Why Is 'Star Trek' Sci-Fi So 'Broken'?
Gene Roddenberry's Joyously Humanistic Celebratory Science Fiction Vision Has Become Something Else Entirely On Paramount Plus
Things Change. Change Is Inevitable
So true, it must be said twice. This life constant is what we count on and must always expect. But how much change is good or reasonable? How much can one veer off the well trod or expected path to a promising or satisfying destination?
I’ve never been one to hate or resist change. I may reflect occasionally back on the ‘old days’ but I certainly don’t want to live in my past - nor any other - without transformation. Change is evolution. To deny that fundamental fact or try to run away from it isn’t logical, practical nor healthy.
Borrowing James T. Kirk’s line… To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before…
Gene Roddenberry’s TV ‘Wagon Train To The Stars’
Star Trek jumped into warp rather modestly during an era when media consumption was by today’s standards positively quaint. You either watched a movie at your local movie theater or you watched your television at home. If you had a color TV it was something special. No cellphones, laptops or tablets, please.
The sci-fi series started as an OTA NBC broadcast television show premiering in 1966. Critics mostly weren’t thrilled, but it connected firmly with an important segment of the viewing audience. So much so that when NBC cancelled it after the 2nd season, a passionate fan letter writing campaign was launched causing NBC to reassess. They gave Captain Kirk’s crew another season of space faring episodes.
Here was a truly unique entertainment intellectual property which then morphed into feature films - after a line of successful comic books, novels, video games and even an Emmy Award winning animated show, which Gene Roddenberry produced.
During the 1980’s, Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in syndication. Paramount Pictures produced the show and sold it out to various networks. This allowed more creative freedoms for Roddenberry’s new Starship, and The Great Bird came aboard as TNG Creator and Executive Producer for several years before his passing.
The Next Generation aka TNG era flourished along with spin-offs Deep Space Nine, Voyager and finally Enterprise. The last two were broadcast on the now defunct netlet UPN. Trek cooled with the box office failure of Star Trek: Nemesis and the legendary Starfleet Starships went dark, waiting patiently in dry dock for future missions.
Paramount + Streamer Brings Back The Star Trekkin
After several modestly successful feature films under JJ Abrams, Star Trek finally returned to fans in streaming form on Paramount +. Now, not only did you have to pay to watch Starfleet officers exploring space, you had to subscribe to pay monthly for shows which offered far less episodes compared to classic Trek.
Progress. Evolution. Change.
Star Trek: Discovery, aka DISCO, became the first Trek under a Paramount Plus banner. Fans were thrilled, at first, to welcome back their beloved science fiction franchise in a new digital TV format, but right off the bat, things had clearly changed.
Instead of a future spanning vision, this is the past. It’s set pre Captain Kirk and features an oddly designed starship with an even odder propulsion system. To compound things, fans charge it with being more of a culturally aware soap opera than the philosophical, sci-fi exploratory vehicle portrayed in previous incarnations.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Picard followed. Both shows claim a fan base, but there’s more debate and creative challenge over these productions than any prior Trek, save for perhaps Enterprise, which itself is a prequel.
A prequel element is definitely a sticking point for many. I want sci-fi to continue on, to build progressively on what came before. Prequels are somewhat lazy and safe. We all know how to connect the dots. Less risky to ultimately pretty boring seems to haunt most prequels.
As much as Strange New Worlds appears to be doing well, it’s basically what Gene Roddenberry created back in the day. With tweaks, stunning visuals and a few new characters, SNW fundamentally breaks no new ground. It can be strongly argued it’s simply a way for Paramount to market the original series 79 episodes and feature films to a new audience.
My honest assessment: Does the job, but ultimately less than thrilling.
Future Prospects
Back in the 1980’s, during the height of Star Trek’s dominant presence at the movie box office, film producer Harve Bennett proposed a Starfleet Academy movie or TV show. It never materialized until recently. It’s currently filming and should be released in 2026.
Why is Paramount Plus Trek apparently so broken it’s divided a legendary loyal fanbase as Trekkers? Star Wars, Marvel movies - MCU - and others too have division among ranks of the faithful, but Roddenberry’s legacy seems most fractured of all.
New fans seem to celebrate the difference from what’s come before. Though it can be argued, if they are ‘new’ they don’t seem to appreciate or truly grasp what Star Trek was, is and what it can or even should be. The latest Paramount + film, Section 31, is a stark example of that difference. Fans and critics nearly uniformly rejected it, yet there are still defenders of how it departs from what Trek’s dealt in before.
It may be more obvious or important to me since I’m a Trekker and wrote episodes for the franchise. It’s not lost on me that I may be too close to this subject, but my YouTube Channel videos, polls and subscriber feedback give me a balanced perspective despite my closeness.
Ultimately, the new Hollywood distribution channel - the technology of streaming - can also be faulted. It’s a gargantuan investment - billions of dollars per platform - and most studios lose money. It’s still in an early development stage, so content must be churned out rapidly. Does it mean quality must necessarily suffer? And why wouldn’t you try to embrace and model new content as close or as celebratory to the existing? Older fans are fading away, so cater to new fans by up ending the existing creative philosophy? That formula seems incredibly imbalanced.
A peek inside a Paramount Pictures boardroom could provide an answer. Interviews executives such as Alex Kurtzman and Terry Matalas give to the press provide a clue, but the real reason behind such an outright broken state of Star Trek is anyone’s guess.
Things change. Change is inevitable. Also less can definitely be more. Hollywood never ever embraces this concept with most of their content. Perhaps only the fascinating time travel tech so connected to Star Trek’s sweeping science fiction can make it all finally clear.
Until then: Scotty, beam me up, I’ve had enough.
Star Trek needs to go forward, not backward. I still don't understand why they haven't yet done Star Trek: The Third Generation. Go forward another 100 years, create a new crew for a new Enterprise, and you can do anything you like with the universe without having to pretend it fits into a 60-year-old timeline.
Great essay, Will. I don't know if it's Star Trek that's broken so much as sci-fi in general. I have this sense that the Cyberpunk authors books in the 1980s ("the Movement") was in a very real sense the 'end' of science fiction as a creative form, after which it degenerated into just another big bucket for genre fiction to churn.
It seems to me that philosophical problems in how we relate to the sciences have left science fiction rudderless, simultaneously 'tech fantasy' and 'social futurism', governed more by political and economic fantasies than by exploring questions about life, the universe, and everything.
Great science fiction - including Star Trek - was always philosophical, because it was about exploring 'the final frontiers' in more than one sense. This has started to come apart just as philosophy has come apart... maybe these are two aspects of the same problem.
All the best,
Chris.