Through My Everyday Eyes

Happy 50th Anniversary to Star Trek, a franchise that has pioneered new frontiers in entertainment! Here are just a few:

Star Trek took the social environment of the 1960s and turned them on their head by including black, Japanese and Russian characters in the story. The series posited that a better future for humanity was possible. Star Trek also broke from racist depictions of relationships in 1968 when Kirk and Uhura shared TV’s first interracial kiss. “Plato’s Stepchildren”

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine explored gender in ways that had never been done on television through the Trill species (see  “Dax,” “Invasive Procedures,” “Afterimage” and really the whole series). The show also explored lesbian imagery in ways that were ground-breaking and not fanservice, and it featured one of the first same-sex kisses on television in 1995′s “Rejoined” (Ellen came out two years later, for perspective).

Star Trek: Voyager explored the complexity of emotions for a mother who will have a mixed child, including the fears that the child will be judged for physical features she cannot control. “Lineage”

The list could go for pages and pages, and the series covered drama, romance, action, adventure, exploration and morality in ways that other franchises could only wish to imitate half as well.

50 years! September 8, 1966-September 8, 2016