Imagine the thrill of a new world, of outer space, a place beyond the earth’s stratosphere, cloaked in darkness…

Imagine the awe-inspiring feeling that held for people who had never seen men on the moon, or perused an Internet’s worth of real space photos. Outer space was a foreign place, a vast unknown frontier that captured the imagination, in 1966, when a little series called Star Trek first aired in the U.S. on September 8 (in Canada, it was September 6.)

On this auspicious anniversary, it’s neat to think back to the beginnings of this show, which stood the test of time, firmly embedded in the American consciousness. Instead of a rocket taking off from Cape Canaveral, which would become the legacy of U.S. space flight, it was a ship, unmoored from any planet’s sway, roving the depths and the reaches of space.

I was looking back at the origin of the first episode, not really a ‘pilot’, the initial airing, titled “Man Trap,” about astronauts getting the salt drained from their bodies by the sci-fi version of a vampire. Interestingly, too, what Roddenberry and company produced was at least partially based on an episode of The Twilight Zone involving a shape-shifter, titled “The Four of Us Are Dying,” and a Samuel Coleridge notion of a “damsel with a dulcimer,” a narrative thread I found hard to track, personally. But all of that made its way to the screen as sci-fi, and Star Trek, so to speak, took off.

Maybe, looking at the story arc of both Star Trek and our real world, we could take Oppenheimer’s Bhagavad Gita quote, and use its inverse positively: “I am become Imagination, Creator of Worlds.”

Star Trek is a show that invites us to think about positive outcomes from science and exploration. So as we come into the AI era, those ideas can serve us well. It’s not that we need to proceed without regulation, or deliberation, or caution. Just like those astronauts, we run the risk of being drained of resources that we need, by runaway technology. What it means, though, is that we can “go boldly” where no one has gone before. Into the future. And every generation does that, all the time. It’s just that our future is getting very uncertain, because the technologies are so powerful, and evolving at such a rapid rate.

As Spock and his human friends wander the universe, they find new species, new ecosystems, and new narratives that challenge what they had previously known. Our world is becoming sort of like that, too. We need that sense of potential, and of purpose, to navigate it well.

It turns out fans are busy: this page shows a lot of the initiatives happening around the 60-year celebration, and many of them aren’t limited to one day. I liked the “Boldly go Green” program, combining the much-loved tv show with the effort to enhance the health of our own planet, because, as much as we might roam, this is our home, the only one that we got.

Here’s Star Trek’s official description of the new Wrath of Khan that Trekkies are excited about:

“Star Trek: Khan explores the untold events on Ceti Alpha V, chronicling Khan’s descent from a superhuman visionary into the vengeful villain seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . Naveen Andrews ( Lost ) voices the iconic role of Khan Noonien Singh, and is joined by a stellar cast, including Wrenn Schmidt ( For All Mankind ) as Lieutenant Marla McGivers, Sonya Cassidy ( Reacher ) as Dr. Rosalind Lear, with Star Trek veteran Tim Russ ( Star Trek: Voyager ) reprising his role as Ensign Tuvok and the legendary George Takei ( Star Trek ) as Captain Sulu. New episodes will be available weekly on Mondays through Nov. 3.”

There’s also new screening from Paramount, and watch parties for the original episode I mentioned.

Here’s one more interesting thing: when I searched for Star Trek on Bing, I found this really neat AI pictorial in the SERP section for “This Day in History,” but when I clicked on it, all I got was strange clickbait. The pictures weren’t there! But you can access each one from the SERP page. Try it yourself, and leave me a comment and let me know if you found the AI-generated photo gallery (this interesting pictorial on the Bing page.) I thought it was compelling.

Also, if you’re a Trekkie, feel free to go back and check out my documentation of the Star Trek Set Tour museum in Ticonderoga, NY, which I visited in 2025, and some of my other Star Trek related posts. Live Long and Prosper!