Star Trek was seen as the forefront of science fiction, with aliens and pioneering tech.
The show, which first began all the way back in 1966, captured the hearts of a generation fascinated with space. Branded the "final frontier" on the show, viewers were transfixed to their TVs as they imagined what life could be like outside of our home planet.
Since then, the show has run in some way for decades, making various predictions on what may happen to Earth. One episode of the show referring to Irish reunification proved to be so controversial, however, it was banned from airing in the UK and Ireland until 2007.
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So, as the show celebrated its 58th birthday this year, Daily Star looks at some of the chilling predictions it has made over the years.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is continuing to infiltrate our world nowadays, but in the 1980s the Star Trek crew appeared to face the same issues. In one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, beloved character and android Data was put on trial to establish whether he had the same rights as a sentient human being.
The ethical dilemma posed in the episode raised concerns at the time about the rise of technology and the eventual development of AI, particularly as Data had been seen as a friendly version of the programme. Others saw a conversation that needed to be had over the rights of androids in an increasingly robotic world, where humans are relying on technology more and more.
This was not the only episode to touch on the subject, as in The Quality of Life, the main cast of the show are tasked with dealing with sentient robots. This also raised questions about the ethical nature of creating AI, a concern which remains to this day.
Landing on the Moon
As the show was taking off in 1966, Star Trek capitalised on the interest of space travel that had gripped America as the Space Race in the Cold War raged on. In their episode Tomorrow Is Yesterday, the crew of the Enterprise head back in time to 1969, when people first walked on the Moon.
The eerie prediction was seen when Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner and Lieutenant Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols, come across a news report looking at the spaceship blasting off. This episode, however, did in fact predict the future, as it was first released in 1967, two years before the actual landing.
However, despite the strange correlation with dates, their true predictions would be hit by tragedy. Just one day after the episode initially aired, the Apollo 1 tragedy occurred, resulting in the deaths of three men.
Civil unrest and social justice
Social upheaval has been a common theme in Star Trek's storylines, as Data mentioned when he predicted Irish reunification in 2024. However, in another episode of the show, the crew travelled to 2024 itself, to see California turned upside down by social unrest.
Back in 1995, a two-part episode titled Past Tense saw Captain Sisko and Dr. Julian Bashir accidentally sent to San Francisco in 2024, where the poor are homeless and forgotten about. This was contrasted with the wealthy and powerful, who lives in separate areas of the city.
Things were brought to a head when Sisko, a black man, is believed to be from the poor district of the city and mistreated by authorities in front of thousands of people. This echoes the social justice movements caused throughout the past few years - particularly the Black Lives Matter movement, brought into the mainstream after the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed man, by American police.
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