Aspects of Life that Disappeared on Star Trek

Watching Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, it's clear that many of the gadgets that we have today, may have been inspired by the television shows and movies. Captain Kirk's communicator is an early precursor to a cell phone. The senior officers of TNG are often seen with tablets similar to iPads. Also all versions of Star Trek feature teleconferencing which didn't exist before the shows debuted.

It would seem that life on Earth in the future is close to being Utopian-like. Homelessness had been eliminated, there is a virtual one hundred percent employment rate, humans were living a lot longer, and nearly all war between humans on Earth had been eliminated. With that being said, there are elements of future life that seem to be missing, that make present day life good.

1. Modern Sports: It would appear that almost all major sports have died off. You never hear Captain Picard asking about the scores for an NFL game. Captain Kirk never debates Bones about who the best basketball players are. The only traces are Commander Sisko's love for baseball, which he would often play on the holodeck and Captain Archer's desire to stay up-to-date with Stanford University's water polo team. A six-team baseball league on Cestus III apparently survived into the 24th century and it was mentioned by Sisko that the last World Series was played in 2042 before a crowd of only 300.

A game called Parrisses Squares, that shared elements of racquetball became popular on board Picard's Enterprise. What's confusing is that on Deep Space Nine O'Brien and Bashir play racquetball on the holodeck, so apparently while popular sports such as basketball died out, racquetball and games that sprang from it survived the centuries. Other sports that make brief appearances are volleyball (Voyager) and fencing (TNG's Picard in two episodes).

2. School Dances: Today, Proms and Homecomings are a tradition of teenage Americans. Three hundred years later and there appears to be no traces of the school time tradition. On TNG, there is a schooling system aboard the Enterprise, but it's always comprised of kids that appear to be under the age of 12. Do the kids not have a dance? If not, where else would their parents overspend to get their kid into a tuxedo?

3. Video Games: One of the fastest rising medias in entertainment seems to have completely disappeared in the future. Admittedly if you have access to a holodeck, the appeal of video games would probably decrease a bit. The only trace of a video game is a game introduced to the crew of Picard's Enterprise by the Ktarians. Although this game was used to numb a portion of the player's brain so the Ktarians could take control of the Enterprise. Oddly, the only member of the crew not to fall to the games addictiveness was a teenager (Wesley).

4. Photographs: Members of the various crews will occasionally look at family pictures on their view screens, tablets, or whatever you call their personal computers in the future, but there doesn't appear to be any photographs anymore. There is the occasional painting or sculpture, but photographs have seemed to all, but disappear. Because of this, crew quarters often seem minimalistic and void of personality.

5. Alcohol: By the time TNG comes around, almost all alcohol has been eliminated on Federation starships. Instead synthehol was created to have the properties of alcohol without the negative effects such as inebriation or organ damage. Maybe this sounds like an improvement over alcohol, but the characters that have had both, have always complained of the generic taste of synthehol. Scotty, perhaps the hardest drinking crew member of all the Enterprises, couldn't stand the taste of synthehol when he found himself aboard Picard's Enterprise. Picard on the other hand could handle whiskey very well and other alien crews such as Klingons still enjoyed their own versions of alcohol such as blood wine. Maybe the Federation should develop a way to inject the Borg with alcohol because as seen in an episode of Voyager, Seven of Nine drinks one glass of champagne and becomes severely inebriated.

6. Books: The only Star Trek crew member that ever consistently seems to have a physical book is Captain Picard. The mystery is, where does he keep them? In his quarters, he has a bookshelf that can be seen when he enjoys breakfast with Dr. Crusher, but there only appears to be a dozen books on that shelf. Does he re-read them over and over again?

7. Pets: Other than Captain Archer's beagle named Porthos and Data's cat named Spot, it appears that no one owns a pet. Picard has a lionfish named Livingston in his ready room, but he never interacts with it. In an episode called "All Good Things..." Q seems to be more interested in the fish than Picard. In fact, everyone of Picard's guests seem more interested in his fish than he is. Hugh of the Borg, DaiMon Lurin, and Berlinghoff Rasmussen all take interest in Picard's fish.

8. Disney: Well at least this plague has disappeared in the future.

Photo: Screencap from first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation

The Future That Hanna-Barbera Promised Us

In 1963, the creators of TV cartoon shows such as The Flintstones and The Yogi Bear Show, created a show set in the near future that entertained children for two years, before being rebooted in 1985 and 1987. That show, famously known as The Jetsons, gave children of the Cold War era a glimpse into how the world would turnout by the year 2000. Because of this cartoon, adults often make jokes questioning where are their flying cars and robots.

One aspect of The Jetsons that is often overlooked is the reason why their futuristic cities are sitting on adjustable columns, high in the air. Because of pollution on ground level of Earth, the architects of what would become Orbit City as well as other cities from the cartoon, created these highly elevated cities to avoid the severe levels of pollution and smog. Hanna-Barbera made projections of a society that not only rapidly moved into the future within 37 years, but also gave hope that even with the potential of Earth becoming polluted, humans could find a way to avoid the filth.

The majority of fans when the show originally aired were obviously children, so the aspect of mass pollution was lost on them. Children focused more on the flying cars, the talking dog (Astro), the robots, and all the gadgets that George Jetson and his family took for granted. In a time before the United States Environmental Protection Agency was formed and climate change became known to the mainstream, The Jetsons forecasted a future where it was necessary for humanity to avoid what we had created.

Some could view The Jetsons as a hopeful promise of a future, even if it has yet to come, but it could also be seen as a forewarning to a future that shows that humanity failed to effectively deal with what we had done to our own planet. A hidden layer of despair, covered with the promise of technology. With all the technology that they had at their disposal, it appears that none of their scientists took the time to try to figure out how to reduce the pollution levels and let humanity enjoy the natural resources of Earth. Without being on the surface of Earth, how would Elroy ever get a chance to enjoy a wonder of the world like the Grand Canyon? How would Judy ever get to enjoy the sand between her toes while strolling along the beaches of Southern California?

In 1987, the space-age family ran into the prehistoric Flintstones family in a movie called The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones. In comparison, it would seem that the life of the Jetsons in Orbit City is better and fare more free of stress, but without the worries of pollution and the fact that Flintstones lived in a time less harmful to their surrounding environment, it could be said that the Flintstones were the ones truly living in a utopia known as Bedrock. At least Fred could take Wilma and Pebbles to the beach, forest, or desert without worrying about the filth that the Jetsons would have to wade through.