A Brief Guide to Star Trek

Trek
changed through the decades and how it perhaps eventually failed to change enough with the times to escape ossification and irrelevance, requiring a dramatic re -invention to save it. It will also look at what the future might be for the
Star Trek
concept, assess what the series’ impact has been on viewers, and consider the unstoppable growth of
Star Trek
fandom.
    Star Trek
now spans five distinct television series (six, if you include the often overlooked early-1970s
Star Trek: The Animated Series
) and eleven movies, from 1979’s
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
to J. J. Abrams’ 2009 reinvention, which has led to a new series of movies to take the franchise through the next decade and maybe beyond.
    While many have pointed to the way
Star Trek
has reflected and critiqued the ethical, social and philosophical issues of our times and attempted to depict progressive gender, class and racial representations – so offering a hopeful and positive vision of the future of humanity – the secret of the success of the series is much simpler: it’s all down to great storytelling.
    The genius of Gene Roddenberry in creating
Star Trek
was to tackle those serious and important issues through well-told science fiction action-adventure tales that appealed to a mass audience. It was the unusual stories and unforgettable characters that first attracted curious television audiences in the 1960s, while the forward-looking ideas presented by the series turned many of those viewers into lifelong fans.
    Legend elevates Roddenberry – known to fans as the Great Bird of the Galaxy – to the status of sole creator of
Star Trek
. However, while his important role as the instigator of the series and author of its concept should not be undervalued (three times, no less: in its original 1960s incarnation, its reinvention as a series of movies and its return to television in the 1980s), Roddenberry himself wasn’t necessarily the most successful
Star Trek
storyteller. In fact,
Star Trek
has enjoyed more success when under the control of other storytellers, as this book sets out to demonstrate.
    Among the host of others who have put their stamp on the concepts of
Star Trek
, some have honoured them (perhaps a bit too much), while others have bent them all out of shape (almost beyond recognition). Significant among them are Samuel A. Peeples, David Gerrold, D. C. Fontana and Gene Coon on
The Original Series
in the 1960s; Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer on the original cast movies of the 1980s; Rick Berman and Michael Piller on
The Next Generation
; Ira Steven Behr, Robert Hewitt Wolfe and Ronald D. Moore on
Deep Space Nine
; Brannon Braga and Jeri Taylor on
Voyager
, all in the 1990s; and Manny Coto on
Enterprise
in the twenty-first century. Some of them outstayed their welcome, while others had far too short a run, but each of these creators brought something unique to their respective attempts to create a new spin on Gene Roddenberry’s
Star Trek
.
    The story behind the
Star Trek
phenomenon is one of inspiration, struggle and good luck. Following a less than stellar career as an episodic television writer, Gene Roddenberry pitched a series he dubbed ‘
Wagon Train
to the stars’, which was taken up by Paramount and ran for three seasons between 1966 and 1969 on NBC. The central trio of characters – headstrong Captain Kirk (William Shatner), inscrutable alien Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and McCoy (DeForest Kelley), the humanist doctor – rapidly became familiar to viewers. However, the series failed to capture a large enough audience to stay on air, narrowly escaping cancellation twice before the axe finally fell, following a lacklustre third season, in 1969. The show found new, unexpected success during syndicated reruns throughout the 1970s (and thanks to daily exposure, sealing the iconic nature of the central trio of characters in pop culture in the process), giving rise to a short-lived animated spin-off and – more importantly – a big-budget movie in 1979 intended to compete with the success of
Star Wars
(1977). While that film met with a mixed reception, it led to a successful series of movies, including the acclaimed
The Wrath of Khan
and
The Voyage Home
, which ran throughout the 1980s.
    A return to television was inevitable for
Star Trek
, with Gene Roddenberry at the helm once more (for the first few years). Between 1987 and 2005
Star Trek
would be in constant production, spanning
The Next Generation
’s new journeys