'Star Trek' Chronicled Human Nature. (The Aliens Were Gravy.)

Last week was the 50th anniversary of “Star Trek” -- or more precisely, as my Bloomberg View colleague Stephen Carter notes, the airing of the first episode of the series. It’s not often that after a half-century, a television show sparks a national celebration (including a set of commemorative stamps from the U.S. Postal Service). What accounts for the series’ enduring appeal?

The answer lies in its portrayal of experiences and societies that, by virtue of their radical differences from our own, allow us to see the most familiar things in a new light. That’s what the best science fiction does. It offers a topsy-turvy world, or a twisted version of reality, which uncovers neglected truths (about, say, what really matters in human life), or which shows the contingency of how things are (and how with a small turn, a nation’s politics could go horribly wrong).