My earliest memories of nerdom was watching Star Wars. It's a classic tale of good verses evil and how when good resists evil, good will win. Around the same time, I remember listening to a Batman book on LP on my Superman record player and reading along to it. Then there were times that were sprinkled with watching the original Star Trek series with my mom. In there I also saw the movies. Then in 1987, my favorite TV series of all time started.
Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered on Septemeber 28, 1987 with 27 million people watching. I was not one of those 27 million people. However, I did watch a preview special about it the night before and it looked awesome. Voice activated computers, touch screen controls, touch screen pads, video teleconferencing and a holodeck. I did watch my first episode a few weeks later (The Naked Now). Then I would only watch a few more in the first season (until reruns when I would end up seeing all te ones that I missed).
The second season had a great episode that I believe would help shape my views on life. Counselor Troi had been impregnated by some kind of alien that would go from fetus to teenager in about a week and then died. Earlier in the episode, Riker suggested that she not go through with the pregnancy. She said she was keeping the child. Now folks on my side would say that was a pro-life message an folks on the other side would say that was a pro-choice message. Not sure what message was suppose to be conveyed, if any at all but it did shape my nine year old mind. There were other episodes that I felt were pro-life. The episode in which Data proves that machines called Exocomps had become alive and deserved to be given rights to live and not forced to be sacrificed for others. The episode when the crew finds a human society that had perfected genetic engineering. The planet is saved by technology in La Forge's visor. La Forge would have been discarded as an embryo had he been conceived on that planet. I am not saying that Roddenberry and the makers of the show were out protesting Roe v Wade. I have a feeling they were pro-choice but their episodes pushed me to value all life and especially innocent life.
Then it came to human rights. In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, there is an episode where the Cardassians abduct O'Brien and hold him for crimes against them. I wish I knew the season or the name of the episode. I would not see it until about 2003. I still have not seen every episode of DS9. As I am watching it in 2003, I thought, "this is some liberal, hate America propaganda in a post 9/11 era." As I thought that, it hit me; this was from the 90s. Oh and if I had seen this in the 90s, I would have thought how this was a pro-American values episode. Oh and we are doing this to people in Gitmo. Then I thought how quick we are to go to war and how the thing I admired about the Federation was that war was the last option and how I had always related us to the Federation. That was the start of me realizing that we had lost our values after 9/11. That the terrorists did win because we gave up our freedom and values out of fear.
I could go on and on about how Star Trek shaped my worldview. It is still secondary to The Bible in what I value but I find so many times the values meet up even if in the 24th Century religion is suppose to be obsolete. I hope by that time we are kind and live in harmony without the human race abandoning God.
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