It’s probably redundant to explain where the title of this Star Trek 60th anniversary column comes from, since other old-as-dirt Star Trek fans like myself have probably seen “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock” more times than we care to admit (even to our therapists). However, for this landmark year of the franchise, Kirk’s melancholic Captain’s Log from the opening of the film feels curiously appropriate.
In that now 42-year old movie, Kirk (William Shatner) is still reeling from the loss of Spock (Leonard Nimoy), as he commands a wounded starship Enterprise back to Earth for decommissioning. The tone is moody, and full of aftergrief–a great way to start off a summer sci-fi action movie, right? Yet, sadly, it sums up my current feelings for Star Trek.
Mission Aborted
Recently, I’d carefully plotted a course for Star Trek Las Vegas (STLV). I hadn’t attended that particular convention for four years, and I missed a few of the people I’d befriended there. I was supposed to go in 2023, but my wife and I caught his-and-her COVID viruses at San Diego Comic Con a week beforehand, so I had to cancel. This year, I had my (insured) ticket in hand, and my room at the Rio hotel reserved. The night before, I was fully packed and ready to go. Then the SIM card in my iPhone died. This left me unable to make or receive calls and texts. In a mild panic, my wife and I rushed it to a nearby AT&T store just before they closed, but they were unable to resolve the issue.
My justifiably worried wife didn’t want me driving four hours across the most hostile desert in the United States without a working phone for emergencies. And she made a good point. So, at the last minute, I cancelled. While the Rio deleted my reservation, I still haven’t received any kind of refund from Creation Entertainment. So much for paying that extra $40 for ‘insurance.’ Creation really puts the ‘con’ in convention. Oh well. Moving on…
Capt. Pike (Anson Mount), La’an (Christina Chong), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) and Chapel (Jess Bush) become Vulcans for wildly convoluted reasons in SNW season 3’s “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans.” This third season Vulcan ‘comedy’ came off as both racist and wildly inaccurate in its Vulcan stoicism–it’s a discipline, not genetic.
The last-minute phone fiasco was the cherry on top of what hasn’t exactly been the “best of times” for me regarding Star Trek. Season 3 of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” was possibly the worst season of Star Trek I’d seen since “Star Trek: Picard”‘s second season. There were also the back-to-back cancellations of “Star Trek: Prodigy” and “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” which were two recent Star Trek shows I consistently enjoyed.
Capt. Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) faces off against the “Klingerite” villain Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti) as he overacts his ass off in “Starfleet Academy.” An Oscar-winner and an Oscar-nominee facing off would normally be big news in Star Trek…
While “Starfleet Academy” certainly had its issues (Paul Giamatti‘s villainy was so hammy it should’ve been served with eggs), it showed promise. Starfleet Academy’s second season is set to stream soon, but without hope of a renewal, I’m not really that interested in seeing a dead series crash. That, and the fact that I simply don’t re-watch individual episodes (or rather chapters) of the heavily-serialized modern Star Trek shows. So I decided to save a few bucks and cancel my Paramount+ subscription.
For full disclosure, there were a few other reasons for my cancellation. Paramount+ recently gutted its once gold standard CBS News. Under the direction of right-wing editor Bari Weiss, Paramount/CBS also took a blowtorch to “60 Minutes” (a long-running, award-winning news show I used to watch as often as possible), just after cancelling “Late Night with Stephen Colbert,” in an apparent retaliatory move over the comedian’s ceaseless (but accurate) mockery of the ‘rumpled thin-skin’ US president, Donald Trump. Trump is chummy with Skydance CEO David Ellison, who happens to be the new owner of CBS/Paramount, via their Skydance merger. You could feel the thumbs on the scales…
The final insult to injury was receiving several obnoxious advert-emails from Paramount+ reminding me to stream Trump’s barbaric, bouncing-castle UFC cage match taking place on the White House lawn on the 4th of July (the damage to which has to be paid for by US taxpayer dollars). Frankly, I’d rather have an oxy-acetylene blowtorch taken to my pried-open eyes than watch “Idiocracy” unfolding in realtime during the nation’s sesquicentennial. Even ‘guest-of-honor’ Trump apparently fell asleep several times watching that hideously stupid event.
All of this left me asking myself if keeping my Paramount+ subscription (which I’ve had in one form or another since 2017) was worth the largely mediocre content and the excess acid in my stomach. The answer was no.
Now back to the Star Trek of it all. I realize little of the last few paragraphs have anything to do with Star Trek directly, so let’s go back “to the time of the beginning…”
Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-4) was legit Star Trek.
It featured the voices of the original cast, and even used some of TOS’ original writers, too.
Star Trek has been a significant part of my life for nearly 60 years. In fact, I was born just a few months after The Original Series premiered in 1966, and I’d become an ardent fan as a kid growing up in the 1970s, watching both TOS and The Animated Series (TAS) in syndication. To me, both shows were two sides of the same coin.
My early Trekkie status reached a crescendo with the premiere of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” in late 1979. The film reunited the original cast ten years after the series cancellation, with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig and even Grace Lee Whitney (“Janice Rand”) back aboard.
Voluntarily demoted from admiral to captain, Kirk (William Shatner) is welcomed aboard the refit Enterprise by Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Chekov (Walter Koenig), Sulu (George Takei) and the rest of the bridge crew in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (1979).
While TMP received mixed-to-poor reviews in those days, my then-13 year old self didn’t care. I would see it no less than ten times theatrically, and most recently in 2019 for a brief, one-night only 40th anniversary rerelease. With the remastered Director’s Cut issued on Blu-Ray a few years ago, I fell in love with the film all over again (though I keep the original version as well; hey, sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t…).
Kirk, Scotty (James Doohan), Chekov and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) learn there’s murder and conspiracy afoot in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” one of two Trek films directed by Nicholas Meyer (“Time After Time”).
Despite the reviews, TMP did great box office (contrary to myth), and it eventually ushered in a slew of sequels in the 1980s and 1990s, beginning with the colorful, energetic “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” in 1982 and concluding the original cast’s run with “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” in 1991.
Kirk and his crew find themselves in 1980s San Francisco looking for humpback whales to save the planet.
This year, in fact, also marks the 40th anniversary of the (deservedly) crowdpleasing favorite, “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” aka “the one with the whales.” That was the movie that brought many non–Star Trek fans into the fold, including my dad, who enjoyed the scenes aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (nee: USS Ranger), and the whales (because who doesn’t love whales?). Most significantly, the movie’s crossover appeal is partly credited with helping to save the humpback population.
Return to TV/Star Trek’s 1990s Heyday
The cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation (left to right): LeVar Burton (“Geordi”), Whoopi Goldberg (“Guinan”), Patrick Stewart (“Picard”), Gates McFadden (“Dr. Crusher”), Michael Dorn (“Worf”), Jonathan Frakes (“Riker”), Marina Sirtis (“Troi”), Wil Wheaton (“Wesley”) and Brent Spiner (“Data”).
The movie franchise would eventually be supplanted by new Star Trek TV shows, including “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987-1994), which, like TMP, initially left viewers with very mixed feelings, until it found its creative groove sometime around its third season, with a fresh writing staff and production team. Personally, I was hooked by season 2, which had a string of amazing episodes (“A Matter of Honor,” “Measure of a Man,” “Q Who”).
The cast of Deep Space Nine (left to right): Michael Dorn (“Worf”), Terry Farrell (“Dax”), Colm Meaney (“O’Brien”), Alexander Siddig (“Dr. Bashir”), Armin Shimerman (“Quark”), Avery Brooks (“Sisko”), René Auberjonois (“Odo”), Nana Visitor (“Kira”) and Cirroc Lofton (“Jake”).
Ushering in a golden era of Star Trek, the 1990s saw the premiere of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” (1993-1999); arguably the best of the Star Trek spinoff shows, with its space station setting offering deeper views into its talented ensemble and supporting casts. An entire story arc would be devoted to the son of the Ferengi barkeep’s brother, and it made for must-see Trek.
The cast of Voyager (left to right): Jeri Ryan (“Seven of Nine”), Robert Picardo (“The Doctor”), Ethan Phillips (“Neelix”), Kate Mulgrew (“Janeway”), Garrett Wang (“Harry Kim”), Robert Duncan MacNeill (“Tom Paris”), Robert Beltran (“Chakotay”), Roxann Dawson (“B’Elanna Torres”) and Tim Russ (“Tuvok”).
Beginning with a memorable pilot episode, “Star Trek: Voyager” (1995-2001) was a return to a starship-based show, and it certainly had a few standout episodes. Beginning after the end of VGR’s run, “Star Trek: Enterprise” (2001-2005) was a sometimes-clumsy prequel show set roughly 100 years before The Original Series, though it often felt like a rehash of VGR; with a stoic, cat-suited Vulcan named T’Pol (Jolene Blalock) standing in for the stoic, cat-suited ex-Borg, Seven of Nine (the very talented Jeri Ryan). Both VGR and ENT had fair numbers of hits and misses, considering their much greater ratios of episodes per season (22-26, compared to today’s 8-12).
The cast of Enterprise (left to right): Anthony Montgomery (“Travis”), Jolene Blalock (“T’Pol”), Dominic Keating (“Reed”), Scott Bakula (“Archer”), Linda Park (“Hoshi”), Connor Trinneer (“Trip”) and Jonathan Billingsley (“Dr. Phlox”).
Marking the unofficial end of Star Trek’s 1990s heyday, which included four TNG movies (“Star Trek: First Contact” arguably being the best of the lot), ENT would be the first post-TOS Star Trek show to be cancelled before reaching its planned seven seasons. A shame, since ENT’s final fourth season also happened to be its best.
Back on the Main Viewer
While I think of Star Trek primarily as a creature of television, the franchise did return in to the big screen for a trio of big-budgeted Star Trek-themed rollercoaster ride movies set in a newly-created ‘alternate reality.’
The cast of “Star Trek” (2009): (left to right) the late Anton Yelchin (“Chekov”), Chris Pine (“Kirk”), Simon Pegg (“Scotty”), Karl Urban (“Dr. McCoy”), John Cho (“Sulu”) and Zoe Saldaña (“Uhura”) face an unseen Spock, who’s played by Zachary Quinto.
This new reality was created in the soft-reboot film “Star Trek” (2009) when Leonard Nimoy’s Ambassador Spock is accidentally thrown back in time 130-odd years through an artificial black hole, where he meets a younger, more rebellious James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), who must gather a familiar crew to defeat an angry, future Romulan (Eric Bana) hellbent on revenge; and in the process, fulfill his destiny as captain of a sleeker starship Enterprise…
From “Star Trek: Into Darkness”: Kirk takes Spock’s place in a lazy redo of the latter’s death scene from “The Wrath of Khan.”
The first reboot movie certainly wasn’t the brightest bulb in Star Trek’s box, but with its charming ensemble cast (Karl Urban, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldaña, et al) it was very entertaining and highly rewatchable. Next up was the far less successful “Star Trek Into Darkness” (2013); a quasi-reshuffled hot-mess of “The Wrath of Khan” (even stealing some lines of dialogue). Up until last year’s direct-to-streaming “Section 31,” this was my least favorite Star Trek movie.
Spock receives word of the older Spock’s demise in “Star Trek Beyond” (2016), a nice tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015) and a major step up from its predecessor.
The final Bad Robot/Skydance-produced Star Trek movie was the somewhat redemptive “Star Trek Beyond” (2016); a 50th anniversary film that recaptured some of the franchise’s earlier aspirational optimism, though it was saddled with yet another tired ‘madman-seeks-revenge’ story. Nevertheless, it was too little, too late, and too expensive, and would effectively halt Bad Robot’s Star Trek reboot movies.
Present Tense
2017 ushered in a new era of Star Trek streaming with the debut of the often-problematic “Star Trek: Discovery” (2017-2024) on the then-fledgling streaming service, CBS-All Access, now known as Paramount+. The first mistake of DSC was to ditch Star Trek’s traditional episodic format for a shorter, serialized seasons–with chapters in place of standalone episodes. Set in the decade just before TOS, and featuring a nice ensemble (Sonequa Martin Green, Doug Jones, Wilson Cruz, Anthony Rapp), DSC showcased an even broader eye for diverse casting, with the inclusion of recurring LGBTQ+ characters; a glaring deficiency in Star Trek’s past.
Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Cadet Tilly (Mary Wiseman) on the bridge of Discovery.
Unfortunately, DSC’s characters spend far too much time navel-gazing and discussing their feelings in pedantic detail. It was difficult to accept them as Starfleet officers from the same vintage as Kirk and Spock, let alone as professional explorers. With a seasonal budget on a par with the Bad Robot movies (also written by coproducer/showrunner Alex Kurtzman), DSC habitually faltered with protracted storylines that crashed on approach with jumbled, confusing, technobabble-heavy finales. It was like watching a subpar outing of Star Trek stretched over 12 episodes.
I realize “Star Trek: Lower Decks” was popular with many Star Trek fans, but frankly, I found it obnoxious and insulting.
Star Trek would also try its hand at animation for the first time since TAS in 1974, and launched its popular “Star Trek: Lower Decks” (2020-2024). Despite the generally receptive fan response, I never really warmed up to this canonical Star Trek-themed parody. It seemed more mocking of Star Trek than a celebration of it. The lead characters are simply too immature to accept as genuine Starfleet officers. I realize it’s a cartoon, but I can’t believe this crew graduated from the same Starfleet Academy as Picard or Janeway. I just don’t dig the “Rick & Morty” vibe.
The young animated heroes of “Star Trek: Prodigy” helped to make Star Trek aspirational again.
The far superior and terribly underrated “Star Trek: Prodigy” (2021-2024) would (perhaps ironically) see a group of young galactic refugees reclaim an abandoned prototypical Federation starship and aspire to join Starfleet. This group of wannabe Starfleet officers had the heart, dedication and sense of wonder missing from “Lower Decks,” and it was refreshing to see the franchise aspire once again. Naturally, it was cancelled after one season, and streamed its second on Netflix.
Seeing the retired Jean-Luc Picard saved from death and reborn in an android body at the end of “Star Trek: Picard” season 1 would’ve been an ideal place to end this sequel series.
In addition to DSC and the two animated shows, Paramount+’s Star Trek factory has cranked out several other live actions spinoffs; the aforementioned TNG-sequel series “Star Trek: Picard” (2020-2023), the Captain Pike-led TOS-prequel “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” (2022-present) and most recently, the promising but prematurely cancelled “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.” (2025-2027?), which will stream its second and final season next year.
PIC ended its first season with a finale that felt like a proper end to the story of Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), as the longtime advocate for android rights (on behalf of his android friend Data) sees his waning consciousness downloaded into a new (but conveniently aged) android body. A second season came up with a dull, convoluted 21st century time-travel arc that threw in every subplot imaginable, and muddied the waters of Picard’s established backstory. The third season was an attempt to appease disappointed Trek fandom with what was essentially a TNG reunion show, with thick, sugar-coated fan service, including a needlessly restored Enterprise-D. Personally, I think PIC would’ve ended best as a single-season miniseries.
Number One (Rebecca Romijn), Capt. Pike (Anson Mount) and Mr. Spock (Ethan Peck) from “Strange New Worlds.”
Strange New Worlds began with a strong pilot episode (titled “Strange New Worlds”) that smartly riffed on the 1951 classic movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” as Pike and company are forced to confront a 21st century analog of our Earth on the verge of using serendipitously-discovered warp technology to create a super-bomb. The first season was generally solid, but bugs and glitches began to creep up in its second, before the rollout of an astonishingly awful third. SNW’s third season was so lousy that I lost any and all interest to see its fourth.
From what I’ve seen and read, the fourth season of SNW featured a dinosaur episode, a Blumhouse-horror episode, a “Hangover”-inspired episode, and more recently, a Muppet episode, which (SPOILER ALERT) takes place in Spock’s dream. Spock, in any incarnation of the character I’ve seen over the past 50+ years, wouldn’t dream of 21st century Muppets. The writers of TV’s “Angel” might, but Spock wouldn’t. That’s not gatekeeping, that’s character consistency. The same reason Matt Dillon of TV’s “Gunsmoke” wouldn’t get a side gig as a rental clown for children’s birthday parties. He just wouldn’t. For the record, I was okay with SNW’s “Buffy”-inspired musical episode (every Star Trek is allowed a “Spock’s Brain” or two), but, in the words of Austin Powers nemesis Doctor Evil, “This is ri-goddamn-diculous.”
At this exceptionally tumultuous time in American history, Star Trek could be focusing its unique brand of allegorical storytelling on the fragility of western democracies, the loss of bodily autonomy for women, the consequences of forever wars in the Middle East, multiple refugee crises around the world, the diminishment of civil rights, climate change, the environmental impact of AI data centers, the use of AI in military systems, or even the impact of brain-rot from social media. You know, the kinds of relevant topics Star Trek (or “The Orville”) used to tackle with care and insight. Instead, we’re getting infantilized stories about dinosaurs, puppets and ghosts. Jeezus, what the hell, Star Trek…?
Instead of leading the charge with topical, socially-relevant modern Star Trek stories, we’re getting gimmick-based drivel in its place. It’s as if the recent, expensive merger with Trump-ally David Ellison’s Skydance has scared the franchise into a stuporous state of frivolity. That influx of billionaire media mogul cash has stripped Star Trek of its integrity. I think the late Star Trek producer/creator Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991) would be mortified at how timid his baby has become, even without those once-dreaded TV network censors. Turns out corporate censorship of streaming platforms is even worse.
I sometimes wonder if maybe I’ve drifted away from Star Trek by holding on to what the series had been at its peak; back when Star Trek featured stories from genuine sci-fi writers, like Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, Jerome Bixby, and Richard Matheson, as well as talented staff writer-producers like Dorothy Fontana, Gene L. Coon, John Meredyth-Lucas, David Gerrold, Ronald D. Moore, René Echevierra, Ira Steven Behr and many others.
Perhaps dinosaurs, ghost stories, Muppets and “Dude, Where’s my Starship?” are the vanguards of a new viewership more into shorter, breezier, assembly-line content rather than adult science-fiction allegory. If so, then perhaps Star Trek needs to take a nice, long break, or call it quits. Star Trek has endured for 60 years. Nothing to sneeze at.
The Oscar-winning Michelle Yeoh is absolutely wasted in Star Trek’s first direct-to-streaming movie, “Section 31” (2025); a perfect example of modern Star Trek not understanding the fundamentals of its source material.
If the franchise can’t find (or refuses to find) anything meaningful to say on the current state of the world within its parable format, then perhaps it’s time to warp off into the sunset, rather than hang on until the last flickers of dilithium cease. This is not the way I’d hoped to observe the 60th anniversary of my once-undisputed favorite sci-fi entertainment franchise.
Here’s hoping Star Trek will someday finds its creative courage, or maybe a few fresh writer-producers who understand and appreciate genuine science-fiction, not just dinosaurs, parodies and puppets. There are always… possibilities.
Live long and prosper, folks.
Where to Watch.
Most of the Star Trek series are still available to stream on Paramount+. Individual episodes or seasons can also be purchased via Prime Video, GooglePlay or YouTube. Many Star Trek episodes and seasons can also be purchased on physical media (DVD/Blu-Ray) as well, from CBS Home Video.
