KIRK TAUGHT US TO EXPLORE, NOT EXPLOIT.

Byline: RONALD D. MOORE 

FOUR decades ago, when the starship Enterprise first settled into orbit around Planet M-113 on Sept. 8, 1966, I was 2 years old. I could not have known it at the time, but ``Star Trek'' would literally change my life.

To say that any television show has changed one's life is to invite both mockery and pity for a geek who must surely have been denied direct sunlight and the attention of women for the better part of his days. In lieu of offering proof that I do not still reside in my parents' basement, let me simply tell you how ``Star Trek'' informed the way I look at the world.

``Star Trek'' is often reduced to kitsch: Kirk's paunch, Spock's pointy ears, green-skinned alien girls. But it was more than escapism and rubber-suited aliens. It was a morality play with Capt. James T. Kirk as a futuristic John F. Kennedy piloting a warp-driven PT-109 through the galaxy.

Kirk, for me, embodied an American idea: His mission was to explore the final frontier, not to conquer it. He was moral without moralizing. Week after week, he confronted the specters of intolerance and injustice, and week after week he found a way to defeat them without ever becoming them.

As I grew into an adult and my political views took shape, I treasured ``Star Trek'' as a dream of what my country could become: a liberal and tolerant society, unafraid to live by its ideals in a dangerous universe, and secure in the knowledge that its greatness is derived from the strength of its ideas rather than the power of its phasers. In my 20s, through luck and determination, I fulfilled my childhood dream: I became a writer for ``Star Trek.''

For 10 years, I helped propel the latter-day incarnations of ``Trek'' into new territory while keeping alive the set of moral principles I'd taken to heart. As I plotted the adventures of the Enterprise-D and the travails of the Deep Space 9 station, I gradually became interested in pushing the boundaries.

Science fiction on film and television has, over the past four decades, moved decisively away from the ``Star Trek'' optimism. ``Blade Runner,'' ``Alien'' and ``The Matrix'' posit much darker, dystopian futures. Even the ``Star Wars'' movies posit the rise of a galactic empire founded on ``the dark side.'' Social and commercial explanations abound for this shift, but my theory is that ``Star Trek'' set the gold standard for the idealistic vision of tomorrow, and no one has successfully challenged it.

Nowadays, it may appear that I've turned a blind eye to my lodestar as the crew of the Galactica behaves in ways that would have been unthinkable in the ``Star Trek'' universe that Gene Roddenberry created. But ``Battlestar Galactica'' remains very much informed by the lessons I learned from that slightly paunchy man in the gold pajama top on the good ship Enterprise.

My characters may not have all the answers (sometimes they're not even aware of the questions) but they contain kernels of both good and evil in their hearts and continue to struggle for salvation and redemption against the darker angels of their natures. Their defeats are many, their victories few, but somehow, some way, they never give up the dream of finding a better tomorrow.

And, thanks to a 40-year-old television show, neither do I.