These peace negotiations result in an alliance that lasts into the Star Trek: Next Generation. In the updated TV series there is a Klingon serving as a bridge officer on the new Starship Enterprise, and he isn't even American. This version was lead by Captain Jean Luc Picard, played by classically trained actor Patrick Stewart.

Following on from the Next Generation TV show came the 8th Feature film, First Contact, and with it the most radically utopian theme so far in Star Trek. As a result of time travel a character from the 21st Century asks Captain Picard how much his ship costs. Picard answers: “The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see money doesn’t exist in the 24th Century… the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”

This anti-capitalist, even communist, theme grew much stronger in the next television series Star Trek: Deep Space 9 which regularly featured an alien species called the Ferengi. Ferengi society was entirely geared towards profit and embracing the philosophy that “greed is good”. These aliens are continuously mocked by the post-capitalist Federation citizens as virtual savages.

In Deep Space 9 another time-travel plot reveals how a key element in the development of Earth’s post-capitalist utopia was the result of a major economic recession in the early 21st century. This recession leads to an uprising of the unemployed whose brutal repression by the state leads to a broader social revolution. Considering these episodes came out in the mid-90s during the heyday of free market triumphalism is especially significant of how deep this anti-capitalist strain had become in the show.

The most politically relevant aspect of Star Trek for today came with the latest and last of the TV series, Enterprise and the War on Terror. Scott Bakula starred as Captain Jonathan Archer leading the first Earth space vessel, this time set a generation before Kirk’s adventures.

Enterprise's first two series went about establishing the characters and relationships and only really took off politically in response to the 9/11. In the third series Earth suffers an unprecedented attack. A suicidal alien pilots a destructive probe that destroys much of Florida and part of Venezuela, killing seven million people in a single blow.

Starfleet discover the attack came from a coalition of closely-related species called the Xindi, who live in a hostile and unstable area of space, the Expanse. Captain Archer also finds out the Xindi are building a massively more powerful version of the probe-weapon that will destroy the whole of Earth.

Captain Archer leads his crew into Xindi territory and has several violent confrontations with elements of their coalition. Over the course of the series however he discovers that the Xindi are only trying to destroy Earth because of the influence of extremist transdimensional beings called "the Sphere-Builders" who are venerated by some Xindi as religiously inspired. These beings have convinced the Xindi that Earth is responsible for the instability in their area of space and that humans are bent on the Xindi's annihilation when in fact it is these transdimensional beings who are the source of the Xindi's problems.

For those who haven't already seen the parallels replace the words "probe" with "WMD", "Xindi" with "Arab", "Expanse" with "Middle East" and "Sphere-builders" with "Islamic extremists" and the story should become familiar to contemporary Earth. What is not familiar is the conclusion. Archer realises wholesale confrontation is counterproductive and forms an alliance of equals with the moderate Xindi against the extremist religious forces. This results in saving both Earth and Xindi space.

The next series of Enterprise took the real-life parallels a step further. The Chancellor of Earth's ally, the planet Vulcan, begins a pre-emptive invasion of the rival Andorians. The pretext for the Chancellor's aggression is that the Andorians are developing planet-destroying probes similar to those made by the Xindi. Vulcan's invasion is necessary to dismantle this weapons programme. The same nefarious Chancellor has neutralised domestic political opponents to his aggression by blaming them for a terrorist attack on a prominent building in the Vulcan capital that he and his allies actually perpetrated themselves.

This 4th series of Enterprise aired in 2004 and was the most damning attack on the Bush regime's invasion of Iraq to appear in mass-media entertainment at that time. Even the sympathetic portrayal of the Iraqi resistance in superb Sci-Fi series Battle Star Galactica was not as direct an assault on the Neocon view of the world. Criminally, this 4th series of Star Trek was the last, cancelled due to insufficient viewing figures.

I dearly hope that, given the success of the new Star Trek film, another TV series will be considered. As well as being entertaining viewing in terms of action-adventure and escapist fun it should be clear that the Star Trek franchise has represented a lot more. Both politically reflective of the times it has been produced in but also a form of agit-prop art for a different, better future there's still a lot of our space left for Star Trek to boldly explore.

Alex Holland is a writer, community activist and Trekkie