@mysteryman,
Star Trek offers many valuable science-fiction ideas that can used by scientists as inspiration storyboards.
Tractor beam conceptualizations speak to NASA's ability to coordinate vehicle management obviously and isn't coordination what we want?
Remember the Star Trek story of the semi-organic species the Borg? Well, in the Hollywood (USA) adaptation "Star Trek: First Contact" (1996), the Borg is a semi-organic, semi-electronic colony species headed by a queen, similar to a bee hive coordination organization.
Star Trek's focus on energy management and functional coordination makes ideas such as Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and beam field vehicle gathering (tractor beams) things of science vision quests.