Honouring Star Trek's 50th anniversary, the Vatican newspaper has said the overwhelmingly popular series gave the world a model of peace, tolerance and cooperation at a time of global tensions.
The show – whose first episode aired on September 8 1966 – began during the Cold War.
But "while builders of nuclear fallout shelters made buckets of money, especially in the United States, Star Trek proposed a true model of cooperation," the article said.
Captain James Kirk and his faithful crew, it said, journeyed to distant galaxies and discovered new civilisations "in order to propose peaceful relations on a foundation of equality."
