Not only was "Forbidden Planet" shamelessly (should I say, untimely?) ripp'd from Shakespeare's "The Tempest", half of Shakespeare's plots were stolen from other writers, in some cases from his own contemporaries. Hollywood and all other dramatists and librettists have recycled material because in the theater the text is just the framework, it's the performance and the production that really makes the show. Published drama may last forever, but it is written to be performed only a finite number of times, perhaps only once. It is ephemeral, it doesn't last like a novel, and it is always modified to meet new audiences.

I never saw the original Star Trek while it was on prime time, I was either a college student without a tv, or doing my military service. It wasn't until 1972 that I had a chance to see the entire series while I was working overseas, and then it was in black and white and dubbed into Spanish! Of course, since then I've had a chance to see it many times over in syndication, but the point is that what made Star Trek so special wasn't that it was good science fiction, or even good drama. But it was the first time SF was put on television and directed at adults, with some effort made to put out a quality product. Given the standards of the time, the show did succeed as art. And about a dozen of the episodes were excellent, by the standards of the time. I'm glad to hear one of the best, "Balance of Terror", will kick off the new series. But even that episode's plot was lifted intact from the old WWII submarine /destroyer duel "The Enemy Below".

Another feature of Star Trek that made it such a ground breaker was that the producers exploited the science fiction vehicle to explore taboo social and political issues which could be disguised in the futuristic setting. In the middle 60s, issues like racism, and war were not ubiquitous to the point of saturation as they are today. This was ground-breaking stuff back then, and it raised a few eyebrows. Sure, some of the social dynamics of 23rd century Star Fleet seem pretty quaint by today's standards, but so would any other production of that time appear so today. Some changes will no doubt be made, probably not for the better, either, but I'm sure the spirit of the original will persist. I think the new Star Trek will tell us much more about the 20th century, and about our own, than it will about the 23rd.