When I was a kid, I was a fan of the original Star Trek series, which was in syndication by then. I haven’t paid any attention to the whole franchise since reaching puberty. I managed to miss or ignore its whole 90’s-era re-emergence.
Well, recent websurfing somehow led me to a Wikipedia page about Gene Roddenberry, creator of the series. Turns out he was a LAPD cop; a Los Angeles City paycheck fed his family while writing TV screenplays and pitching series pilots on the side. He wrote a lot of Dragnet and other 1950’s and 1960’s cop-show screenplays, under a pseudonym because he was still an active member of the police force.
As Wikipedia surfing usually goes, I ended up reading the entries for a few of the original episodes. And I quickly noticed a pattern. In script after script, the Enterprise responds to a distress call, or is ordered in to investigate. Wha? They were cops! Roddenbery sold the series to NBC as being "Wagon Train to the Stars" or "Gunsmoke in Space", and maybe it was in terms of overall feel, but that wasn’t the main plot device. Never noticed that isomorphism between cop shows and Star Trek, but there it is. They cruised around the galaxy, like cops on the beat, responding to a dispatch call. Maybe that’s why the Enterprise looked a bit like a donut.
