Gene Roddenberry, the man who created Star Trek, would have been 81 years old today had he not passed away in 1991. When Roddenberry died, Star Trek was celebrating its 25th anniversary, work was being completed on "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" and Star Trek: The Next Generation was well into production of its fifth season.

Since his passing, the Star Trek universe has expanded exponentially with the additions of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise, not to mention four new motion pictures featuring The Next Generation and, significantly, the explosion of the Internet. In fact, the Star Trek franchise has produced more Star Trek content after Roddenberry's death than when he was alive; a staggering legacy even he might never have dreamed possible.

What would Roddenberry have made of these strange advances to and evolutions of his creations? It seems, looking back at where the franchise was when he passed away, a much simpler time for Star Trek. The movies were firmly set in the Original Series era, TNG had outlived its parent series and become a critical and ratings success, and James T. Kirk was still very much alive.

It's easy to speculate; indeed, most hardcore fans have taken speculation and armchair quarterbacking of Star Trek to heights even Roddenberry would never have imagined. Across the Internet and at conventions regularly, fans who never spoke with Roddenberry, fans that weren't even alive when the Original Series was airing, like to assume that they know exactly what he would have wanted. It's a deceptively simple trap to fall into, since so many feel an affinity to the universe he created.

What Would Gene Do?

Which brings up the totally speculative and unfair question: What would Star Trek be like today if Roddenberry were still alive and running things? Would we have had DS9, Voyager or Enterprise? Would Roddenberry have approved of the endless leaks and scripts appearing on the Internet? Would Roddenberry's ideas, revolutionary back in the 1960's when science fiction was far out of the mainstream, have retained their freshness in today's sci-fi saturated television and movie landscape?

It's important to remember that Roddenberry was primarily a producer, not a writer. Officially, he only received writing credit for a total of 16 episodes (12 TOS and 4 TNG) out of close to 200 episodes produced before his death. But Roddenberry had the remarkable skill that great producers share — being able to put together groups of people who could collaborate well and generate the stories which, when taken collectively, constitute the Star Trek universe.

Without getting involved in the potentially endless conversation about what changes we'd see in the Star Trek universe if Roddenberry were still at the helm, it's safe to say that he would have continued to assemble top-notch professionals to continue the Star Trek legacy right up to his retirement.

And what is that legacy? What did he create in the 60's that resonated so much with fans around the world that a series of films followed by a series of, well, series resulted with no end in sight?

What Exactly Did Roddenberry Create?

While academics and scholars of literature and religion may scoff at this notion, Star Trek has far more in common with the Bible and the works of Shakespeare and the Brothers Grimm than most would realize. All of these works contain stories, pure and simple. The setting and context may change, but at their core, all of these works contain morals or messages about life and how to live life. These stories might also contain danger, spectacle — plus a little romance to spice things up — but ultimately they are morality tales.

Roddenberry pushed the envelope for his time by making strong political statements and cloaking them in science fiction allegory, allowing controversial topics to sail past network censors, who weren't sophisticated enough (or assumed the audience wasn't sophisticated enough) to see that hot-button topics such as race relations, gender equality, pollution and anti-war sentiments were encoded in these harmless-looking outer space adventures.

Today's television and film landscape has less to worry about from censors, as even the most innocuous of sitcoms have "very special" episodes revolving around "issues." Roddenberry's didactic approach of the Original Series is, to today's audiences, more obvious than it was back in 1966. People are far more aware in today's mass media-saturated world of when they're being preached to and for many, the moment they become aware that they're being given a "message" they tend to raise shields.

The French playwright Moliere had a theory about comedy, roughly paraphrased as follows: "When people go to see a tragedy they all cry, then talk about what a good cry they had and the significance rolls off like water from a duck's back, but with comedy, you make an audience laugh and while their mouths are open from laughter, you can reach in and grab their hearts." Science fiction, like comedy, can be a wonderful place to hide a message, for while an audience — especially a younger audience — is watching an adventure story, a theme can subtly work its way into the viewer's mind without seeming like a preachy, screechy diatribe.

What of Roddenberry Exists in Today's Star Trek?

To Roddenberry, humanity was not a collection of squabbling races and peoples at each others' throats (as today's news reports seem to indicate), but one special, tenacious race living amongst the other sentient races of the galaxy. Moving into an age where human beings are not alone in the galaxy would (and many say will) have a galvanizing effect upon the people of Earth.

One of the things Enterprise seeks to accomplish is to replenish the sense of wonder about space exploration that may have faded with stories set in the 24th century where the U.S.S. Enterprise-E and the U.S.S. Voyager roam space at high speeds and provide their crews with a standard of living many of us envy for its luxury and abundance of resources.

In terms of what Roddenberry would have done differently than the inheritors of his legacy — Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Ira Behr and many others — that's a source of countless conversations, arguments and rants for conventions, armchair admirals and message boards. But what is truly remarkable about Roddenberry's creation is that its spirit continues to be alive and well, and, like humanity, will struggle and continue on into the future.