That’s right, longtime readers, I’m back to writing about Star Trek. Maybe it’s been on my mind since the long-awaited last season of Discovery finally made it to screens. Or maybe the idea of Trek never left.
This time around, I want to point to to The Roddenberry Archive. For the last year or so, this web site has been showing you virtual reality visions of pretty much every Star Trek location they can. These are really well-done 3D models. The Archive was originally only available to those with VR headsets, but it’s been rendered so that anyone with a screen can use it. There’s also an incredibly well-rendered series of videos which show you little snippets of stories using 3D renders of original actors. No word if the families of the original actors approved these renders, and most of them seem to have been made before the SAG-AFTRA contract that made it so permission was required.
The Vision Pro experience
Apparently, if you have the $3,500 or higher Apple Vision Pro, you can get an incredibly realistic experience which shows everything from the Original Series bridge to the Promenade at DS9. I had tried a very early version of this in a museum back in 2019, but that was on Oculus Rift hardware which was already obsolete at the time. It wasn’t very good then but I have a feeling it’s massively improved. If there’s anyone reading this who does actually have a Vision Pro at this point, I’d be curious about your experiences.
Why do we keep going back to Star Trek? Or is it just me?
Star Trek was a fairly cheesy show built with plywood sets back about 60 years ago. A lot of other adventure series at the time, like The Rat Patrol and Felony Squad are all but forgotten today. But this particular one keeps chugging away, with at least one more new TV series coming to Paramount+ to add to the two they’re already producing. There are lingering rumors of yet another movie, too. So why does this story keep appealing to us?
Younger folks, much younger folks anyway, might say that it’s strictly a generational thing. Science fiction hit the mainstream for the first time in the 1970s and kept growing in our consciousness. Star Trek was one of the first TV shows to really provide thought-provoking sci-fi to the masses. If you were around back then, you have fond memories of the times and the people you associate with the show.
A second generation of fans grew up embracing The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. These shows can seem really cheesy to us today as well but they represented a serious evolution in sci-fi storytelling. But all of that was 30 years ago. The real question is, will Star Trek outlive its initial fans?
Only time will tell, I suppose. Star Wars, the other sci-fi influence from the 1970s, is stumbling now. Disney has squeezed too much from the franchise and it’s barely hanging on. Trek was like that in the 2000s, which is why there wasn’t anything on TV or in movies for about 5 years, and really only a small amount of content until the late 2010s.
Big universes, small universes
Both Trek and Wars suffer from what I call the “small universe problem.” It’s where you get so attached to a small group of characters that everything in the universe seems to point to them. in Star Wars, there’s been only one show (Andor) that didn’t have a direct tie-in to one Skywalker or another. (Argue that The Mandalorian has no tie-in, and I’ll give you some deep cuts to prove otherwise.) In Trek, we see the same characters over and over again. Barely an episode goes by that we don’t reference Kirk, Spock, or Picard.
This has the effect of stifling original storytelling because it’s hard to get audiences to think of the franchise without the main characters. It’s not easy to get that universe to expand, but if you do you’ll find that the stories get better and better. Think about it this way. There are billions of stars in each universe, many with planets, many with life. But somehow these stories tie in the same five people? Statistically that’s impossible. It’s also bad writing. But in the end, it’s what people want.
A way forward for Star Trek
I’m serious when I say that both Star Trek and Star Wars could disappear from our consciousnesses in 25 years. 75 years ago, everyone knew Buck Rogers and Captain Planet – but no one does today. Today’s sci-fi has a simple way forward, and it’s not like they haven’t done it before.
Star Trek needs to launch more content that explicitly cuts ties with its main characters. Use the same basic framework of the Federation, the Klingons, whatever. But tell someone else’s story! If you must, have one character from an old series present in episode one to send them off. This is how Star Trek: The Next Generation launched, and it worked. It could work again.
Content producers got spooked when Star Wars: The Last Jedi got so much bad press. You can read my review of it here. This film was a blatant attempt to move that franchise away from its main characters and toward a premise that resonated with young people today. It was so soundly thrashed (despite making a bundle at the box office) that Disney backtracked, offering the timid Rise of Skywalker as an apology and return to a Skywalker-centric universe.
The folks at Paramount who produce Star Trek obviously took notice, because they’ve been hesitant to move too far from the basic premises of the 1966 show. Even the slightest hint of pessimism is met with calls of “Roddenberry wouldn’t approve!”
And yet, it seems to me that failing to embrace the ideas of younger generations and refusing to look to the future… that’s pretty much the most un-Star Trek-like thing, ever.
This post is dedicated to Dave Galanter, who authored some great books during his life.
