Tag: trekkies

Keeping the Star Trek fan community a welcoming place

Keeping the Star Trek fan community a welcoming place

Dennis

I didn’t realise it until a few weeks ago, but I’ve officially been a Trekkie for more than thirty years. The earliest episode of The Next Generation that I can solidly remember watching was Season 2’s The Royale, which aired here in the UK in June 1991. Although I’m fairly sure that The Royale isn’t the first ever Star Trek episode that I saw, it’s the earliest one that I can remember and thus I can officially date my entry into the fandom to more than three decades ago.

I quickly became enamoured with The Next Generation, tuning in to watch every new episode as they aired, and even renting copies of some of the episodes on video as and when I could find them. In the rural part of the UK where I grew up, there weren’t many other fans of science fiction and fantasy, so being a Trekkie could be lonely. This was years before I got access to the internet, too, so finding fellow Trekkies wasn’t easy.

The Royale is the first episode of Star Trek that I can definitely remember watching.

That being said, there was a sci-fi magazine that I subscribed to for a time, and I think it must’ve been in one of the issues that I found out about a Star Trek fan group that was organising a meet-up. This would’ve been in late 1994 or early 1995, around the time Generations was in cinemas. Because my mother thought I was too young to travel more than two hours by train on my own, she accompanied me – much to my horror – but promised me she’d find other things to do in the city where the meet-up was taking place.

I was nervous as I got ready to attend the meet-up. I’d seen as much of The Next Generation as had been broadcast on terrestrial TV in the UK, and a few other episodes on video, but I’d only seen a handful of episodes of The Original Series and just one of the films (The Search for Spock, weirdly, was my first Star Trek film) so I wasn’t really sure how older fans would react. I felt like a bit of an imposter at first; a newbie barging into an established group.

It took two hours to travel by rail from where I lived to where the meet-up was being held.

But all of the Trekkies I met were incredibly welcoming. At the meet-up I was the youngest person there by a considerable margin, but everyone was very nice to me and made me feel part of the group. Nobody tried to tell me that I wasn’t a “true fan” of Star Trek because of my limited knowledge of The Original Series, and I had a great time talking to other fans for the first time, seeing different collections of merchandise – some imported from America – and hearing a few people share their experiences of meeting William Shatner or other members of the cast. I left the event having had a great time and feeling excited to continue and expand my fandom. Someone had recommended that I watch The Wrath of Khan, so shortly after I was able to rent the film and see it for myself.

I went back to several meet-ups with this group in the mid/late-1990s, but as I got ready to go to university and started getting online, I sort of drifted away. It was never an official fan club or anything as far as I recall, just a group of Trekkies who’d get together to trade merch and chat once in a while.

Kirk in The Wrath of Khan.

Those early fan meet-ups meant a lot to me as I began my journey as a Star Trek fan. The people I talked to were all very welcoming, and they seemed pleased that a younger person was interested enough in Star Trek to associate with their group. I think they recognised, even back then, that a franchise like Star Trek needs new fans – because new fans are the lifeblood of any fan community. Making sure that community is a welcoming place, however people come by it, is incredibly important.

I was quite sensitive as a kid, and if I’d been met with a wall of negativity at that first meet-up, I don’t think I’d have ever gone back. It would almost certainly have put me off Star Trek entirely, as I’d have associated the franchise with unkind, unwelcoming people. I might have never gone back to watch The Original Series, and perhaps I’d have switched off and skipped Deep Space Nine and Voyager when they came along, too. The words people use matter, and how we treat new fans or people on the cusp of joining the fan community is incredibly important.

It’s so important to be kind to everyone in the fan community – especially newbies.

Meet-ups like the ones I remember still happen within the fan community, but nowadays most people’s first contact with other Trekkies is via the internet and social media. In a way, I’m jealous of that! As a kid I would have loved nothing more than to have found a ready-made Trekkie community that I could share my love of the franchise with any time I wanted to, but I first became a Trekkie years before I got online! I grew up in a rural area, and there just weren’t any other Trekkies in my immediate circle of friends or neighbours – at least none that I knew of at the time.

But social media and the internet have brought with them trolls and unkind people who seem to delight in crapping all over anything that someone else likes. That’s unfortunately true within the Star Trek fan community as well, and there are enough people who are unkind and unpleasant to others online that I fear for anyone just getting started with Star Trek. The community that they encounter on social media is, unfortunately, plagued by a vocal minority of people like that.

The online Trekkie community can be an unkind, even hateful place.

I’m not the most active person on social media. But even I’ve seen the way that some people behave, and how the relative anonymity of the internet and social media seems to amplify some people’s absolute worst qualities and tendencies. Even conversations that start off politely, or questions asked in good faith and with no bad intentions at all, can become toxic incredibly quickly.

I believe that it’s up to all of us to be considerate and thoughtful in our interactions within the fan community. New shows like Discovery and Prodigy are hopefully going to continue to bring on board hordes of brand-new Trekkies, and all of us have a responsibility to ensure that the fan community these folks discover is a kind, welcoming place. Trying to act like gatekeepers by telling new Trekkies that their opinions are invalid because they haven’t seen a particular film or episode, or that the show they like isn’t “real Star Trek,” is going to upset people and make the Star Trek fan community look like an unkind, selfish, closed-off place.

Prodigy is hopefully going to bring lots of new fans into the Star Trek fan community for the first time.

New fans are, as I said earlier, the lifeblood of any fandom. If Star Trek were to remain the sole preserve of fans from the ’60s or the ’90s it wouldn’t last very long at all – and it wouldn’t deserve to. The fan community needs new Trekkies joining in and sharing their excitement for the franchise in order to grow and remain relevant. If we try to shut those people out or tell them they’re only “allowed” to join in once they’ve met a particular threshold then the fan community will stagnate, online fan groups will become unpleasant places, and the resultant decline in online chatter will harm Star Trek and could easily lead to a decline in viewership in general.

There are many fans for whom Star Trek has always been a complete product. There were a lot of arguments in the ’80s and ’90s about how The Next Generation was taking over from The Original Series, whether Deep Space Nine was too dark in tone, and whether the Star Trek franchise needed a prequel – to name just three examples. Star Trek has always been developing and evolving, episode by episode and season by season. But for fans who missed those conversations and didn’t see the slow progress that the franchise made over the span of decades, Star Trek has always existed as a complete product: a DVD box set or a full series on a streaming platform. It seems to me that it’s those folks who are more likely to act as gatekeepers and try to keep new fans who don’t share their opinions out of the fan community.

Star Trek hasn’t always been a complete DVD box set. It took decades to get to that point.

Star Trek has always meant different things to different people. And consequently, fans have always had preferences within the Star Trek franchise about which episodes, films, series, and even characters that they prefer. If someone doesn’t like one part of Star Trek, that’s okay. It doesn’t make them “less” of a Trekkie. And if someone’s new to the franchise and isn’t up to speed on every film or episode, that doesn’t make them “less” of a fan either.

The people who are trying to play gatekeeper need to stop. It doesn’t do anyone any good to try to exclude people – especially new fans – from the Star Trek fan community. Although I’m a fan of Star Trek in its older and newer incarnations, I understand that there are people who don’t like some or all of what Star Trek is currently doing. I was even in a similar position myself once upon a time, as I wasn’t particularly keen on Enterprise when it was announced and only tuned in sporadically during its original broadcast run. But in the early 2000s I would have never dreamed of telling anyone that they weren’t a “real fan” of Star Trek because they liked Enterprise, or because Enterprise was the first Star Trek show they’d ever seen.

I freely admit that Enterprise didn’t seem like my thing when it first premiered. But I was wrong about that.

The message I have is a simple one, at the end of the day: we all have a responsibility to keep the Star Trek fan community a kind, friendly, and welcoming place.

Fans can be passionate, and the desire to talk about the things we like – and dislike – is a powerful one. Making sure that the Star Trek fan community feels welcoming to newcomers doesn’t mean whitewashing Star Trek and never sharing a critical opinion, but it does mean that criticism needs to be carefully considered and offered in as constructive a manner as possible. ViacomCBS has definitely made mistakes with the Star Trek franchise in recent years, for example, but my criticisms of the corporation or my negative reviews of individual episodes here on the website have never strayed into attacking fellow fans. If you like an episode that I don’t, that’s okay! And I think that’s the attitude that we all need to try to adopt going forward.

A series like Prodigy has the potential to open up the Star Trek fan community, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see an influx of new, younger fans in the months and years ahead. Those of us who’ve been Trekkies for a long time should try, for their sake, to keep conversations and debates civil in tone and to ensure that the fan community is a kind, friendly, and welcoming place. Shutting down or tuning out as much of the toxicity as possible is a big part of that.

Let’s try to make sure fans of Prodigy feel welcome as they get started in the Star Trek fan community.

I’ve lost count of the number of negative, toxic, and even bigoted and hateful messages and posts that I’ve seen in recent years. Practically all of them appeared not because they were sent directly to me, nor because I sought out those groups or follow individuals who hold those views, but because they were amplified on social media by other folks – often with good intentions – who chose to interact or engage. There’s an expression from the early days of the internet that I think is relevant in a lot of cases: “don’t feed the trolls.”

A lot of the anti-Trek content spewed onto social media by people like that is done for attention, and by engaging with it in a big way it gets amplified, giving the attention-seeking trolls exactly what they want. There are some instances where calling someone out or shutting down someone espousing hurtful, bigoted views is going to be important – but in many cases there’s no need to engage with people who are throwing out hate and toxicity just for the sake of it. Because of the way social media works, with algorithms promoting content that gets the most engagements, doing so often ends up drawing more and more attention to something that really should just be ignored. Most social media platforms offer users the ability to block individuals, groups, or even whole words and phrases – so we should use those tools when necessary.

Don’t feed the trolls…

So I think that’s about all I have to say. I was prompted to write this piece after seeing a lot of chatter on social media about the state of the Star Trek fan community, and with Prodigy now airing and potentially bringing younger fans on board in large numbers, I wanted to give my two cents on why it’s important to make sure the fan community is as welcoming and friendly as possible.

Ever since I attended that first meet-up in 1994 or 1995, I’ve remembered the kindness that I was shown and how I was made to feel welcome as a new fan. I try to keep that spirit going in all of my engagements with the Star Trek fan community, and though there are episodes I dislike and things on the corporate side that I will continue to criticise, in my very limited way I try to make sure that I’m contributing positively to the overall discourse surrounding Star Trek. There’s room for constructive criticism and there’s room for differences of opinion – but there’s no room for toxicity, hate, and bigotry. It’s the responsibility of all of us to do what we can to keep the Star Trek fan community a welcoming place.

The Star Trek franchise – including all series and films mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Do you have to love everything Star Trek does to be a “true fan?”

Do you have to love everything Star Trek does to be a “true fan?”

Dennis

This essay was inspired in part by a couple of conversations I had over the holidays with fellow Trekkies, as well as a number of social media posts and groups that I’ve seen over the last few years. Though I’ll be addressing the question of “do you have to love everything the franchise does” from the perspective of a Star Trek fan, much of what I have to say can easily be applied to other fandoms and franchises as well. This essay isn’t an attack on any individual nor on anyone else’s position; it’s a defence of my own and my way of doing things here on the website. Let’s get started!

As I state in my methodology, and as I’ve said on a number of occasions in essays, reviews, and other pieces that I’ve published, I reserve the right as an independent critic/commentator to speak honestly and share my genuine thoughts and feelings on any of the subjects I write about here on the website. That includes the Star Trek franchise, and although I’m happy to say that I love Star Trek, that doesn’t mean that I necessarily love everything that the franchise puts out. Nor can I offer ViacomCBS – the corporation which owns and manages Star Trek – my support for many of the decisions that they’ve taken in recent years.

What does it mean to be a fan of Star Trek?

I think we can break this subject down into two main parts: firstly we have criticism of individual episodes, films, seasons, and entire series for things like narrative choice, visual effects, acting performances, pacing and editing, and so on. This is a basic outline of media criticism in a general sense, and any review or impression of an episode of television, a film, or an entire season or TV show should be expected to talk about at least some of these topics.

Secondly we have the corporate side of things. Business decisions, the leadership of the corporation, the timing of releases, the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, the overall direction of travel for the franchise that’s being set by the corporation in charge, and many other related matters. These are all things that fans of any franchise need to be aware of – and I would argue that critics should be able to discuss corporate affairs because of how they can impact the quality of content produced. Corporate matters can also spill over into the fan community.

Logo of ViacomCBS, the corporation which owns and manages Star Trek.

On the first point, I’m proud of the fact that I have a space on the internet where I can share my genuine and honest impressions of the latest Star Trek episodes (as well as other films, games, and television shows). I don’t want to restrict what I can say in any way, let alone confine myself to only sharing positive impressions and glossing over the negatives. This isn’t a space for whitewashing, and as I’ve said multiple times: I’m not aiming to be a cheerleader for any franchise, even one that I love as much as Star Trek.

That being said, out of more than eight hundred episodes and thirteen films (at time of writing), there really aren’t many that I consider to be irredeemably awful. Even Star Trek at its worst usually has redeeming features, and if you’ve read my reviews or write-ups of the handful of episodes that I dislike, you’ll see that I still find positive things to say about certain elements of them.

Spock’s Brain is widely considered to be one of the worst episodes from The Original Series.

I also try to offer as much of my criticism as possible in a constructive way. Rather than simply saying “this episode is crap” and leaving it at that, I try to lay out in as clear terms as possible what it was that I didn’t like, why specific elements of the narrative failed to resonate, and offer anyone reading my reviews an explanation for my conclusions. One of the problems with social media – especially with platforms like Twitter that encourage very short posts – is that any kind of explanation or nuance is lost. One of the main reasons why I created this website in the first place was so that I could expand properly on my thoughts and not find myself curtailed by word or character limits.

It’s that nuance that I think too often gets lost in the fast-paced world of online media discourse. People see a tweet, a headline, or an out-of-context excerpt and then move on to the next one, not stopping to read a longer review or listen to a longer podcast or video essay. It isn’t possible to summarise a review in just a couple of lines – and as you’re probably already aware, I have a somewhat longwinded writing style that is especially unsuited to short-form reviews and posts!

On a related note, follow me on Twitter!

Nuance is key to any decent review – and to any piece of media criticism in general. It’s incredibly rare to come across a film, video game, or episode of television that is completely perfect or utterly awful, and even in a positive review it can be worth drawing attention, however briefly, to negative aspects or things that didn’t work quite as well as others. This is something you’ll often see in my own work, and while I freely admit it can come across as “nitpicking,” for the same reasons of being constructive with criticism I stand by it.

It’s on the corporate side of things where I think it’s fair to say I’ve been far more critical than I have in any analysis or review! ViacomCBS has, in my view, mismanaged the Star Trek brand in significant and damaging ways in recent years, and the corporation’s failures have led to serious problems for the franchise as well as exacerbated divisions within the Star Trek fan community. I haven’t held back when it comes to criticising ViacomCBS and its board, and I will continue to do so as I see fit.

I’ve been critical of ViacomCBS – as illustrated by this edited poster I created for an article a few weeks ago.

The way I see it, there’s always going to be a spectrum of opinion on any franchise or work of media. At one end are people who totally hate it and find it awful, and at the other you have those who find it perfect (or who are paid to say nothing but positive things in public). As is happening in all walks of life, though, the middle ground is being increasingly pushed out. The shades of grey are less popular than ever before, with folks being encouraged to go all-in with either the haters or the lovers. For too many people, there’s no longer any room for a nuanced, moderate take on any film, video game, or television series.

I see this through my limited interactions with the Star Trek fan community first and foremost, but it’s also just as prevalent in practically every other fandom and many other walks of life – not least politics! There are a growing number of people who are quick to write off any new Star Trek as being automatically bad – in many cases without even bothering to watch it. And on the other side of what increasingly feels like a two-sided, black-or-white argument are those for whom Star Trek can do no wrong, with every single episode being flawless. I find that I can’t fit in with either group.

It can sometimes feel like my position doesn’t fit with either side of the fan community.

I’m too in love with “Nu-Trek” for those that consider anything post-2005 to have no redeeming features. And for some on the pro-Trek side, my very direct criticisms of ViacomCBS in particular, as well as some of my critiques of the handful of episodes that I didn’t like, make me too much of “a hater.”

Sometimes it’s fair to invoke the old adage that if I’m being criticised by both sides – on the pro side for being too anti and on the anti side for being too pro – I must be doing something right. But it doesn’t feel that way, and it seems that, no matter what I say about Star Trek, I’m going to attract criticism from one side or, in some cases, both. Taking a position where I try to offer constructive criticism while also expressing my passion for a franchise I truly care about is difficult, and for some folks who seem only to want to have their pre-existing biases about Star Trek reflected back at them, my independent position and willingness to consider both positives and negatives isn’t what they want.

The Star Trek Universe is a big place, but sometimes it feels as though it’s divided into just two camps.

All of this leads me to the question I asked at the beginning: do you have to love everything Star Trek does to be considered a “true fan?” For some people, it seems that the answer to that question is a resounding “yes.” I’ve spoken with some Trekkies who say that, if they ever did find something within Star Trek that they didn’t like, they’d prefer to keep it to themselves rather than say anything at all that could be considered critical of the franchise.

But to me, that isn’t how fans should react. Blind, unquestioning love or devotion is what some religions and cults seek from their adherents, but when it comes to something like a science-fiction franchise, surely we should feel free to speak as we find? And more importantly, if there aren’t people willing to offer constructive criticism, how will the creative teams and corporate leaders know what’s going wrong? Failing to offer valid criticism where valid criticism is due can only lead to the franchise repeating mistakes or doubling-down on them, and that will lead to Star Trek coming to harm in the medium-to-long term.

This sequence in the Lower Decks Season 1 episode Envoys is one that I criticised in my review.

Star Trek, like all major franchises, has its own team of paid cheerleaders. ViacomCBS has a marketing department, social media channels, a website, and a number of people on its books either as full-time employees or freelancers. The corporation doesn’t need blind, unwavering support from fans that glosses over or ignores criticism. It needs honesty from its biggest fans.

At the same time, there are too many so-called “fans” who have come to deal in nothing but hate. Ironically, these people often undermine their own cause by being too spiteful and vitriolic – and that’s before we get into the blatant bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and other unsavoury characteristics that seem to be prevalent in some anti-Trek social media groups online. By offering one-dimensional hate – often for shows or episodes that they will admit to never having even watched – these people make it easy for ViacomCBS and the creative teams in charge of Star Trek to write off any kernels of legitimate criticism that they may have had to offer.

It must be some kind of visual metaphor…

Since Star Trek returned to the small screen in 2017, there have been a handful of episodes that I disliked. I haven’t reviewed all of them here on the website (because I’ve only been here since late 2019) but for those that did get the full review or write-up treatment, I’ve tried to be both fair and constructive in my criticisms.

We often hear about toxic negativity within fan communities, and you can find many examples of so-called “fans” who take their dislike of certain narratives or characters to ludicrous and often hateful extremes. But I’d posit that there can be such a thing as toxic positivity as well, where fans are unwilling to so much as entertain the possibility that some aspect of their favourite franchise is wrong, or that the company running that franchise has made a mistake. Both forms can be damaging, both can lead to arguments and disagreements within fan communities, and I would argue very strongly that neither serves the franchise in question well.

Discovery has attracted criticism – and a lot of support, too – since it debuted in 2017.

I can empathise, to an extent anyway, with people who haven’t enjoyed Star Trek’s return to the small screen. Around the turn of the millennium, I was listening to the radio when the news of a new Star Trek show was breaking. I was dismayed to learn that the planned series was going to be a prequel, as I felt that Star Trek was a franchise that should aim to look to the future rather than look backwards at its own past. I also felt that prequels in general were problematic – this coming in the wake of the disappointment of The Phantom Menace over in the Star Wars franchise, which had been released around the same time.

Though I ultimately tuned in to see Enterprise’s premiere in late 2001, for much of the show’s four-season run I only tuned in sporadically, and was far from being a fan – or even regular viewer – at that point in my life. I can relate to at least some of the folks who haven’t been wild about everything Star Trek has done in recent years because I was once in a similar position. I actually find it somewhat ironic, considering the divisions in the fandom that were prevalent around the time of Enterprise’s premiere, how so many of these anti-Trek folks seem to lump Enterprise in with all of the previous Star Trek shows as being the franchise’s “heyday” and a time at which there was no division. Just because they missed those arguments doesn’t mean that they didn’t happen!

I nearly missed out on Enterprise, but have since used it as a great example of a show that exceeded my expectations and had more to offer than I initially thought.

I did eventually get around to watching all of Enterprise when I got the series on DVD a few years after it went off the air. And I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. It was a true Star Trek series, one that embodied the spirit of exploration of the franchise’s early days – something that had been, to an extent, lost in the Dominion War arc of Deep Space Nine’s later seasons and that played second fiddle in Voyager’s journey home. I came to respect and even admire what Enterprise had to offer – even though I didn’t see it at first. In time, I wonder how many people on the anti-Trek side of things will come to similar conclusions about the current crop of Star Trek shows.

That’s just part of my personal history as a Trekkie, and I hope it provides context to some of the things we’ve talked about today. I very firmly believe that fans don’t need to adore everything that Star Trek does. Disliking an episode or two here and there or feeling that the franchise’s corporate leadership is making mistakes doesn’t make anyone less of a fan, and calling these things out is actually important. The franchise, and those who lead it and are responsible for taking it forward, need that kind of honesty from Star Trek’s biggest fans.

Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1 was an episode I criticised heavily.

However, it’s important that criticism is presented in a constructive way. There are many forms of constructive criticism, and trying to dismiss any or all of them as unwarranted hate isn’t the right approach. As Trekkies, I feel we should be bold – fearless, even – in calling out mistakes or problems as we find them. That’s what I try to do here on the website, offering a balanced and I hope fair approach with all of my reviews and commentary.

There have been mistakes made by ViacomCBS. We won’t get into all of them again here, but suffice to say that I also feel that it’s important for us as Trekkies to hold the corporation to account when it screws up. We saw an example of this recently with the Discovery Season 4 debacle, and that represented a rare moment of unity within the fandom – fans from all sides of the debate, and even some Star Trek creatives, all joined in to call on the corporation to do something to address the self-inflicted problem. The end result was a victory (of sorts) for fans.

ViacomCBS shares took a big hit in the wake of the Discovery Season 4 debacle last November.

We’re lucky that, right now, there’s more Star Trek on our screens than ever before. I noted with happiness in 2020 that it was the first year since 1998 where three different Star Trek productions were broadcast – but 2022 is going to eclipse that by a country mile! We’re on course to see five different Star Trek productions hit our screens between now and Christmas, and the varied mix of different shows with different focuses should mean that there’s something that the franchise can offer to every Trekkie. As someone who has generally enjoyed what modern Star Trek has had to offer, I’m incredibly pleased with that!

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore missteps or problems. Several of these upcoming shows won’t be available for every Trekkie because the rollout of Paramount+ is painfully slow and plagued by problems. That’s by far the biggest issue, and it’s one I’ve been calling on ViacomCBS to address since Lower Decks Season 1 only aired in the United States back in 2020.

Much of the world – including my native UK – is still waiting for Paramount+.

My approach to Star Trek will continue to be nuanced. I’ll continue to say that I’m thrilled that ViacomCBS is producing so much Star Trek, while simultaneously criticising the corporation for failing to bring these new shows to fans around the world. I’ll continue to say that, as long as ViacomCBS and Paramount+ deny shows like Prodigy to international fans, piracy is absolutely morally justifiable. And I will, of course, continue to criticise everything from bad acting and crappy editing to poor narrative decisions. Does that make me less of a “true fan?” I don’t think so.

But if you disagree, that’s up to you. I’m not in the business of telling anybody what to think, and I offer my reviews and commentary as-is. Take it or leave it, and if folks don’t like what I have to say or the way I approach my discussions of Star Trek, they’re free to click off my website and seek out other critics and reviewers whose content they prefer. There are always going to be a plethora of opinions and a wide spectrum of views about Star Trek – such is the nature of media criticism in general. I offer my take to folks who are interested, and although I find myself speaking negatively about Star Trek and the corporation that owns it, I like to think I do so from a place of love.

There is a lot to love about Star Trek in both its older and modern forms. There are also elements that deserve criticism, and I don’t believe that anyone should be considered less of a “true fan” for pointing those out.

The Star Trek franchise, including all properties mentioned above, is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Discovery won’t be available internationally.

Star Trek: Discovery won’t be available internationally.

Dennis

The message above was posted on social media earlier this evening. What follows is my immediate response – a somewhat unstructured, angry response. For a more structured argument about ViacomCBS’ mishandling of the Star Trek brand internationally, check out this article.

I cannot believe what I just read. Star Trek: Discovery’s fourth season is not going to be made available on Netflix outside of the United States, and will only be available for international viewers sometime next year when Paramount+ arrives. I’m still digesting this truly awful news.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had a go at ViacomCBS – the corporation which owns and mismanages the Star Trek brand – for refusing to make Star Trek: Prodigy available internationally, despite that show being a co-production between CBS Studios and Nickelodeon… a ViacomCBS-owned channel that’s available in more than 70 countries around the world.

This Discovery news comes after Prodigy has been denied to international fans. Lower Decks Season 1 was also denied a simultaneous broadcast internationally, arriving almost six months later. So I can’t be alone in asking what the fuck ViacomCBS thinks it’s playing at. Are they trying to encourage piracy? Do they just not care about Star Trek? Perhaps they want to do as much harm as possible to their own brand, and that of their mediocre second-tier streaming platform at the heart of these problems: Paramount+.

ViacomCBS is desperately but incompetently pushing Paramount+.

To make this announcement less than 48 hours before Discovery’s fourth season was due to premiere is beyond insulting. It’s the latest and most egregious “fuck you” in a long line going back a couple of years at least from a corporation that doesn’t give a damn about Star Trek’s sizeable international fanbase.

Not only is Season 4 not going to be available on Netflix, but Seasons 1-3 have been pulled – or will shortly be pulled – from the streaming service as well, gated off behind a paywall that doesn’t exist because Paramount+ isn’t available here in the UK (and elsewhere) yet. It is at least possible to get the first three seasons of the show on blu-ray, so fans who want to watch or re-watch earlier seasons will be able to do so that way. But Season 4 isn’t available… or at least it isn’t available via conventional methods.

Perhaps this is some kind of visual metaphor?

When corporations choose to become gatekeepers and refuse to share the content that they’ve produced with fans who are literally holding their wallets open screaming “take my money!” then piracy, by default, becomes the only option to access that content. Discovery actually will be available internationally, because this is the 21st Century and most folks have internet access. With a tiny amount of effort it’s going to be possible to pirate every episode of the show, allowing fans to enjoy Discovery while ensuring that ViacomCBS doesn’t see a single measly cent by way of profit. That isn’t the decision fans made, it’s the choice ViacomCBS made.

Star Trek became an international franchise at the behest of ViacomCBS and its corporate predecessors. They advocated this kind of corporate globalism because – like the greedy little Ferengi they are – they saw profit beyond America’s borders. There are Trekkies from Tierra del Fuego to St. Petersburg because globalism proved so attractive for ViacomCBS, but the corporation has once again proved beyond any doubt that it doesn’t give even the tiniest of fucks about anyone outside of North America.

Leaked photograph from the ViacomCBS boardroom.

So as I said a couple of weeks ago about Prodigy: it’s totally morally justifiable to pirate it. Go right ahead and pirate Prodigy, and pirate Discovery too. ViacomCBS has told us to keep our money and fuck off, so let’s make sure they don’t ever see another penny of it. What’s the point in continuing to support a corporation that leaves its international fans out in the cold because it can’t manage the incredibly basic task of broadcasting a television show?

Broadcasting and streaming is ViacomCBS’ entire business model – yet time and time again they fuck it up. Paramount+ is a mediocre platform at best that will never be the Netflix and Disney+ competitor that its corporate masters wish it to be. It arrived on the scene a decade too late, with too little original content, and its rollout even within the United States has been horribly mismanaged by a corporation that appears to be run by absolute morons. Paramount+ recently lost the rights to all of the Star Trek films for several months – despite ViacomCBS owning the rights to those films. And as we’re learning the hard way once again today, its international rollout has been pathetically slow.

Only for fans in North America.

It’s such a shame for all of the actors, directors, and behind-the-camera crew who clearly have put a lot of work into Discovery Season 4 that their work is going to be tainted by a truly selfish and shitty business decision. It isn’t their fault, yet their hard work is now soured in the minds of many of the show’s biggest fans because of incomprehensible corporate bullshit.

I’ve been disappointed with ViacomCBS for a while for their pathetic mishandling of the Star Trek brand, but this latest attack has come as a body blow. I’m angry – actually legitimately angry – with a cowardly corporation that doesn’t have the faintest idea how to operate in a 21st Century television and streaming market. Their mismanagement will continue to harm Star Trek – perhaps fatally so.

ViacomCBS is the company responsible for mismanaging Star Trek.

I can’t speak for every Trekkie, but a lot of Star Trek’s international fans are losing patience with this corporation. It’s long past time for ViacomCBS to get a grip and start managing the franchise properly – before too much harm is done. Star Trek is an amazing franchise that everyone should be able to watch together and share with one another no matter where they’re from – but disgusting and insulting corporate decisions continue to get in the way and actively harm Star Trek.

Lower Decks is so much less than it could and should be entirely because ViacomCBS fucked up its international broadcast. The same will be true of Prodigy – a decision compounded in that case by the utterly ridiculous broadcast schedule. Four episodes, then a two-month break? What fuckwit came up with that idea? And now Discovery.

Here’s a newsflash for the ViacomCBS board: fans aren’t going to wait for the mediocre Paramount+ to arrive. A lot of Trekkies will pirate the show, and a lot of viewers who had been looking forward to seeing it on Netflix just won’t bother; they’ll have forgotten all about it by next year. So let’s all sarcastically applaud ViacomCBS for hammering a nail into the coffin of Star Trek. I hope someone out there with a modicum of business acumen will be able to step in and save the day – but I’m not holding my breath.

The Star Trek franchise – including Discovery and all other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Worf and the spiral of clickbait

Worf and the spiral of clickbait

Dennis

One potential news story that I opted not to cover here on the website was a recent social media post by Worf actor Michael Dorn. In a single Twitter post, Dorn wrote the following: “Just got the news, being summoned back into action. Starfleet calls. #ad”

Well, no sooner had that post hit Twitter than the Star Trek fan community began scrambling to “break” the news of Worf’s return to Star Trek. Websites, blogs, and YouTube shows all jumped on Dorn’s post, using headlines like: “Michael Dorn CONFIRMS Worf’s Return!” As the battle for clicks escalated, Trekkies online began speculating about what form Worf’s return could take, and this too began to grow and spiral out of control.

The Tweet that launched a thousand clickbait articles…

The Captain Worf series that he’s been trying to get off the ground for the better part of a decade seemed to be 100% confirmed, if you believed certain websites and channels. Others were convinced the Twitter post meant Worf would appear in Picard Season 2 or Discovery Season 4. And of course, many outlets reported their wild speculation with minimal caveats as though it were fact.

All of this hype came crashing down within 48 hours, however, when it became clear that Dorn’s Twitter post was nothing more than an advertisement for mobile game Star Trek Legends, an Apple Arcade exclusive title. Legends looks like so many other mobile games released in the last few years, and I have no desire to sign up to Apple Arcade at £5 per month just to play one mediocre-looking title. Even if it does have Worf!

Logo for Star Trek Legends.

Uninspired mobile games aside, I think this whole Michael Dorn saga is yet another example in a very long line of how we have to be incredibly careful how we use social media and how difficult it is to trust even supposedly “reputable” outlets. In this piece I’ll look at the issue as it relates to the Star Trek fan community in particular, but obviously these same broad points can apply to news, politics, and so on.

Michael Dorn’s post was designed to get attention. He may have written it himself, but it’s equally likely – in my opinion as someone who used to work in video games marketing – that it was written by the marketing team behind Star Trek Legends. But whoever wrote the actual words, the post was deliberately ambiguous and designed to get Trekkies talking, playing on fan hopes of the return of a major character who hasn’t been seen on screen since 2002.

Worf made his last canonical appearance in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis.

Marketers do this kind of thing all the time; it’s a nostalgia play. It isn’t the first time we’ve seen it in the Star Trek community, either. But because we’re in an age of 24/7 social media use, some of the biggest names in the online Star Trek fandom jumped on Dorn’s comment, seeing an easy way to get clicks – and thus money – for themselves.

Reading the Twitter post, and especially seeing the #ad hashtag, it should’ve been screamingly obvious that this was not connected to a new television show or film. And I have no doubt whatsoever that the social media managers, webmasters, and fan group leaders who began to write clickbaity articles and produce clickbait videos knew that for a fact. But they did so anyway. It was a topic of conversation – and an easy win. Who wouldn’t click on a video or article that screamed “Worf is coming back!” in big bold capital letters? For fans unaware of the original Twitter post, they jumped on such articles and videos hoping to learn that Worf was getting his own show or that he would appear in Picard – the natural implication of such a headline.

Worf having a role in Picard Season 2 was something some fans speculated about at length.

I’m lucky to have my own website, and that means I can cover the topics I want to at my own pace. I did see the Michael Dorn controversy unfold, but two things became apparent very quickly. First was that no one commenting online, no matter how large their website and following, actually knew anything substantial. And second, Dorn’s post had the #ad hashtag, which meant it was clearly connected to a product of some kind. Star Trek Legends turned out to be that product.

As a result, I chose not to cover a “story” that was a bag of nothing. I could easily have penned a short article about the prospects of a Captain Worf series and the potential for Worf to appear in Picard Season 2, Discovery Season 4, or Lower Decks Season 2. Maybe doing so would have driven traffic to the website. But it would’ve felt more than a little dishonest.

Worf in The Next Generation Season 7 episode Lower Decks.

Rumours swirl in the Star Trek fan community all the time – as indeed they do in every online community. But most of these “rumours” are clearly nonsense, based on unverified and often unspecified sources. The truth is that ViacomCBS and the creative team in charge of Star Trek generally do a good job at keeping a lid on leaks. Occasionally a story will leak ahead of an official announcement, but as we’ve seen with some big projects recently, including the new film scheduled for 2023, most of the time that is simply not the case. Yet many social media channels, fan groups, and websites insist on reporting rumour as if it were fact.

When I write speculatively here on the website, you’ll note that I always caveat what I’m saying by explaining that I have no “insider information” nor any “sources.” This is specifically to damp down any theory or speculation that I’m writing about and to clarify that it’s just guesswork on my part. Sometimes it’s educated guesswork, putting together things that seem obvious even if there’s yet to be official confirmation, but even then such a caveat is incredibly important.

Worf is a character in mobile game Star Trek Legends.

It’s easy for a website or social media group to fall into the trap of writing clickbait based on things like Michael Dorn’s Twitter post, but it doesn’t do anything for the Star Trek fan community. In some cases it can be actively harmful – building up hype and expectations that are obviously only going to lead to disappointment. Marketing folks need to be aware of this, as well. As much as Dorn’s post got people talking about Star Trek Legends, they deliberately set up Trekkies for disappointment by allowing Dorn to imply – albeit in a way that should’ve been easy for fans to see through – that Worf was coming back to Star Trek.

But the blame in this case doesn’t lie only with the marketing team at Star Trek Legends, who are, after all, doing their best to market a product. It lies with fan groups, websites, and social media channels who took that obvious piece of marketing and put their own spin on it, building up the hype of Worf’s possible return to Star Trek in order to drive clicks, views, and website traffic.

Worf in a teaser video for Star Trek Legends posted on Twitter.

This is what I mean by the “spiral” of clickbait: a slightly dishonest marketing post on social media appears. Fan websites and social media channels jump on it and take it out of context, in some cases completely disregarding or ignoring the possibility of it being marketing. As the hype bubble starts to build, more outlets and fans jump on the story, talking about it and driving more and more clicks and traffic. What began as a single post advertising a mobile game thus exploded to become a big story online, and it didn’t need to be. From the marketers’ point of view, it’s a rousing success! But for fans, at best it’s a mild disappointment.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find reliable, objective sources of information online, and it’s getting to a point where, unless something is confirmed unambiguously by an official outlet, I don’t trust it.

We all need to be careful what we read and watch, and try our best not to give in to clickbait!

Star Trek Legends is out now for iOS devices via Apple Arcade. The Star Trek franchise – including all titles mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Unsolicited Star Trek pitches for shows that will never be made!

Unsolicited Star Trek pitches for shows that will never be made!

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1, Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, and for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

In the early days of the website I put together a short list of ideas for future Star Trek projects. The list was, naturally, pure fantasy – I’m highly unlikely to ever be in the position of making a single episode of television, let alone working on Star Trek! But it was fun to write out some of these concepts and ideas that have been rolling around my head – in some cases for decades! So this time I’m going to update and expand upon that original list, and give you five of my Star Trek fantasies!

Wait, that sounds inappropriate.

There’s been a fair amount of talk over the last couple of years about potential Star Trek projects. Some have made it into production – like the “Captain Pike series,” a.k.a. Strange New Worlds! Others, like a sequel to Star Trek Beyond and a couple of other feature film projects appear to have been shelved. And some, like the Ceti Alpha V miniseries that I covered recently, are supposedly ready-to-go but languishing in development hell. This time it’s my turn to churn out some Star Trek ideas!

It’s my turn to put (metaphorical) pen to paper!

Though this is just a bit of fun – and a total fantasy, as there’s no way any of these projects will ever be made – I think there’s something valuable for any critic or commentator in thinking creatively. I spend a lot of time discussing Star Trek from the point of view of an independent critic, but many people have put in a ton of hard work to create the television shows, films, and games that I write about. Creative writing and criticism are very different tasks in many ways, and it’s no bad thing for a critic to try their hand, on occasion, at being creative.

Before we get started, two of my usual caveats apply. First, I have no “insider information.” I’m not claiming any of these projects are being secretly worked on over at ViacomCBS; this is pure fan-fiction. Second, these are projects that I feel would be fun in my subjective opinion. If you disagree and think they’d be awful, that’s fine. You’re entitled to your opinion!

With that out of the way, let’s get started!

Number 1: Colony World

The planet Terra Nova, as seen in Enterprise Season 1.

The original premise of Deep Space Nine was that it should be akin to a town in old Western stories – Commander Sisko as the “sheriff,” the Bajorans as “natives,” Quark’s Bar as the “saloon,” and so on. That concept can be seen at points early in the show’s run, but I’d argue that it had evaporated at least somewhat when the decision was made to make the Bajoran wormhole so important. The railroad came early to Star Trek’s frontier town!

Deep Space Nine largely moved away from being an isolated frontier station, and the huge amount of traffic that ran through the wormhole and the Bajoran system turned it into an important trading and diplomatic post. Thus we’ve never really seen what life is like out in the wilds, far away from the nearest Starbase. And that’s where my Colony World concept comes in.

Chief O’Brien greets Commander Sisko and Jake Sisko as they arrive on DS9 for the first time in Emissary.

This series wouldn’t be set on a starship or even a space station. It would be set on a remote colony, perhaps a brand-new one that’s just beginning to get established. There would be a small Starfleet outpost – perhaps a command officer and a couple of security personnel. The sheriff and his deputies, to use the analogy above! But the rest of the main cast would be Federation civilians, and there’d be scope in a series with a static setting to bring in a number of secondary recurring characters. Being set primarily in one location would potentially keep costs down, too, and without needing to spend a lot of money on expensive special effects the series might be inexpensive to make.

We could explore the motivations Federation citizens have to colonise the frontier. Why leave behind the paradise that is 24th Century Earth? Perhaps someone among the group has a past they’re looking to escape, and this could be a source of drama. And we could examine something Commander Sisko briefly confronted in the Deep Space Nine premiere – being assigned to an awful, unwanted posting. Because of the importance of DS9 and his role as the Emissary, Sisko only really had to deal with that for one episode, but we could see our Starfleet officers spending whole seasons coming to terms with being assigned to a post that they don’t want because of its remoteness.

A small Starfleet base seen in Insurrection.

Colony World presents an opportunity to look at the reasons for colonisation in a general sense. In the 21st Century, almost all of us live in established settlements; no one really goes anywhere new and just builds an entire town from scratch. So we could look at the environmental impact of doing so, both to be an historical parallel and to comment on future plans to colonise the moon and Mars. Taking an unspoilt wilderness and building on it, even with 24th Century technology, will contaminate the environment and change it; what does the Federation do to mitigate that?

Finally, the series could consider territorial disputes. Perhaps the planet targeted for colonisation is claimed by some other faction, or once had other occupants who left. There are so many contemporary parallels for land claims and arguments over territory that the series could touch on, and this could be a way for Star Trek to use its sci-fi lens to examine real-world issues.

Number 2: Borg Invasion

Multiple Borg Cubes seen in the Lower Decks title sequence.

On both occasions where the Borg attacked Earth they came in one single ship, and on both occasions they were defeated by Starfleet – albeit at great cost! But what would it be like if the Borg actually put real effort into assimilating the Federation? In The Next Generation Season 7 episode Parallels, we got a brief glimpse when a dimension-crossing Worf encounters a parallel universe Enterprise-D. The Federation put up a fight, but seem to have been overwhelmed.

The Borg have genuine horror series potential, and a Borg Invasion story could definitely cross over into the horror genre, playing on themes from zombie fiction like The Walking Dead. If you read my essay on the Borg a few months ago, you may remember that zombies are such a good analogy because in both cases, everyone the heroes lose can potentially be turned into another enemy to fight. That’s a terrifying concept, as is losing one’s sense of self-identity through assimilation; a fate worse than death.

Assimilation, as seen in the Voyager Season 5 episode Dark Frontier.

This wouldn’t make for a good film, it would really need to be a series. And not only that, but a limited series with a planned story from the beginning. If it were to run for, say, three seasons, Season 1 would start as normal with the Federation doing its thing, with a huge Borg attack in episodes 1-2. The remainder of Season 1 would see Federation losses mount, akin to Seasons 5-6 of Deep Space Nine when they had the Dominion War. Season 2 would look at attempts to recruit allies, perhaps restoring broken alliances with the Klingons or Romulans. Season 3 would see the development of some kind of Borg-killing weapon that would finally turn the tide, and the series finale would end in victory, driving the Borg from Earth.

The question of timeframe arises, especially with Discovery establishing the 32nd Century Federation and the Temporal War. Perhaps I’d put it in the 26th or 27th Centuries; far removed from established Star Trek in both directions.

The Enterprise-D in pursuit of a Borg Cube in The Best of Both Worlds.

Finally, and perhaps most controversially, this would be the Borg’s swansong; their final Star Trek appearance – at least for many, many years. A villain that is beaten too often becomes boring, and the Borg were certainly in danger of becoming stale toward the end of Voyager’s run. If the Star Trek franchise were to dedicate an entire series to the Borg Invasion, I would have it end with the Borg’s total and utter defeat, ending the faction permanently. It would be possible, of course, for future Star Trek projects to go back and do Borg-focused prequels, but for me this would be the end of the Borg – going out with a bang! Some factions, by their nature, are suited to one-off stories, and although the Borg are absolutely iconic within Star Trek, I don’t believe the franchise can keep doing Borg stories indefinitely. So this would be their end!

Aside from the obvious horror vibe, with elements from classic sci-fi horror films like Alien or The Terminator, there would be scope for such a series to tell dark and gritty war stories like we saw in episodes of Deep Space Nine such as The Siege of AR-558. Borg Invasion would be one of the darkest Star Trek shows ever put to screen. Whether that’s something you’re into will be a matter of personal taste, of course, but I think it could work exceptionally well.

Number 3: Hospital Ship

The medical ship USS Pasteur.

This is the concept that I’ve been kicking around for the longest time! I first started thinking about this idea in the mid-90s when The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were still on the air. In short, this series would be “ER in space.” A hospital ship – something like the USS Pasteur from The Next Generation’s finale – would travel to places suffering from diseases and disasters to lend its expertise.

In my original (’90s) version of this idea, I thought it could be fun to bring back characters like Dr Pulaski and Dr Bashir; a crossover of some of my favourite medical officers from the 24th Century! That’s obviously not going to happen now, but the underlying concept remains valid. Not every episode would focus on some horrible plague or catastrophe, and there would be quieter stories in between to allow for character arcs and development.

My original version of this idea brought back Dr Pulaski.

Some of the ship’s activities would be routine, such as transporting medical equipment to a new colony, but other times they would be called upon to fight hard to cure a truly awful disease that had broken out on a starship or base, and seeing the medical crew race against time to save lives would be incredibly tense and dramatic – just like it is in other medical drama series.

The ship could also be sent to the aftermath of battles, triaging wounded officers and using its facilities to save as many lives as possible. If you can think of a concept done in a show like ER or even House, this series could put a sci-fi spin on it.

This series would be “ER in space.”

While most of the main cast would be medical staff – and I would probably put the chief medical officer as the main protagonist – there would also have to be other crewmen and officers on board; a captain, bridge crew, engineers, and so on, and some of these could be side characters or recurring characters. Perhaps in a true disaster situation some of them would be tasked with helping out in the hospital!

I loved ER when it was running in the ’90s and 2000s, and there are a number of other fun medical shows too. Star Trek could do justice to this concept, and without being constrained by real-world diseases and conditions that affect humans, there’s almost unlimited scope for creativity in the health issues suffered by both human and alien patients. As the world of entertainment begins to wrangle with the coronavirus pandemic, this series could be a way for Star Trek to use its sci-fi setting to take a look at one of the biggest events of recent years.

Number 4: The Federation Government

Jaresh-Inyo, Federation President in the mid-24th Century.

If the series above is “ER in space,” then this concept is akin to “The West Wing in space!” Except it’s not in space. It would be in Paris, or perhaps at some other location where the Federation Council is situated. Aside from the Deep Space Nine two-part story Homefront and Paradise Lost, we’ve never really spent any time with the leaders of the Federation. It’s implied that there’s a USA-like power structure, with a President as the executive branch, the Federation Council as some kind of deliberative or legislative body, and a federalist structure with semi-independent worlds under the Federation umbrella. But the specifics of how any of it works has been kept vague for all of Star Trek’s history.

This series would change that, and would explore how the Federation is governed. Exploration appears to be a priority for the Federation, at least in the 23rd and 24th Centuries, but beyond that we don’t know what objectives the Federation government may have. The Federation is usually presented as a post-scarcity society, one in which everyone’s survival needs are met and in which accumulation of wealth and possessions is not a concern. But someone still has to be in charge, ensuring that every Federation member world and every citizen can access things like replicators.

The Federation President in the late 23rd Century.

The Federation President is an elected role, and it’s assumed that members of its legislative body would be elected as well, but whether there are political parties, factions, etc. is not known, and the series could explore that. There are surely lots of people who would have the ambition of becoming President, and many more who would seek to use the position to change the Federation in some way.

Shows like The West Wing and even comedies like Yes, Minister looked not only at the politicians, but also at the civil servants who managed day-to-day government operations, and this series would look at those people as well. Who really holds power inside the Federation government, and are they all as altruistic as they seem?

This series would be Star Trek’s answer to shows like The West Wing.

In addition, we could look at diplomats and thus the Federation’s relationships with other factions. Deep Space Nine saw the building of relations with the Klingons, Romulans, and others, and if the series were set after the Dominion War it would also be interesting to see how relations progressed with both the Cardassians and the Dominion. The admission of a new Federation member – such as Bajor – could be a major storyline in the show as the characters make the necessary preparations.

Finally, the series might look at the relationship between Starfleet and the Federation government. We tend to see the command structure within Starfleet as absolute, because from the point of view of most Star Trek characters, the head of Starfleet has the final say! But in any democratic society, the military – which Starfleet partly is, at least – should not have total leeway to do whatever it chooses. The head of Starfleet must surely take their orders from the Federation government, and setting policies which impact Starfleet could be an ongoing theme in the show.

Number 5: Galactic Wildlife

Book and a trance worm in Star Trek: Discovery Season 3.

Styled as a pseudo-documentary, this series would hop from planet to planet looking at some of the wild animals that live in the Milky Way. Just like real documentaries that follow the lives of animals, we’d spend time following the lives and routines of some of the terrestrial, marine, and even spacefaring creatures that have been shown in Star Trek.

Every Star Trek series to date has looked at animals and non-sentient critters at some point, but rarely has an episode done so in any real depth. Thus, many of Star Trek’s animals are open to a closer look, and there’s plenty of room for creativity even within the confines of previously-established species.

Captain Kirk with tribbles. This must be one of the most iconic images in all of Star Trek!

While I’d want to keep the focus of this series on the animals themselves, there’s the potential to expand it a little, to spend some time with the narrator or even the science team who are following the animals. Again, though, I’d want to keep the documentary-style format going, so perhaps this would be done in the form of recorded logs.

Special effects and CGI continue to improve, so gone are the days when an “alien animal” would be a dog with a horn tied to its head! But the focus on the animals would mean the series would need a pretty high CGI budget, as it would need to look as convincing as possible. The 2019 remake of The Lion King pulled off photorealistic animation, though, so in theory I think it could be made to work – especially as technology continues to improve.

A very convincing alien, seen in The Original Series Season 1 episode The Enemy Within.

Among the creatures we could spend time with are famous ones like the tribbles or the Ceti Alpha V eel, as well as new creatures from recent shows like the gormagander (a.k.a. the “space whale”) or Book’s trance worms. Then there are critters like the Klingon targ, the Vulcan sehlat, the Cardassian vole, or even the gagh worms that Klingons eat.

Star Trek has shown or referenced a huge number of animals over the course of its 800+ stories, and it could be great fun to dive back into the franchise’s history, pull out a lesser-known species like the Regalian fleaspider, and take an in-depth look at the fictional critter. Maybe this, out of all the show ideas I’ve pitched today, is the most nerdy, niche concept of them all! But people like animal documentaries, and a series like this, which looks entirely at fictional creatures, has never been attempted as far as I’m aware. It would be wholly unique, not only within Star Trek but in the entire entertainment realm!

So that’s it. Five pitches for Star Trek shows… that will never be made!

This was a lot of fun to put together, and I have other Star Trek ideas that I’ve been kicking around that I might talk about on a future occasion. As I said at the beginning, this is pure fan-fantasy, and none of these projects will ever be produced – despite the fact that I think they’d be neat. There are many interesting ideas that fans have come up with over the years, some of which ultimately take the form of fan-fiction or even fan-made films. Trekkies are an incredibly creative bunch!

I hope you enjoyed this look at a few of my Star Trek ideas. Perhaps you like some of them as much as I do… or perhaps this list will exist as a reminder of why Alex Kurtzman, not Trekking with Dennis, is in charge of the franchise over at ViacomCBS!

The Star Trek franchise, including all series and films mentioned above, is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Axanar, Discovery, and the fan community coming back together

Axanar, Discovery, and the fan community coming back together

Dennis

Update 2022: Unfortunately the video that I’m referring to has been set to “private” since I wrote this article.

I sporadically check in with fan project Star Trek Axanar. After Tim Russ’ and Walter Koenig’s Star Trek Renegades, Axanar was the fan film I was most interested in seeing when it was announced a few years ago. I was surprised to see Alec Peters – the creator and star of Axanar – had released a video titled In Defense of Alex Kurtzman – Why Star Trek is going to be OK on the fan film’s official YouTube channel a few days ago, and while I don’t normally do “responses,” I thought it was very interesting and worth drawing your attention to.

If you aren’t familiar with the development of Axanar, here’s a quick recap – and it should explain why the aforementioned video came as a bit of a surprise. In 2014, a fan film titled Prelude to Axanar was released. Produced by Alec Peters, the film served as a prologue to a longer crowd-funded fan film he and his team hoped to create. Star Trek Axanar would look at Garth of Izar, the famed Starfleet captain who was encountered by Kirk and co. in The Original Series’ third season episode Whom Gods Destroy. Fleet Captain Garth was the hero of an event known as the Battle of Axanar, and Peters intended to depict the events surrounding the battle in this fan film, which would feature a number of Star Trek actors.

However, CBS took exception to Axanar and ended up suing Peters and the team behind the fan film. The details of the lawsuit are complicated, but suffice to say CBS went after the production on copyright grounds, and the end result was a set of rules handed down that all fan films would be expected to follow. In addition, the Axanar team lost a lot of time and money that had been originally intended for the film.

Prelude to Axanar was released on YouTube in 2014.

All of this took place in the run-up to the first season of Star Trek: Discovery, and proved incredibly divisive for the fan community. Many folks backed Peters and Axanar, feeling that CBS was being unfair and attacking Star Trek’s most passionate fans. Others suggested that the motivation behind the lawsuit was that CBS was concerned that Axanar would be better than Discovery. Though it wasn’t the main reason why some Trekkies aren’t fans of Discovery and other modern Star Trek productions, the real-life battle over Axanar was certainly a factor.

CBS – now ViacomCBS – has certainly been tone-deaf when it comes to the fandom on occasion. I’ve talked at length about the decision to broadcast Lower Decks in North America only, and we can also point to things like the forced shutdown of fan project Stage 9 at a time when ViacomCBS doesn’t seem to be making any Star Trek games or comparable interactive experiences. So I can certainly understand the position of fans who took an anti-CBS position in the wake of the Axanar lawsuit.

I’ve written previously about divisions within the Star Trek fandom, and how people often present it as “old” Star Trek versus “new” Star Trek. Since 2017 Star Trek has been, in many respects, different from how it was in the 1960s or even the 1990s. And as I always say, individual tastes are subjective – we like different things, even within a single franchise. Some fans love The Wrath of Khan, others like The Motion Picture, just to give a single example. As the Star Trek franchise approaches its fifty-fifth anniversary and its 800th episode, it’s no wonder there are debates about which series or style of storytelling are the best!

ViacomCBS hasn’t always done right by Star Trek fans.

What I was so pleased to see from Alec Peters and Axanar in this video was a respect for what ViacomCBS and the Star Trek franchise are doing. Alex Kurtzman’s leadership has seen three new Star Trek shows premiere, with at least four others in the pipeline. It looks certain that the franchise will live to see its sixtieth anniversary in 2026 with new episodes still being broadcast, and as we enter the 2020s the franchise is, perhaps, on the cusp of a new era that could rival its 1990s heyday.

There is room within a fandom like Star Trek for Discovery and Axanar to coexist. We aren’t gatekeepers, telling other Trekkies that they aren’t “real fans” because the show or film they like best isn’t “real Star Trek.” That has never been what the franchise is all about, and anyone saying such nonsense has missed the point. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees; to get so bogged down in the minutia and detail that we miss the big picture.

The Star Trek fandom has always been a welcoming community. I remember my first visit to a Star Trek fan meetup in England in the mid-1990s, and as a younger guy I was welcomed by other fans to their event. This would have been sometime after Star Trek: Generations has been in cinemas, and while I was a huge fan of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, I wasn’t fully caught up on The Original Series outside of its films. Despite that, fans of The Original Series who I met didn’t tell me that I wasn’t a “real fan” or that I had never seen “real Star Trek.” They were incredibly welcoming, and most people seemed thrilled that the franchise was still alive and kicking.

The logo for Axanar.

The Next Generation was controversial when it premiered in 1987. People who entered the fandom in the 1990s or later – as I did – missed that controversy, but it happened. Deep Space Nine was controversial too, with its static setting and darker tone. I know some Trekkies who utterly hated the Dominion War arc, feeling it went counter to the franchise’s optimistic tone.

The point is that we all have things within the franchise that we like and things that we aren’t keen on. But we would never dream of telling someone who’s a fan of The Next Generation and Voyager but dislikes Deep Space Nine that they somehow aren’t a “real fan.” And the same is true of the Star Trek projects of today. Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks are “real” Star Trek, just as much as any other series or film. It’s okay to disagree about every aspect of those productions, and people will always do so. But they are part of the franchise, and just because they aren’t to some people’s taste doesn’t make them invalid.

Alec Peters and the team behind Axanar have largely avoided commenting on Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks. I was pleasantly surprised to see them do so this time, and even more so to learn that Peters is a fan of Picard. There is a lot to like in modern Star Trek, and a lot to like in past Star Trek too. And Axanar still looks like an interesting proposition, one I will certainly tune in to see when the final version of the film (or episodes) are released.

Discovery is real Star Trek.

There are so many things in the modern world to divide us. But I would argue that, as Trekkies, we have much more in common with one another than we do with, for example, fans of celebrity reality television shows! There are, sadly, people who have begun to make money cashing in on this division, widening the gap between different groups of fans and trying to convince their audiences that only one kind of Star Trek fan is a “real fan.” I’m glad to see that Axanar isn’t on board with that, because there is room in the franchise for all of us. We can be passionate about what we like and dislike, and everyone is entitled to their own opinions about what makes for a good Star Trek story. But there’s no need to get nasty or aggressive toward someone who expresses a different opinion.

Watching the video I was struck by how mature Peters was in his tone. Axanar may have been controversial, but there’s no denying that he – and the team he built to bring the project to fruition – are deeply passionate Star Trek fans. What I took away from his video, though, was that he can appreciate that Alex Kurtzman is a fan too. Kurtzman and Peters may have very different attitudes to Star Trek and storytelling, but to express respect across that divide is something I believe many fans needed to see.

I liked what he had to say about giving Kurtzman time, too. Though I don’t necessarily agree that every Star Trek show’s first two seasons “suck,” as Peters put it, we certainly should give the new team at ViacomCBS time to tell more of the stories that they want to tell. For a lot of younger fans, Star Trek has always been a complete product. Every episode was available on DVD or streaming, and it’s easy for someone younger to look back at the franchise as a single entity, not appreciating the decades of work that went into it. Star Trek developed gradually, over a long period of time, in order to become the franchise it was in the 1990s. For fans who didn’t see any part of that process, for whom Star Trek has always existed in its current form, it’s perhaps easier to criticise modern productions as they find their feet and grow.

A screengrab from the video.

We are certainly in a new era of television storytelling, and this is another point Peters brought up. Star Trek – like any franchise – has to adapt to meet audience expectations in the 2020s; many episodes and stories that we look back on fondly would struggle if made today. As Trekkies, we’re a tiny portion of Star Trek’s audience. The franchise has to have broad appeal to a wider audience beyond this niche if it’s going to survive, and someone like Alex Kurtzman was brought on board because the people at ViacomCBS believe he has the creative vision to help the franchise grow. It’s never nice to be told “this wasn’t made for you,” but in a sense it’s true – and always has been. Even The Original Series was produced with a wider audience in mind, and we can trace the franchise’s move away from ethereal sci-fi toward more action-oriented stories to at least 1982’s The Wrath of Khan.

The point is, Star Trek has always been evolving. It’s a franchise that has tried many different things over the years, and the current era is no different. As Alec Peters pointed out, Kurtzman and his team are listening. That’s why we got Strange New Worlds, that’s why some of the storytelling decisions were made in Discovery, and even while Kurtzman and his team focus on bringing Star Trek to new fans and a wider audience, they are trying to balance that with feedback from fans.

It’s not up to Alec Peters or myself to defend Alex Kurtzman and his vision for the franchise, at the end of the day. It’s okay to dislike Discovery, Picard, or any other Star Trek project that you feel didn’t appeal to you or didn’t work very well. But I think we could all agree that the fandom would be a nicer place for everyone if we didn’t try to play gatekeeper and tell genuine Trekkies that they aren’t welcome because they like the “wrong” show or film. It’s a big galaxy, and there’s room for all of us.

You can find Alec Peters’ video embedded below.

The Star Trek franchise – including all properties mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. Star Trek Axanar, Prelude to Axanar, and the Axanar logos were created by fans. The video above is hosted on YouTube, and merely embedded (linked) here on Trekking with Dennis. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

“Old” versus “New” Star Trek

“Old” versus “New” Star Trek

Dennis

Spoiler Warning: While this essay doesn’t go into many plot details, there may be minor spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise, including for Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery.

I’ve seen a number articles and videos over the last couple of years, really since Star Trek: Discovery premiered, looking at how the Star Trek fanbase has become divided into fans of “old” Star Trek and “new” Star Trek. However one may feel about the various films and series, it’s undeniable that there are many Trekkies who have jumped ship over the years and do not consider themselves fans of the franchise’s newer iterations – as well as plenty of casual viewers who have seen one series but not others. Given that the franchise is well past its fiftieth anniversary, perhaps that’s fair enough. But I did want to take a look at the phenomenon for myself and give my thoughts on how the franchise is split, some of the possible causes, and what that split could mean for the franchise going forward into the 2020s and beyond.

True hipster Star Trek fans only watched Star Trek when Jeffrey Hunter was in it. William Shatner? Pfft. Newbie.

Firstly, the question often asked in these articles is “how can everyone come back together?” Writers will often set up that question, pretending that they’re going to answer it fairly, only to basically end up saying “everyone will come back together if Star Trek does everything my way and gives me everything I want.” That just isn’t realistic, I’m afraid. And as with many cases of division, the reality is that there may not be a way to bridge the gulf and reunite everyone around one new Star Trek series or film. That may sound depressing, and it is in a way. But we have to be realistic – there are some people now who are literally making money from running anti-Star Trek groups online, and if anyone expects someone in that position to suddenly turn around and say “hey guys, I just saw the latest episode and it was amazing!” well, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. The truth is that some people aren’t interested in fair criticism. They have decided they want to hate, and just like fans of a football team could never support a rival club, no matter what, their hatred for the current and upcoming lineup of Star Trek shows and films will continue. It’s part of the tribal mindset that we as human beings all end up subscribing to in one way or another: “I support X, which is opposed to Y. Therefore, I can never ever like Y, because it would go against how I define myself as a person”. That’s true in sport, it’s true in politics, and it’s true in entertainment as well.

But before we can look at divisions in the fanbase, we need to examine the basic concept: what is “old” Star Trek, and what is “new” Star Trek? It’s a far more complicated question than it seems, and the answer will vary depending on how old a person is, and when they first encountered the franchise.

The bridge of the original USS Enterprise in the episode The Corbomite Maneuver. For many fans, The Original Series and its crew were irreplaceable.

There are several “turning points” in the history of Star Trek where fans jumped ship, and the easiest way to look at them is in chronological order. The first one was in 1987, when The Next Generation premiered. Until this point, Star Trek had been The Original Series with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the 1960s crew, and while there was excitement for Star Trek’s return to television – just as there was in 2017 – that was countered by a vocal number of fans who believed ardently that the original characters were the beating heart of Star Trek – and were irreplaceable. These people may have watched The Original Series and the first four Star Trek films (The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered County were released after The Next Generation premiered) but simply had no interest in a new crew, a new ship, and a new century. Indeed, Sir Patrick Stewart himself has said many times that he believed The Next Generation would not be a success – and would run for perhaps two seasons at most.

The NX-01 Enterprise leaves its dock in Broken Bow – the series premiere of Enterprise.

The second turning point is the one I’m most familiar with – because it’s the point I came very close to jumping ship myself: 2000-2001, when Enterprise was announced and entered production. In the aftermath of the disaster that was Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1999, a prequel was just something that many fans, myself included, had little interest in. Star Trek – as I have often written here on the blog – had always been about pushing forward into the future, and yet here was a show that wanted to look back at its own past. This kind of navel-gazing just didn’t feel like a good idea, and the aesthetic of the show, with its boiler-suit uniforms, clunky starship design, modern (for the time) computer screens, and overreliance on not-quite-good-enough early-2000s CGI was not inspiring. There had been some real stinkers in the Star Trek canon when it came to individual episodes and stories – Spock’s Brain, Angel One, Shades of Grey, Threshold, and Move Along Home to name but a few – but this was the first time that the premise of a series itself seemed unexciting, at least for me. The introduction of Scott Bakula as the captain did go some way toward lifting the show for some fans who had been on the fence, but I confess that during Enterprise’s original run here in the UK I only tuned in sporadically, and it was only when I got the series on DVD a few years after it went off the air that I watched it in its entirety. Nowadays I often cite Enterprise as an example whenever I hear the argument: “nobody asked for this”. Nobody in 2000 was asking for Enterprise, yet it actually told some interesting stories and had a great cast of characters. I’m glad to have seen it, I’m glad it existed, and ultimately I feel its strengths far outweighed its weaknesses. Giving it a second chance was a good decision – even if the only reason I bought the DVDs was to complete my Star Trek collection!

The 2009 redesign of the USS Enterprise – and re-casting of the original crew – was too much for some fans.

Next comes our third turning point: when Enterprise went off the air, a spell was broken. Star Trek had, in some form, been in continuous production for almost two decades, beginning with pre-release work on The Next Generation in 1986 running all the way through to 2005 when the final episodes of Enterprise were produced and released. The cancellation of Enterprise was symbolic – the end of an era. And in that moment it seemed as though Star Trek was dead and not coming back. But it didn’t stay that way for very long at all, and within a year or so of Enterprise’s cancellation, word started going around about a new film – one which would be a reboot, recasting iconic characters like Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. For many long-term fans – including some friends of mine – that was a bridge too far, and they were never interested in what would become 2009’s Star Trek and the “JJverse” or Kelvin timeline that it spawned. For others, Star Trek was too much of a departure from the rest of the franchise, with its visual overhaul and action-heavy story, and some fans who did give it a go were underwhelmed and didn’t come back for more.

The USS Discovery, as seen in the first official teaser trailer in 2016.

So we’ve reached the final turning point. 2017, and the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery is the moment that many of these articles and videos use when dividing “old” Star Trek from “new” Star Trek. Discovery had a somewhat troubled production, with Bryan Fuller departing before the show aired, and controversy surrounding CBS All Access as a platform for the show in the United States. There was also the “prequel problem” that plagued Enterprise, and as more details came out about the series, the visual style being more in line with the JJverse than The Original Series also became a bone of contention. As with each of the three previous turning points, a number of fans decided that Discovery just wasn’t for them and simply opted out.

The point of recounting this history of the Star Trek fanbase and the points at which some fans chose not to continue with new iterations is simple – this is not a new phenomenon. It has happened before in Star Trek, and, if we’re lucky enough for the franchise to continue into the future, it will undoubtedly happen again sooner or later. None of these moments destroyed the franchise or ruined the fanbase, nor drove Star Trek’s creators and promoters out of business for the simple reason that the fans who jumped ship were in the minority. A vocal minority, perhaps, but a minority nevertheless. And it’s the same with those who haven’t watched Discovery and Picard – and of course, those who make a big fuss about not supporting “new” Star Trek in online groups and on YouTube channels: they’re a minority.

“Real” Star Trek fans love The Final Frontier.

Trekkies have always been a minority of Star Trek’s audience. It’s a commercial product; a series designed to have appeal beyond a small niche of convention attendees. If it didn’t appeal to casual viewers it would never have survived or been reborn in the first place, at any of the points mentioned above. So to say that because a small number of Trekkies who liked the TNG-era shows don’t like Discovery there’s somehow a massive problem and that Star Trek today is fundamentally broken is nonsense. A minority of a minority, no matter how vocal they may be with their criticism and hate, don’t matter to ViacomCBS’ bottom line in any material way.

But do they have a point?

It’s a tough one for me to answer, and if you’ve been here before you’ll know why: I’m a big fan of “new” Star Trek, just as I’m a fan of “old” Star Trek too. I can see the point of view that says the newer shows and films are bad, but generally I don’t agree, so from my perspective they don’t have a point. Especially to those people who pre-judged Discovery and Picard based on what they read in anti-Star Trek groups online and never even watched the shows in the first place I’d really say they don’t have a leg to stand on in this argument. How can they possibly sit there and say something is bad when they haven’t given it a try for themselves? The biased “reporting” of some anti-Star Trek YouTuber is not the same as experiencing the film or series for themselves, and I’d really encourage everyone who falls into that category to at least stick with Discovery beyond its opening two episodes, which I fully concede were especially weak.

This actually ties into another point – most Star Trek series, with the exceptions of Deep Space Nine and Picard – opened quite underwhelmingly. And it took more than a few episodes for all of the Star Trek shows to really find their feet. The Next Generation’s first season isn’t anywhere near as good as its third, fourth, or fifth, for example, and Voyager similarly took at least a full season to get up and running. Even the beloved Original Series got off to a rocky start – so giving up on Discovery or Picard after one or two episodes isn’t really giving those shows a fair shake.

Lorca and Saru in Star Trek: Discovery.

Part of this is to do with binge-watching culture. For many Star Trek fans – and I include myself in this category to an extent, especially when it comes to Enterprise – they missed out on seeing most or all of “old” Star Trek when it originally aired. They could pick and choose which episodes to watch from DVDs or on streaming platforms, and watch them anytime they wanted to. Star Trek, to many Trekkies, was a complete product. Seven seasons of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, as well as three of The Original Series and four of Enterprise is a lot to wade through, and an individual bad episode is just a blip when you don’t have to wait a week for the next one and can skip ahead to another episode on the disc.

But there are changes in the way Star Trek has told stories over time, and we do have to acknowledge that. There has been a move away from episodic storytelling (aka the “monster-of-the-week” format) in favour of season-long story arcs and a serialised format. I confess I have a preference, in some cases at least, for episodic television. It’s nice to be able to jump into a random episode of a series without needing to know or remember everything that happened leading up to that point. It makes Discovery and Picard season-long commitments, instead of something fans can jump in and out of. And because, as mentioned, a lot of folks are used to Star Trek shows being complete products and in addition are used to binge-watching, having to wait a week between episodes of a partially-complete story can be annoying I suppose.

There has also been a shift away from the more ethereal, philosophical, and thought-provoking storylines that Star Trek used to do. Ironically, many of those stories and episodes are less popular among fans – The Motion Picture is always considered a poor relation to films like First Contact and The Wrath of Khan, which are both much more in the action-sci fi genre, just to give an example. I discussed this in a little more detail in my 40th anniversary look at The Motion Picture if you’re interested to read more. But there’s no doubt that Discovery and especially the JJverse films have gone in a much more action-centric direction, and for people who wanted to see more of the slower paced, thought-provoking stories, action-sci fi maybe doesn’t “feel like Star Trek” in quite the same way.

Kirk and Scotty in The Motion Picture – a less popular film than its sequel with many Trekkies.

Now we come to what is the single biggest point: nostalgia. People like what they grew up with. Heck, the whole reason Star Trek is being made again now, more than fifty years since it was first created, is because nostalgia is incredibly powerful and there’s money to be made from it. But nostalgia is a double-edged sword. Some people don’t want to see an “updated” version of the franchise they loved from childhood or young adulthood. If they want more of it in the first place, they want to see it exactly the same as before. No changes, no iterations, no modernising – a carbon copy of what came before. And that isn’t realistic.

Television storytelling has moved on since the 1960s and the 1990s – which are the two “golden ages” of Star Trek, depending on which fans you ask. Expecting to see The Next Generation Season 8 in 2020 was an unrealistic expectation. The way stories are told, and what television audiences expect from their shows, are just different nowadays. For fans of episodic television that might seem disappointing, but as with Trekkies in general we’re in a minority there. Shows like Lost, Breaking Bad, and of course Game of Thrones had such a huge impact on television that they fundamentally changed the way audiences approach their favourite franchises – and in order to stay competitive, Star Trek has to recognise that and keep up.

There are undeniably a lot of positive feelings attached to a franchise from childhood. The return of Star Trek (and other franchises too, like Star Wars) was designed to play on those positive feelings to sell a product – that’s basically the point of resurrecting franchises in the first place. For a minority of fans who only liked things when done the old way, that hasn’t worked and the updates and changes mean they don’t get the same feelings that they do when re-watching an old episode or film. But for a lot of people, these shows have been a hit. They hit the mark where it mattered and got many fans clamouring for more. And in a few years or a few decades from now, Discovery-era fans will be just as excited for the return of Burnham and Saru as I have been to see Picard and Seven of Nine.

Seven of Nine returned in Star Trek: Picard.

In fact, one of the things I was genuinely concerned about with Star Trek: Picard is that they were going to fall into the Star Wars trap of overplaying the nostalgia card. I didn’t want The Next Generation Season 8, because that show has ended. It’s over. What Picard represented is something practically no other series or franchise will ever get – a new iteration. Picard is the same man, and he’s the core of the show as he was in The Next Generation. But surrounding him are new characters, and I wanted to make sure that they would have the chance to become fan favourites for the next generation (pun absolutely intended) of Star Trek fans.

My introduction to the franchise was The Next Generation. And it wasn’t until a few years later – probably in the mid-1990s – that I got around to watching any of The Original Series. For some people, Picard and Discovery will be their first port of call as Star Trek fans, just as The Next Generation was for me. Those of us who’ve been around Star Trek for twenty-five years or more still have a place in the fandom, but things are changing. With new shows in production, new fans are coming on board who may not be aware of Picard’s top-secret mission to Celtris III, or that Kirk and his crew once visited a parallel universe where magic is real. If we try to be gatekeepers and say “you aren’t a real Star Trek fan because Discovery isn’t as good as the show that I like” then the fandom isn’t just going to be divided, it’s going to become toxic. Instead of being a “big tent”, recognising that the franchise means different things to different people, some folks seem to want to claim the fandom for themselves and exclude anyone who doesn’t share their belief about what Star Trek means.

And frankly, that’s just sad.

Star Trek has always tried to use its science fiction setting to tell stories that reflect contemporary issues. There are countless examples, and this could be an essay in itself, but suffice to say many of those stories resonated with fans in the past. The Original Series challenged the Cold War concepts of superweapons and mutually assured destruction in the episode The Doomsday Machine to great effect, and fans will laud that. But when Discovery uses Ash Tyler’s trauma as an analogy for underreported male sexual abuse, those same folks scream about “too much politics”. As I’ve said before, to anyone who says there’s “too much politics” in modern Star Trek I’d ask one simple question – “have you seen Star Trek before?”

Spock and Kirk at the end of The Doomsday Machine from Season 2 of The Original Series. They talked about nuclear weapons – a massive issue in the 1960s.

The problem here is that, when it comes to The Original Series and the shows of The Next Generation’s era, we’re watching them decades on from their original release. Many of the people complaining about politics in modern Star Trek weren’t even born when The Next Generation and its sister shows were first on the air. And very few people now can remember watching The Original Series when it was new. The political themes in many of those episodes are less prickly and less relevant today, and though they would be instantly recognisable to contemporary audiences, watching them today fifty years later or thirty years later, they’re harder to spot. And if someone is watching an episode for the tenth or twentieth time, an episode they first watched at age five or six, it’s even harder to be objective and pull the themes and messaging out of the drama and presentation. Taking a step back and looking at a favourite show or episode objectively is very difficult. I made an attempt to do so when I re-watched The Measure of a Man from The Next Generation’s second season, but it wasn’t easy.

Star Trek has always been a political show, even if as kids we didn’t realise it. And it has always taken a “progressive” political position on contemporary issues. If an individual can’t stand that, and is only content to watch entertainment that is either wholly politically neutral or agrees entirely with their own political biases, then that’s okay. No one is forcing anyone to watch a television show that they don’t like. And if they don’t like something, it’s easier than ever to change the channel. They can pick a new show on Netflix or Amazon Prime or CBS All Access and watch that instead, or go back to a previous Star Trek series that they do enjoy. Modern Star Trek is not mandatory viewing, and from my own point of view I can tell you I’m pretty brutal when it comes to switching off a show that I find boring or that I’m not enjoying for whatever reason.

In 2020 we live in a world where there is an insane amount of entertainment available to watch – and much of it can be found online for free with a basic knowledge of computing. So I don’t really understand why people would want to spend a lot of time watching a show that they don’t enjoy, then jump online to share their dislike with others – not when there are so many other things to watch. A few people who run websites, groups, or YouTube channels, make money by doing this. And I guess that’s fair enough – if people will pay for it, and you can make money at it, that’s okay. But for everyone else, I don’t really see what they gain from it – aside from the feeling of inclusion being part of a “tribe”, or perhaps a feeling of superiority to think they know better than the show’s creators?

Some people have been unhappy with Star Trek: Picard.

To get back on topic, and draw this essay to a conclusion, there are differences between Star Trek today and Star Trek in the era of The Original Series and The Next Generation. For some fans, the difference is too stark and they don’t want to watch whatever they consider to be “bad”. I’m okay with that – we can all have our own opinions about the franchise. I just don’t like the toxicity and gatekeeping that has plagued some – thankfully small – groups within the fandom.

Speaking for myself, I’ve enjoyed Star Trek’s return to television. Star Trek: Picard has been the better of the two offerings so far, but I’m genuinely excited at the prospect of a Capt. Pike series and at Lower Decks’ different take on the franchise. It’s a great time to be a fan right now, simply because there’s so much Star Trek – and sci fi/fantasy content in general – in production. We won’t always be so lucky to have this, and even though I wasn’t a big Enterprise fan during its original run, I was still sad when it went off the air and there was just a big void of nothing. That isn’t a scenario I’m keen to see repeated, and while I admit there have been hits and misses in modern Star Trek, I’d rather see it continue to be made than simply scrapped. By diversifying the kind of stories it tells – Picard and Discovery are very different in tone, for example, and Lower Decks will be something different again – hopefully Star Trek can build on what has been accomplished already and bring in more people. If some people decide not to stick with it because of the changes, that’s okay. But I firmly believe that the core or the heart of Star Trek is the same as it was in the 1960s – and that it has remained that way for its entire run.

Star Trek is a complicated franchise that means different things to different people. But there is room in the fandom for everyone – at least, everyone who wants to participate. If someone dislikes Picard or Discovery but loves The Next Generation, as fans and as people who know how to behave civilly, we can still have a great conversation about Star Trek without treading on each others’ toes. And it’s my hope that there’s more that unites us as fans of this great franchise than divides us – after all, Discovery and The Next Generation have much more in common than The Next Generation does with, say, the latest iteration of some celebrity reality show. At the end of the day, I’m happy to share a franchise and a fandom with some very passionate people – even if we can’t agree on a lot of things.

The Star Trek franchise – including all series and films mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.