New About.com Feature Article

Julia Houston, About.com's Star Trek Guide, has posted the latest edition in her weekly feature article series. This week she looks at the Americanism deeply imbued in Star Trek, asking 'Just How American is Star Trek?'

In a word: very.

And this may help explain why Star Trek's attitudes and popularity have changed so much in the past thirty-five years.

It's quite obvious -- sometimes almost painfully so -- that rebellious optimism was stylish when TOS came out. It's not a simple matter of popular views being directly reflected on the show, but of the more complex and general matter of employing attractive and familiar attitudes. TOS may seem tame and hypocritical to people who have no idea what America was like in the late 1960s. However, that first interracial kiss (whether they cheated the angle or not), the presence of a Russian on the bridge (Davey Jones look-alike or not), that first curse word spoken in prime time, the condemnations of racism, materialism and stuffy establishments, and, perhaps most tellingly, the hero who's the youngest captain in Starfleet all reflect the vigorous and iconoclastic hopes of a generation that that really thought it might be smarter than the generation before it.

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