I mean, I get it. Because if you look at it a certain way, it’s about an all-powerful military ship captained by a White Human Male saving the ‘savage’ (pale-skinned often human-looking) alien cultures and beating up those troublemaking dark-skinned aliens (and monstrous-looking ones) who are never going to act civilized because it’s just in their blood, so they can’t help themselves, don’cha know.

Admittedly it was a bit more obvious in the original series, but still. Unfortunately, while Star Trek is a wonderful example of a utopian post-scarcity culture that comes together despite its differences, it’s also a good example of unconscious bias making its way into art. I doubt the creators, Roddenberry especially, set out purposely to write things that way, but the biases he grew up around still crept in.

I consider the Culture books to be another example; despite the author talking about how members of the Culture are so unconcerned with sexuality or norms that they often even swap genders because they feel like it, none of the protagonists are anything less than Manly Men or Beautiful Women In Makeup. You never meet a MC who’s a genderswapped person, or even a guy in a dress.