Today’s post is going to be another of those minimal-content quickies, for which I sincerely apologize. I don’t mean to keep teasing you loyal reader types. However, I do want to draw your attention to a nice essay that was referenced today on Wil Wheaton’s website, which is one of my daily stops on this Internet crazy train.

Wheaton, as you may or may not know, played Wesley Crusher in the first four seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The piece that he references, A Love Letter to Star Trek, is another blogger’s thoughts on Trek and the effect it has had on her and her young sons.

I’ve loved Trek since I was a small child, when I used to watch afternoon re-runs of the classic original series with my mom after school, but it’s sometimes hard to admit that little truth in public. People who don’t get the show really don’t get it, and I have often struggled in vain to explain why Trek and its assorted spin-offs are much, much more than just silly fluff about guys who wear velour pajamas and have latex doo-dads on their faces. The trappings of the show(s) are often so cheesy that non-fans can’t see beyond them to get the point of Trek, which is the hope that human beings can become something far better than what we are.

The “Love Letter” piece that Wil references explains the appeal of these TV shows as well as anything I’ve ever said. I was moved by one passage in particular:

One day, a bad bad day, when many soldiers lost lives in that distant senseless war, my middle son stood with barefeet on the cold tile floor of the kitchen, listening to NPR, and clenched his fists in frustration.

 

“Why don’t they stop fighting? We’re never going to join a Federation of Planets if this continues. Don’t they know that? Why don’t they want to help end starvation instead? I wish we lived in the future.”

 

I wished we lived in that future, too, where replicators created gourmet meals and women wore flowing tunics and held important positions, and no wars raged on planet Earth because starvation was a memory from some other sick place and time. I loved that my sons saw this, wanted a future of space travel and social justice.

I recall that I once said something very similar to my own mother. For those who struggle to understand why people love Star Trek, this is their answer. Because it offers everyone, children and adults alike, a vision of a better way of life. And because velour looks cool on TV…