10 Times Star Trek Changed The World

2. Diversity On Deck

Trekkies Gabriel Koerner
CBS

The credo of Star Trek is written into the lore of one of its most famous alien races. The IDIC, or Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, is the very essence of the show’s mission both on- and off-screen. Whether this is fully realised, or even realisable, is a debate for another day, but Star Trek did help shift the direction of the prevailing moral winds when it comes to representation.

For The Original Series, Gene Roddenberry made a point of going against the praxis of the era in hiring a diverse group of actors in (relatively) non-stereotypical roles for television at the time. Both Nichelle Nichols and George Takei were trailblazers in this regard.

Nichols (Lt. Uhura) very nearly quit Star Trek after the first season to carry on her career elsewhere. Fortunately for the world, she bumped into one of her biggest fans before making the final decision – none other than Dr Martin Luther King Jr. It was he who convinced Nichols to stay. In the EXCELLENT documentary Women In Motion, Nichols cites Dr King’s reasoning as follows:

He said, "you don’t understand the effect you’re having, not only on black people, not only on young women, but on everybody. Everybody’s mind and attitude is changed immeasurably simply because you are there."

Another fan, Whoopi Goldberg, would echo these sentiments years later when she asked Gene Roddenberry if she could be a part of The Next Generation. As part of the reasons for wanting to do so, Goldberg recalls the impact of watching Star Trek as a child: "It wasn’t until lieutenant Uhura that I realised I was in the future".

Star Trek would continue to strive towards its mission of diversity in the other spin-offs from DS9 to Discovery.

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Jack Kiely is a writer with a PhD in French and almost certainly an unhealthy obsession with Star Trek.