The original Star Trek is known for its themes, how each adventure comes wrapped in its own unique and thought-provoking message. In over fifty years of cast interviews, documentaries, and retrospectives these themes have been reduced to shorthand: optimism; tolerance; peace; the human adventure. As we teach students in English class, words like that are topics, not a description of the actual theme. I’ve rarely seen or read much discussion about what Star Trek’s messages are in full. What did all of those themes add up to? What did the series have to say about the topics so often ascribed to it? 

This series of essays attempts to answer those questions. It is the product of a rewatch of all 28 episodes of Star Trek’s season one. Each essay analyzes a distinct theme and how it is conveyed through plot, character, and dialogue. Two things become apparent. First, the original series was written by serious writers who had a lot to say, and it shows. The themes are complex, nuanced, and richly dramatized by story elements. I’m convinced that this aspect of the show is why it made such a strong impression on the first wave of viewers in the 1960s and 70s, and why nearly a dozen franchise iterations have been able to ride its coattails ever since. 

Second, there are not 28 themes, one for each episode. Instead there are 10 distinct themes that are expressed in different ways across those first 28 episodes. Most episodes express multiple themes. The impact of this–when Where No Man Has Gone Before and Space Seed, The Corbomite Maneuver and The Devil in the Dark each look at the same idea from different angles–not only enriches the theme but also the show itself. Because they are repeated with variations, the individual themes synthesize into a kind of uber thesis for the entire show, which is usually what people refer to when they say Star Trek is about optimism, tolerance, peace, and the human adventure. The themes collectively give the show a unique perspective. This in turn entices fans because we relate to that universal perspective and adopt it as our own.  

One more observation. It’s become a cliche to say that the original Star Trek took the most controversial issues of the day and used science-fiction tropes to sneak them into American living rooms. This is only half true. The Gorn and the Horta are so much more than puppets in a parable about whatever thuggery Bull Connor was inflicting in the early 60s. Like all great literature, the season one themes are universal and timeless. 

In fact, the themes are attempted answers to the biggest of Big Questions that would have been on the minds of anyone who had lived through the Twentieth Century up to that point (or Twenty-First Century)–about social control, the proper uses of technology, the utility of war, the importance of fellowship, human flourishing, and the future prospects of humanity.

Here is a list of the season one themes: 

Theme: No Shortcuts

Theme: All parts of human nature are essential

Theme: Fallen Nature vs. Internal Discipline

Theme: Moral Progress

Theme: Importance of Human Connection

Theme: Embrace “the Other”

Theme: Anti-technocracy

Theme: Anti-War

Theme: Ecological Harmony

Theme: None

Theme: Dualities are False

Human Condition: the Struggle

The most dominant set are themes about human nature. All but 10 episodes, about two-thirds of season one, use specific themes to explore aspects of the human condition. These fall into two broad categories. The first suite of human nature themes dwell on the struggles of the human condition; the second reveals the rewards. First we will look at the Struggle.  

Theme: No Shortcuts

Percent of Season One: 53% 

15 of 28 episodes: 

• Where No Man Has Gone Before 
• Mudd’s Women
• The Man Trap
• Charlie X
• What are Little Girls Made of?
• Dagger of the Mind
• Miri
• The Menagerie 
• The Squire of Gothos
• The Alternative Factor
• The Return of the Archons 
• Space Seed 
• A Taste of Armageddon
• This Side of Paradise
• The City on the Edge of Forever

The theme of no shortcuts is often expressed in episodes that are critical of characters who try to skip the difficult steps of a process only to find that those steps were essential for success, wisdom or true fulfillment. More than half of the episodes expressed this theme–by far the most prevalent theme of the season. 

In each of these episodes, the shortcut is trying to overleap a different challenge, so the theme is universal rather than particular. The theme is dramatized when the characters are punished with failure or worse for trying their shortcut. Charlie Evans fails by trying to skip over the natural wisdom and empathy that comes with adulthood; Gary Mitchel and Khan fail by trying to skip over the wisdom and empathy derived from generational human evolution. The Talosians fail by trying to supplant life’s pain and challenges with illusion and fantasy. Dr. Korby and the people of Miri’s planet fail by trying to subtract mortality from the human equation. Dr. Adams fails by trying to use technology to shortcut psychological recovery and true behavioral corrective therapy. Mudd’s women are slaves to their drugs rather than choosing the harder path of self-love and inner beauty. The Eminians fail by trying to have war without the messiness of war. The people of Beta III try to form a perfect, orderly society, only to have mayhem bubble to the surface during carnivals, not to mention being slaves to a computer. The Omicron Ceti III colonists fail by giving up the struggles and pressures of pioneer life for the simulated bliss of the spores. 

The quintessential episode for this theme is Where No Man Has Gone Before, the series’s second pilot. The very first Kirk Speech is about the dangers of acquiring power too precipitously. 

Dehner: “Before long we’ll be where it would have taken millions of years of learning to reach—“

Kirk: “And what will Mitchel learn in getting there? Will he know what to do with his power? Will he acquire the wisdom? … Did you hear him joke about compassion? Of all else, a God needs compassion.”

In other episodes we see the folly of people trying to jump over social evolution to fabricate utopian paradises. The Return of the Archons ends with this exchange: 

Spock: “How often mankind has wished for a world as peaceful and secure as the one Landru provided.”

Kirk: “Yes. And we never got it. Just lucky, I guess.”

The exact sentiment is expressed at the end of This Side of Paradise: 

McCoy: “Well, that’s the second time man’s been thrown out of Paradise.”

Kirk: “No, no, Bones, this time we walked out on our own. Maybe we weren’t meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through, struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can’t stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums.”

Edith Keeler begins her famous sermon about an optimistic future with these words: “If you’re a bum… then get out. Now I don’t pretend to tell you how to find happiness and love when everyday is just a struggle to survive. But I do insist that you do survive.” And then Kirk learns (not for the last time) that sometimes the only way to survive is to sacrifice what you love. 

In all of these episodes, Star Trek is preaching that the hard path is the only true path, the only way to live long and prosper.

Theme: All parts of human nature are essential

Percent of Season One: 35% 

10 of 28 episodes:

• Where No Man Has Gone Before 
• The Enemy Within 
• Charlie X
• What are Little Girls Made of?
• Dagger of the Mind
• Miri
• The Menagerie 
• The Return of the Archons 
• Space Seed 
• This Side of Paradise

In over half of the No Shortcut episodes, the shortcut is around some immutable aspect of human nature, and this conveys a similar but more pointed theme: All parts of human nature–good, bad, and ugly–are essential. 

The idea that all parts of human nature are essential is conveyed by the many characters who try to circumvent or skip over unpleasant or inefficient aspects of human nature, always with negative consequences.  Oftentimes these misguided characters are trying to efface or re-edit what they deem to be inconvenient or weak aspects of human nature: pain, fear, ignorance, weakness, loneliness, death. And in each episode Kirk or some other wise member of the Enterprise crew steps up to remind us that while those things may be inconvenient they are nonetheless essential to the human condition, and without them we would cease to function. The Season One creative team was so interested in this theme that they wrote an episode that was exclusively devoted to it–The Enemy Within. By subtracting out the bad parts of human nature–wickedness, selfishness–Kirk is reduced to an indecisive shell of himself. 

Gary Mitchel, Charlie Evans and Kahn also have important elements their humanity pulled out of them, though it is subtraction by addition. By becoming all powerful they lose individual perspective, compassion, and desires for anything less than acquiring more power. Their new strength does not make them better people, it makes them broken people. Their superhuman powers refracted through their brokenness makes them monsters.    

In What Are Little Girls Made Of?, Kirk has this exchange with the android Dr. Korby: 

Korby: “In android form, a Human being can have practical immortality. Can you see what I’m offering mankind?”

Kirk: “Programming – different word, but the same old promises made by Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Hitler…”

Korby: “Can you imagine how life could be improved if we could do away with jealousy, greed, hate?”

Kirk: “It can also be improved by eliminating love, tenderness, sentiment. The other side of the coin, doctor.”

Pain and happiness. Love and hate. Outer weakness and inner strength. Death and Life. Kirk keeps pointing out across all of these episodes that you cannot have one without the other. His predecessor Captain Pike learned the same lesson from his captivity by the Talosians: “You either live life – bruises, skinned knees and all – or you turn your back on it and start dying.” As Vina explained to him about the Talosian escape into the blissful comfort of illusion: “But they found it’s a trap. Like a narcotic. Because when dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating.”

Similar to the Talosians, when Kirk and crew get high on the spores in This Side of Paradise, they begin to lose their sense of duty to the ship and their mission, just as the colonists lost the will to farm and build their new home. 

When the Earth eugenics scientists, the scientists of Miri’s planet, and Dr. Adams of the Tantalus penal colony each use technology to reprogram the human condition in their respective episodes, disastrous consequences follow. Instead, all of these episodes suggest that what we consider the darker angels of our nature must actually be respected, even admired, but always kept in check. The bloodthirsty ambition of Kahn is a vital human drive, so long as they are tempered by the wisdom and compassion of people like Kirk.    

You can’t have the good without the bad, and it is a fool’s errand–an impossibility no matter what powers you bring to the task–to try to save oneself from the bad, which can only be managed. And there is something essential in this struggle, this constant vigilance and internal negotiation that makes us human.   

Theme: Fallen Nature vs. Internal Discipline 

Percent of Season: 32%

9 of 28 Episodes: 

• Where No Man Has Gone Before 
• The Enemy Within 
• The Man Trap
• The Naked Time
• Charlie X
• The Menagerie 
• The Return of the Archons 
• A Taste of Armageddon
• This Side of Paradise

A thread that runs through some of these episodes is that there is a lot of bad in that nature, that Humans are a fallen people. Humans as inherently sinful, while a Judeo-Christian concept, is nonetheless present in Star Trek in a secular guise. The demon inside all of us that makes evil possible is emphatically not defeated by the 23rd Century, and nowhere in these episodes is such a defeat ever promised to be at hand.

“Let’s talk about humans, our frailties,” Kirk says to Dehner in the very first Kirk Speech. “As powerful as [Mitchel] gets, he’ll have all that inside of him. You know all the ugly, savage things that we all keep buried, that no one dare expose. But he’ll dare. Who’s to stop him? He doesn’t need to care.”

In A Taste of Armageddon, Anan 7 explains his people’s justification for their war this way: “A killer first, a builder second. A hunter, a warrior. And let’s be honest, a murderer. That is our joint heritage, is it not?” Later, when Kirk is proposing peace, he provides the counterpoint: “All right, it’s instinctive. But the instinct can be fought. We’re human beings, with the blood of a million savage years on our hands. But we can stop it! We can admit that we’re killers, but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes.”

Hearing this speech, it is hard not to think about the 12 step program for drug addiction. The addict does not say to himself, ‘I will never do drugs again, I’m cured.’ He tells himself ‘just stay sober today. Worry about tomorrow tomorrow.’

Star Trek could have been a typical sci-fi show where the problems are all caused by monsters and alien bad guys. There is plenty of that, but just as many of the antagonists are humans who are flawed and broken, who have lost their way (Mitchel, Mudd, Kirk himself after his transporter accident, Charlie, Dr. Crater, Dr. Korby, Dr. Adams, Kodos, Lieutenant Finney, Khan…). When confronted by Kirk and his crew, these people and their demons never win, but they serve as a reminder that any of us could become like them if we are not careful.  

The emphasis is that Human evil is very real and not going anywhere, but that it can be kept in check through internal discipline and strong character. Kirk spends most of the season showing how this is done–whether it is lecturing Dr. Crater on his immoral choices regarding the Salt Creature:

“This thing becomes wife, lover, best friend, wise man, fool, idol, slave. It isn’t a bad life to have everyone in the universe at your beck and call! And you win all the arguments!”

Or coaching Charlie how to grow up: 

“There are a million things in this universe you can have and there are a million things you can’t have. It’s no fun facing that, but that’s the way things are.”

In many of these episodes, the solution is to foster internal discipline and act on it. 

Dr. Crater, the Talosians, and the Omicron Ceti III spore victims all succumb to the temptations of selfish apathy, the ease of a hollow existence. They all lack the internal discipline to overcome this descent. In The Naked Time, when Kirk’s rigid self-discipline is sapped by the Psi 2000 virus he is powerfully seduced by the temptation to throw his career away, to go walk on the beach with “no more braid” on his shoulder. 

The Naked Time and The Return of the Archons are explorations of two opposite ends of internal discipline. When the Psi 2000 virus hits, we see what happens when the discipline falls away. The crew becomes dysfunctional, they contemplate not only throwing their careers and cherished beliefs away, but some of them seem content to sit back and let themselves burn up in the atmosphere. On Beta III there is too much discipline, and the people lash out in madness. The computer Landru did not trust the people to find the right mix of discipline and freedom for themselves. So their freedoms were taken away. By destroying Landru, Kirk restores their freedom but it comes with the challenge of self-discipline.  

One important manifestation of internal discipline is the intellect, which is depicted as the more evolved part of human nature that can mediate or override the baser elements of that nature. 

The primacy of the intellect is an explicit theme in The Enemy Within. 

McCoy: “You have your intellect, Jim, you can fight with that…. The intelligence and logic, your half appears to have most of that. Perhaps that’s where Man’s essential courage comes from. He was afraid, and you weren’t.” 

Spock: “I have a human half, as well as an alien half, submerged, constantly at war with each other. I survive it because my intelligence wins out over both, makes them live together.” 

This idea is also in Charlie X. Charlie becomes so dangerous because, as a child, he has not acquired the wisdom of experience.

While Spock is often depicted as having encyclopedic knowledge, Kirk also knows much about not just the workings of a starship, but history, literature, and human nature. Everyone on the Enterprise is exceedingly smart. But book smarts are not the powerhouse of the intellect, nor are they the key to discipline. It is the ability to reason, analyze, judge, and apply logic to the swirl of emotions. Star Trek values emotions over logic as we will see in the next segment, but when it comes to maintaining discipline over our inner demons, the intellect is an important tool.   

Human Condition: the Reward

In the first suite of themes Star Trek is teaching that life as a human is hard, and there is great value and beauty in those struggles. But in other episodes–and often layered over top of the same episodes–there is a different message, one of pure uplift and optimism. The original Star Trek never put on a big smile and told its audience “Be optimistic.” It made an argument. It demonstrated concrete reasons why one should have an optimistic outlook. These reasons are the vital gift of human connection, and the demonstrated fact of moral and ethical progress in both individuals and society.  

Theme: Moral Progress

Percent of Season: 25%

7 of 28 Episodes: 

• Where No Man Has Gone Before
• Miri
• The Squire of Gothos
• Arena
• Space Seed
• A Taste of Armageddon
• The City on the Edge of Forever

Implicit in Kirk’s speech to Dehner in Where No Man Has Gone Before is that humanity has thrived in spite of “the ugly, savage things that we all keep buried.” Those things are a part of us, but they do not determine our fate. 

Kirk explains something similar to the next god-like creature he encounters–Trelane–who accuses the crew of being primitive savages. As Marc Cushman explains in his analysis of that episode: “Kirk demonstrates that mankind is capable of greater things than our detractors would believe. This is the magic of Star Trek. In the turbulent 1960s, Americans, especially America’s youth, were desperate for a sign that we could survive and, more so, that there was reason for us to do so.” 

Cushman also notes that in the same week production on The Squire of Gothos began there was a slew of reporting that could have proved Trelane’s point: the Vietnam war, as well as nuclear testing from both China and the USSR. Also Miri aired that week, an episode which depicted “the end of Western civilization as we knew it.” Miri was not explicitly about Human progress, but it did depict a literal parallel Earth, one that did not make it–unlike the Earth Kirk and his crew came from.

In Arena, we have the story of a bloody war that is averted. Kirk first choses aggression and is prepared to launch a war against the Gorn. But when forced to choose between cold-blooded murder and mercy, he choses the more enlightened path. 

In Space Seed, Kirk is faced with yet another supposedly superior lifeform who argues that Humans are a debased species. In this case the antagonist turns out to be a genetically modified Human–Kahn. Kirk must once again vouch for progress that has been made and argue that humanity is not the brutes Khan takes them for. The audience is also reminded that sometime in their future (ahem, the 1990s) Humanity will nearly destroy itself, but that we will survive our mistakes and continue to improve our condition, paving the way to the future we see in Kirk’s 23rd Century.    

In A Taste of Armageddon we visit a planet that has tried to have a sanitized version of war. When the Eminiarians justify their way of life by saying “There can be no peace… We’re a killer species” the ensuing Kirk Speech adds to the theme: “All right, it’s instinctive. But the instinct can be fought. We’re human beings, with the blood of a million savage years on our hands. But we can stop it! We can admit we’re killers, but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes–knowing that you’re not going to kill today.”

The Eminiarians apparently believe that war is inevitable so we might as well make it as civilized as possible. Kirk is saying that war is in our nature but it is not inevitable, it can be overcome. This Kirk speech is Star Trek’s thesis of the optimistic human future: it’s not that people will evolve beyond our flaws and brutality, but that we will learn how to better manage them.     

Finally–and again to The City on the Edge of Forever–we are reminded that war on Earth once had its place, was even a necessary evil, but that we were able to move past that. When Kirk declares “Peace was the way” and Spock agrees by adding “She was right. But at the wrong time” both are reflecting on a time in Earth’s history when Keeler’s argument did win the day, when the war protesters and the peacekeepers finally succeeded in changing the course of Human history.    

Keeler’s “One day, soon” speech is a perfect distillation of this theme, but she makes the same case just about any time she opens her mouth. On their romantic stroll she and Kirk have this exchange:  

Keeler: I just know that’s all. I feel it. And more. I think that one day they’re going to take all the money that they spend on war and death-

Kirk: and make them spend it on life.

Kirk, stuck in the 1930s, knows that humanity has to at least make it past World War II before this great moral progress can occur. But the people who watched this episode when it first aired, in the 1960s and 70s, as the Vietnam War raged–were left to wonder–to hope–that maybe this decade, this very year, might be when change will finally come. It must have been a tantalizing idea to fantasize about. 

Those of us who watched Star Trek after that, or are watching it now, know the shift has not yet happened and appears unlikely any time soon. But Star Trek allows us to hope that it will happen eventually, and perhaps sooner than we think. 

Theme: Importance of Human Connection 

Percent of Season: 25%

7 of 28 Episodes: 

• Where No Man Has Gone Before
• The Man Trap
• The Naked Time
• Charlie X
• The Menagerie
• The Alternative Factor
• The City on the Edge of Forever

Star Trek is always reminding us of how important it is for people to bond with one another. The purpose of these bonds is nothing more or less than happiness, companionship, community. But the episodes also show that human connection is a powerful force that can have deep ramifications on not just an individual life but the fate of the universe. Accordingly, hard choices must sometimes be made about when and how to forge these connections, and when to sever them.   

The importance of human connection is a major element in both pilot episodes. In The Cage, the Talosians whole mission is to get a companion for Vina so that she has someone real to share her life with. Spock does the same for Pike in The Menagerie. Gary Mitchel choses Dehner so he will not have to be alone. Kirk wrestles with what to do about Mitchel because he finds it too difficult to break the bond of friendship he has with him. 

In The Man Trap, Crater is traumatized by the loss of his wife. While he longs to become an isolated hermit living alone on a deserted planet, he still indulges the need for companionship by making the salt creature take the form of his wife. Crater maintains throughout the episode that he wants to be left alone. And he literally means it. He desires to be alone, but with the creature as an occasional companion. This is shown to be unworkable. Kirk tries to convince him not to give in to self-delusion, and that he cannot supplement real human connection with artificial connection. 

Charlie X is also a mediation on how terrible it is to be denied human connection. First Charlie was alone for years, raised by computers on the crashed ship. Then he is exiled with the non-corporeal aliens. His haunting parting words to the Enterprise crew: “Don’t let them take me. I can’t even touch them… they can’t feel… they don’t love.” This loss makes him a tragic character in the end. 

Lazarus is similarly tragic. While The Alternative Factor barely registers as having a theme because of its script problems, it is still an exploration of the theme of human connection, and would have been moreso if it could have had a few more rewrites. Lazarus is pained by the separation from his people. He tries to find love with an Enterprise crewwoman, but in an act of supreme sacrifice and tragedy, he traps himself for all eternity with his own mad double.  

The Naked Time shows how great a sacrifice both Kirk and Spock are making by intentionally limiting their connections with others. Spock does so because of the Vulcan way of suppressing emotions. Kirk does so because of the burden of command. While the other intoxicated characters are played for laughs, both of these are profoundly sad.  

Spock’s portrayal of spiraling out of control is poignant. It is clear that to him losing control is the one thing he cannot allow, or allow to be seen. (Nimoy pushed the director to move his weeping scene into the briefing room; it was originally written as a public act in the corridor played for laughs). 

Nimoy said he learned from this episode that he was not playing “a man with no emotions, but a man who had great pride, who had learned to control his emotions and who would deny that he knew what emotions were.” The character is interesting because he is always operating on two levels; all his lines and reactions must be parsed by the viewer. Spock is an emotionless Vulcan but is also projecting the façade of an emotionless Vulcan to cover his actual emotions—both at the same time.

The key moment is when Spock admits, “Jim, when I feel friendship for you, I’m ashamed.” Taken at face value, this is heartbreaking (it is also very queer–not that he is being romantic.) We see the toll that his supreme control has taken on his psyche. We want him to let us in, and he never does. But because the scripts and the actor himself give the audience enough winks–hints of Spock’s rich inner life–we feel as though we are in the know anyway, and a connection if formed. No wonder he became a fan favorite. Nimoy claimed that after the episode aired, his mail increased from a few hundred letters a week to 10,000 a week. 

It’s also pretty obvious that the rest of the crew is in on it too, especially Kirk and McCoy. All the scenes of friendly ribbing and tender concern show that they know exactly who Spock is. The fact that they adopt Spock’s facade that this doesn’t mean anything is another way of showing they care about him deeply. 

Kirk’s revelation in this episode is more straightforward, but even more tragic: 

“Love. You’re better off without it, and I’m better off without mine. This vessel–I give, she takes. She won’t permit me my life. I have to live hers… Now I know why it’s called ‘she.’ A flesh woman—to touch; to hold; a beach to walk on; a few days, no braid on my shoulder.” 

At the end of this scene, alone, he looks up and says to his ship: “I’ll never lose you. Never.” 

And after McCoy gives him the antidote, he looks at Yeoman Rand, almost reaches to touch her hair, and says, “No beach to walk on.” It’s a moment of sobriety where he decides—not for the first time, but with a sense of finality—that he has chosen a life where his purpose is his duty and his companion is his ship. It’s not that he is in love with Rand; she represents a longing for a normal life with romantic commitments—the possibility that he is rejecting.  

The ultimate expression of the power of human connection in season one is the love between Keeler and Kirk. Kirk genuinely falls in love with Keeler in a way that’s much more profound than the typical Kirk dalliance, and then he has to let that connection be smashed for the good of humanity. 

The famous future poem Kirk quotes–where “I love you” is replaced with the more egalitarian universal affirmation “Let me help”–is yet more evidence of the themes of human connection and moral progress.  The lonely, seemingly sisyphean work of helping people that Keeler is engaged in during the Great Depression will one day become everyone’s purpose. As Keeler points out, she and Kirk speak the same language. They are soul mates.  

It is telling that all of these examples showcase the importance of human connection by depicting the terrible consequences and tragedies associated with its absence. We are meant to be together, to share our lives. We are meant to love and help one another. It is something that everyone strives for even and especially in the face of it being taken away. We need it. 

Despite the above examples, the human connection on the show that always endures is that of the crew. Spock clearly gets over his shame over loving Kirk as a friend, and he almost certainly has just as strong an attachment to McCoy. And both Kirk and McCoy feel the same toward him and one another. Same for Uhura, Sulu, Scotty, Rand and Chapel. They all care about and enjoy one another. This is obvious from the many moments of humor and camaraderie between them, especially when they are all gathered together on the bridge after a mission. They are a family. 

This fact is an essential ingredient to Star Trek’s optimistic vision of the future. The moral progress of their culture, their faith in the future, would all be beside the point if they did not have each other to share in it. The implication is that this is a value that has spread across the entire 23rd Century Federation culture: we’re in this together, we treat one another as friends. Exploring the frontier, building a utopia–that’s the job but doing it with other people is the reason we’re out here. 

The message to the audience is no matter where you go or what you do: find other people, know them, share your life. This is never easy, but it is worth it.  

Continued in Part 2