our differences and reach for the stars... as Picard put it in Star Trek: First Contact "The acquisition of wealth, is no longer the driving force in our lives... we seek to better ourselves and the rest of humanity". My thing in life has never been to get a Ferrari or anything like that. I don't want a mansion. I just wanna help people. I think part of that goes along with my career as an actor. I mean sure if you get big I could make a lot of money, but if I got to do this for the rest of my life, and make enough to live off of it, I'd be happy, and I'd hope somewhere, somehow I could change someone's life, as the actors I have talked about did, and those are just two examples.
But putting me aside, I think there is another reason why we trek. Because I think deep down we want to believe that, that is the way it could, and should be. That the politics of our day did not prevail, and that the chasms that divide us in our world, ceased to exist, and that we all, boldly went into the stars...
