10 Predictions About The Future Star Trek Probably Got Wrong

Star Trek is a bit of an anomaly on television today. Whereas the vast majority of other sci-fi shows tend to entice viewers by reassuring them that things will still be as s**t in the future, don't worry, Trek insists that all will turn out fine in the end, so long as we keep working at it. Gene Roddenberry's famous 'vision' of a better, more hopeful tomorrow for humanity is perhaps Star Trek's greatest prediction about the future. There is no place like utopia, but you can achieve a lot trying to get there.

It is counselor Troi who, in Star Trek: First Contact, gives us a timeline for such changes, as she explains to Zefram Cochrane: "[First Contact] unites humanity in a way no one ever thought possible […]. Poverty, disease, war. They'll all be gone within the next fifty years." That means we've only got a maximum of 90 years in the real world to get our act together!

It's probably negativity bias coupled with a more generalised cynicism, but given the current state of global affairs, that hardly seems like enough time at all. If we don't act now to halt the climate crisis, humanity as we know it won't even make it to 2113.