Star Trek’s One True Heir Still Ranks Among the Most Critically Acclaimed TV Shows of the 2020s

When it premiered in 1966, Star Trek offered the world a look at a better tomorrow at a time when nuclear war seemed not just possible, but almost certain. From there, and across every show and movie that The Original Series spawned, there has been a single element that has connected every Star Trek story: competency.

From the great captains to the cooks and everyone in between, Star Trek has always focused on intelligent and empathetic people doing their best to make the universe a better place. Talking through problems was just as important as taking action, and sometimes a good talk was all that was really needed.

These days, the world feels chaotic, and finding comfort in entertainment can be difficult. But there is one show, more than any other, that manages to capture the feeling Star Trek created 60 years ago. It isn’t set in the future, and it doesn’t take place in space, but it is filled with good and smart people doing all they can.

The Pitt Tackles The Same Issues As Star Trek, But Without The Phasers

HBO Max’s The Pitt, set at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, focuses on the doctors and nurses who deal with life and death situations every day. The show itself offers an amazing inner concept by setting each season in real time, playing out over 15 hours with elements and patients carrying across episodes, but manages to weave in stories that can be solved within each episode.

And, like Star Trek, it is seeing these brilliant TV minds tackle both the mundane — people suffering from heat exhaustion — with the terrifying — a mass shooting event — and handle each hurdle with care and, most importantly, competence. Seeing people who are good at their jobs, and who know they are good at their jobs, is a type of comfort that we all look for.

We look for that element because it reminds us that somewhere out there, in the real world and not just on TV, are good, caring, competent people who can and will help us through our darkest moments as long as we reach out to them. They remind us of the very thing Mister Rogers told us to look out for: the helpers.

Even when faced with the impossible, these doctors, like the crews of every Star Trek series, do all they can to reach the best outcome. Not every person will survive, and not every story will end happily, but they do their best each and every time. And that brings us comfort even when it breaks our hearts.

The Pitt Has Another Thing That Star Trek Has: Fun Jargon

Unless you are a doctor or work in the medical industry, The Pitt features a whole lot of words and phrases that are basically gobbledygook to you. That doesn’t mean you can’t follow along when, for example, student doctor Javadi asks for a “GlideScope,” or when senior attending physician Dr. Robby says to “bolus another 500 cc’s” of medication into a patient.

Just as with Star Trek characters discussing self-sealing stem bolts or isolinear optical chips, it doesn’t matter that we likely don’t know exactly what the medical staff on The Pitt are saying, it matters that they say it with confidence and that we know they know what they are saying.

And, most importantly, they are using these strange words because the things they are doing and asking for will, in most cases, make things better for the people they are helping. Often these words will come up while doctors talk to one another as they discuss how to best treat a patient, and we know that they are working together, creating a plan.

And, like Star Trek, the job of the men and women working in the Pitt is just as much about diplomacy as it is about action. Like the best Star Trek episodes, the show tackles problems that exist in the real world, offer varying perspectives through the characters, and offers ways to work together toward the ultimate goal: unity.

There won’t be any evasive maneuvers, Changelings, or Vulcan rituals on The Pitt (unless the show gets really weird in future seasons), but it does have the very thing that has made Star Trek such a beloved franchise: humanity.