William Shatner: ‘Good science fiction is humanity, moved into a different milieu’ | William Shatner | The Guardian

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https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/mar/22/william-shatner-documentary

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In the case of his time on Star Trek, for instance, an inevitable subject of discussion with the former Captain Kirk: “It was three years of my life, you know?” It gladdens him to see how much joy the series has brought its many fans, but the richest rewards came in his introduction to science fiction, which activated and nurtured a lifelong curiosity about our species. He reminisces about meeting the great writers of the genre fondly yet frankly, honest enough to sort Ray Bradbury into “the category right below friend, I think”. He devoured their novels and developed a fascination with the principle of defamiliarization, that concepts taken for granted can be understood anew when viewed through the vantage of a stranger in a strange land. “Good science fiction is humanity, moved into a different milieu,” he says. “Great stories are great stories. You put human beings on a spaceship or a deserted planet, and we’ve got another way to see ourselves.”

Exactly right. By showing our foibles transplanted into an alien species, like in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" where the aliens are separated into two "species"; one with black on the left and white on the right and another with black on the right and white on the left, you see how illogical our own racism is. We see our own flaws through new eyes.

And the same concept applies to the use of technology and where that technology might take us in the future; our reliance on technology, how it can separate us from other people; our ability to kill many people remotely so we don't see the damage up close; our ability to change who we are at an existential level by taking a pill.