Star Trek at 60: the secret of this pioneering series was its exploration of humanity, not aliens

By Stephen McVeigh, Professor of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Swansea University

When Star Trek first appeared on television screens 60 years ago, audiences expected science fiction to offer aliens, monsters and futuristic technology. What they encountered was something far more ambitious.

From its very first broadcast episode on September 8 1966, Star Trek established that its true subject was the exploration of humanity itself. For all its reputation as an action-packed space adventure, the franchise has endured because it repeatedly returned to a universal question: what does it mean…

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