re: #100 Targetpractice

I’d argue that the bulk of ST’s famous episodes over the series have either been about the conflict between the ideal and the reality of meeting races and galactic powers or of Starfleet officers failing to live up to it. The writers on TNG actually had a term for trying to write drama while working within the constraints of his vision of what future humanity would be: “The Roddenberry Box.” He’d take you aside and tell you that Earth was a paradise, that all conflict had been resolved, nobody wanted for basic needs, and that all those “petty” impulses that we’d once devoted ourselves to were gone. Then he’d tell you to go write drama.

Which is why Star Trek was set entirely in space where the crew met new aliens every week to have conflict with. I can’t think of any episodes of the original series set on Earth.*

*Except when they time traveled into the past where conflict did exist.