This month brings a strange intersection into my life. September 8 is the 60th anniversary of the US premiere of Star Trek. I really am not sure how to convey what a major presence and influence the Star Trek franchise has been throughout my entire life but my guess is a major percentage of all of out there reading this feel very much the same way. September also brings around my annual renewal for Paramount Plus, which I have had since day one solely because of Star Trek. Since its launch I have watched a few other shows and movies on the service, mainly cartoons like the newer Turtles. I don’t like the Taylor Sheridan shows, NCIAnything or much else on Paramount Plus,but it has been worth it for Star Trek.
Except I am not sure it is anymore… I am not sure it is worth it to me to payd for what is being called Star Trek these days.
The original Star Trek had already been cancelled by the time I was born, but it was still on television. For most of my childhood it was on every weekday but when it was not a nightly feature it was at least on weekends. Star Trek: The Animated Series was cancelled when I was two years old, but it remained a Saturday morning cartoon during my early years and eventually turned up on Nickelodeon. It may be hard to imagine now, but when I was a kid cable was not universally available (I think I was in fifth grade when it came to our neighborhood) and almost nobody had VCRs. In the 1970s and ‘80s there were more television stations in St. Louis than found in many areas and we only had six (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and two “independent” channels; Fox did not launch until the late 1980s).
Very few shows made it to daily syndication like Star Trek and in hindsight the majority of those that did were comedies such as I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch and Leave It To Beaver. Most of those, by the way, had many more episodes than Star Trek (Lucy ran for 180, Brady Bunch 117 and Leave It To Beaver 234). The Twilight Zone, one of the few fantasy/science fiction series besides Star Trek to find a regular spot in daily syndication, produced 156 episodes. Today, it is generally accepted a show needs to have 100 episodes to be considered for daily syndication. Star Trek only has 79 episodes so, when running five nights a week, the entire series repeats more than three times in a single year. This meant Star Trek became “comfort television” for many viewers, myself included, in a time when you could not view favorites on demand. It was one of the first show which become so familiar viewers could run it in the background or come into the middle of a broadcast and still know what was going on.
As an aside, I think the fact Star Trek was always on in the 1970s and 1980s led to one of the early stereotypes about its fans. “Trekkies” were (and still are) often portrayed as obsessives who reveled in the most trivial information pertaining to the series. While there might be some truth to this, one has to consider after it hit syndication, Star Trek was one of the first shows with fans who saw episodes several times. It was easy to memorize plots, titles and even dialogue. It was hard to avoid noticing patterns such as Captain Kirk using the two moves in fights three times in the last week or only taking off his shirt early in seasons!
Then Star Trek returned and in a very big way. One of my favorite childhood memories is going to see Star Trek The Motion Picture (which honestly is probably my favorite of the Trek films, narrowly edging out Wrath of Khan). I was seven, my brother six. We got Star Trek Happy Meals before the movie (the iconic kids meals were a fairly new addition to McDonalds and the Star Trek tie-in was the first “themed” Happy Meal). A Happy Meal was a pretty big deal on its own. McDonalds and a movie? Amazing! I remember being confused by the overture, the music interlude before the movie actually started (Star Trek was one of the last major American feature films, if not the last, to feature an overture) but my mother explained many movies used to start in that way. That overture, Ilia’s Theme composed by Jerry Goldsmith, is one of my favorite pieces of music to this day.
Shortly after Star Trek The Motion Picture my parents were presented with a problem. I was a very advanced grade school reader with a high school level reading comprehension. I tore through “age appropriate” books and was becoming bored. A librarian suggested to my mother giving me Star Trek novels because they were written for teens and adults but presented stories which would have been allowed on prime time television. I started with the novelization of Star Trek The Motion Picture and was hooked. Even though I had been a fan of Star Trek before the novels, I really have to point to the steady parade of Star Trek paperbacks I consumed throughout my elementary school years as the reason I have been a life long Star Trek fan. Even though they were not a huge part of my regular reading after my middle school years, I would occasionally pick up a Star Trek book over the years; they were kind of a “comfort reading.” Familiar and fun, they were great casual reads.
A few years ago, when I started traveling for work, Star Trek returned to my regular reading rotation. First, I was reading in airports, on planes and in hotel rooms so I was doing more light reading in general. Because hauling around books was a chore, I shifted heavily towards ebooks and discovered Simon and Schuster’s monthly Star Trek ebook deals (this is an ongoing feature of the Simon and Schuster website, just search for it). You can purchase the sale ebooks on the platform of your choice and I had regular digital credits from choosing slower Amazon Prime deliveries (something I still do). My Kindle was soon full of new Star Trek adventures ranging from recent releases to old Pocket Books and crossing through all of the series. Although I still loved the older Pocket Book releases I found I truly enjoyed the “Next Generation Relaunch” books set after the last film (Star Trek Nemesis) as Picard and Dr. Crusher started a life together and Riker and Troi moved on to the Titan. New interesting characters such as alien contact specialist T’Ryssa Chen and security officer Jasminder Choudhury joined the Enterprise and old favorites such as Worf took on new roles.
I can honestly say when Paramount Plus was announced, I was all in. I had seen every single Star Trek episode and movie up until that point. In fact, during all of my time on airplanes in that traveling job, I even went back and watched all of the Star Trek shows and movies in release order. It was honestly part of my exploration of how complex franchises evolve (after all, from DC Comics to Gundam there are many complex franchises in fantasy and science fiction). There were certainly some low points along the way, that first season of The Next Generation, for example, is rough and Kelvinverse movies are not exactly great. Still, if it was Star Trek I would watch it and, by and large, enjoy the contribution to the overall universe. Given the franchise’s history of successfully adding new shows to the franchise, a whole new generation of Star Trek, able to take advantages of the freedoms offered by streaming, was exciting.
Sure, I had some reservations. After all, there was that 2009 Star Trek reboot film. It started off promising, especially after quickly establishing it was taking place in an alternate timeline. However, it ended in a spectacularly stupid way (spoiler, if you have never seen it) as James Kirk, disgraced and expelled from Star Fleet Academy, saves the day. This is all to be expected but then Kirk is not only restored to the Academy but immediately promoted from recently expelled student to captain of Star Fleet’s flagship. This is a ridiculous ending. It had been stated the new movie series was to tell stories of the original series crew before they were part of the Enterprise crew. The new Star Trek producers were saying the streaming series would be a prequel to the original show, something which they had managed with Enterprise, which was not set in an alternate timeline or dimension. It seemed like something they could pull off.
Star Trek: Discovery turned out to be a mixed bag. It featured really interesting characters portrayed by truly talented actors. I had been a fan of Michelle Yeoh since her days as “Michelle Khan” in Hong Kong films such as Yes, Madam and Sonequa Martin Green was a sharp shooting stand out on The Walking Dead. Mary Wiseman’s Ensign Tilly was an instantly likable audience surrogate while Shazad Latif and Jason Isaacs both portrayed intense new characters with secrets. Wilson Cruz and Anthony Rapp’s Dr. Culber and Chief Engineer Stamets portrayed a much more interesting and multi-layered couple than previous Star Trek romantic storylines. The characters were strong enough to bring me back week after week but there were problems with Discovery, too.
First of all, Green’s Michael Burnham was a hitherto unknown adopted human sibling of Mr. Spock. This was described by many as a bold move which opened new, exciting storytelling opportunities but it was really just a retread of the twist in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. That movie, widely considered by many to be the weakest of all Star Trek films, introduced Spock’s half-brother Sybok who had cast aside Vulcan teachings to embrace emotions. Later in the show, the USS Discovery jumped into a future where the Federation had essentially fallen apart and sets out to rebuild it. This, too, was a retread. Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, produced after his death followed Captain Dylan Hunt, captain of Commonwealth battleship Andromeda who finds himself thrown into a future attempting to rebuild the utopian Commonwealth after his ship spends decade trapped in black hole’s gravity field.
Discovery had other troubling issues. Although it was set before the original Star Trek series it featured technology beyond the original show. Discovery’s design was much more slick and futuristic than previous Star Trek shows with holographic displays and super advanced computers. Several years earlier Enterprise proved a prequel series could take advantage of modern effects but still look and feel more primitive than the technology portrayed in Star Trek the Original Series. For reasons never really explained, the producers of Discovery chose to present a new kind of Klingon which differed in both appearance and culture from earlier versions. This was, of course, also done in Star Trek The Motion Picture, purely because they had the budget and technology available for the first time to give the Klingons a non-human appearance. Honestly, the whole point of The Motion Picture was to show off what Star Trek could be with a budget and modern special effects! Still, the cool new look Klingons left serious fans demanding an explanation for decades. Deciding to dredge up this can of worms a second time seemed like an odd choice.
The second new release from Paramount was an animated series, a comedy, aimed at adults. I will admit I was not particularly excited about Lower Decks because the team behind it was connected to Rick and Morty, which I frankly can not stand. Surprisingly, though, I took to Lower Decks because it was obviously made by serious fans. Sure, it poked fun at the franchise’s silly spots and inconsistencies but showed a deep knowledge of the franchise’s minutiae, the kind of knowledge that only loving fans could manage. Then came Strange New Worlds, a spin off of Discovery featuring the USS Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike, who captained the ship before Kirk and was seen in the original series episode The Menagerie.
Strange New Worlds had a challenge previous Star Trek shows did not. Captain Pike had been introduced to viewers originally in The Menagerie, a first season show which used footage from the first of two pilots produced for Star Trek. Only Spock (Leonard Nimoy) was retained from that pilot, called The Cage, although Majel Barrett appeared as the ship’s first officer in The Cage and as Nurse Chapel in Star Trek. Since the original series, though, The Cage had been released on home video. Anson Mount (Pike), Ethan Peck (Spock) and Rebecca Romijin (Una, the first officer) would all have to portray characters familiar to Star Trek fans. The producers did not shy away from this though, adding other familiar characters such as Nurse Chapel, Uhura, Scotty, Dr. M’benga, Harry Mudd and even James T. Kirk. By and large this has been handled well but it fed into problems. In The Menagerie it was mentioned Kirk had met Pike before and he is familiar enough with Captain Pike (spoiler: who is now disfigured, confined to a wheelchair and unable to communicate except by blinking a light yes and no) to address him as Chris. Despite the former captain of the Enterprise being introduced, nobody from the current crew except for Spock is shown interacting or even inquiring about the man even after Spock ends up being court martialed.
From there, though, Strange New Worlds continues to push against the known history (ie the canon) of Star Trek. There are several encounters, for example, with the Gorn*. The Gorn are not only a known entity they are a threat to the Federation. When the reptilian Gorn were introduced in the original series episode Arena the crew of the Enterprise are completely unfamiliar with them. They are completely unaware they are in space claimed by the Gorn and, in fact, have to be informed of even the Gorn’s name by a powerful group of aliens. Furthermore, the Gorn not only look nothing like the alien shown in Arena, they act completely different. The Gorn are now fast and active, not the alien which outmatches Kirk in strength but lacks in speed and agility. They also lay eggs inside warm blooded sentient creatures, essentially making them into the Magog, a major threat from the later Gene Roddenberry series Andromeda. Spock’s backstory is problematic as well, but I will not even go into that. Another thing I will not even go into further are musical episodes and an episode which sees the crew turned into puppets. I am still watching Strange New Worlds, which will end with the current season, but it often feels like a chore. I am actually still in the middle of last season.
Concurrent with much of this came Star Trek: Picard, which as you may expect is about Jean Luc Picard in his later years. Although it had potential, and many people seemed to really like it, I was disappointed. Again, it seemed to ignore the canon of Star Trek, but in small ways which could have been forgivable. For example, there is an extended exploration of Picard’s memories of childhood and his mother but I do not believe his brother (who appeared in Star Trek The Next Generation) was ever mentioned. Later in the show the Next Generation crew reunites and there is a great deal of focus on their families and children but Worf’s son Alexander, who lived on the Enterprise with all of these characters, was not only absent but not even mentioned! There was also arguably some annoying fan service. But for me the biggest problem with Picard was simply that the new, official story of the Next Generation crew after the movies was simply not as good as the version created in the Next Generation Relaunch novels.
There were other releases, too. Star Trek: Prodigy brought original Trek to Nickelodeon for the first time with a animated series aimed at older kids. I watched a few episodes but it really wasn’t for me (and wasn’t meant to be). A special streaming only movie, Section 31, was pretty universally panned and for good reason. Star Fleet Academy, following a group a cadets in the future timeline of Star Trek: Discovery, will return for a second and final season after being cancelled mid first season. Probably because of the hype (both positive and negative) surrounding the series I have not been motivated to try watching. A new animated series, Star Trek Scouts, has also launched but it is basically aimed at the Paw Patrol set and I haven’t seen any of it either.
So the current state of the franchise is basically a mix between shows which seem to chafe under the weight of the Star Trek universe, several of which are not successful, and shows aimed at little kids. This leads me with several questions. Why does a franchise stop respecting its canon? Why do they risk existing fans in their efforts to court new demographics? Is it a lack of imagination on the part of the creators? Boredom among the production staff? Is it a lack of respect towards its history? Or its audience? When a franchise stops respecting its canon, when does it stop becoming a cohesive franchise? When does it become what is often derisively described as “comic book?” These are questions which are not unique to Star Trek. Many other franchises have faced similar issues, most notably Doctor Who both in the past and recently.
As we approach the sixtieth anniversary of Star Trek I am struck by the lack of serious celebration surrounding the milestone. There is no new film, no new series. In fact, Strange New Worlds is ending and the most recent live action entry (which was listed as part of the anniversary celebrations), Star Fleet Academy was cancelled during its first season. A second season was already in production and will air. Personally, in many ways the most exciting anniversary announcements have been the two Lego sets (the Next Generation style Enterprise and the upcoming original series bridge playset). Worse yet, I am a season behind on Strange New Worlds, because I often find it a chore to watch. I have never even started Starfleet Academy. I still love the old Trek. I re-watched a few episodes (The Menagerie, Arena and Journey to Babel) before writing this article. Even though I have seen them perhaps one hundred times or more I still thoroughly enjoyed them.
September brings both the anniversary of Star Trek and the renewal, or cancellation, of a service I have solely for Star Trek. I am honestly still not sure what I will do with Paramount Plus. There are new (final) seasons of both Strange New Worlds and Academy I have yet to watch. It very well may come down to whether or not I feel like I have $100 to spare, even though I have no interest in the Tayler Sheridan shows which seem to have become the new tentpole of the service. Last year when faced with a similar decision the service renewed earlier than I expected, which decided the matter for me. A bigger question, and one which seriously bothers me, is if it is time for Star Trek to be over, at least for now or at least for me?
*Since writing the initial draft of this article I caught up with enough of Strange New Worlds to see the season four episode Terrarium which throws out a possibility to explain the change in the Gorn when a powerful alien suggests someday it might be necessary to change the Federation’s perception of the Gorn. While attempting to solve the Gorn problem (and referring back to the Metron, the powerful aliens first seen in the Original Series episode which introduced the Gorn) it was a very “deus ex machina” moment in the worst way.