When I was growing up my family (or at least Rob and I) regularly watched Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm not sure why it appealed to me, but then again, as I've lately been revisiting '80s movies I loved as a kid, I'm finding there's not much logical qualification for what I did and didn't like back then. At any rate, via a Netflix trial I decided to re-plunge myself in Star Trek by starting over again at the first season. Memories of later episodes are coming back, and brief glimpses of understanding at why I liked the series, but I must say that this feels enough like watching the series for the first time, and I'm more impressed now than I ever was as a kid. As a kid, Star Trek was about exploring space, seeing what interesting predicaments the crew could get into, really digging the holodeck episodes (look it up), etc. Now I see quite a bit more. I never realized that just about every episode was built on the exploration of some moral gray area and seeing how the crew handled it. I'm serious; the technology and space stuff is only a facade for the exploration of our moral humanity, though the technology and space stuff obviously factor in. Is it okay to steal a space ship from the Federation if it means saving your planet from being destroyed? Is an eye for an eye the best means of retribution and revenge? Can a sentient non-human yet human-like being (an android) be counted on for needing to make a decision based on more than just logic? Is it better to utilize absolute power to give people what would make them happy or to refrain from such use to give them what they need?

If, at the end of the day, Star Trek is just Star Trek to you, that's okay. No skin off my nose. But I encourage you to give it a different look...just about every episode so far has thoroughly intrigued me, and though it's not making me into more of a science fiction geek, it is making me reminisce of days when it was okay to cloak moral commentary with phasers and Klingons.