Tuesday Slice: Old enough to see it again

Midriff-baring crop tops.  Platform shoes.  Vertically striped, flowy linen pants.  Teeshirts with sayings in groovy fonts.  My teen and young adult years are being replayed on the consumer front.  I've aged enough to see it--what's old is new again.  TV shows and movies of my youth are being remade and celebrated, too.

Maybe it's nostalgia, or just a love of sci-fi, but lately I've been watching old episodes of the various series of "Star Trek".  Sometimes I turn to the channel earlier and catch the original series and "Next Generation".  Usually I watch "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager", falling asleep before the opening strains of "Enterprise".   Come to think of it--can watching sci-fi be nostalgic, when most of the content is still futuristic?

Here's where my "Star Trek" viewing has changed:  I'm now old enough to truly pay attention to the social commentary written into many of the episodes.  Topics such as inequity in healthcare based on socioeconomic class; centuries-old rival cultures so acclimatized to battling that they can't see beyond the war; destroying ecosystems to maintain the status quo; predilection for violence, and the argument for rehabilitation versus execution; and, of course, racism--only in the future, it's more species-ism.  Greed is often at the root of conflicts-greed for materials, control, domination.

These conflicts occur on other planets, in other star systems.  Most of the time, the captain and crew rise above the issues, offering a better future for all involved.  Sometimes, the systems are so embedded, the conflicts so raw, that all the crew can do is escape with their own lives, leaving the chaos behind.  What's sobering is that these episodes were written decades ago--and we're still trying to solve these problems here on Earth.  It's sad to think that I may be too old to ever see the solutions come to fruition in my lifetime.  At least on "Star Trek" Earth, we've come to know better and do better in the future.