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[color=#000000ost_uid0]The Obsessive Trekker's Top Ten Ways in Which TOS Constitutes a Serious and Compelling Social Document Reflecting Profoundly on Our Culture and Our Times


10. As the first U.S. TV show to feature an interracial kiss, TOS was in the forefront of establishing the preeminence of sex in American society, to the exclusion of all other concerns

9. The prominent role played by Southern country doctor Leonard McCoy emphasized that even bumpkins can make their mark on space, and paved the way for later, highly nuanced Southern sci-fi characters like Trip Tucker

8. TOS's heterogeneous, multi-ethnic crew proved once and for all that it is possible for people of different kinds to get along and work together for the common good, as long as it's in a completely artificial, pie-in-the-sky sci-fi fantasy future where everybody gets along and works together

7. Captain Kirk's developing tummy made it possible for millions of impressionable to children to be comfortable in later life with their own McDonald's-induced spare tire

6. In proud defiance of the stodgy networks, Star Trek dared to broach the cutting edge of the hippie music scene, certain that this classic art form would endure into the 23rd century and beyond

5. Kirk taught millions of young men the valuable and useful skill of grabbing women by the shoulders and kissing without tongue

4. Thanks to "The Immunity Factor," it's a little easier for all of us to deal with the obsessive antimatter alter egos we all carry around inside

3. Both government and corporate executives have long known the value of having two subordinates express diametrically opposed viewpoints, then ignoring them both completely

2. I think it goes without saying that if we were transported back to Tombstone, Arizona and forced to participate in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, each of us would behave exactly as the officers of the Enterprise did


And the Obsessive Trekker's Number One Way in Which TOS Constitutes a Serious and Compelling Social Document Reflecting Profoundly on Our Culture and Our Times:

1. Kirk's stubborn adherence to his bigoted beliefs about Klingons, which he took to the grave in defiance of radical shifts in reality rendering his beliefs antiquated and dangerously out of touch, is recognized everywhere as the very essence of the American attitude toward the rest of the world[/colorost_uid0]