The path to understanding the storytelling and the characters in television series is parsing. Break down and examine how individual component parts work together to persuade an audience and you will understand the power of television series such as Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. This sounds simple. And it can be if you do it correctly.

We first need to recap Gene Roddenberry’s initial mid-1960s rationale for creating a science fiction space opera named Star Trek:

• He stated very specifically to this writer that he wanted to produce and write a network television show in the 1960s that would deal with subjects like sex, politics, religion, war, racial inequality, and male-dominated culture.
• The standards and practices of network television programming denied the presentation of such subjects in the 1960s, so Roddenberry specifically chose the science fiction space operas genre, explaining, “We figured if we went to a strange planet and [wrote stories about controversial subjects], it would somehow get past the network censors, and indeed it did.“
• Roddenberry also explained that with Star Trek he and the producers and writers could, “turn out the action and adventure that appeals to one segment of the audience, and at the same time make incisive or daring comments about our times. Science fiction happens to be one of the most versatile literary forms for making comment, to talk about alternative todays and possible tomorrows.“

Star Trek by design concealed its often controversial subject matter in stories told of human beings who are living in some future time and who travel in space and encounter previously undiscovered planets and extraterrestrial life forms. Roddenberry told me in 1973, however, that he never intended for Star Trek to “predict” how mankind would actually be like in the future. He said, “I think science fiction often sets out dreams and hopes of a way we might be. And it gives some people something to work for. But it never really is ‘predictive’ because, in the first place, I cannot get an audience in a science fiction–or at least an audience that will pay the bills–if I show the heroes as being what I really suspect humans will be like in a couple of hundred years. I think our value system and attitudes and ways will so change, that they would frighten today’s audiences probably no less than twentieth-century humanity frighten an eighth or ninth-century audience.”

A well-planned and deliberate storytelling format was employed by producers and writers for 79 episodes of Star Trek broadcast from 1966 through 1969. The very same storytelling format (with the same starship Enterprise but with new characters) also was employed by producers and writers for Star Trek: The Next Generation for 178 episodes broadcast 1987-1994. Do the math:  This sci-fi storytelling format chosen and set in motion and guided by Roddenberry was employed for the production and broadcast of some 257 episodes over a span of 10 years.

After Roddenberry’s death, the “idea content” could not be preserved and guided across the entire Star Trek franchise. But, the legacy of Star Trek is nonetheless clear. If we parse the 257 Star Trek episodes from the Roddenberry era, we will discover that persuasive storytelling components appear repeatedly across the episodes. These are the ingredients of storytelling that originally made Star Trek so unique on U.S. television for 10 years:

Characters can teach us lessons: The characters in the two Roddenberry era Star Trek television series are not merely there to advance the plots of the episodes. Characters can be employed by producers and writers to serve a persuasive purpose.

Having a character be half human and and half Vulcan, for instance, is the most famous example of persuasive characters in Star Trek. Spock’s dual nature meant that he would struggle to find balance between his logical, Vulcan nature versus his emotional, human nature. How Spock behaved and what choices he made could serve persuasive purposes beyond merely advancing the plot. In the episode “Journey to Babel,” for instance, Spock chooses his command responsibilities over choosing to participate in a blood transfusion that will save the life of his father. This choice has persuasive value in the episode because the choice makes one think about what’s more important–personal loyalty to one’s family, or, professional loyalty to one’s employer.

It is apparently true that any character on any television series can be used by producers and writers to serve similar persuasive purposes with the audience. But, what’s essential is that the character must create in the mind of the viewer a comparison between what the viewer knows to be true versus what truths the character is representing in the fictional story on screen. Star Trek succeeded with many such persuasive comparisons of the essential truths in characters because both series from the Roddenbery era relied upon the depiction of a multitude of extraterrestial lifeforms in additions to the human beings from planet Earth. There were so many opportunities to urge the viewer to compare himself or herself with the starship crewmembers from Earth,or with the Vulcans, the Klingons, the Ferengi, the Cardassians, the Romulans, and so forth.[to top]

Human beings are destined to explore space: This is the essential component of the Star Trek storytelling in these first two television series. The primary focus is people like you and me, except they happen to live in our future, and they are employed on starships whose job it is to seek out strange new life and new civilizations.

This is very important. This idea suggests that mankind truly has a future, that the human race will live on into distant centuries rather than realizing doomsday predictions of self destruction. Moreover, the destiny of humanity is to oneday go from our home planet and explore what’s out there in space.

The people in Star Trek are unlike the people in the Star Wars movies who may (sort of) look like you and me, but actually are from a galaxy, far, far away. In the first two Star Trek television series, the people are flesh and blood human beings from Earth and their home galaxy is also our home galaxy, The Milky Way. By depicting human beings in space, who otherwise are like you and me, the producers and writers are able to compare and contrast us with them in the storytelling. The similarities can be used to make persuasive points. We bleed when cut. They bleed when cut. We cry when we are sad. They cry when they are sad.

The persuasive effort going on in Star Trek is that invitation for us to compare how we would likely respond to what’s going on around us if only we happened to live in a future century that our destiney earned for us. Will ordinary people like us be any wiser or more civilized for all the many wonderful things that the future makes possible? Or, will we still be weighed down by everyday prejudice, greed, anger, violence, and killing? Trick question. [to top]

Gender or race do not enable either success or happiness: This storytelling component grew out of a cultural turning point in the United States in the 1960s as the male-dominated culture of that time was being challenged by the womens’ liberation movement at the same time that African Americans fought for civil rights.

The original Star Trek in the 1960s began showing strong female characters who were the equal of men and in charge of their own destiny. The original pilot that was produced to sell Star Trek to NBC boldly featured a female second in command of the Enterprise. The network rejected that and the pilot, too.But, they requested a rare second pilot to be produced. Are you surprised that the strong female aspect got toned down in the second pilot? Nearly a quarter century later, Star Trek: The Next Generation was produced within a very different and comparatively less male-dominated culture in the U.S. than the 1960s. Not surprisingly, the second Star Trek series depicted females who were equal to males. In 1990, an episode entitled “Yesterday’s Enterprise” featured a female captain of the famous startship on Star Trek. It wasn’t until 1995 when Star Trek: Voyager debuted that a starship captain became main character, Capt. Kathryn Janeway.

The depiction of people of color on prime time network television programming in the 1960s was very limited. Bill Cosby was the first African American to be cast in a leading role in a regular television series on NBC-TV in 1965 in I Spy costarring Robert Culp. The original Star Trek premiered on NBC in 1966 and it featured African American actress Nichelli Nichols as Uhura plus Asian American actor George Takei as Sulu–two major roles that continued through all three seasons.

But, Star Trek demonstrated that a person’s gender or skin color had nothing at all to do with how successful or emotionally fulfilled they would became. The word diversity–today an operationalized part of the normal course of U.S. business–was written into science fiction stories on Star Trek during the 1960s as a futuristic concept that human beings would oneday come to value over prejudice.[to top]

Culture can be contagious: The storytelling component springs from the Star Trek universe’s central organization unit of civilizations known as the United Federation of Planets. The Federation is more or less dominated by human beings from Earth, but there are other civilizations (such as the Vulcans) that have a significant impact on the spread of the culture throughout the quadrants of The Milky Way galaxy in which we live.

The whole mission of the starship Enterprise is to seek out new life and new civilizations, but the mission really is to spread the Federation’s culture galaxy-wide. In the original series, there was the so-called Prime Directive, a 1960s-ish way of looking at life: Dominant cultures should never interfere in the development of other cultures. It’s worth remembering that Star Trek the original series was written and produced during the era of the U.S. involvement in war in Southeast Asia–a time of widespread antiwar protests on college campuses. One central tenet of the antiwar sentiment in those days was that the U.S. should not interfere militarily in the sovereign governments of the various countries in Southeast Asia, even though those governments chose communism over democracy. So, it is understandable how the original Star Trek would depict life 300 years in the future as being driven by a prime directive of noninterference. Time and again, Kirk and Spock wrestled with choices about interfering or not in newly-discovered planetary civilizations.

In contast, Star Trek: The Next Generation was produced during a time when the U.S. was not involved in a war. So, by the time the Enterprise was captained by Jean-Luc Picard, the Prime Directive was still around and still got mentioned, but it was not a central, driving force for the starship crew like it was in the days of Kirk and Spock.

Underlying all of this is the belief in the Star Trek universe that the Federation’s culture should be seen by newly-discovered planetary civilizations as appealing, if not downright contagious. Who could resist an organizing unit of galaxy-wide planetary societies who all flew around space in very cool starships? But, episodes dealt with instances in which newly-discovered life did not care to take in the Federation’s culture notwithstanding all the cool technology. On the other extreme we find the Borg, first seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation, a society that forces its culture and its rules on everyone else by assimilation. [to top]

The answer is science and/or technology: This is another essential component of the Star Trek storytelling in these first two television series. Technology is presented in both series as having many seemingly fantastic answers to everyday, ordinary problems. But, just not 100% of the time. What happens when the transporter beam accidently splits a man into two different men? One is aggressive with a killer instinct and the other is so docile that he cannot make a simple decision to save his life. Suddently, technology looks very dangerous and life-threatening, doesn’t it? Star Trek episodes consistently persuade us viewers here in the present that technology is the answer only if you are asking the right question.

The essential persuasive point about the technological depictions or the scientific advances in the Star Trek universe is that human beings must still be capable of making solid decisions for themselves if they intend to save themselves from dangerous and life-threatening situations. And, sometimes when science or technology, themselves, are dangerous and life-threatening, human beings can only choose to use their innate and usually flawed logic and sense of determination to make things right again.

Star Trek: The Next Generation uses far more science and technology than the original series ever could–especially because science and technology was not very advanced in the 1960s when the original series was being written and produced. But, even with all the eye candy special effects that depict awesome technology on Star Trek: The Next Generation, the technology, alone, could not be relied upon to keep human beings out of harms way. [to top]

The answer is to live on another planet: Similarly to the storytelling component in Star Trek concerning the question of how science and technology can or cannot change human lives, this component is also very important. On Star Trek the human beings are working to seek out new planets. That’s their job. Sometimes, the new planets seem far more inviting than our own planet. Sometimes, the entire landscape is awesome and the planet looks like anybody’s image of paradise. But, time and again, Star Trek stories show how appearances can be deceiving and that if ever human beings fall for a good-looking planet, there is going to be hell to pay.

The philosophical view that Star Trek conveys through all its depictions of alien planets (both the good-looking and the ugly ones) is that no matter where we human beings may go, we can never escape from ourselves. This realization can be a real downer, but we can be wiser for it. [to top]

Alternate realities can teach us lessons: Another central storytelling component is the depiction of what might we learn if we could only see life from an alternate perspective. A famous example of this is Frank Capra’s 1946 movie It’s a Wonderful Life starring James Stewart. In this classic film, an angel helps a man see what life would be like if he had never existed.

Thankfully, Star Trek did not use the storytelling component of having angels intervene in people’s lives. No, instead, there were time rifts and guardians of forever and other such natural and man-made things that manipulated the space time continuum, teaching the crew of the Enterprise important lessons about what might have been in an alternate reality. But, the impact upon the audience can be the same as watching that angel who intervened in a mortal man’s life. We in the audience can learn about how to live or how not to live when we see alternate realities right before our very eyes in Star Trek episodes. [to top]

Alien life may be neither threatening nor fun, just alien: Star Trek episodes use this storytelling component very frequently. In fact, Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets consists of numerous civilizations of extraterrestrials who nonetheless agree to live and work together with human beings peacefully. Well, most of the time anyway.

Science fiction on television and in movies has dealt with alien life that is threatening more times than it is possible to count. It is an established science fiction stereotype. A very famous, nonstereotypical example is Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien. The opposing view is represented by Steven Spielberg’s 1982 E.T. the Extraterrestial.

Star Trek stories deal with alien life of various types and threat levels especially to compare and contrast us with them. We in the audience can learn from how Vulcans behave too logically, for example, or how Klingons behave too aggressively.