Star Trek is a space version of Wagon Train. There's the crew, there's the encountered. The problems arise now from the in-group, now from the out. The future is not without its counterpart of violence in the past and present. This ranges from good old-fashioned impaling on primitive spears to ridiculous duels in which characters throw electrical charges at one another through their fingertips. The series carries the usual bag of space-fiction hard and software—lasers, telepathy, time warps, etc. Countering the comic-strip values is the image of an integrated crew representing diverse races—albeit, the captain is an American, and the known space system seems to be under the benevolent hegemony of a Pax Americana.

No attempt is ever made to hypothecate any realistic prediction about political, economic, or social conditions: the encounters are all in a contextual vacuum. Still, the program does focus attention on the...