I watched the debut of the Star Trek series on NBC in 1966 in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Why was I in Wichita Falls, Texas? I was at Sheppard AFB for training on my way to becoming an operating-room medic. After long days of classroom instruction and mock operations, the Airman’s Club at Sheppard was a big draw for most of us.
Those of us who gathered around the color TV in the Airman’s Club on September 8, 1966, were immediately drawn to Star Trek. We were accustomed to a diet of movies and TV about space exploration that consisted of programs like the poorly animated Clutch Cargo series or the ridiculously childish Lost in Space.
Star Trek took deep space stories to a whole new level: plausible, literate sci-fi television.
(Did you know that the series was almost called Wagon Train to the Stars? No kidding.)
We liked Captain Kirk, Lieutenant Uhura, Dr. “Bones” McCoy and engineer Montgomery Scott. But it was Mr. Spock that most intrigued us.
He was implacably and resolutely logical.
Spock was the human-alien First Officer on the Starship Enterprise. He had pointy ears and hailed from a planet known as Vulcan. He could probe others’ minds and efficiently and quietly disable humans with a squeeze on the shoulder.
Spock defined cool in 1966.
Leonard Nimoy played Spock for all three seasons of the show. Nimoy died Friday at the age of 83.
Star Trek gave us much more than three years of entertainment. I believe the series gave those of us who were coming of age in 1966 permission to object to what our governments were doing. As the war in Vietnam was ramping up, it reinforced our desire to speak up and protest.
It was all summed up in the prime directive for the 23rd-century guiding principles of the United Federation of Planets: Starfleet personnel are prohibited from interfering with the internal development of lesser alien civilizations.
The emphasis of the prime directive, which was first specifically introduced in a 1967 episode titled The Return of the Archons, reminded Starfleet personnel that it was particularly dangerous to use their superior technology to impose their own values or ideals on undeveloped civilizations.
The appeal of the series to young adults of the time, I think, was that it dealt with vexing problems in deep space in mature and compassionate ways that reflected the ideals we wished our present-day world might adopt. It buffered Captain Kirk’s occasional tendency towards aggression and value-imposition with Spock’s absolute logic.
“We could do that here on Earth,” our young minds concluded.
Now, we mark the passing of an icon of our youth.
The best tribute possible to Leonard Nimoy I think -- at least from my 21st-century perspective -- was offered, appropriately, by astronaut Terry Virts, who is right now circling Earth on the International Space Station. He tweeted the image you see above.
If you’re a fan of the series, you know what it means.
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