In my native country of Iran during the pre-Islamic-revolution times, the television, rife with American films, was a window into the western culture, specially the American culture, for most people.
But Star Trek was something else. It wasn't so much a glimpse of the western culture than it was the promise of what humanity could be if we let go of our bigotry and superstitions, and instead embrace humanity, science and rationality.
As a young boy I had a few sleepless nights after watching some of the more action-packed episodes. One memorable episode was The Doomsday Machine, which had me terrified of the specter of Earth being gobbled up by a fiery funnel. But many episodes also had the power to make us look at our society and at ourselves and see things from a different angle, mainly a logical one.
In of my most favorite episodes, Mirror, Mirror, the audience is taken on a journey to a parallel universe where greed for power, tyranny, and savagery is the order of the day. To the crew of the parallel Enterprise it's all par for the course, but to the few normal-world Enterprise crew members who are transported there by accident and to us, the viewers, it's a dark and hopeless world. That is not so different from many parts of our world today. We can only root for the parallel-Enterprise Spock who, at the end of the episode, realizes how illogical his world actually is. Of course seeing Spock with a beard in this episode is a pretty good bonus in itself.
Leonard Nimoy has sadly passed away, but his character, Spock, will undoubtedly live long and prosper. LLAP
Give a few Sats