Freelancing was barely making ends meet. Sending out hundreds of applications was wearing me down. To add insult to injury, most nights, I simply couldn't sleep.

After a fruitless midnight circumnavigation of my entire neighborhood, I flopped down on the couch, still feeling restless and miserable. So I turned on Netflix and found "Star Trek: Enterprise" first in my list of recommendations. (Read how to binge watch all 726 "Star Trek" episodes and 12 movies in this piece from Tom's Guide, our sister site.)

I've always been a moderate "Star Trek" fan. Even though my first exposure to the franchise was the decidedly mediocre "Insurrection," something about the mix of sci-fi action and mildly thoughtful philosophy made a powerful impression in my 11-year-old brain. From then on, my dad and I would gather in the living room every night after dinner to watch reruns of the original series. He explained what was happening in the world at the time each episode aired, and suddenly, I knew what "allegory" and "parable" meant.