This is the opening paragraph of Wikipedia's article on Star Trek (the franchise). Read and memorize, as I am guessing the gremlins will soon pare it down to size:
Star Trek is an American science fiction television and film series that has transcended its context of entertainment. It has shaped and formatively influenced culture, ideas, technologies, sciences, and even race relations. The original Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry. It debuted in 1966 and ran for three seasons. Like the Bible and Shakespeare, Star Trek is increasingly understood as being a great text of Western Civilization, and it is now studied in this way by literary criticism and literary theory.[1] The original pilot film of Star Trek, "The Cage," was made in 1964, starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike of the Federation Starship Enterprise. It elaborates many of the major literary and technological themes that are hallmarks of the entire Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry was very influenced in his creation of Star Trek by the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet. After saying no to Star Trek in 1965 because it was too cerebral and not suited to serial production, NBC Television Network executives asked that a second pilot film be made.[2] Hunter then turned down the leading role, and it was given to William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk. Following the release of other series in the franchise, the Kirk-headed series was retroactively referred to as "Star Trek: The Original Series". [...]
[1] See [[Michele Barrett and Duncan Barrett, "Star Trek: The Human Frontier," Routledge 2001 and Franco LaPolla, "Star Trek: Foto di Gruppo Con Astronave," Editrice PuntoZero, 1996.
[2] See [[Stephen E. Whitfield (Poe) and Gene Roddenberry, "Them (sic) Making of Star Trek," Ballantine, 1968, pp. 123-4, and Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman, "Inside Star Trek: The Real Story," Pocket Books, 1996, pp. 27-30, 58-60.
Hats off to the Wikipedia user who is attempting to give cultural context for Star Trek. Will let you know if the wording above changes--curious whether it will be deemed "neutral" enough by the collective mind.
Update: It only took a few hours for the Wikipedians to dumb it down to the following:
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment series. The original Star Trek is an American television series, created by Gene Roddenberry, which debuted in 1966 and ran for three seasons, following the interstellar adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Federation Starship Enterprise. The original pilot film of Star Trek, “The Cage,” was made in 1964, starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike. Following the release of other series in the franchise, the Kirk-headed series was retroactively referred to as "Star Trek: The Original Series".
An issue of contention is: whether Star Trek is "mere" entertainment or a larger text. We don't get to consider this because the footnotes to writings arguing for the latter were removed along with the rewritten lead. My head hurts thinking of trying to argue, to a cult of people obsessed with "facts," that the cultural influence (bad or good, brilliant or mediocre) of this phenomenon (which long ago went well beyond a mere TV series into the realm of language references, design, role play, etc) deserves to be the lead paragraph and not some sidebar. Knowledge is more than an inverted pyramid of facts (with worker bees deciding the order in the pyramid)--it is argument. But who wants to devote the energy arguing about this topic with people who have ultimate publishing power but no sense of beauty or drama?