Trek

A short item here about an essay from 20 years ago about Star Trek (The Original Series). It looks at how the events of the late 60s affected what made it to the screen. It references four episodes that had something to say about the Vietnam War. The first two (The City on the Edge of Forever and A Private Little War) are seen as supporting the governments plans and actions. The latter two (The Omega Glory and Let That Be Your Last Battlefield) are put forth as critical of them.

The implication is that the writers and producers of Star Trek - no few of whom were GI Generation - went from being in favor of intervention to opposition. The Tet Offensive is suggested as being the change point between the two. A problem with that is the timing: The second and third episodes were shown only a month apart, the first only a few days after Tet - not really long enough for a complete change in attitude. Especially since the episodes would have been written and filmed several months before. (According to one source noted on the Memory Alpha link above, The Omega Glory was written years earlier, in 1965, and filmed in December 1967.)

One additional surprise is that the essay doesn't mention The Way to Eden - the "space hippies" episode. First broadcast about a month later than the last one above, it shares an outlook similar to what the essay attributes to the first: While well-meaning and even sympathetic, those involved in the counterculture are naive, misled by their leaders.  As a result, it suggests that the attitudes of the producers and writers had changed much less than this essay infers.