Is Star Trek a Utopian Vision of the Future?

The crew of the USS Enterprise. Photo courtesy of Starloggers.com ©

Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek has been called by some “a utopian vision of the future.” It’s not hard to see why. The century that the Enterprise and its crew find themselves in, is better than those days of yesterday that were filled with nuclear war, racial strife, and the eugenics war mentioned in the season one episode “Space Seed.” In Star Trek’s current century, any conflict that could possibly arise is…