As Star Trek Day 2024 arrives (that’s the day that the first episode of Star Trek aired on NBC back in 1966) we take a look at the state of the franchise and it where’s it’s boldy going into the future.
In the 20th century…
In 1996, Star Trek was at the height of its success. First Contact established that the cast of Star Trek:The Next Generation could carry a movie on their own. It’s a film that incorporates elements of every incarnation of the franchise: Cochrane from The Original Series, the cast of The Next Generation, the Defiant from Deep Space Nine, and a cameo from the Doctor from Voyager. On TV, there were two shows on the air with Deep Space Nine breaking Star Trek’s episodic mould, and Voyager continuing the classic storytelling tradition. The Original Series celebrated 30 years and both series kept it alive with episodes revisiting their television and movie eras. First Contact itself became a nexus for Star Trek with events and characters spinning off into Voyager and Enterprise and resonating into today’s Star Trek on both Lower Decks and especially Picard. This was the peak. Gene Roddenberry had passed the torch and Rick Berman and Michael Piller had built loads of really big fires. And for a while, it seemed Star Trek was there to stay.
But what goes up, must come down, even with artificial gravity. Less than a decade later, Star Trek: Nemesis killed the film franchise with a poor box office and critical reception, and more significantly, Star Trek disappeared from TV after 18 years following the limping ratings of prequel-series Enterprise. It was over, and it didn’t seem like there was any way back.
In the 21st century…
From cold ashes, a phoenix rose (see, it really is all about First Contact). JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot were going to produce a new Star Trek movie, with a script from TV veterans Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. For the first time, a Trek film would feature a cast assembled for the big screen and with a budget to match. While the film franchise had begun with a big investment and a big name director, lower budgets meant every subsequent film had been made with TV producers and TV movie budgets, and with directors who probably wouldn’t have been given a shot at films under any other circumstances. This new movie was to be a proper blockbuster, designed to appeal to a mass audience in a way Star Trek never had before.
It would take Star Trek right back to the start, with a young Kirk and Spock meeting for the first time and serving on the Enterprise together. But because this is science fiction, and people can’t let go of the unhelpful idea of canon, we needed some explanation as to why things looked cooler than they did in the 1960s and why everyone was better looking. So there was a fairly neat plot involving time travel and Leonard Nimoy returned as Spock to pass the torch to the next generation… or the last generation… the same generation?? Whatever. This series would go on to have three films, hitting a creative high with the first, and a box office triumph with the second, and then a complete loss of momentum by the time Star Trek Beyond came out for the franchise’s 50th anniversary.
But it was always intended to be more. The team at Bad Robot wanted to control all of Star Trek media and that meant a clean slate. They wanted an end to media featuring the classic lineups. That meant no more Shatner and Nimoy gracing the covers of novels and comic books. Why should they compete with themselves? Captain Kirk was now Chris Pine, and Spock was Zachary Quinto. The more these actors became associated with the roles, the more the brand would grow. And that wasn’t all. They wanted to bring Star Trek back to TV, first in an animated form and then, perhaps, with a new live action show. Of course, none of this happened. At the time, Star Trek rights were made complicated following the split of CBS and Paramount into different parent companies. So when one of the finest TV production companies in the world offered to manage the brand, of course, they were laughed out of the room. Why would they stop their licensing cash cow to breathe new life into Star Trek? No, it was much better to keep scraping the barrel until they started digging a hole in the floor.
And while another film has been burning in development hell for the best part of a decade, back on TV, Star Trek was about to come back with a bang.
In the 21st century… but later… the 21st centurier
Star Trek suddenly became relevant again in 2016 as the streaming wars began with every media company looking for IP to exploit. CBS All Access, essentially a catch-up service, was going to start producing original content and new Star Trek was top of the agenda. Alex Kurtzman, co-writer of the first two Bad Robot films, was brought on as executive producer through his Secret Hideout brand, and Bryan Fuller was tapped to be the showrunner and co-creator of a new show. As CBS’s streaming platform was only US-based, Netflix would distribute the show internationally, taking it to the widest possible audience, and footing most of the substantial production costs.
While there were already five live action Star Trek shows out there and an animated series, the new era would be a departure. Star Trek: The Next Generation had been created by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (with plenty of input from Dorothy Fontana and David Gerrold). Every one of the spin-offs still had a lineage related to the self-proclaimed Great Bird of the Galaxy, producers and writers who had worked closely with him, most notably Rick Berman. And while the films had not had his direct involvement following The Motion Picture, it was still his cast. Even the reboot films were following the same basic template of Star Trek: The Original Series. But now, we had something new.
Bryan Fuller was perhaps best known for his TV adaptation of Hannibal but genre fans knew and loved him for the short-lived fantasy shows Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me. It was somewhat reassuring that he had started his career on Deep Space Nine and later became a staff writer on Voyager. Further to this, saviour of the Star Trek movies Nick Meyer was brought on board as a consulting producer, and Joe Menosky, formerly a writer on The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager joined the show as co-executive producer.
It is fair to say that Star Trek: Discovery had a difficult beginning. It was to be set a decade before the world we knew from The Original Series. Fuller wanted the show to be an anthology, not unlike American Horror Story. So season one would show how the world we knew from Star Trek came to be following the Federation/Klingon war. It would then jump to a different era with new protagonists on a different ship. The idea was perfect for streaming. It meant you could introduce new viewers to each era of Star Trek, its aesthetic, antagonists and goals. Then when they want to see more, they can start watching one of the older shows. Once all of that was re-established, new worlds could be created.
However, world building costs money and time, and it seemed Fuller was spending too much of both in pre-production while also working on another show, American Gods, for another network.
It was all too much and in October 2016, Fuller was asked to step down, with two of his long-term writing collaborators Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg taking over under the supervision of Kurtzman. Much of the original plan was thrown out, including the anthology idea as well as some of the more classic Star Trek allegorical storytelling but Fuller’s roadmap and characters remained in place. While much of the production design would have echoes from the classic show, completely new uniforms and advanced technology would be seen on screen, surpassing anything previously viewed in Star Trek’s fictional future, all things that might upset certain factions of fandom.
The first season of Star Trek: Discovery is, to borrow a Vulcan word, fascinating. Quite rightly, it felt no obligation to repeat the same kind of stories as the previous eras. It focussed on Michael Burnham played by Sonequa Martin-Green, a first officer who ends up starting a war and is jailed for mutiny, but somehow finds herself on board Starfleet’s experimental starship. British actor Jason Isaacs sat in the captain’s chair as the complex Gabriel Lorca with a supporting cast including the excellent Doug Jones as Saru, Broadway veteran Anthony Rapp as scientist Paul Stamets, and Mary Wiseman as naive cadet Sylvia Tilly.
While it was new, it was also weirdly also bogged down in The Original Series, with Burnham revealed to be Spock’s adopted sister, appearances from Sarek and Amanda, and Harry Mudd as a recurring villain. The show would also explore the Mirror Universe, just as TOS, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise had before. But to give the show an all-new edge, it would tell more of the story from a Klingon perspective. While some sides of fandom thought it was too dark to be Star Trek, broke canon, and was ultimately a very good looking show with fine actors hampered by awful writing, others believed it to be the best Star Trek had ever been. There are enough die-hard fans as well as deep academic writing about the show to suggest it was the right show for the time.
Discovery has now completed its run with five seasons and 65 episodes, and it would be hard to argue it has been anything other than a success. It’s spawned a spin-off in Strange New Worlds with more coming in the form of the Section 31 TV movie and Starfleet Academy show. However, Discovery will always be defined by what it could have been rather than what it is. With the departure of Fuller, it almost became a show that no one wanted to make, trapped in Star Trek’s past but wanting to be about the future. Meyer quietly disappeared at some point during the first season, Menosky left to work on The Orville, and Harberts and Berg were sacked during the second season over alleged verbal abuse.
It’s a show that has constantly reinvented itself. The second season saw it attempting to lighten and fall more in line with Star Trek of old with the inevitable appearance of the Enterprise and Spock. At the end of that year, the good ship sailed into the distant future, out of the way of canon so it could face galactic threats in its own time with Michelle Paradise taking the reins. Arguably, it has become less interesting as it has become more settled and conventional. Its strength was the bold, chaotic, frustrating madness in the storytelling and characters.
But that’s just part one of the story. Before season 2 of Discovery had even aired, the world of Star Trek was expanding. In August of 2018, it was announced that Patrick Stewart would be returning to Star Trek in a new show focused on Picard, aptly named Star Trek: Picard. Pulitzer-prize winning novelist Michael Chabon was to be showrunner with the show described as a “psychological character exploration”.
A couple of months later, Star Trek’s first animated comedy show, Lower Decks, was announced from creator Mike McMahan, known for both writing Rick and Morty and the very funny TNG Season 8 Twitter account.
The Star Trek brand would continue to expand with Star Trek: Prodigy, the first Star Trek show aimed directly at children, ordered in mid-2019 from renowned animation writers Kevin and Dan Hageman. It would see Kate Mulgrew reprise her role as Kathryn Janeway… you know for kids. It would be a partnership between Nickelodeon and the newly rebranded Paramount+.
Completing the lineup was Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, an Enterprise-set spin-off from Discovery with Anson Mount, Ethan Peck and Rebecca Romijn reprising their roles as Captain Christopher Pike, Spock and Number One. Of course, these were Star Trek’s original characters from the original and rejected pilot ‘The Cage’ which meant that this was the purest Star Trek ever made, a pilot picked up after more than 50 years. Unlike the serialised single-story seasons of Picard and Discovery, this would take Star Trek back to its roots with more episodic storytelling alongside more serialised character arcs.
Never in history had there been more than two Star Trek shows in production. Now there were five, and the goal was to have Star Trek on all-year around, 50 episodes a year, so every side of fandom could always be a little bit annoyed. The franchise managed this just once with 2022 showcasing six episodes of Discovery season 4, 10 of Picard season 2, 10 of Strange New Worlds season 1, 10 of Lower Decks season 3 and 15 episodes of Prodigy season 1. Pretty cool, but it was not to last.
The human adventure is just beginning… or ending
All good things must come to an end, and after two years of being a complete narrative mess, and one of being a lovely big Star Trek: The Next Generation reunion, Star Trek: Picard completed its mission in 2023. It was always planned to be three seasons, and that’s probably as far as they could have taken it.
It was also announced that Star Trek: Discovery was to be cancelled following its fifth season. And while five years is a good run, it was cancelled rather than ending through anyone’s creative decision, with additional filming taking place to make the final episode more of a series finale and than a season finale. Now, some of this might have been to do with the launch of Paramount+. Following the reunification of CBS and Paramount, the streaming service went global. This meant scorching the deal with Netflix for Discovery, a show which reportedly did pretty well for the streamer. That meant, for contractual reasons no one has ever explained, Discovery was only available internationally on ad-supported live streamer Pluto TV, and probably lost a whole chunk of funding.
As studios realised that the streaming bubble was bursting, Star Trek: Prodigy was the victim of budget cuts and was cancelled and the first season removed from Paramount+ in June 2023, despite the second season being close to completion. After months of speculation, the show was picked up by Netflix with all 202, but a third season would seem somewhat unlikely.
That leaves just Strange New Worlds as the sole live action show, with season 3 set to air in 2025, two years after its cliffhanger season 2 finale, and happily, it’s also been renewed for season 4.
Star Trek: Lower Decks has been the most reliable of the shows, producing a new season every year since its debut in 2020. And despite it appearing to be the most radical departure for Star Trek, it’s actually the closest thing we have to the 1990s shows, both in aesthetic, structure and plots, and it’s lovely. While both Discovery and Picard ploughed through showrunners, cast members and writers. Lower Decks has been extremely settled and long may it continue. So, of course it’s been cancelled with its final run due very soon. Again, five seasons isn’t bad, but all of these shows have such short seasons, that you can’t help but feel a little short changed. And with that, we’re close to the first run of new Star Trek shows reaching their conclusions.
Strange New Worlds is the 21st century’s answer to classic Star Trek and they’ve been working their way through every classic episode format, perhaps in a slightly shallow way. The first season was, arguably, more successful than the second which took some pretty big swings with both a musical and animated episode, as well as some fairly tedious relationship plots. There is a point where you just need to actually embrace having a format, especially with just 10 episodes to play with. It does seem clear that there’s a bigger plan in play with this show. They’ve introduced a new Kirk, joining Uhura, Chapel and Spock who are series regulars, and a young Scotty put in an appearance in the season 2 finale soon to be a series regular in the next run. That just leaves McCoy, Sulu and Chekov until you get the whole classic lineup together. Could they remake classic Star Trek? Or perhaps do some lost missions, even jump ahead and do a post-Motion Picture Phase 2 series? Who can say, but it’ll be somewhat interesting to find out.
The Secret Hideout era of Star Trek has produced close to 200 episodes in just seven years, so it has clearly worked, but it seems unlikely there will ever be five shows in production simultaneously again. Might we see a shift to more traditional production models? Could Strange New Worlds up its episode count to 15 or even 20 per season? Well, no, and that’s according to the showrunners. They did ask. But despite this fragmented volume, none of these shows have had the same impact of Star Trek at its peak. Kirk and Spock, and Data and Picard are household names. Are Burnham or Boimler? Star Trek is for everyone, it’s just that everyone gets their own version of it.
With the way the media landscape has fractured, perhaps that’s impossible and that’s why we’re probably going to get another Kirk on the Enterprise doing the same things Star Trek has done for 60 years. All of this era of Star Trek has been caught up with its own legacy; shows fronted by Stewart and Mulgrew, one set on board the Enterprise and another that makes more references than you’d find with a day spent on Memory Alpha. Discovery, with its jump to the future, despite its reference-heavy origins, became the most original show in the whole lineup.
But new content is coming, with a Starfleet Academy show (the least inspired idea of all time) in production and featuring some familiar faces, and a Section 31 TV movie, starring Michelle Yeoh as an evil mass murderer that we’re supposed to love, already in the can. It’s incredible that there haven’t been Star Trek TV movies to date, but it seems to be a model that could work. There are sets, uniforms and crews already up and running, which should keep production costs to a more manageable level. Patrick Stewart has expressed a desire for one last ride, despite doing that already. And it would seem there are plenty of characters that would be worth revisiting.
And now, the conclusion
There are still worlds to explore, new characters to love and an inexplicable number of Starfleet uniforms to be designed. But going forwards, it seems there will be less, and there should be less. One show at a time really doesn’t seem like a bad idea. We’ve already seen shows repeating ideas with both Discovery and Picard dealing with a scary artificial intelligence.
So perhaps the one thing Star Trek really needs to work is… space.
A version of this article originally appeared in the late great magazine, From the Sublime.