Final Project
Firstly, Star Trek: The Original Series or simply Star Trek first aired in 1966 which put it smackdown in the middle of the American-Vietnam War, the cold war and the various civil rights movements / unrest occurring on in the United States of America. What was so special about this show among other things at the time is it showed a united earth and represented it through would even by some modern standards would be considered a diverse cast. Both my grandparents and parents recall watching the reruns of this show which is where it gained its popularity and being incredibly impressed with how it represented the future not in a dystopian light but almost a utopia where all of earth and beyond got along. The cast included a Canadian from Vancouver who played a Scottish engineer, a Canadian from Montreal who played the Captain, A normal American who played a emotionless alien and an a southern American in the form of the doctor. This was nothing new but what was interesting was having a Japanese-American who had survived an American concentration camp during WW2 play the helmsman, an American play a Russian security officer (who wasn’t a bad guy) and a African American woman play the communications officer. The show's creators despite some other shortfalls wanted to show that humanity would eventually overcome their modern-day differences and work together. And throughout the show we see all the main characters treated equally, none of them are talked down too (though there is still some misogyny), and there isn’t any semblance of racial discrimination. That isn't to say that the actors weren’t on the receiving end of hate; most notably the actress that played the communications officer, Nichelle Nichols received so much hate mail because she was black and a woman That she considered dropping the show and if it weren't for meeting doctor Martin Luther King junior who told her she should stay and represent African Americans in space, she would have left. The creators of the show depicted modern day problems threw the various stories of the show such as race wars and the cold war, demonstrated by two clips below.
