10 Films That Wanted To Be Star Trek
6. Serenity
Serenity, the spin-off and tying-up of Firefly, owes a big debt to Star Trek, as did the series before it. While Joss Whedon said that he set Firefly in a region of space that the Enterprise would have flown right past, the Alliance forces represent a twisted version of the Federation, from the point of view of the worlds that didn't exactly want to be under Starfleet's heel.
Serenity sees an officer hunting down River and the crew of Malcolm Reynolds' ship, armed with the full authority of the government. The Browncoats are the separatists, so often depicted as the bad guys in franchises like Star Trek, though shown sympathetically here. The crimes of the Alliance are revealed, coated in good intentions, with disastrous results.
Gene Roddenberry described humanity going through hell to reach heaven, with both ends on show in Whedon's wild west here. Reynolds is like Kirk with a greater sense of humor, though, like Kirk, Picard, and the rest, he has an infallible sense of doing the right thing, even in the wrongest circumstances.
It is far from perfect, but Serenity attempts to show a future where people can do the right thing - something that Star Trek has preached since its earliest days.