Drawing on autobiographical, biographical, historical, and rare archival materials, author Micheal Pounds explores the relationship between "Star Trek" and ethnic equality, one of America's most enduring social issues. Using two television series formed around a common vision and produced by the same studio and executive producer (Gene Roddenberry), Race in Space determines the extent to which social attitudes, values, and beliefs about ethnicity have changed during the more than twenty years that separate them.

The book begins by examining the history of American television, both as a business and a social institution faced with confronting the civil rights movement-centered demands for reform of employment and images of the African-American. The second half of the book analyzes the principal recurring characters in each "Star Trek" series and their relationships with other characters, as well as the specific racial themes of certain episodes, and how these episodes represent ethnicity and cultural attitudes both as part of the series, in the contemporary world, and in the larger vision of the future that the series portrays.