A Brief Guide to Star Trek

where no man had gone before, through the 1990s’ ethnic war dramas of
Deep Space Nine
, the exploration-driven
Voyager
and into the twenty-first century, with post-9/11 prequel series
Enterprise
. Franchise fatigue – too much mediocre
Star Trek
‘product’ flooding the market at the same time – led to the cancellation of
Enterprise
and the curtailment of
The Next Generation
movie series. The second batch of movies had produced one bona fide summer blockbuster in 1996’s
First Contact
(featuring
The Next Generation
’s signature antagonists, the Borg), but had crashed to Earth with the dismal
Nemesis
in 2002.
    A rescue mission for
Star Trek
was necessary. It fell to film-maker (
Mission: Impossible III
) and cult TV producer (
Alias
,
Lost
) J. J. Abrams to rise to the challenge of reinventing
Star Trek
once more for a whole new generation. Alongside screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, Abrams returned to the very beginning, rediscovering the iconic characters of Kirk, Spock and McCoy.

    Star Trek
has been acclaimed as utopian science fiction. Arriving at the end of the 1960s, Roddenberry’s space opera tapped into real-world social and political movements, presenting a vision of the future that offered infinite diversity in infinite combinations (IDIC) and the non-interference rule of the Prime Directive. Aspects of the world of
Star Trek
were obviously contradictory: these people of the future espoused clearly liberal values, but did so while encased in a military outlook. This was a future that displayed great advances in communications and medical science, but also offered similar advances in weaponry, such as photo torpedoes and phasers.
    Each version of
Star Trek
reflected the times in which it was made. The movies of the 1980s featuring the cast of
The Original Series
tackled issues of ageing and rebirth through the core trilogy of
The Wrath of Khan
,
The Search for Spock
and
The Voyage Home
. By the time of
The Next Generation
, the self-absorbed ‘Me generation’, who came to adulthood in the 1970s, were running things, so alongside the tactical officer and science officer, the bridge team of the new
Enterprise
for the 1980s featured a touchy-feely psychologist in the shape of Counsellor Troi.
Deep Space Nine
turned darker for the 1990s, a time when ethnic strife tore up central Europe and the Middle East erupted in conflict that continues today. The post-colonial world of Bajor and the United Nations-style peacekeeping crew of the space station
Deep Space Nine
dramatised issues of war, sacrifice and conflict in a way unthinkable in the comparably anodyne
Star Trek
of the 1960s. On the other hand, the next series,
Voyager
, reflected a somewhat blander, safer 1990s as the twenty-first century loomed; it also featured a failure of the imagination on the part of those creating
Star Trek
to genuinely escape from the past and boldly go into the unknown. They became trapped within the formula that
Deep Space Nine
had so successfully strayed from. Instead of updating
Star Trek
for the new century, both
Voyager
and prequel series
Enterprise
set about recreating the deep-space exploration tropes of
The Original Series
from the 1960s, and even tried to create new versions of the iconic 1960s characters through relatively colourless avatars like Captain Archer and Chief Engineer ‘Trip’ Tucker. Concurrently,
The Next Generation
movies had trouble defining themselves, failing to service the ensemble cast that had blossomed on television, yet succeeding when adopting the style and approach of the contemporary summer blockbuster in
First Contact
. Even here, though, the producers of
Nemesis
were looking backwards, attempting to model their new
Star Trek
movie for 2002 on the one that had succeeded twenty years earlier, 1982’s
The Wrath of Khan
.
    Alongside these series and movies, a different type of utopian experiment was going on as
Star Trek
fandom developed, grew and changed, aided and abetted by developments in modern technology (the Internet, cheap video). Starting out in the 1960s as isolated local clubs and mail-order fanzines (fan-produced magazines),
Star Trek
fandom grew during the 1970s thanks to mass conventions that brought like-minded people together to celebrate their obsession. The future depicted on
Star Trek
created a genuine new community here on Earth.
Star Trek
served to free fans’ imaginations and to spark their creativity, allowing them to become creators (of, among