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Let's face it. The cast of the original "Star Trek" series was far from cheesecake. With the exception of Nichelle Nichols, pretty much everybody else in the cast was average, or at best, mildly pleasant-looking. Kirk looked like my father with a smaller nose.

Spock looked like my husband with a bigger nose. Dr. McCoy looked like a marmoset. If the original series was cast today, would the same cast have been chosen? If you put J.J. Abrams in charge, chances are they would all be a bit prettier.

Yet in spite of the cast being made up of relatively average-looking people, "Star Trek" became a huge pop culture phenomenon that continues to influence people from all walks of life. By today's standards, though, a television series seems to need a Six or Seven-of-Nine to rate a ten. Would viewers of sci-fi and fantasy TV still love "Battlestar Galactica" if Six looked like Eleanor Roosevelt or T'Pol looked like Margaret Thatcher?

Most of us have been conditioned from birth to be attracted to pretty people, or at least people we perceive as pretty. It can start with parents or siblings commenting on how So-and-so is gorgeous, or Johnny Doe needs to lose a few pounds. It?s certainly promulgated by the imagery and messages in the mass media, starting with beauty contests, and most recently with model wannabe "reality" shows.

Even what gets reported on television news seems to be determined by lookism. Of all the abductions and murders of women and girls that take place in the US, the cases of the Elizabeth Smarts, JonBenets, and Laci Petersens, all attractive white women, get headline attention, while the pretty, but African American, Latoyia Figueroas and Tamika Hustons are ignored. Lookism and racism are integrally connected, and often yield similar consequences.

In a study done in Texas and Michigan, researchers found that an attractive worker is paid 10 percent more than his or her unattractive counterpart, even where they perform the same work and have similar levels of experience.

In schools, teachers often give better grades to their more attractive students. In court, good-looking defendants are more likely to be exonerated than their not-so-pretty counterparts. Mothers of beautiful children give them more attention than mothers of plain or unattractive children. Beautiful white women tend to have few traffic tickets, even though they are just as likely to commit traffic violations as anyone else.

Earlier this week, Keira Knightley made the news because she objected to having her breasts digitally enhanced in publicity photos for her movie "The Duchess." Reports were that she was proud of her body the way it is, and doesn?t want it altered. I guess the question to ask is will the movie make more money if her publicity photos make her breasts look bigger than they are?

That's also the question to ask about sci-fi shows. Are we now in an age where the only way networks and producers can draw people into a series is to make sure there?s a parade of scantly- or tightly-clad women flashing their assets (real, surgically, or digitally enhanced) around? Did "The Bionic Woman" fail because Michelle Ryan wasn?t pretty enough? Would the series, as it was, have been better with Tricia Helfer in the lead? Would Ryan have seemed prettier had the writing been better?

The question holds true for the men in sci-fi series as well, though to a lesser extent. While there?s apparently more tolerance for men with the looks of Saul Tigh, and Edward James Olmos, who is looking more curmudgeonly than hot these days, has top billing, would viewers be so enthralled with Baltar if he looked like Howard Cosell, or even John Colicos?

Perhaps we would, given that the one actor in the gorgeous "Lost" cast to get an Emmy nomination this year was the average-looking Michael Emerson; however, he may never have had the chance to grab our attention had there not been the pulchritudinous Kate, Jack, Sawyer, Sayid, Sun, Jin et al luring viewers in.

While I would love to say I am above all of it, I realize I also fall victim to lookist thinking. I, too, found Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine to be more interesting than Jennifer Lien as Kes. I probably wouldn?t have been as interested in Baltar?s story had he not been encased in James Callis?s face and body, though I might still have been intrigued had a less-than-gorgeous Six been slithering all over him.

So, could a current sci-fi show succeed without the cheesecake? If the cast looked more like that of the original "Star Trek" would it find itself hitting the unemployment office three weeks into the series? What do you think?

In the meantime, pass the cheesecake.

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Hear Michael Hinman on SyFy Radio every Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT at www.BlogTalkRadio.com/SyFyRadio.