Will Wheaton looks back at Trek...

Because it's an optimistic view of our future, because starships look cool and so do nebulas, because it has lots of babes, beacuse it has heroes battling evil and facing challenges, because a starship crew is a team and some people want to be part of a team that values brains not athletic ability, because it's an escapist fantasy that takes you into outer space and away from your mundane job, or homework or day-to-day problems...

"It speaks to some basic human needs, that there is a tomorrow - it's not all going to be over in a big flash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans. No, ancient astronauts did not build the pyramids - human beings built them because they're clever and they work hard. And 'Star Trek' is about those things."
- Gene Roddenberry

"For me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects."
- Gene Roddenberry

"In the annals of science fiction, where dystopias rule the imaginative roost, Star Trek stood nearly alone in telling us that our future would be better than our past, that our common problems would be solved, that we, as a species, were fundamentally good, and that the universe would reward us for our goodness."
- Charles Shaar Murray and Mike Marqusee in "Prospect Magazine"