Fifty years ago, “Star Trek” pushed the frontiers of technology with 23rd-century smartphones – also known as communicators – but the TV show pushed social and political frontiers as well.
“While the original premise of the show may have been, ‘Let’s just have some adventures with a spaceship,’ very quickly it became social commentary as well,” screenwriter David Gerrold observes in “Building Star Trek,” a Smithsonian Channel documentary about the show and its legacy.
In honor of the 50th anniversary of the “Star Trek” premiere, we’re listing five ways in which the show’s scripts – and its creator, Gene Roddenberry – went where few 1960s-era TV sagas had gone before.
