dpFew television shows have lived as long, or traveled as far, as Star Trek.
When it premiered in 1966, the bridge of the USS Enterprise showed viewers something rare: an Asian man at the helm, a Black woman as its Swahili communications officer and a half-alien working beside them as a science officer. They were not visitors or outsiders. They belonged there.
That vision helped Star Trek change television. The original series treated science fiction as a place for grownup stories about loyalty, courage, grief and the difficult choices people make. It gave actors who had often been confined to stereotypes the chance to play skilled professionals. It built a world broad enough to keep expanding for six decades.
William Shatner poses for a portrait in Los Angeles in 1984; he played Capt. James T. Kirk.
Alamy Stock Photo
William Shatner, who played Capt. James T. Kirk, believes the show endured because the future was never its true subject.
“Although the background was futuristic, the foreground was what happens because you’re a human being,” Shatner, 95, tells AARP during an interview at GalaxyCon Richmond (Virginia) in March 2026. “And I think that was the key to Star Trek’s success.”
The original Star Trek premiered on Sept. 8, 1966. Sixty years later, the franchise includes films, animated series, streaming shows, novels, podcasts and conventions that draw fans who were not alive when the USS Enterprise first appeared on television.
A different kind of television cast
George Takei, who played helmsman Hikaru Sulu, saw something just as important when he first read for the role.
“It was the first time that I was being asked to portray a character that was fully developed,” Takei, 89, says. “It was a human being, not a cartoon or a stereotype.”
American television offered few substantial roles for Asian actors when Takei auditioned for Star Trek. The parts available to him were often narrow and familiar. Sulu was neither.
“This was an identifiable, sharp, intelligent member of a Starfleet team,” Takei says. “I desperately wanted to be a part of that show.”
Sulu sat at the helm of the Enterprise and helped carry out its missions. He had interests and ambition.
“I was proud to be cast as Sulu,” Takei says.
In a description accompanying a studio model of the Enterprise, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum characterizes the crew as an on-screen image of racial and gender integration, with men and women from different backgrounds working together as equals. The show did not stop to explain why those characters belonged there. They simply did.
