Tom Nichols once taught a class in the Cold War and American pop culture, for students who were too young to have experienced both at the same time. Many songs, movies, and TV shows carried references to the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union that fly over their heads today. The Twilight Zone is famous for this, but the original Star Trek series, which aired from 1966 to 1968, was rich with Cold War allegories.
The various sci-fi writers who worked on Star Trek were open to all kinds of adventures, but series creator Gene Roddenberry pushed his own ideas constantly. In the series, the United Federation of Planets stood in for first world countries, specifically NATO, and the Klingon Empire represented the second world, the Soviet Union and its communist allies. Despite the Prime Directive, Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise often stepped in to stop wars on various planets or protect a planet from the Klingons. Some episodes mirrored real-world events that have become disconnected over time. Nichols takes us through a few of those episodes and explains the Cold War analogies in an essay that will bring back memories, good or bad. -via Damn Interesting