This is why Star Trek is so inferior to other SF programmes. ST:NG had higher production values and better writers than TOS, and an infinitely better cast (I have few memories more painful than watching Shatner chew the scenery while Nimoy did his impression of a stuffed owl and poor DeForest Kelley, stuck between them, tried to act).

But TOS was stuck in the 1950s and TNG in the 1960s. The British SF programme Blakes' 7, which ran between 1978 and 1981 was what Trek should have been. The Federation of Blakes' 7 was a fascist dictatorship. Blake, the hero, was a man of conscience and morality, a revolutionary and ultimately ineffectual, constantly saved from disasters of his own creation by his cohorts; a trio of petty criminals, a telepathic guerilla fighter and a sociopath. Avon, played by Paul Darrow, was the character Spock should have been: highly intelligent, ruthlessly logical, completely without emotion or empathy. Aware of his own superiority and prepared to manipulate and sacrifice anyone and anything to ensure his own survival and dominance.

Fortunately, the US provided its own antidote to Trek in Babylon 5. JMS got everything right that Roddenberry had got wrong. From politics, racism and shades of grey morality to the idea that damaged equipment actually required repair by people in overalls using spanners!