On May 9th, 2009 the world was reintroduced to U. S. S. Enterprise and its fabled crew in the movie aptly named Star Trek.
At the helm of this great space adventure is the womanizing James T. Kirk and the ever calculating Vulcan, Spock.
Both come to realize that no matter what alternate timeline they are in, the friendship they share (or rather soon to) will always be stronger than any conflict they face.
Truly, this is one of the great themes that pervaded throughout the original television show that ran from 1966-1969.
At the time of its conception, Star Trek was breaking old notions of differences between nations with its worldly crew, beginning with Japanese-Filipino Helmsmen Hikaru Sulu, Scottish Engineer Montgomery Scott and African Communications Officer Nyota Uhura if the first season and growing in the second season with the addition of Russian Navigator, Pavel Chekov. All of which appear in the new movie.
The multi-racial crew of the then "state-of-the-art" Enterprise fought the boundaries created at the time forming lasting bonds that broke through popular conventions that prevented not only a woman, but a powerful African woman to take charge or a Russian from even adding his two bits in the workforce of America.
The show took all those people we thought to be our enemies and helped viewers see them as other human beings.
What about show's contemporary counter part? Although it has been 43 years since the Enterprise took to the stars and the Kirk of our century is not yet the captain he will become, the basic or universal themes of equality and open-mindedness are still values strived for.
All of this is represented by Kirk's and Spock's combative relationship at the beginning of the movie where each are intolerant of each other's obvious heritage (even though Spock is struggling with being half-human) and their unique methods of accomplishing the same goal- the survival of everyone on Earth. By the end of which, they realize their foolishness.
More congruent to our own times, where once we were in a cold-war and the introduction of a prominent Russian on TV was controversial, we are yet again faced with an "Alien" foe from the middle-east. Just as Chekov illustrated Russia's Humanity, the Captain Richard Rabua of the U. S. S. Kelvin appeared at the helm of the movie, showing us that heroism, leadership, and self-sacrifice for the greater good are not determined by the color of your skin or the place of your birth.
Of course, after you've considered all of the humanitarian philosophies that have made an influential impact on both the original Star Trek and the modern film rendition, there is still that one awesome dream.
The one best illustrated by Spock at the end of the latest movie- "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life-forms and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before."
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