The following is an excerpt from the chapter:

In 1966 NBC aired the pilot episode of Star Trek, a sci-fi series created by TV writer Gene Roddenberry. Though popular the series was cancelled after three seasons and syndicated (i.e. repeated ad nauseum) which served to strengthen its appeal spawning several successful movies and sister series. Devotees of the theme (or Trekkies) across the world come from all age groups and hold regular conventions where they dress to imitate characters, including alien life forms. True numbers are difficult to ascertain, however, one petition against the copyright owners returned 30,000 signatures.

Roddenberry is quoted as rejecting religion from an early age which comes across in his scripts where he advocates a very scientific, logical and humanistic approach to any problem. But it’s not impossible to sell religion to the spiritually skeptical stereotype lover of all things scientific. In the film Star Wars director George Lucas employed an emotionally charged theme borrowed from mythology, religion and politics to touch a spiritual chord within the sci-fi fraternity. With the introduction “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away”, Lucas set aside all notions of man as the predominant evolutionary species creating instead a scientifically and spiritually advanced world with no relation to the present time, avoiding the problem of obsolescence faced by his contemporaries who resorted to increasingly distant periods in man’s future. Star Wars is a timeless tale of the struggle between good and evil, pitching the fascist imagery reminiscent of Hitler’s Third Reich against a virtuous band of rebels able to manipulate a force (the Force) that permeates the entire universe. If such a tale were to survive Armageddon it should gain the same status with the inheritors of planet Earth as any religious text bequeathed their ancestors.