ā€œYour father was captain of a starship for 12 minutes,ā€ says Captain Christopher Pike. Heā€™s in a roadside bar in rural Iowa, the kind of old-school dive that still serves Budweiser Classic and shots of Jack, despite far more interesting drinks having been invented by 2255.

ā€œHe saved 800 livesā€”including your motherā€™s, and yours,ā€ Pike continues. Itā€™s quiet in the barā€”past closing timeā€”and Pikeā€™s talking to a dipshit farm boy who just yanked a wadded-up napkin out of his bloody nose. The rest of the blood on James T. Kirkā€™s face is starting to dryā€”a reminder that, while the kidā€™s pretty good at starting bar fights, he sucks at finishing them.

Pike looks at Kirk. ā€œI dare you,ā€ he says, ā€œto do better.ā€

As scenes in 2009ā€™s Star Trek go, thatā€™s a big one. (For Kirk, at leastā€”otherwise heā€™d have never bothered scraping that blood off his face and ignoring his hangover long enough to enroll in the ā€œpeace-keeping and humanitarian armadaā€ of Starfleet.) But Pikeā€™s challenge also serves as a reminder of what Star Trek is all about: he fact that, as a species, we can do a hell of a lot better.

That sentiment probably felt less forced when the original Star Trek was beamed into Americansā€™ TVs in 1966, right in the midst of the Space Age, an era that embraced science and humanism. In 1966, it might not have seemed likely that humankind would set aside our differences to cure disease, stop war, eliminate money, and explore the stars in bright, plastic spaceships, but at least it didnā€™t seem impossible.

It does seem kind of impossible in 2016, when any glance at the news makes JUST FUCKING BURN IT DOWN ALREADY feel like a reasonable course of action. So maybe itā€™s worth remembering that both the Space Age and the future seen in Star Trekā€”a future where crews of multicultural scientists departed a thriving Earth to discover, and learn from, other civilizationsā€”came about thanks to conflict. The race to the Moon wouldnā€™t have happened without the paranoid tensions of America and the Soviet Union; the Civil Rights movement came about only after centuries of atrocities were tolerated and encouraged on American soil. If 2016ā€”when weā€™re still giving Russia the side-eye, when authorities still spill black peopleā€™s blood on our streets, when fear-stoking demagogues still determine our cultural discourseā€”seems so awful, itā€™s because 2016 feels so little like the future and so much like the past.

It might seem desperate or foolhardy to turn to Star Trek to show us what weā€™re capable of, but thatā€™s what Star Trek already did. Creator Gene Roddenberryā€™s original Star Trek inspired future scientists and current technologies, and showed the rest of us a way, however fantastical, that people of different colors and beliefs could work and live together, pushing humanity forward. With a billion TV episodes and a slew of movies (Star Trek Beyond comes out this weekend, and next year brings a new streaming TV series), Star Trek has morphed into one more monolithic genre franchiseā€”one thatā€™s sometimes clever and sometimes stupid, one that sometimes devotes hours to space diplomacy and at other times just sets off some space explosions. But five decades after it premiered, Star Trek serves as reminder: Weā€™ve had shitty times before. We got through them. There will be more shitty times. Weā€™ll get through those, too.

Despite the twenty-first century having surpassed many of Roddenberryā€™s wildest technological dreams, those of us living in 2016 find ourselves struggling with some of the same social and political issues as those who were alive in the ā€™60s. That can make Star Trekā€™s interstellar utopia seem goofy and preposterousā€”like itā€™s merely one more fantasy world for us to gaze into as we retreat from reality. But every once in a while, the future of Star Trek can feel like something moreā€”like a melding of entertainment and ideology, of adventure and potential. Every once in a while, Star Trek feels like an actual glimpse into a future. A future where, if we wanted, we could scrape the blood off our faces and do better.