Star Trek

*"Space: The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, its continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before!"*

Star Trek is a mass media sci fi franchise owned by ViacomCBS and one of the fronts, and one of the most important ones, in the battle of Pop Culture, due to its strong cultural association with geek, fandom, and convention culture. The fandom associated with Star Trek are known as Trekkies or Trekkers (depending on where you live).

## Basic History

Star Trek was created in 1966 by Gene Roddenberry. Although his initial pitch and pilot, featuring the captain Pike, were rejected, he was given a second chance and released a second pilot, featuring the more action-oriented Captain Kirk, which was greenlit. At that moment, the Original Series, the first iteration of the show, began. While it gained a fandom following, it did not pick up a mainstream audience and thus suffered budget problems. The show was due to be cancelled after two seasons, but after a fan movement, the show was renewed for a third season. While not as good as the previous seasons, the third season allowed the show to enter into syndication, which helped to vastly increase the audience and fandom and to ensure the survival of the franchise later on.

Indeed, Star Trek began to release movies, and became a cinematic franchise following the success of the sci fi movie Star Wars. In 1987, Star Trek returned to the small screen with the sequel series Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), set 100 years after the original series and following a new crew. While the first season or two struggled to move past TOS (which the original series was later rebranded), it eventually gained its footing and evolved into its own show, and gaining acceptance from the Star Trek fanbase who loved the originals. In addition, and entire new generation of Star Trek fans, including the children of the original series fans, grew up on this show.

After the success of the Next Generation, many spin-off shows were released. The first was Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (DS9), which featured a non-mobile space station and the first captain of color. This show took on much more darker themes and tackled war and the morality of war. While many fans of the optimistic TNG and TOS disliked it, it grew its own fanbase, and eventually came to be accepted by fans of the other two shows. A second spinoff, Star Trek: Voyager, followed the first female captain and featured a ship being pulled into an unknown part of the galaxy and trying to return home. The last spin-off in the so-called Next Generation Era was Star Trek: Enterprise, which unlike the previous three shows which lasted 7 seasons, was canceled after 4 seasons. The show never truly gained its footing, and was only beginning to in the fourth season when it was canceled, and the finale left a bad taste in fan's mouths. Some fans think the finale of Enterprise was the end of Star Trek.

In 2009, JJ Abrams directed a reboot of the franchise set in another continuity not affecting the original. This was followed by two sequel movies, Star Trek: Into Darkness and Star Trek: Beyond, with a fourth reportedly in development hell.

However, the true end of the franchise began when JJ Abrams' associate, Alex Kurtzman, was brought on to bring Star Trek back to the small screen on the streaming service Paramount Plus. This signaled the start of NuTrek and the end of the Star Trek franchise. The franchise officially "died" in the eyes of fans in 2021 when Kurtzman's 5 year contract was renewed until 2026.

## Central Ideas

Star Trek has many core ideas. One is optimism- the optimism that humans will grow out of their problems and become more evolved in the future, growing past things like material wealth or violence. Often times, episodes of shows would feature a civilization with a parallel of a real world, present day problem. The humans would encounter the civilization and compare their more evolved ideals with the civilization's less evolved ideals and in so doing provide hope to viewers that one day that problem will be overcome.

Star Trek also has strong themes of morality. Many episode were morality plays, which featured a situation (such as a "the good of the many versus the needs of a few" situation) that challenged the morality of the crew, that they would later overcome successfully. Star Trek was also strong on acceptance and being progressive socially- it featured the first interracial kiss on broadcast TV (between Kirk and Uhura), it featured androgynous aliens as a stand in for LGBTQ+ issues and even a kiss between two women before it was fully acceptable, and addressed human rights like in the cases of Data the android and The Doctor the hologram. Star Trek also had strong explorational themes, given the main premise of most of the show was exploring new phenomenon and species in space. In addition, there is plenty of action to keep audiences engaged if they find the more talky parts of Star Trek boring.

Star Trek began with The Original Series which focused on Captain Kirk the action star, Spock the classic Vulcan, old country Doctor McCoy, Uhura, famous engineer Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov (after season 2). This show was more of a Space Western and the crew were like cowboys on the frontier- in this case, the final one. There was a lot of action, fighting, and every episode would have Kirk fighting with something or finding a new woman to fall in love with- sometimes both! The next series, The Next Generation, was a lot less action-packed and a lot more slow paced and thoughtful. While the original series was intelligent and had intelligent moments, this show focused on those and increased that element. Rather than fighting, situations were resolved through diplomacy more often. This crew followed Captain Picard, Riker (number one), empathic Troi, Klingon Starfleet officer Worf, blind engineer La Forge, android Data, and Doctor Beverly Crusher and her sometimes annoying son Wesley Crusher.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine featured Captain Benjamin Sisko, his son Jake Sisko, greedy Ferengi Quark, shapeshifter Odo, symbiont Dax, O'Brien, freedom fighter Kira, and after season 4 Worf from TNG joins the crew. The show also features the spy Garak, a morally complicated individual. As mentioned, this show features more war, as the majority of the fourth season and beyond focus on a conflict with the interstellar power known as the Dominion, who led by Odo's species, the Changeling Founders. Many morally difficult decisions must be made, especially during a tense episode when Sisko realizes in order to win he must convince the Romulans to join the fight, and must do so through the use of deceit. The show also delves into religious themes, such as when Sisko is chosen to be the emissary to the mystical aliens The Prophets, who live in the wormhole connecting DS9 with the area of space where the Dominion lives.

Star Trek: Voyager was a spiritual continuation of The Next Generation as it returned to a ship exploring space and new planets every week, this time in the distant part of the galaxy known as the Delta Quadrant. Unlike TNG or earlier shows, the writing was less than consistent and it featured more technobabble (made up words to represent sci fi stuff), but it is still enjoyed by many. The crew consisted of Captain Janeway, Tuvok, Chakotay, a holographic Doctor, pilot Paris, perpetual ensign Kim, half-Klingon engineer Torres, Delta Quadrant native Neelix, and after season 4 Seven of Nine, a former Borg drone. Star Trek: Enterprise was the first Star Trek prequel, and thus a risky move considering how nitpicky the Star Trek fandom is when it comes to continuity. It is set in the era right after the first ship fast enough to be capable of regular exploration is launched and features Captain Archer, T'Pol, Tucker, Sato, Dr. Phlox, Reed, and Mayweather. The show acted to connect our modern world with the one we see later on in Star Trek's timeline. While the first two seasons dealt with exploration, the third season was one extended arc (a feature which would be used frequently in NuTrek) and the fourth season consisted of several mini-arcs.