Gene Roddenberry on Male Pattern Baldness

A journalist asked Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, how a bald guy could helm the U.S.S. Enterprise in the 24th Century. Surely, by then, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness?

To which Roddenberry replied: “No, by the 24th century, no one will care.”

One of the great things about Star Trek is that it celebrated differences, but not discrimination, though it was not afraid to talk about it. The Klingons do not think, or talk, or act, like the Betazoids, and Data has a different way of looking at the world than the Ferengi, though they too have their moral codes as outlined in the "Rules of Acquisition."

I have always thought it was a bit of an insider joke that an Scottish English actor was hired and given the name Jean Luc Picard. Not only did it mock the traditional antagonism between the French and the British (which had, theoretically, dissipated by the 24th Century), but it also quietly poked fun at the provincialism of so many Americans who would not even notice, or ask, how a Frenchman had acquired a Scottish British accent. What? You mean that's not a French accent?

William Shatner, of course, was a toupee man. And who are we to judge? It almost certainly made his career.