star trek anniversary – Trekking with Dennis

Star Trek: The Road Not Taken

As part of my ongoing series of articles to celebrate Star Trek’s big sixtieth anniversary year, I want to take you to an alternate reality! No, not the Kelvin timeline, the Mirror Universe, nor any of the other parallel worlds glimpsed in various Star Trek productions over the past six decades. What I want to examine is what our world – the real world – might look like if Star Trek had never aired.

Because… we came closer to that than you might think.

I daresay most Trekkies know this, but I’ll very briefly recap for anyone new or who doesn’t remember. In 1964, Gene Roddenberry penned Star Trek Is…, the first pitch for what would become The Original Series. In late 1964 and into 1965, The Cage was produced by Desilu for NBC… who shot it down. However, convinced that Star Trek could still be made to work – subject to some revisions – NBC approved the production of a second pilot. That episode would become Where No Man Has Gone Before, which I re-watched here on the website a few weeks back.

Still frame from Star Trek TOS showing Kirk and Spock — Kirk and Spock in *Where No Man Has Gone Before*, the second pilot.

But for our purposes today… we’re gonna say that the second pilot didn’t happen, and then examine the alternate timeline created by Star Trek’s absence.

In this timeline, NBC took a look at The Cage and rejected it even more strongly, refusing to pick up Star Trek or greenlight that second pilot, let alone commission a full season. Gene Roddenberry and Desilu might’ve tried to shop the project to CBS and others, but they also refused to pick it up. Star Trek would never be made, and The Cage would remain in Desilu and NBC’s vaults for decades without being broadcast.

What’s the point of this exercise? Good question!

Promo poster for Star Trek SNW S4 (cropped) showing the USS Enterprise — The USS Enterprise on a recent promotional poster.

I think it’s an interesting thought experiment. What might the sci-fi landscape look like, six decades on, without Star Trek? Would other shows of the mid-60s have stepped up to take its place? Would some shows that, in the real world, only lasted one or two seasons, have taken the audience that TOS got, and gone on to become enduring, popular franchises? And what of Star Trek’s legacy beyond the world of entertainment? The franchise has inspired people all over the world to get into fields like engineering, medicine, and, of course, astronomy and space sciences.

In short… what might the world look like without Star Trek, and how big can we really argue the franchise’s influence has been? Those are the questions I want to consider as we step “through the looking-glass” to this strange parallel universe!

So let’s get back to our alt-history story. It’s early 1965, and the word from NBC and Desilu is “no.” Gene Roddenberry’s sci-fi pitch hasn’t been picked up and won’t be going ahead.

Photo of Gene Roddenberry wearing a hat — Gene Roddenberry.
*Photo Credit: Majel Barrett Roddenberry/The Roddenberry Estate*

Gene Roddenberry, by the mid-1960s, had already been working in TV for a decade. He had credits as a writer and as a producer on dozens of productions in genres like police procedurals and westerns, and was the creator of The Lieutenant, a drama series set in the US Marine Corps. I daresay that, if Star Trek hadn’t been picked up, Rodenberry’s career would have continued in a similar vein – writing a few episodes here and there for various different shows, working as a producer where he could, and perhaps continuing to pitch new ideas to the networks. Whether anything else would’ve been on Star Trek’s level, though… well, I doubt it.

Here in the real world, after The Original Series had aired, but before the Star Trek films and The Next Generation were created, Roddenberry put together a few more pitches and ideas for new TV shows. Four of these became TV movies: Genesis II, Planet Earth, The Questor Tapes, and Spectre. I daresay none of these would’ve been made without Roddenberry’s status having been inflated by Star Trek’s success – and there’d almost certainly be no Earth: Final Conflict or Andromeda, either – the two ’90s/’00s sci-fi shows produced after Roddenberry’s death based on his work and ideas.

Title card for Andromeda — No Star Trek almost certainly means no *Andromeda*…

The Original Series, despite its prominence to us Trekkies, wasn’t the only sci-fi series on American TV in the mid-1960s. Science fiction was still a relatively new genre, especially on television, but there were successful sci-fi and sci-fi-adjacent shows on the air. The Twilight Zone is one of the most famous, of course, and predates Star Trek by more than seven years. The first Batman TV series – the one starring Adam West – was also on the air from 1966 to 1968. Then there’s the likes of Lost in Space, which aired for three seasons from 1965, The Time Tunnel, which only managed a single season in 1966-67, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which ran for four seasons from 1964, and The Invaders, which ran for one season.

In a world without Star Trek, might some of these have been more successful?

We already know the legacy of Batman – new films with the titular character are still being created today, and Batman was a pretty big hit at the time. The same is true for The Twilight Zone. But I want to zoom in on The Time Tunnel, The Invaders, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea this time – I think, in a world without Star Trek, they’re exactly the kinds of niche, nerdy, “cult classic” TV shows that could have hoovered up the Trekkie community that never was!

End card for The Time Tunnel S01E01 — *The Time Tunnel* was one of *Star Trek: The Original Series’* sci-fi contemporaries.

Picture this: The Time Tunnel doesn’t get canned in 1967, but runs for two more seasons. It gets re-broadcast in syndication in the early ’70s, growing in popularity, and before you know it… fans are clamouring for more. Perhaps an animated series would be created to satiate fans, or maybe the show would be picked up for some kind of second phase.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea could be in a similar boat (if you’ll excuse the pun). It has a lot in common with Star Trek, with aliens, monsters, and a lot of themes that tie into real-world events and issues. In a world without Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea – which was already on the air – could’ve been primed to pick up the baton for sci-fi with a message, and the fan community could’ve latched onto that. Again, after the series went off the air, re-runs could’ve grown its audience, leading to calls for a sequel series or movie.

Still frame from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea showing the Seaview — The Seaview from *Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea*.

The Invaders only lasted for a single season, but I can absolutely see a pathway for a show like that to succeed in a world without Star Trek. After defeating the initial alien invasion, perhaps the characters would’ve discovered that it was only the first part of a larger plan, or that other alien races also have designs on Earth. The Invaders, being set on Earth, is different to Star Trek – but still has that “cult classic” potential.

I haven’t mentioned another ’60s classic, yet – but there’s a reason for that.

Doctor Who started airing here in the UK in 1963, and it quickly became a family favourite with us Brits! But Doctor Who didn’t cross the Atlantic until well into the 1970s, and I think its legacy is still very much a British thing. That isn’t to say Doctor Who couldn’t have gotten even bigger, if there were a big Star Trek-shaped void in the sci-fi realm. But in terms of what we’re talking about today… I consider it kind of off to one side in its own, very British niche.

Still frame from the first episode of Dr Who showing the Tardis — *Doctor Who* didn’t hit American screens until the 1970s.

So that’s our alt-history ’60s! With no Star Trek, a show like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Invaders, or The Time Tunnel manages to pick up some of the would-be Trekkies, and blows up to become much bigger than it ever did in our world.

If I had to pick just one – based on my admittedly incomplete knowledge of these programmes – I’m going to say, for the sake of argument, that it’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea that makes the leap. Lost in Space might seem superficially more similar to Star Trek, and I like The Time Tunnel for its visual style and timeline-hopping shenanigans! But if we’re picking just one of these, for the purposes of building out our alt-history of televised sci-fi, I’m gonna say that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea has the right mix of sci-fi, classic adventures, and a comparable kind of moral messaging to The Original Series, so it’s going to be the winner!

Promo photo for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea — In our alt-timeline, the void left by Star Trek’s absence is filled by *Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea*…

But what does that mean for the next chapter of our alternate timeline?

In the real world, the success of Star Trek – especially in the early 1970s after being rebroadcast – directly led to an expansion of the sci-fi genre. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, has said on the record that Star Trek paved the way for Star Wars, literally saying that Star Wars stood “on the shoulders” of Star Trek and the sci-fi-friendly audience that it helped to create. So, without Star Trek… do we get Star Wars?

There are other sci-fi films and series in our alt-timeline, so I’m not going to suggest that an expansion of the science fiction genre “never happens.” 2001: A Space Odyssey was in pre-production before Star Trek came along, and that film is still hugely influential over the genre, just as one example.

Still frame from 2001: A Space Odyssey showing Space Station V — Other sci-fi titles, like *2001: A Space Odyssey*, would still be made.

However, I do believe that, in a world without Star Trek, the timings of some of these things changes. Perhaps 2001: A Space Odyssey is still a success, or maybe it’s slightly less successful without Star Trek giving its audience a bit of a boost. But without Star Trek, and especially without the resurgence of space-based sci-fi that Star Trek led in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I’m going to say that there’s no Star Wars in 1977 – and no Alien in 1979, either.

There’s still a place, in our alt-timeline, for both an epic space fantasy like Star Wars and a gritty sci-fi horror picture like Alien. But because Star Trek looms so large over both films (and their subsequent franchises), and because in this alt-timeline, sci-fi has gone in a different direction, I’m going to posit that neither of these hugely influential pictures gets made. There will be epic sci-fi and sci-fi horror… but it won’t come along in the second half of the ’70s, it’ll come much later.

Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas — Gene Roddenberry (left) and George Lucas.
*Photo: Dan Madsen*

Now we have to talk even more speculatively!

I’ve suggested that, without Star Trek, and with the sci-fi genre looking very different in the ’70s, we don’t see Star Wars in 1977 or Alien in 1979. Star Wars, according to George Lucas, was only able to come along when it did because Star Trek had “softened the ground” for sci-fi and brought new eyes to the genre. And Alien almost feels like the antithesis of Star Trek in many ways – a working-class crew of “space truckers,” a corporate dystopia, and a film that presents space not as “the final frontier” for peaceful exploration, but as a dark, dangerous place. Neither film gets to exist without Star Trek.

But what does the absence of *those* titles mean? Arguably, the Star Wars franchise is even more important for sci-fi going into the ’80s than Star Trek, and Alien is not only a landmark science fiction film, but a seminal work of the horror genre, too. If Star Trek means neither of those films get made… well, now we have to look at the snowball effect and the ramifications of that!

Still frame from Star Wars 1977 showing Luke in the Falcon — No Star Trek means no Star Wars, and no Star Wars means…

I maintain that, somehow, sci-fi would have a resurgence on both the big and small screens in our alt-timeline. But if it doesn’t happen in the ’70s, then do we get films like E.T., The Terminator, Blade Runner, Flight of the Navigator, or The Last Starfighter in the ’80s? And without Alien, what becomes of films like The Thing or The Fly? None of this is to say that Star Trek, Star Wars, and Alien are directly responsible for these films’ existence, but if you hack away at the foundations of sci-fi on the small and big screens, it’s at least conceivable to me that these stories never get greenlit; that studio executives and producers aren’t willing to fund “experimental” films or “unproven” genres like sci-fi and sci-fi/horror in such a big way. The entire landscape of ’80s cinema would be completely changed as a result.

With less space-based sci-fi, we come back to my idea about shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Time Tunnel proving popular. Perhaps sci-fi goes in more of a terrestrial direction, with films inspired by those shows doing more with sci-fi concepts on Earth, in the deep sea, and going backwards and forwards through time. That might bode well for Back to the Future, The Abyss, RoboCop, and similar titles in this era!

Still frame from The Abyss showing a submersible — Our alt-timeline could see more Earth-based sci-fi stories, like *The Abyss*.

I also think that, in lieu of sci-fi, we could see more films in the fantasy or superhero genres in the ’70s and continuing into the ’80s. There are landmark fantasy films in this era – The NeverEnding Story, for instance, which was a favourite of mine when I was a kid. You could also point to Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, The Last Unicorn, Highlander, and even The Princess Bride as films that would likely still exist. Some of these titles might grow in popularity in a world without Star Trek and Star Wars, with fantasy becoming a much bigger genre in this era.

Without Star Trek and Star Wars leading the way for sci-fi, films like Superman could have led to the superhero genre becoming much bigger, much earlier. It’s hard to remember nowadays – almost twenty years into the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s dominance at the box office – but the superhero/comic book adaptation genre wasn’t always a guaranteed box office draw. The end of the ’80s saw Tim Burton’s Batman, but in our alt-timeline, I wonder if superheroes like Iron Man, the X-Men, and others might’ve stepped into the void left by fewer sci-fi titles. Superheroes and sci-fi have a lot of things in common, and comic book adaptations could easily be this timeline’s biggest blockbusters.

Promo for Superman 1978 showing the superhero — There might be a lot more superheroes and comic book adaptations in our alt-timeline.

Having rolled the snowball into the ’80s, I think changes from here become harder to predict. If we have more fantasy films, for instance, could an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings be produced years earlier? And if so… would it be as well-received? That’s very much an open question. If superheroes dominate the ’80s box office, how long does that last? And what does it mean for blockbuster titles in the ’90s and towards the millennium? Again, stacking change atop change makes things harder to predict!

I will posit, though, that sometime in the late ’80s or early ’90s, someone, somehow, cracks the sci-fi genre open again. Films set in space, be they horror titles, pure sci-fi, or epic adventures will – eventually and, from our point of view, belatedly – hit the big and small screens. But in our alt-timeline, I doubt we’d recognise any of them, or any of their names. Some might draw inspiration from the same sources as Star Trek and Star Wars, whereas others may be inspired by the dominant fantasy and superhero genres, or even the terrestrial sci-fi shows that replaced Star Trek. But somehow, some way, we don’t see space stories completely disappear. And going into the millennium and beyond, there may be fewer films and TV shows like that… but there are still going to be *some*.

The galaxy Centaurus A — Films set in space wouldn’t be entirely absent.
*Photo: ESO/WFI (Optical); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (Submillimetre); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray)*

Star Trek’s influence, though, doesn’t merely extend to the world of entertainment. So let’s also consider what the franchise’s absence could mean outside of the realm of film and TV.

There are countless individual stories of people who were inspired to become engineers because of Scotty, doctors because of Dr McCoy, or astronomers because of Star Trek’s focus on science. We can’t possibly account for all of those individually, but there are some trends we can point to.

First of all, I think a world without Star Trek would gradually see less interest in space and space exploration. It wouldn’t be obvious at first; the moon landing, the Space Shuttle, and so on would still happen on schedule and would still attract interest and attention. But gradually, over time, without the inspirational aspect that Star Trek brought to the table, there’d be fewer people getting interested in astronomy and related scientific fields, and – as above – that would have a kind of snowball effect.

Gene Roddenberry and several members of The Original Series cast at the dedication ceremony for the Space Shuttle Enterprise — Gene Roddenberry and several members of *The Original Series* cast at the dedication ceremony for the Space Shuttle Enterprise, 1976.
*Photo: NASA*

There are some specific areas where Star Trek had more of a direct influence. For example, the first Space Shuttle was only named “Enterprise” because of a campaign by Trekkies! So I think, in our alt-timeline, that Shuttle would almost certainly have a different name (most likely “Constitution,” for America’s bicentennial) – and that could have knock-on effects for the rest of the fleet. Then there’s Nichelle Nichols’ role in helping to recruit female astronauts, as detailed in Women In Motion, a great documentary film.

NASA would still want to recruit women astronauts to go into space, but it’s conceivable that this would be slower, and perhaps the first American woman to go into space (which, in the real world, was Sally Ride in 1983) wouldn’t happen until later.

I don’t think we’re talking about major discoveries or missions not going ahead; the space shuttle was already in early development by the late ’60s, and I can’t really point to any specific mission to space that wouldn’t have been able to go ahead without Star Trek and its legacy. But I think it’s fair to say that some missions might’ve launched later, that fewer people might’ve felt called to work in space-related scientific fields, and that there would be knock-on effects of that. By the time our alt-timeline reaches 2026, the snowball effect could put it several years behind the real world in terms of certain missions and discoveries.

Photo of Nichelle Nichols at NASA — Nichelle Nichols leveraged her fame and role on Star Trek to help NASA recruit women astronauts.

As we can see, Star Trek’s absence doesn’t mean there’s *no* sci-fi, no space adventures on TV, or massive, earth-shattering impacts on space exploration. But the entertainment landscape – and the world at large – would be undeniably different without it. Science fiction could easily have gone in a very different, more terrestrial direction, focusing for years not on outer space, but on the deep oceans, time travel, and the future of Earth. If aliens appeared at all, they’d appear as visitors – or invaders – rather than being encountered out in space, on their own home worlds.

Star Trek’s vision of humanity’s future is more optimistic, uplifting, and aspirational than practically any other sci-fi setting, and its writers have almost always found ways to tell interesting and dramatic stories despite the denizens of Earth living in a tech-driven post-scarcity “utopia.” I’m not sure any other franchise – real or imagined – could pull that off quite so successfully in our alt-timeline, and that means that sci-fi almost certainly looks darker and more dystopian than it does in the real world.

Crop from the Star Trek Stargazers webtoon showing DS9 — Sci-fi (and entertainment in general) would be bleaker and less hopeful without Star Trek.

I would like to add one addendum; an epilogue to our alt-timeline. After passing through various different corporate owners, and with its sole tape remaining locked in a vault… I think The Cage would eventually be cleaned up, remastered, and turned into a TV movie. It would take decades before it would ever see the light of day, and the chance to launch Star Trek as a real show would have long since slipped away. But a version of The Cage would eventually be broadcast – and audiences would see it as a fun little curiosity; a relic of a bygone era of television production. There might even be articles like this one, wondering “what might have been” if this weird little mid-60s sci-fi series had been picked up for a full season!

So that’s all for today. I hope this little thought experiment has been of some interest.

I was inspired by Star Trek’s 60th anniversary, and I’ve actually had a piece in my writing pile for several years, tentatively titled “Star Trek’s Contemporaries”, in which I planned to look a bit more deeply at shows like The Time Tunnel and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which I referenced in this piece. Stay tuned, because I daresay I’ll get around to that one day!

Still frame from Star Trek's pilot, The Cage, showing a close-up of Captain Pike. — Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike in *The Cage*.

The point was to take a look at a world without Star Trek… not because that’s a world I’d ever want to live in, but as a way to highlight the very real, tangible impacts that Star Trek has had and continues to have on sci-fi, the wider entertainment industry, and even beyond. If Star Trek had never got past the pilot stage – as very nearly happened – I think we can make a case for sci-fi being in a radically different place, the entertainment industry looking quite different, and perhaps even some real-world space missions not happening on schedule. As we celebrate the franchise’s landmark sixtieth anniversary, I think it’s worth taking time to acknowledge how important Star Trek has been and continues to be.

If you want to check out more pieces celebrating Star Trek’s 60th, I’ve recently written up re-watches of The Original Series’ second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, and the very first episode of Star Trek that I can ever remember watching: The Next Generation Season 2 episode The Royale. Earlier in the year, I reviewed Star Trek’s newest series, Starfleet Academy, and the video game Star Trek: Voyager – Across The Unknown. I also took a look at the franchise’s uncertain future amidst a corporate merger, and wrote about my encounter with William Shatner – Captain Kirk himself – who I met at Comic-Con. Click or tap any of those links to check out those articles, and stay tuned! There’s more to come here on the website as the sixtieth anniversary year continues.

Thank you for coming along with me on this alt-timeline adventure! And, as always… Live Long and Prosper, friends.

All TV programmes and films discussed above are the copyrights of their respective studios, production companies, distributors, and/or broadcasters. The Star Trek franchise – including The Original Series and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of the Skydance Paramount Corporation. Star Trek: The Original Series is available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available, and is also available on DVD/Blu-ray. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek “Hot Takes” (For The 60th Anniversary!)

Sun 11.01.26Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Beware of spoilers for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series, The Motion Picture, The Next Generation, Voyager, First Contact, Discovery, Picard, Prodigy, Strange New Worlds, and Starfleet Academy.

2026 will mark the 60th anniversary of the Star Trek franchise. And what better way to celebrate the beginning of this milestone year than by stirring the pot in the Trekkie community? So today, I thought we could all enjoy six more of my patented Star Trek “Hot Takes!”

Before we go any further, I’d like to give a couple of caveats. Firstly, these are all opinions that I genuinely hold, and I’m not making things up for the sake of clickbait or to deliberately upset people. But, with that being said, I’m also a huge Star Trek fan, and I share these “hot takes” with tongue firmly embedded in cheek! This is meant to be a bit of light-hearted fun in the 60th anniversary year – not something to get too worked up or annoyed about.

Promo screenshot for Star Trek Online showing a D'Kora Class ship. — A Ferengi marauder.

These are *hot* takes, not “super obvious takes that everyone will agree with,” so you can expect some degree of controversy! And, as always, everything we’re talking about is just one person’s *subjective, not objective* opinion. Feel free to disagree vehemently; I’m well aware that my position will be the minority one in most cases. However, if you aren’t in the right frame of mind for some potentially controversial Star Trek opinions… consider this your final content warning!

With all of that out of the way, let’s celebrate the beginning of Star Trek’s big sixtieth anniversary year with six “hot takes”!

“Hot Take” #1:
Star Trek got way better after Gene Roddenberry was out of the picture.

Promotional photo of Star Trek: The Next Generation creator Gene Roddenberry on set. — Gene Roddenberry.

Gene Roddenberry was Star Trek’s creator. He established the world, the lore, the look and feel of Star Trek… he quite literally built the franchise from nothing, and his philosophy and ideas are *still* a core part of Star Trek today. But after Roddenberry lost control of the cinematic franchise in the early ’80s, and especially after he stepped away from day-to-day work on The Next Generation, well… that’s where Star Trek got a heck of a lot better.

Gene Roddenberry cut his teeth on the TV serials of the mid ’50s, and his writing style… it never really evolved beyond that, even as the entertainment landscape around him was utterly transformed. Look at his final work with the original Star Trek crew: The Motion Picture, which he was heavily involved with, had a troubled production, with script re-writes happening during filming, and the finished story feels like an extended cut of a TOS episode. This came two years after Star Wars, a year after Superman, and the same year as Alien and Apocalypse Now. And although The Motion Picture made more than its money back, it’s not exactly the definitive Star Trek story for either Trekkies or a more general audience.

Behind-the-scenes photo from Star Trek: The Motion Picture showing director Robert Wise, creator Gene Roddenberry, William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, and Leonard Nimoy. — Roddenberry with Leonard Nimoy, director Robert Wise, DeForest Kelley, and William Shatner on the set of *The Motion Picture*.

The simple truth is that Roddenberry was lapped by a new generation of sci-fi storytellers and filmmakers in the years after Star Trek. And ironically, many of those projects would never have been greenlit were it not for the huge success of Star Trek! But by the end of the ’70s at the very latest, what Gene Roddenberry was capable of, particularly as a scriptwriter, had fallen way behind audience expectations. He tried to reclaim his place at the head of the Star Trek franchise with The Next Generation in 1987, but again… most of that show’s best episodes and stories came *after* he was no longer involved.

In The Original Series, Roddenberry penned the critically-panned episode The Omega Glory, his original treatment of The Cage almost got Star Trek cancelled before it could get off the ground, and of the other writing credits he has in the franchise… could you name a single one? Return of the Archons, Bread and Circuses, The Savage Curtain… none of these leap out at me as being “must-watch classics.”

Behind-the-scenes photo from the Star Trek TNG S3 episode Menage a Troi showing Gene Roddenberry and actor Peter Slutsker (in Ferengi makeup). — Gene Roddenberry with actor Peter Slutsker on the set of *The Next Generation*.

Roddenberry had a very rigid, almost dogmatic vision of what the future should look like. And, admirable as that may have been, it didn’t really lend itself to interesting, engaging, or realistic storytelling. If Starfleet characters and humans in this era are all heroic paragons of virtue, free of prejudices, conflicts, and negative feelings of any kind… how do you build tension and drama in a story? How can characters have arcs when they begin at “already perfect”? And the less we say about Roddenberry’s self-insert character of Wesley Crusher (named after his own middle name) the better!

Okay, okay. I’m exaggerating just a little. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that The Original Series films were better-recieved after Roddenberry was kicked off them. Nor that The Next Generation began to improve after he was no longer directly involved. I personally *adore* The Motion Picture, but there’s no denying it’s not one of the best films in the franchise in most people’s opinions. Gene Roddenberry was simply a man of his time… and his time came and went. When The Next Generation was underway, and spin-offs were being worked on, Roddenberry’s time was over. And Star Trek improved as a result. Characters could be flawed, humanity and Starfleet could better reflect the world of today by being imperfect, and Star Trek began to feel less like an impossible utopia or a morality fable and more… real.

“Hot Take” #2:
The overuse of legacy characters did more harm than good in modern Star Trek.

Promo photo for Star Trek: Picard Season 3 showing the main characters. — (Most of) the main characters from *The Next Generation* returned in *Picard* Season 3.

In 2018, I was… concerned. For the second time in a decade, we were going to see Captain Pike and Spock re-cast for a new project: Discovery’s second season. And, around the same time, we also learned that Jean-Luc Picard was being brought back for his own series. Star Trek’s return to its small-screen home had already been complicated by including Michael Burnham as Spock’s long-lost adopted sibling, but these announcements seemed to signal a disturbing trend: Star Trek was doubling-down on legacy characters and storylines at the expense of trying something new.

And that trend would continue. Prodigy, despite being billed as a show for kids, functions more as a sequel to Voyager than an independent production. Picard quite literally dumped almost all of its new characters – without bothering to resolve most of their arcs and storylines – in order to bring back the crew of The Next Generation for one final adventure. And Strange New Worlds, despite introducing us to some interesting new characters, focuses excessively on Spock, Kirk, Uhura, Scotty, and other TOS characters that have been introduced. We even got an entire episode in Season 3 where it was *only* those legacy characters who were in focus.

Still frame from Star Trek SNW Season 3 showing Kirk and Scotty. — Kirk and Scotty in *Strange New Worlds*.

If I’m right, and Star Trek will be disappearing from the small screen for the foreseeable future in the next few years, I really think we’ll come to regret this overabundance of legacy characters. Why? Well, to put it simply: it’s left Star Trek with nothing to build on and nowhere to go in the future. You and I may love Janeway, Seven, Picard, Riker, Spock, Uhura, and more… but these stories have either been sequels, showing these characters firmly in retirement or at the ends of their careers, or prequels, bringing the characters from their younger selves closer to the people we remember. By the time these shows are all over… where’s the foundation Star Trek needs to build something new?

There are ways to include legacy characters without totally overwhelming or swamping a production. But it requires discipline on the production side of things. It needs someone to step in and say “no, we’ve seen enough of the Doctor or Uhura or Picard already, let’s tell a story that focuses on someone new.” It’s my hope that – however late in the day it may be – Starfleet Academy will strike a better balance in this regard that any of its predecessors have. It’ll be fun to catch up with the Doctor after all this time… but he doesn’t need to be a main character. He should be, as Robert Picardo has said, “the Yoda of Star Trek,” offering advice and help to this new cadre of cadets, but without getting in their way or making things all about himself.

Kate Mulgrew and Robert Picardo at the Starfleet Academy premiere in 2026. — Kate Mulgrew and Robert Picardo in January 2026.

Look at the absolutely awful mess that Star Wars has gotten itself into thanks to an inability to move on from legacy characters (and the only story that the franchise has ever told). Is that what we want for Star Trek? If Star Trek had gone down this kind of route in the ’80s and ’90s, sticking doggedly with Kirk and his crew, think of all the incredible characters we’d never have met, and all of the stories that would’ve never been told. Modern Star Trek, by focusing so heavily on legacy characters at the expense of new creations (and, arguably, because some of the few new creations haven’t been particularly well-written or well-received), has deprived the franchise of innovation for current audiences, failed to open the doorway to new audiences, and most importantly, stagnated the franchise and left it with fewer narrative directions in the future.

I can’t help but feel, as this current streaming era seems to be winding down, that modern Star Trek will come to be seen as a catastrophically mishandled period, and a massive missed opportunity to build a new, solid foundation for the future. In another twenty or thirty years, there won’t be able to be a revival of any of the modern shows, except perhaps for Lower Decks, because of how heavily they’ve all leaned on either returning actors or re-cast characters. There’s nowhere left for most of them to go now, and they’ve left Star Trek as a whole feeling kinda… tired.

“Hot Take” #3:
The Borg Queen ruins the Borg, and her inclusion fundamentally misunderstands the Collective and what made them such an intimidating villain.

(Cropped) still frame from Star Trek: First Contact showing the introduction of the Borg Queen. — The Borg Queen’s first appearance.

This is a subject I’ve touched on before – and it really ought to be a longer essay on its own, one day! For now, here’s the short version: the Borg Queen has always felt, to me, like the worst and most egregious kind of studio interference. “Films need to have villains!” decreed someone at Paramount Pictures in the mid ’90s, and because the Borg had already been decided upon for First Contact, the writers had to go out of their way to create a unique individual Borg character for Picard, Data, and the others to face off against. Even though the idea of a “unique individual Borg” is a complete oxymoron.

Think back to what Q told Picard when the Borg first appeared in Q Who: “They’re not interested in political conquest, wealth, or power as you know it. They’re simply interested in your ship, its technology. They’ve identified it as something they can consume.” That description presents the Borg as an adversary for the Federation unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the franchise before or since. And it’s *terrifying.*

Still frame from Star Trek: TNG showing Picard, Q, Geordi, and Worf in engineering. — *Q Who* introduced the Borg.

A common trope in Star Trek is “they were only trying to communicate!!1!” where we learn, belatedly, that a supposed enemy or alien monster wasn’t interested in harming our heroes, but that their form of life was so different that we interpreted their actions as aggression. Another trope of the franchise is our heroes using diplomacy and negotiation to defuse dangerous situations; talking down the Cardassians, Romulans, or Sheliak before a conflict can even break out. The Borg – prior to First Contact – completely ruled out all of that. They don’t talk, they don’t negotiate, they don’t want to be pals. They want to consume; to exploit technological and biological resources to add to their Collective. And you don’t get a say in that.

The Borg Queen opens up a channel to conversation and negotiation with the Borg, and was also a scenery-chewing bad guy in the mould of so many other villains of stage and screen, both in the Star Trek franchise and beyond. I’ll concede the point that the Borg Queen is one of Star Trek’s most memorable and iconic villains. But that’s not the issue. There didn’t need to be an individual Borg leader in order for the Collective to be so dangerous and threatening. Worse, the Queen actively detracts from the previously unique nature of the Borg, transforming them into just another enemy faction with an over-the-top leader.

Still frame from Star Trek: Picard Season 3 showing the defeat of the Borg Queen. — “Noooo!”

This got worse in Voyager, where the Queen developed a weird relationship with Janeway and, in particular, Seven of Nine. The Borg Queen is supposedly a manifestation of the Borg Collective itself, in control of literally trillions of drones, tens of thousands of starships, and the biggest interstellar empire in the galaxy. Yet, for some reason, she obsesses over Picard, Janeway, and Seven of Nine in a way that never felt plausible or realistic. It continued the trend of making villains in Star Trek simultaneously more bland and more over-the-top. And, of course, it all came to a head in Picard’s third season, where the finally-defeated Borg Queen even yells out “noooo!” as she’s beaten, as if she were a second-rate supervillain from a cheap comic book.

The Borg Collective worked because it held up a dark mirror to a society just beginning to get started with computers, showing us how an over-dependence on technology could go awry. It played on similar tropes to zombies, fears of Cold War-era “brainwashing,” and more. The idea that every hero lost turns into another enemy to fight is a powerful one, and the thought of losing one’s mind and being turned against one’s friends is truly a fate worse than death for a lot of folks. But what made the Borg work was that they were incomprehensible, unstoppable, and far beyond Starfleet in terms of size and technology. Adding a scenery-chewing bad guy at the behest of a studio executive? It took away all of those unique qualities, set the stage for a noticeable decline in the quality of Borg stories, and just… ruined the Borg.

“Hot Take” #4:
The transporter is more magic than sci-fi… which is why arguments about whether it “kills and copies” characters are kinda silly.

Concept art for Star Trek: Phase II/Star Trek: The Motion Picture showing a transporter room and two characters. — Concept art for *Phase II* showing the transporter.

Of *all* the fictional technologies in the Star Trek franchise, none have become quite as controversial as the transporter. There’s a raging debate about how the transporter works, what happens to people who get transported, and whether they’re the same person, clones, or something else entirely. Some folks are adamant that the transporter basically murders and then clones anyone who steps into it, arguing that, if the transporter were ever to be invented in the real world, our current understanding of physics and atomic particles means that the person who steps out the other side of a transporter beam is basically a clone.

But here’s the thing: the transporter is probably the least-realistic of any of the major technologies we know of in Star Trek. There are proposals for faster-than-light communication via quantum entanglement. There are concepts for actual warp drive and other faster-than-light engines. There are realistic artificial gravity ideas that seem feasible. But a transporter? It’s basically magic wrapped in technobabble. That technobabble makes it *feel* technological rather than magical, but it’s the least-plausible of all Star Trek technologies. And for me, it’s one of those “you just gotta suspend your disbelief” things.

Still frame from Star Trek TOS Season 2 showing characters mid-transport. — Transporting in *The Original Series*.

We don’t apply the same rigorous real-world quantum physics analyses to things like warp drive, do we? Not at the same rate, anyway, based on my engagement with the fan community. Yet, if you approach faster-than-light travel the same way as some pseudo-scientists and armchair physicists do the transporter, you pretty quickly find that it’s impossible, too. My point is this: Star Trek is science-*fiction*, and, as in all works of fiction, there comes a moment where you can either… go with a story and suspend your disbelief, or you can’t. Lots of things in Star Trek are totally fictional. Klingons. Phasers. Dilithium Crystals. And while I get the argument that we want the world of Star Trek to make sense, it’s more important to me that it remains consistent with itself, not that it has to conform to our current understanding of real-world science in every instance.

If Star Trek was constrained by real-world science all the time, that wouldn’t just affect the transporter! Starships at warp would have to deal with time dilation as they travelled faster than the speed of light. Energy weapons would be basically invisible. Starship battles would look a heck of a lot different, too. Can you imagine, in the Battle of the Mutara Nebula, if we had to sit in the cinema for eight weeks while the Enterprise’s torpedo slowly made its way, at sub-light speeds, towards the Reliant? That wouldn’t be a lot of fun, right?

Still frame from Star Trek: TNG showing Barclay being transported. — Lt. Barclay mid-transport.

There is a sub-genre of “hard” sci-fi, where real science matters a lot more than it does in Star Trek. And I daresay it’s true that you’d either never get a technology like the transporter there, or if you did, it’d be treated as some kind of existential horror. But Star Trek isn’t that kind of franchise, despite what some Trekkies like to think, and if we want to enjoy Star Trek episodes and stories on their own merit, we kinda have to accept some scientific inaccuracies and some of the franchise’s more magical and fantastical elements. The transporter is one such example.

I will say, though, that I totally get this argument, and when it’s made in a less-than-serious way, I don’t *object* to it, nor to having a discussion around it. But if someone’s gonna try to claim that it “ruins” Star Trek, or that the franchise needs to explain, in-universe, how the transporter works in detail, then that’s something I’m just flat-out not interested in. Most of Star Trek’s technologies benefit from a degree of vagueness, and the transporter is one of them. It can adapt to fit the needs of all manner of stories, and while there may be implications to the technology based on our current understanding of sub-atomic particles and physics… well, who’s to say that those implications won’t be overcome or proven wrong in the next few centuries? All it takes is a little bit of creative thinking to accept that the transporter works in exactly the way we see it work in episode after episode!

“Hot Take” #5:
Most pitches for new Star Trek shows from ex-actors (and a lot of fantasy proposals from fans, too) would be just *awful*.

Still frame from Star Trek: Enterprise Season 4 showing Archer and T'Pol. — President Archer, anyone?

Scott Bakula has been doing the rounds recently with his proposal for a “Star Trek: President Archer” series; a kind of sequel to Enterprise focusing on the early years of the Federation with Archer as its leader. Robert Duncan McNeill unironically pitched a Captain Proton show a few years ago. Michael Dorn spent years trying to convince CBS and Paramount to go for his “Captain Worf” idea. And those are just a handful of ideas for new shows, sequels, or spin-offs that I just… I really think wouldn’t be much fun.

Picard demonstrated that there can be a place for sequels in Star Trek – though it did so *very* imperfectly a lot of the time. But as we were just saying, modern Star Trek already relies excessively on legacy characters, so doing *more* Picard-type shows, focusing on characters like Seven, Janeway, Worf, or Archer… I think it’s just too much, especially right now. And without a hook nor a compelling reason for *why* any of these characters need to return, I think they’d struggle to tell engaging and interesting stories that would really justify bringing them back.

Still frame from Star Trek: Voyager Season 5 showing Captain Proton (Tom Paris), the Doctor, and Harry Kim in a black-and-white holo programme. — A Captain Proton series? Really?

On the one hand, I get it. If you’re… well, to be honest, *most* ex-Star Trek actors, returning to the franchise is the best work you’re gonna get this decade – if not ever. And when the former ViacomCBS and Paramount corporations seemed to have been greenlighting Trek projects all across the board, you’ve basically got nothing to lose by putting a pitch together. But I think what Star Trek needs right now is to move on, to genuinely leave the past in the past. If there’s even a remote chance of a new series anytime soon, it should be set further along the timeline, in a new era, with new characters. Modern Trek has already overdone it with the legacy characters, in my opinion.

But that’s somewhat incidental. The blunt reality is that I don’t think I’ve seen a single one of these pitches that I actually liked, or that I felt had even the remotest justification for being created. Take Kate Mulgrew’s Janeway idea as an example. Between Voyager, Prodigy, and references to her in Picard, we’ve seen her entire arc… and then some. What could a hypothetical “Star Trek: Janeway” do for the character that we haven’t already seen? It would be a sequel for the sake of making a sequel… worse, it would be a sequel for the sake of cutting Kate Mulgrew a cheque.

Still frame from Star Trek: Prodigy's premiere showing holo-Janeway. — A holographic version of Captain Janeway from *Prodigy*.

I’m loathe to give studio executives *any* credit whatsoever – especially the brain-dead hacks who used to run the old ViacomCBS and Paramount corporations. But if there’s one thing I could say in defence of some of these folks, it’s that they recognised the obvious lack of quality (and lack of broader audience appeal) in these kinds of actor-led pitches and proposals. There’s an alternate timeline, perhaps, where the Star Trek franchise is swamped by a succession of disappointing sequel shows centred around one or two returning characters… and I just don’t see how any of that would be an improvement.

I’d also extend this to a whole lot of fan-made proposals and “fantasy” Star Trek shows, too – probably including some of my own! I’d have loved to see, for example, a series set aboard a hospital ship; ER in space. But let’s be honest, hardly anyone would be interested in that! There’s no shortage of ideas and proposals from fans for new Star Trek shows, sequels, and spin-offs, and while I will occasionally come across one that sounds genuinely interesting… most of them are absolute trash, and would be truly awful if they ever made it to the screen. This isn’t to say that the Star Trek franchise has got everything right in recent years – far from it. Look at the repetitiveness of Discovery’s storytelling as the show wore on, the bizarre decision to commission a Section 31 show, then re-work it into a TV movie, or making a half-kids show, half-sequel to a series from a quarter of a century earlier. But just because the folks in charge of Star Trek have made mistakes, that doesn’t magically make some of these truly awful-sounding pitches any better!

“Hot Take” #6:
Star Trek is, at a fundamental level, not the right fit for a serialised streaming TV show.

Behind-the-scenes photo from Star Trek: Picard showing Patrick Stewart and a camera. — Behind-the-scenes on *Picard* Season 2.

Since Lost premiered in the mid 2000s, and especially after Game of Thrones took the world by storm, most big-budget TV shows have gone down a serialised route, mandated by broadcasters and streaming platforms. And there have been some wonderful success stories with the serialised format… in other franchises. But when you think about what Star Trek is at its core – a franchise about exploring strange new worlds – that just doesn’t gel with the kind of serialised storytelling that has become the norm on streaming. And I think that’s a big part of why modern Star Trek has struggled.

A typical Star Trek series needs the freedom that only episodic storytelling can provide. It needs to be able to warp to a new planet every week, encounter new aliens, new villains, and new temporary allies. There can be character arcs and growth within that format – I’m not suggesting we go back to the days where something huge or traumatic would happen, only for it to be ignored in every subsequent story. But in terms of what Starfleet is and what almost all of our main characters do for a living… the only way to tell these kinds of stories, really, is to use that older, episodic style.

Still frame from Star Trek: The Next Generation showing the Enterprise-D at DS9. — The Enterprise-D at DS9.

The only series where serialised storytelling had a chance of working was Deep Space Nine. A static setting with a large cast of secondary characters gave the franchise that opportunity. And I’m not averse to the idea of doing something like that again – DS9 is, on balance, probably my favourite series, and I’d like to see another Star Trek show set on a space station or even a colony. Both of those settings offer more potential for serialised storytelling.

But a show like Discovery, set on a vessel of exploration, needed the freedom of an episodic format to really shine. There were a few semi-standalone episodes across Discovery’s run, and I think most of them would probably rank as my personal favourites that the show produced. But for me, Discovery’s format – which was later recycled in Picard and even Prodigy – felt more like a constraint than an advantage. Blindly chasing the latest trend did not benefit any of the Star Trek shows that tried it, and it’s no coincidence that Strange New Worlds – which employs much more of an episodic style – is, in my view, far and away the best part of modern Star Trek.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x09 showing the USS Enterprise. — The Enterprise in *Strange New Worlds*.

Unfortunately, Starfleet Academy seems poised to repeat the mistakes made by Discovery, Picard, and Prodigy – telling a season-long, fully-serialised story with a “huge galactic threat,” a villain with a mysterious connection to a main character, and so on. It’s my sincere hope that, if and when Star Trek is revived on the small screen one day, we’ll get something closer to Strange New Worlds in terms of the kind of storytelling employed. Most Star Trek shows just aren’t a good fit for these kinds of serialised stories. And that’s before we get into how repetitive it is to have existential threats, scenery-chewing villains, and the like every single time.

Star Trek has *always* taken inspiration from the entertainment landscape around it, and that’s not inherently a bad thing. But in this case, the way streaming TV has gone over the past fifteen years or so has taken it in a direction that doesn’t suit the Star Trek franchise, and I wish the higher-ups had recognised that sooner. There’s scope to tell *some* serialised stories in Star Trek – I’m not saying it should never be attempted. But doing so at the expense of episodic storytelling in almost every case is why, for a lot of folks, the modern franchise hasn’t “felt like Star Trek.”

So that’s it… for now!

Still frame from Star Trek IV showing Kirk and Spock on a bus. — Kirk and Spock in 1986…

We’ve talked about six of my “hot takes” to mark the beginning of the 60th anniversary year – but there’s more to come! Starfleet Academy will premiere later this week (for some reason, Paramount-Skydance didn’t invite me to the premiere nor give me the episodes to watch early; wonder why?) My current plan for Starfleet Academy is to write a review of the two-episode premiere, then write a review of Season 1 as a whole after it concludes in early March. I don’t think I have enough in the tank for weekly episode reviews right now, I’m afraid, but I hope you’ll join me as I check out the premiere, at least.

And as we get closer to the anniversary, I’ve got a couple of ideas for episode re-watches and other pieces to celebrate this impressive milestone. I’m not 100% sure if Strange New Worlds Season 4 will be out this year, but if it is, I daresay I’ll be reviewing those episodes, too. And I’m always on the hunt for more Star Trek topics to write about, especially in an important year like this. So definitely check back!

Until then, I hope this has been a bit of fun – and not something to get too worked up or upset about! I enjoyed writing up these “hot takes,” and I hope you’ll take them in the spirit of good-natured fun as we come together to celebrate what makes Star Trek such a great franchise. See you… out there!

Most Star Trek films and TV programmes can be streamed on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available, and are also available on DVD and/or Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including everything discussed above – is the copyright of Skydance/Paramount. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Happy Star Trek Day!

Mon 08.09.25Dennis

Spoiler Warning: Beware of minor spoilers for Strange New Worlds Seasons 2-3.

Happy Star Trek Day, friends!

The 8th of September – i.e. today – was the date in 1966 when the very first episode of Star Trek premiered in the United States, and in recent years, it’s been celebrated within the fan community as “Star Trek Day.” Next year’s going to be the milestone 60th anniversary, but I thought we could take stock of where Star Trek finds itself, reflect on the importance of the franchise, and just geek out a little bit today, since it’s a special occasion.

Though it was the first episode to be broadcast, The Man Trap wasn’t the first episode to be produced. After The Cage didn’t make the cut, Gene Roddenberry and co. were given a rare second chance to make a pilot, and they settled on Where No Man Has Gone Before. However, although the network liked this episode more than The Cage, it wasn’t considered as straightforward a story when it came to deciding on the broadcast schedule. Basically, by process of elimination, The Man Trap won out against the few other completed episodes in September 1966. And just the other day, I got to meet Budd Albright – one of the actors who was in The Man Trap. Being able to say I’ve met one of the performers who was in the first ever Star Trek episode is, without a doubt, one of the coolest things I can add to my resume as a Trekkie!

Still frame from Star Trek: The Original Series S01, E01, "The Man Trap," showing Barnhart and the M-113 Creature. — Budd Albright (left) in *The Man Trap*, which aired 59 years ago today.

When you look back with 59 years of hindsight, having seen how Star Trek attracted a fandom and expanded into a massive franchise, it’s easy to fall into the trap of saying its success was always a sure thing. But if you read up on the early production history of Star Trek, what amazes me is how it could’ve either been completely different… or might never have made it off the ground at all. Even today, if a television pilot gets rejected, being offered a second chance by a broadcaster is something that very rarely happens. In the mid-1960s, with sci-fi still a relatively new and untested genre on television – and an expensive one, thanks to sets, costumes, props, prosthetics, and special effects – it’s genuinely stunning to think that the higher-ups at the network were willing to give Gene Roddenberry that all-important second chance.

There were several key decisions taken early in the production of The Original Series that I genuinely believe took a great concept and turned it into something that became a phenomenon. The first was the avoidance of product placement; Gene Roddenberry was keen to avoid Kirk and Spock turning to the camera, cigarette in hand, and plugging brands like Lucky Strike. The second, and probably most important, was that The Original Series was filmed and broadcast in colour, at a time when colour TV was only just getting started. Doctor Who, one of Star Trek’s contemporaries in the ’60s, didn’t broadcast in colour until 1970, and American shows around the same time – like The Addams Family, The Twilight Zone, and The Fugitive – were all still airing in black-and-white.

Kirk, Spock, and Dr McCoy from Star Trek on a promo poster for the series' Betamax release c. 1986 (cropped). — Kirk, Spock, and Dr McCoy.

Star Trek was cancelled in 1969 due to low ratings – but those ratings massively improved when the series was rebroadcast in the early 1970s – and I firmly believe that if it had been in black-and-white, not colour, it would’ve been more difficult for Star Trek to have garnered the level of support that led to the creation of The Animated Series and, eventually, The Motion Picture. I don’t know if colour was always the plan, and for a while, I remember reading that the only full cut of The Cage that existed was in black-and-white, though I’m not sure if that was just a pre-internet rumour! In any case, being filmed and broadcast in full colour definitely gave Star Trek a much-needed boost as colour TV was just about to take off.

At the core of Star Trek, though, were great characters and fun stories – often, but not always, with morals and messages that reflected the world in which they were written in different ways. I said a few years ago that The Man Trap is more than just an “alien monster” story; what makes the episode so poignant and powerful are the reflections Kirk, Spock, McCoy and others have when they consider the implications that the Salt Vampire may have been the last of its kind… and they killed it in self-defence. Star Trek has always trusted its audience to think, and encouraged viewers to consider the implications and possibilities of its stories. Star Trek episodes are designed to be dwelt upon after the credits have rolled – which, I think, explains why there’s such a vocal and passionate fan community!

Still frame from Star Trek: The Original Series S01, E01, "The Man Trap," showing the M-113 Creature/Salt Vampire. — The M-113 Creature.

After The Cage was rejected, Gene Roddenberry and the team re-worked most of its characters. “Number One” was originally intended to be the stoic and logical one, but that role was reassigned to the new incarnation of Spock. Captain Pike was out, replaced with Captain Kirk. Dr Boyce became Dr McCoy, but retained a similar role as an older confidant of the captain. Characters like Sulu and Uhura were created, and the stage was set for the show we’re all familiar with.

If you’d told the cast and crew then, in 1966, that new episodes featuring Spock, Scotty, Uhura, and Nurse Chapel would still be airing 59 years later… well, I doubt anyone would have believed you!

But I think it says a lot about those characters, and the way The Original Series was written, that Strange New Worlds came to exist at all – let alone that it’s the best thing Star Trek has done in a long time. Those characters, their personalities, and the way they’d conduct themselves in their roles… it’s a huge part of what made Star Trek into the franchise it would become. We’re still watching episodes starring these same characters, alebit in an updated format, all these years later.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x06 showing Spock, Scotty, Chapel, and Uhura on the bridge of the USS Farragut. — Spock, Scotty, Chapel, and Uhura in a recent *Strange New Worlds* episode.

I didn’t come to Star Trek via The Original Series. It was The Next Generation that first made me a Trekkie in the early 1990s. I’ve said this before, but Season 2’s The Royale is the first episode I can remember watching all the way through (though I think I’d seen at least parts of episodes before that, as well as having seen some action figures and props that my uncle had at the time.) In any case, I date my entry into the Trekkie community to 1991, when The Royale aired for the first time here in the UK. I went back to watch The Original Series here and there, when it was on TV and when I could afford to rent video tapes!

But as I progressed my journey into the Trekkie community through the 1990s, including attending my first-ever fan meetup and going to visit the Star Trek Exhibition around the time of the 30th anniversary, I came to watch The Original Series episodes and films. I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you what the first TOS episode I watched was; that memory is lost in the recesses of an addled brain! But I soon fell in love with Kirk, Spock, Dr McCoy, and the rest of the crew – just as the first generation of Trekkies had done a quarter of a century earlier. I don’t think I knew that The Man Trap had been the first episode to air until I got online around the turn of the millennium and started talking to other Star Trek fans; there was a debate, for a time, about which episode “technically counts” as the first one – should we go in broadcast order or production order? Broadcast seems to have won that argument, by the way!

Behind-the-scenes photo/still frame from Star Trek: TOS showing the original USS Enterprise model against a blue screen. — The original USS Enterprise filming model.

Some people have gone so far as to suggest that, without Star Trek, there’d be no sci-fi on our screens today. I don’t agree with that assessment, I’m afraid. By 1966, when The Man Trap aired, Kuberick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was in production. Other sci-fi and sci-fi-adjacent shows, like The Outer Limits, My Favorite Martian, and The Twilight Zone were already airing, and with the space race in full swing, there was a growing amount of attention on the genre. But without Star Trek, the sci-fi landscape would’ve been very different. Even back then, there was a lot of “doomerism” floating around. Star Trek is one of the very few entertainment properties – then or now – to present an optimistic vision of the future, where technology cures problems rather than causes them, where humanity has overcome its violent impulses rather than surrendered to them, and where the future is bright, not dark.

That’s what appealed to a lot of people about Star Trek: the core fundamentals of its setting. Technology could cure diseases. There was still an economy and private property, but humanity had moved to become a “post-scarcity society,” where an abundance of energy and resources meant we could dedicate our time to science, exploration, and other pursuits instead of being tied to a desk or working in a factory. Those elements of escapism appeal just as much today as they did 59 years ago – and they probably always will.

Still frame from Star Trek: The Original Series S01, E01, "The Man Trap," showing Dr McCoy holding his medical tricorder. — Dr McCoy with his medical tricorder in *The Man Trap*.

As someone who’s had health issues going back decades, I can say with certainty that one of the most appealing things about Star Trek’s vision of the future is the potential to cure diseases, and how it depicts an inclusive, friendly society that’s largely free from discrimination and hate. Technologies like the hypospray and medical tricorder are seen diagnosing and treating all manner of ailments and conditions. Some episodes suggested that limbs could be regenerated, scar tissue covered up, and even the ageing process itself could be reversed (in some stories, at least!) Dr McCoy (and later the likes of Dr Crusher, Dr Pulaski, and Dr Bashir) would be seen treating patients in state-of-the-art medical facilities, with bio-beds, computer monitoring, and research labs to develop brand-new cures.

Star Trek “predicted” technology that we take for granted today. What is the Enterprise’s viewscreen if not an early take on video-calling and FaceTime? Communicators seem an awful lot like mobile phones. Combadges? Bluetooth microphones and speakers. There are laser weapons in use by militaries around the world, and proposals for things like nuclear fusion reactors, ion thrusters, and even a “warp drive” concept of sorts – many of which are at least partly inspired by Star Trek. And there are countless individuals who have cited Star Trek as a reason for their interest in medical, scientific, or engineering fields.

Still frame from Star Trek: The Original Series S01, E01, "The Man Trap," showing the main viewscreen. — The planet M-113 (remastered version) on the Enterprise’s main viewscreen.

So if that’s Star Trek’s legacy and early history… what’s next? What may lie in store for Star Trek as we pass its 59th birthday?

This is where, I’m afraid, things start to look a little less rosy. In my view, Skydance – Star Trek’s new corporate overlords – are not as interested in making new television shows as the previous incarnations of Paramount and CBS had been. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Discovery, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds were all cancelled after Paramount took the decision to go ahead with the Skydance merger. David Ellison, the CEO of Skydance and, by extension, the man with the final say over new Star Trek productions, does seem interested in some kind of feature film adaptation – and as luck would have it, there are supposedly at least two such projects currently being worked on. But with Paramount+ struggling, and not every recent Star Trek project being particularly well-received… I will not be at all surprised if the final episodes of Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy will bring an end to this era of Star Trek on TV.

With that being said, as depressing as it may sound, it isn’t always a bad thing for a franchise to take a break, get shaken up, and come back after some time has passed! It worked for Doctor Who in the mid-2000s, it arguably worked for Star Trek after Enterprise’s cancellation, and it’s at least possible to think that future Star Trek productions may benefit from learning the lessons of this era of streaming TV… as well as from having a bit of a hiatus.

Concept art of the USS Enterprise produced for Phase II/The Motion Picture. — Concept art of the USS Enterprise produced for *Phase II*/*The Motion Picture*.

I don’t have any “insider information,” by the way. But based on what’s been said publicly about potentially merging Paramount+ with Peacock (or some other streaming platform), David Ellison’s apparent preference for films over streaming TV, and the cancellation announcement for Strange New Worlds coming before Season 3 had even aired… that’s my gut feeling. No new Star Trek has been greenlit for a while, and one of the shows that had been announced – Tawny Newsome’s “workplace comedy” series – now seems to not be going ahead. So I think we have to contend with the possibility, as we pass the 59th anniversary, that Star Trek may once again be heading for a fallow period.

But there will be time to talk about that in more detail on another occasion!

Today, I want to raise a glass and toast to Star Trek’s success. Not many other entertainment properties from the mid-1960s are still around, still being worked on, and still so beloved as Star Trek. Very few franchises get anywhere near the 1,000-story mark – yet Star Trek, at time of writing, is just about 40 episodes shy of that incredible milestone. If Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy proceed as planned, as well as the films which are supposedly being worked on… hitting that 1,000-story mark seems within reach in the next few years.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x09 showing transporting. — Beaming down to a moon in the most recent Star Trek episode.

On a personal note, though I’ve dealt with burnout and felt the franchise had been over-saturated in the early 2020s, I’m still a huge Trekkie. I’ve been keeping up with Strange New Worlds this season, and I regularly go back to watch my favourites from The Next Generation era in particular. Being a Trekkie has been part of my identity, in a way, since I was a pre-teen, and now I’m in my forties! Nothing else in the entertainment world compares to Star Trek, for me, and even when I’m not actively watching the latest film or episode, Star Trek is still on my mind, its philosophy and vision of the future are still things I take into account, and my love for this franchise remains. The way I express that may fluctuate, sure, but I am still a Trekkie – and I daresay I always will be.

So happy Star Trek Day! Wherever you are in the world, whatever you’re doing, and regardless of whether you plan to watch The Man Trap (or any other episode) to mark the occasion, thank you for checking in, and I hope you have a wonderful Star Trek Day. This incredible franchise brought us together, today, 59 years on from that first episode – and I think that’s something pretty darn special.

Live Long and Prosper.

The Star Trek franchise – including all episodes and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Skydance/Paramount. Most Star Trek shows and films can be streamed on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available, or purchased on DVD and Blu-ray. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.