In praise of Star Trek

I was watching re-runs of the first series of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" the other day (OK, I grant that that is a little bogus, not to say sad) when I came across an episode called "Where No One has Gone Before". In it a character appears who has "special knowledge" of the Enterprise's warp drive. To the humans aboard he appears to be a rather weak-looking,  vulnerable humanoid life form, but nonetheless he (with the assistance of Wesley Crusher, the teenage ensign who does a line in the worst jumpers in the known galaxy) is able to save the ship from disaster, while taking it "beyond warp 10", and therefore covering every furthest point in the Universe simultaneously).

There is another episode in the original (captain Kirk/Mr Spock) series where they encounter a race that can manipulate reality and which Spock pronounces as " as far ahead of humankind as we are above the amoeba".

For us to achieve this level of complexity , how far must our "civilisation" have to go to reach a similar level? A million years? A billion? Is it even conceivable we could last that long, given our precarious state currently? It's an open question. But let us look at the age of the Universe. Currently aged at 13.7 billion years, within 1 billion years of its creation, the early galaxies had already formed,with many stars with Earth-like planets orbiting them. The latest research is now indicating that Earth-like planets, floating in a Goldilocks zone where water can exist in its liquid state, probably litter all galaxies and in a profusion than wasn't believed possible just a few years ago. It is perfectly possible that there are life forms out there that have been in existence, and evolving, not for just 3 billion years like here, but at least twice as long.

Can you imagine what they might have achieved with that sort of head start? Travel between the stars might be elementary for them; indeed, they might be able to manipulate all the laws of nature to their own advantage. In other words, they would be so far ahead of us they would be indistinguishable from what we might call God. If they have lasted that long, they might have found it necessary to relocate, as their home star eventually died and they needed to find another. They might not even need a planet by that stage of their evolution, having no corporeal existence at all, but simply existing as unimaginable whorls of energy. They could certainly travel here, though I'm sure they would have some non-interference policy, like the "Prime Directive" so beloved by Star Fleet.

At present there are restrictions laid down by the laws of physics; we can't go faster than light, we can't travel in time and so on. But that's only at the level we currently understand how the Universe works. But one day, if we can avoid destroying the only home we have in the meantime, these little obstructions may be overcome. Can we make it? I think we can.

What's all this got to do with Star Trek? Just that it helped open my mind, and many others, to the possibilities of the infinite. And let's face it, you can't say that about most TV programmes.