Someone here just made a post wishing for a Star Trek theme park. It brought back memories of the Star Trek Experience in Vegas, and also got me thinking about how Trek isn't really the force in popular culture that it used to be.
After the cancellation of TOS it was constantly running in syndication (and there was also the brief animated series). No matter where you lived there was a good chance you could turn on the TV and watch episodes of Star Trek. Since science fiction wasn't common on television, Trek remained a unique and memorable experience. It seemed much more popular in syndication than when it was originally broadcast.
Between 1979 and 1987 there was a Star Trek revival. Four Star Trek films released. Then in 1987 Star Trek hit warp factor ten...
TNG, Voyager, and DS9 were all on television concurrently. Enterprise debuted the same year that Voyager ended (only four months later). There was an amazing run of 18 consecutive years 1987 to 2005 where Star Trek was constantly on TV and in the public consciousness.. You didn't need to be a subscriber to a steaming service or even have cable. The seasons were not 5 to 10 episodes long, they were 20+ episodes. 25 LONG SEASONS of Trek delivered between '87 and '05 (18 years). That's 624 EPISODES.
I lived through that golden age of Trek, and can say that things are a lot different now.
Yes, we've had a lot of Trek since that era. The J.J. Abrams films, Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks (only a combined 191 episodes) and now the upcoming Academy. But, to be honest, the social impact and general interest seems much different.
I do think Star Trek fandom is certainly alive and well and thriving. Advances in technology has allowed some of the best fan efforts over the past few decades. But, Trek isn't in the general public consciousness in the same way that it once was.
Official modern TV efforts require streaming subscriptions, have incredibly short seasons, and to be honest haven't always brought the same quality or expected style of writing. Of course, there's a lot more science fiction (and TV shows in general) that audiences have access to, making it more difficult for Trek to stand out. It just doesn't seem to reach as far and wide (or as deep) as it once did.
What are your thoughts about the current impact of Trek in modern culture? Why does it seem less special and less significant? Am I wrong? Please offer your opinions.
The Star Trek Experience in Vegas was a treasure and possibly one of the best fan/immersive experiences ever! Seeing Klingons fight in the bar, and the moment you walk on the D bridge!? Excellent experience and I wish I could go back.
I loved it. I agree, it was absolutely amazing!!
I'm really bummed I missed it. I keep hoping they'll revive it temporarily but this doesn't feel like the era of Trek for it.
They kinda did something like this at Universal Studios Hollywood this past year at an event called Fan Fest Nights.
Besides merch and food, it also featured the Enterprise D bridge used in Picard Season 3.
Yesss I missed it and I was so bummed out. I hope it becomes a traveling museum and it’ll be cool if it made stops in science museums as exhibits. I bet a lot of folks who were inspired to go to space would go see it
Best thing in Vegas ever - and the museum you went through in the queue!!
Oh man, I cried when I walked on the bridge 😆😆😆
I really wish I’d gone. My sister and I went to Vegas in 2005, but only had the money for one big show. We decided to see The Blue Man Group since she wasn’t a big Star Trek fan. It was good, but I don’t really remember much from it. I feel like if we’d done the Star Trek Experience, I’d remember a lot more.
Hell yes, I was transported and everything.
It was superb. Wish I had not tried to look serious in the bridge photo op - inside I was ecstatic.
My best friend got married on the Bridge. They were all so awesome and really mad with a experience to remember. I'd never been to vegas cause I'm not into gambling or that level of partying. But that is what brought us there. Vegas has nothing like that anymore to pull people in that aren't their average spenders. We ended up dropping a lot of money at other places we never would have.
Current streaming-only Trek has had little to no impact on the cultural zeitgeist.
We've had 16 years of 'Modern Star Trek', and the only trek I see memed is 'SIlver Age' stuff (TNG, DS9, VOY).
Is number of memes the method by which societal impact should be determined?
I mean, it’s not the only way, but Rawr has a point: the cultural zeitgeist is carried via extremely short form media these days.
I mean it's literally in the word memetic, so yes
It definitely shows cultural relevance
All I know is the odds of getting a "star trek discovery" Lego set aren't particularly high.
New Star Trek Discovery video game coming out in the near future, somehow!
Certainly a variable to be considered.
If I start seeing a bunch of unfamiliar memes from the same new show I know people are watching it at least.
Got a second Doakes meme out of OG Dexter, but I dont think Ive seen an image macro from any of the new series.
This is what we call "impressions", which is a general gauge of how broadly popular content is. A lack of chatter online implies weak impressions.
Does ENT count as Silver Age or Modern?
Taking a cue from comic books, which have a Bronze Age between their Silver and Modern Ages (roughly the period from late 1960s to the mid-1980s), we could call that Bronze Age Star Trek.
Had they used a Jerry Goldsmith intro, it would have been Silver Age, but because they chose "Faith of the Heart" it isn't even Modern.
But have you considered that it's been a long road...
I see LDS and SNW memes all the time.
You're right, I even have some LDS gifs... oh I even have some SNW gifs, I have the one of spock eating bacon, and I use that sometimes when I'm happy.
I completely agree. In the 80s and 90s EVERYONE knew who Data and Picard were. Just like in the 60s everyone knew who Spock and Kirk were. Ask the average TV viewer today to name a character from Discovery.
That's not meant as bashing, it's just a fact.
TV Syndication is how Star Trek built its fandom and popularity
And it’ll never reach that height again paywalled off to some small streaming service. It’s either spin off and become a large movie franchise (a la Marvel or Star Wars) or sell the rights to be made and distributed by a larger service.
Of course, the environment in this day and age is way more competitive when it comes to fandoms.
Star Trek was never really Star Wars or MCU level big - it existed as a solid niche in its corner of the world with its cadre of fanatical fans, much like anime.
There's no longer a mono-culture. It's hard to name ANY modern TV character that even a quorum of Americans could identify, everyone is in their own media bubble.
That era also had 26 new episodes every year. These short seasons don't give us any time to really get to know these characters as well.
And the gritty emotional storylines don't get you to like the characters. If we could learn to love sex pest laforge it means it can't be impossible.
hey, we even learned to love mentally unstable sex offender Barclay, soo
TNG somehow managed to make Barclay, a weirdo who was deepfaking Troi on the holodeck, a likeable, redeemable character. Discovery couldn’t make Tilly interesting.
I think of LaForge as more of a less toxic incel. The Sex Pest is Bashir.
La Forge was just an awkward dork to me - a stereotypical engineer.
This, lol.
I didn't watch Star Trek until this year, I'm a Millennial. I knew about the one with whales, Kirk and his women, tribbles, Beam me up Scotty (which I was shocked Kirk never said it exactly), the transporter, the woman with 3 boobs, Worf and his growl, Seven of Nine, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard having a British accent but being French.
It was a cultural phenomenon. I believe it was the failure of Enterprise and the newer shows being streaming only, in an already overcrowded market, that's stopping it from continuing to be it it's peak.
I thought 3 boobs girl was from Total Recall. The Star Trek freaky girl was the green girl from the end of TOS and written into the Kelvin movie as an homage.
The 'Woman w/ Three Boobs' is better represented by the Arnold Schwarzenegger SciFi film: Total Recall. (They even put them in the Reboot...)
I mean even people that watch that show might have trouble naming a character! Michael, Saru, and... Spock and Pike lol. Stammets. That's all I can do.
Also Emperor Michelle Yeoh, Captain Lucius Malfoy, Booker, and the giant tardigrade
Actually, it’s not Malfoy, it’s “Holy Shit, It’s Jason Isaacs, Why’s He Got an American Accent, Oh Well, I’ll Watch This Until He Dies”
For me personally, Saru and Jason Isaacs as Lorca were the best parts of that first season. After that, i didnt particularly enjoy it
I loved the first season. Lorca is my favourite captain. I also enjoyed Michelle Yeoh in that season, didn't have a problem with Burnham till the finale, and loved the tone of that season. I actually thoguht season 1 of Discovery was a great direction for Star Trek and wanted to see more.
But I guess the fandom disagreed with me xD
IMO Discovery was a show of diminishing returns every season, starting out great, and gettign worse and worse the more it tried to appease its fanbase.
"But I guess the fandom disagreed with me xD"
Bah who cares? If you enjoyed what you enjoyed, that's all that matters in the end.
I'm with you that I enjoyed maybe more than half of Disco's first season. Didn't personally really enjoy it enough to keep watching it after the 2nd season though.
Lucky.
IMO that future timeline is some of the worst trek.
Just doesn't feel much like star trek anymore.
There's no more svcreens. Everythign is "programmable matter" which means when you go up to a ship console, cg bullshit makes it form into exactly what you want the controls to be from reading your mind.
So the bridge is all just CG bullshit and all the controls are nothing.
On top of that they can replicate whatever they want into their hands like with nothing but a thought. And can teleport anytime anywhere at any moment with a double tap of their comm badge and a thought.
Technology that literally breaks the universe and writing.
Especially with writers who dont know how to handle it so you get episodes liek the one where Burnham needs to blow up something, so she macguyver's her phaser to become a bomb and uses that to blow up a thing...
And then just replicates a new phaer in her hand at the speed of thought... and it's like... if she could replicate a new phaser at any time... why didn't she just replicate a bomb? Why even bother with the macguyver shit?
The tech in the future timeline is so advanced it's broken and ruins the entire show.
IMO.
Generally I try really hard not to be a hater.
But I definitely found myself hte watching those last seasons of discovery and there were very few things that I enjoyed.
I didn't always hate Burnham, thoguh she could be plenty annoying at times. And I liked booker.
I didn't even like Saru as much s other people. I feel like his character was kinda not treated well, misused and kinda written so that I'd not like him. He was just kind of annoying by the end.
Complaining about the lack of screens sounds like an old man yelling at clouds.
But yeah, your example about the phasers does sound silly. Could have made a good joke for Lower Decks.
But who could forget characters like The Other Gay Guy, Genderfluid Ghost Girl and Bubbly Redhead?
That's Doctor Other Gay Guy to you sunshine.
But yeah I can't actually name a single bridge crew member from discovery and I have watched the whole thing.
I think discovery was pretty explicit about Michael Burnham being the main character. In (four or five?) seasons they did have a couple of episodes where other bridges characters had a plot, but those are far between
I've watched episodes of Discovery since 2020.
I still don't know the name of the black woman who helps pilot the ship along with the woman with the non-borg eye thingamabob
I think we all know his name was Dr. Rickie Vasquez.
I have a hard time beliving this.
Also Steampowered Giraffe Reject
Seriously. Cyborg-lady deserved so much more than the few hints of her story and the swan-song she got.
She should have had multiple episodes following her.
Honestly, she got more than most dead crewmembers in Trek get. Like, DS9 had a couple tries at characterizing a redshirt before they killed them off, but even with 26 episodes a season they didn't get any more than cyborg lady did.
If they really wanted to make us care they should have killed off a bigger character, like Culber maybe. Or, wait, they did that, it just didn't take.
I dunno. I don't have a point, I'm just talking.
Doctor other guy from rent. (Both Stamets and him were in Rent together with CW Barry Allen's dad and Daredevil's night nurse... oh and you know what... Elsa was there too from Frozen)
I have no problem remembering Lorca's name, he's who I cite when people ask me who my favourite captain is.
Discovery was different because it focused on Michael as a main character instead of the bridge crew. I can't even name the majority of people on the bridge and it ran for five seasons. I know they were trying to be different but I really didn't care for that aspect of discovery.
It's easier if you use Stereotypes... Gay engineer. Gay doctor, backup gay engineer, cyborg girl. Pronoun person. Sweary ADHD girl. Doug Jones.
The names are so bad...
I’ve been a trek fan since the 80s and I can’t name a single character from Discovery.
Star Trek was aspirational, to be better than ourselves. Discovery is a bunch of weeping teenagers.
To be fair, it's nearly impossible for any streaming show to have that massive cultural impact.
Back when cable was kind nearly everyone would watch the same hit shows. That doesn't happen now very much.
Game of Thrones was basically the only thing big enough to do it anymore. The Mandolirian also did to a smaller degree.
Stranger things?
For the first 2-3 seasons sure but then ehn.
Stranger Things had the benefit of coming along early on in the streaming age
I wouldn't think so. It's super popular on Reddit but I don't know anyone IRL who watched it aside from the wife and I.
On the other hand, everyone I know watched GoT and most watched the Mandolorian.
If you go to Target, theres Stranger Things merchandise on a scale I havent seen since probably the release of Star Wars Episode I
I’m pretty sure Stranger Things is more popular outside of Reddit
I think people are largely missing the point.
Extremely few shows make it into large scale pop culture these days.
As opposed to the days when cable was king. A lot of shows did.
Even Stranger Things is coasting on popularity from a decade ago. I don’t think it could have become nearly that big if it came out today.
Oh yeah, if anything the Reddit bubble downplays how big that show is. I was wondering if people would still be into it when it came back but news of Netflix doing theatrical releases feels huge in my area.
Stranger Things is extremely popular. The final season premiere week had almost 60 million viewers, the highest for any English Netflix series. It is a top 10 show in every country. Just because you don’t know anybody who watches it doesn’t mean it isn’t a massive hit.
It’s popular, but within its own corner of the world. I have a respect for that franchise, but personally don’t watch it out of a lack of interest.
If you go to a comic convention, it’s one of many competing fandoms as opposed to an overarching dominating presence.
To be fair, streaming has split popular culture into a thousand little pieces. Very few things are "big" anymore. Taylor Swift might be the only example I can think of.
KPop Demon Hunters is something else that comes to mind in this day and age.
It being streaming only, on a famously janky app, owned by an idiot who's currently pursuing Warner Bros. with the blind tenacity of Pepé Le Pew, turns people off. The newer stuff has been tonally inconsistent project to project with no attempt at any sort of connectivity between shows. The 90s stuff was operating chronologically across three shows and four movies. Now we have Strange New Worlds doing its on thing while Lower Decks was REALLY doing its own thing in an extremely separate time period.
Yeah, grow and evolve with the times, but don't fall into the trappings of things you aren't known for. How can you tell a modern Trek season finale? The world is ending and the ship is being lit darker than it usually is and the fate of the galaxy is resting on one central protagonist who maybe hasn't tested well but we've shoved forward anyway. This is Star Trek, not The Flash.
And recently-speaking, I HATE Bones' casting. Hate it. It more or less confirms my theory that Strange New Worlds is casting its legacy characters based on one or two superficial qualities. Thomas Jane looks cantankerous, let's make him Bones! Martin Quinn is Scottish, so there ya go!
Martin Quinn is 31, James Wesley is 43, and Thomas Jane is 56. Comparing that to the ages that these characters are in 2259, when SNW Season 2 is set, Scotty is 39, Kirk is 28, and Bones is 31. Scotty is the oldest person on Kirk's senior staff, Quinn looks like he's fresh out of high school. I know Jane is popular casting but I have autism and can't reconcile this. I have a really hard time working things like this over in my brain.
DeForest Kelly was 11 years older than Shatner and Nimoy. So there's precedent.
There's precedent, yeah. But Thomas Jane is roughly 25 years older than the character he's supposed to be playing. If that existed in a vaccum, I'd have an easier time with it, but stacked up against Martin Quinn, it makes it look like either Scotty is Benjamin Button or Bones is Jack from Jack.
It really cannot be overstated just how terrible Paramount Plus is as a streaming service
I've had all of the major streaming platforms in recent memory, and the hate for Paramount Plus is a bit extreme. It's fine honestly. Probably has the weakest navigation of the bunch but it's not a deal breaker.
Consider yourself lucky
Navigating in Paramount Plus has just been the worst, but that's the tip of the iceberg for me.
I did my annual winter trek mini-marathon. I experienced multiple crashes while watching Enterprise, SNW, DS9, and Lower Decks (2x with Lower Decks btw). Lo and behold, I go to Netflix to watch Prodigy...SMOOTH sailing.
You may find the hatred for Paramount Plus to be extreme. I would disagree. I would find the hatred for Paramount Plus to be...lacking. Need more of it.
I mean I haven’t liked a single thing since they rebooted it and I don’t think I’m alone in that
Nothing is the force in popular culture that it once was, because the avenues for cultural products to become popular are far more splintered than they ever were.
That may be true, but is it the only reason that modern Trek isn't as well known as previous eras?
Do you remember when "baby Yoda" (Gogu) was something of a cultural Star Wars phenomenon recently. It's still possible (although a lot more difficult) for TV shows to find cultural significance beyond their dedicated fan base
In the 60s everyone knew who Spock and Kirk were. In the 90s just about everyone knew who Data and Picard were. Ask an average TV viewer today to name a character from Discovery.
The issue is definitely "avenues" (the mechanisms to deliver art and product) as you stated. That's why I discussed streaming in my original post. But, I also think it's a matter of writing quality, style, intent, and other choices concerning the vision of what Trek can be.
It also doesn't help that seasons are so short that it's difficult for people to become invested in characters.
As much as we Trekkies hate it, Star Wars was always bigger than Star Trek. But I also doubt if you ask the average TV viewer today they'll be able to name a character from any of the Star Wars shows that's not Baby Yoda, and how many would actually know the character's real name?
But anyone who lived through the 80s or 90s could tell you who Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader were.
Even though Star Wars is being capitalized on like crazy these days, I'm not convinced it has even close to the same cultural influence it had when the first three movies came out.
As both a star Trek & wars fan, Disney really shit the bed with their movies. For me personally it ruined the franchise.
All the modern Trek was anywhere from mid quality to great, and even Picard season 3 mostly managed to give the tng crew its swan song.
Meanwhile Disney just went off and executed Han Leia & Luke after destroying their characters and making all their success from the original movies meaningless.
Baby Yoda only worked cuz of the cultural phenomenon that is og Yoda. But the most recent announced baby Yoda movie has less views on its trailer than Supergirl, so I think even baby Yoda has been milked as much as they could.
I watched every episode of Discovery and I still couldn't name half of the regular bridge crew...
That drove me crazy about that show. They rarely addressed each other by name.
That is because they never were main caracters, even though they got more important in the later seasons. They were still side caracters.
Baby yoda, minecraft and all the other huge touchstones are huge because they became popular among kids. Today, 6-7 is more famous than star trek because kids are the actual avenue for fame now.
You say kids, but part of kids being a drive force is social media. It's easy for something to spread culturally across social media when you're talking about people consuming short blurbs of information incessantly.
But in a TV medium like Star Trek, it's much harder now. Even getting something to blow up like GoT would be difficult today.
Most people still know who Kirk and Spock are, and quite a few also know who Data and Picard are as well, even if they lack the detailed knowledge a fan would have.
Ask an average person twenty years ago to name one from VGR, DS9 or ENT
This is the norm for shows.
Star Trek has been declining as a cultural force for almost 30 years. It’s also built to be an episodic TV series and is competing against these prestige dramas and high budget serials that will have way more cultural impact. Comparisons to Star Wars are actually pretty spot on in that respect because their streaming series have been declining too for the same reasons. Grogu was a cute Baby Yoda and the first big debut of Disney +, first live action Star Wars show, came out right before the Rise of Skywalker. It had a lot of reasons for cultural impact, but you don’t see the same impact with Ahsoka and Acolyte and Skeleton Crew. Even with Andor which matches those prestige serials’ quality doesn’t really pass the “ask a random person to name a character” test
But again, this is a trend for Star Trek. People in the 2000s didn’t know who Trip and Phlox were. DS9 and Voyager didn’t have the same impact as TNG. It’s mostly a matter of not innovating and when they do, they’re copying other series’ formats and not very well. DIS and PIC didn’t have the compelling story for seasons-long arcs to carry mass appeal and with SNW general audiences aren’t begging for the 5th redo of a 60 year old formula even though it’s pretty good
No syndication that keeps in people's attention. Once a show finishes it's run on streaming, it's gone from the wider public consciousness.
Popular culture is effectively dead nowadays, very few things have very large social reach and impact... we've all gone off into our own echo chambers.
I go to Trek conventions once in a while, and I can't help but think that it's some sort of gathering for older people.
With that said, science fiction the genre isn't the zeitgeist at the moment. As good as some of the current sci-fi shows are, I still barely see, for example, an Expanse cosplayer in a convention. The media landscape is too fragmented for any shows to stand out.
Sci-fi is at its peak, some of the most popular shows have been sci-fi every year for the last 5 years or so. It's just more down to earth sci-fi, not spaceships and robots.
This. Pluribus is the most popular show in Apple TV's history. Maybe Trek should tap into some of that and do something with Jurati already.
I've never really cared how cool or mainstream it is. Even at the height of TNG's popularity when I was in middle school I remember most other boys in my classes thought Trek was dorky.
Also in my experience the more mainstream something is the more compromised it could be. People are complaining about Academy looking like Vampire Diaries or whatever, but that's precisely because the powers that be want it to be more mainstream and appealing to gen-z. Focusing on that is detrimental to core fans, if anything.
Current Star Trek lacks social impact because the writing lacks themes of social relevance.
Trek was always at its best when it told stories set in the future but with moral dilemmas and allegories that could be related to the modern day. Sure, the space battles every now and then were fun but the BEST was often the former rather than the latter (also, the battles and fights were few and far between…vs now when it seems to drive the series).
Current Trek does not tell stories in the same vein of the most successful Trek shows from the past. It lacks themes of social commentary and often the sci-fi aspects fall flat or feel hollow. The current wave of Trek attempted to appeal to a wider audience but in reality has appealed to a smaller audience.
EDIT: There is also the aesthetics. Everything in modern Trek is dark and depressing, and I mean that figuratively as well as literally. Every ship is DARK and that’s just frankly annoying.
What I am absolutely done with are all the things about modern TV and movies : lens flare, shaky cam, everyone is either mumbling or screaming, and everything is too dark to see. It's just so unpleasant to look at that I probably wouldn't watch even if every episode was City on the Edge of Forever. Which, uh, they aren't.
I want to touch on something that I don't think star trek fans consider too much. September 11, 2001.
Star trek has always been a somewhat hopeful show. It's about humanity exploring and reaching for an aspirational future.
So after 9/11, the western world was shocked out of our sense of safety. The world became a much more dangerous place. America added armed military to airports, a very visible symbol of how the world had changed.
So then a show called Enterprise airs starting September 26, 2001. It has all the hope of previous star trek but it is released into a world full of uncertainty and fear. Obviously the show had plenty of other problems, but the first season was written and shot for a different world.
After 9/11, media changed. Super hero movies turned into The Dark Knight. The most popular show on TV was Game of Thrones. And Star Trek with its hopeful message doesn't fit in that environment. Discovery was widely criticized for trying.
I'm not sure there is a wide audience for hopeful Star Trek even now. I would love to be proven wrong.
You mentioned the Dark Knight
And then even now people might not want a hopeful Star Trek.
I say Superman 2025 proves the audience does want hope, it was brightness and hope that is worth fighting for.
The dark Knight is a pretty hopeful movie imo. Especially the part where the people on the 2 boats refuse to blow each other up.
TOS aired just a few years after the Cuban Missle Crisis, in the middle of the Vietnam War. TOS didn't exactly air in a time of certainty and safety.
Yeah good point. We were still pretty worried about nuclear armageddon well into the '80s. And in the '70s the economy was crap on top of that.
TNG landing right about when the Berlin Wall came down and leading into the 90's tech economy was probably the most hopeful era for America and much of Europe in the last hundred years, which is why 9/11 stands out so starkly.
Otherwise you have the Great Depression leading into WWII, that ending into the cold war, the Korean and Vietnam wars during the Cold War, the Vietnam draft and gas crisis in the 70s.
Living in a hopeful era isn't exactly the norm for society.
The new Battlestar Galactica fit the zeitgeist really well, too, and threw in some relevant social commentary.
I was born in '92. I liked and continue to like Star Trek, but that vision of the future seemed hokey to me and my friends.
Halo was the science fiction juggernaut of my youth, and Halo presents a future where interplanetary expansion has resulted in a kind of dull, rote fascism ruling all humanity. This seemed pretty believable to us then.
That particular kind of bleakness went out of favor, but I think science fiction went out of favor in general. The future became too grim to even consider, I think, except in extremely sensationalized things like Hunger Games.
Media is pretty fragmented generally. There are waves of popularity still, and a few icons. Everyone knows iron man now, but even most Marvel characters aren't super well known. Everyone knows Taylor Swift. Everyone has heard of stranger things, though most haven't watched it in years. But generally we just don't all watch the same stuff anymore. We can't even agree on what is reality anymore because news is so fragmented.
I think reducing the criticisms of Discovery to "trying to be hopeful in a hopeless time" is not only far too reductive, but mostly inaccurate as well.
There’s a massive tonal shift in the franchise. Classic Trek felt like a stage play where big ideas were interrogated. Modern Trek feels more like a lecture series punctuated by explosions. It feels like the writers don't trust the audience to handle a slow-burn debate or genuine interpersonal conflict, so they settle for "pew pew" action and forced sentimentality.
There’s a reason “those old scientists” was so good an episode
1) bright. It was bright. Like a cartoon. Since it was a crossover with a cartoon
2) it actually did have a social message. It was disguised by the deeply (but well done) self indulgent nostalgia trip, but secondary premise of the episode was social commentary on racism and breaking/defying stereotypes. And that is classic Star Trek.
It lacks the profoundness of the original shows thematically, as they explored heavy adult topics. The whole "belive in yourself and you will be the best" and "you are awesome the way you are" and "trust in each other and everything will be fine" is a Disney level or message for kids.
Thank you for this comment. I was thinking the same.
I don't really have a meaning about the anesthetics, but after DS9, I think Star Trek keeps missing deep, interesting dilemmas, some real transgressions, and some stuff that makes you think.
Exactly.
I want smart Star Trek again. What we have is Star Trek that has been dumbed down.
Thank you!
Check out these posts from over in /r/sciencefiction.
The "1966 Singularity": How "Energy Optimism" created the Golden Age of Sci-Fi (Star Trek, Doctor Who, & Ultraman)
From Evangelion to DS9 to The X-Files: Why 1990s Sci-Fi Shifted from Outer Space to Inner Crisis
But I also think it has a lot to do with Star Trek going from from niche to big budget. Money writes Trek as much as the writers do. Money carries its own baggage, money demands guaranteed profits, money hates risk, money means lowest common denominator slop. In the 60s-80s they could solicit stories from trained scientists and engineers, now it's written by communications majors who aren't really fans as much as they say they are. Original ideas get replaced with discount imports from every other space fantasy.
Case in point: In TNG: The Naked Now, it took Riker half the episode to remember where he heard of polywater before. He had almost forgotten Kirk's adventures because it had happened nearly a century ago, and it wasn't that important anymore. Yes, even though his ship was named after the one Kirk commanded. Fast forward to SNW Those Old Scientists and the entire damn episode is about how revered everyone is.
Because of the money factor, Trek cannot do original anymore, that is too risky. Instead, Trek turned inward, mining itself for material with self-references and fan service.
Quite honestly I think Trek mostly forgot what it was. It's a scifi take on cultural situations that are addressed from a lens far from our own reality. I grew up in the 80's and 90's so silver age trek was my thing. The only trek that really got it was SNW in seasons 1 and 2 and that vanished mostly with season 3. Star Trek asked us to consider societal situations and modern trek mostly doesn't do that. It's too vested in its twisting arcs and dark drama. Couple that with the lack of easy access due to it being stream and you don't really reach an audience and you can't really draw in new ones due to the pay wall. While I love trek for the 'oo big ship' it was the stories that made me think that stuck with me. Most of modern trek (again aside from SNW seasons 1 and 2) are forgettable. They are just a lot of CGI with no real substance. When you compare the writing of TNG with episodes like Measure of a Man, Pale Moonlight and Drumhead to modern trek, you can really see the major differences. SNW had that episode with the people who were going to use anti-matter weapons on each other and a few others I can't remember off the top of my head, but that's the problem. Nothing sticks. Nothing begs you to consider the situation.
It was clearly at its strongest from the 80s when the original series had a resurgence with the movies to the time TNG ended its run. I’d say after that point is when Trek reached the quantity for the sake of quantity era. Even if you love DS9 and Voyager they were in the shadow of TNGs success and people even feel Series 7 of TNG was them out of ideas. The viewing figures after TNG ended were often just trying to stay afloat. So really I feel by the time we got to Enterprise the wider audience stopped caring about Trek and didn’t even bother seeing Star Trek: Nemesis to say goodbye to the TNG crew. So while people can so oh it’s struggling now after an amazing run… so it was always pushed to keep going as far as it could while hoping the films would do well enough.
Maybe early trek was treated more like flagships for their channels. Which same could be said for their streaming too. But that’s really the only difference. the difference between tv and streaming.
Hiding it all behind the Paramount+ walled garden is definitely lessening it's impact.
There are so many other sources of entertainment today, I don't see any show having that kind of impact ever again. When TNG came out many viewers really were still limited to broadcast TV with maybe a VCR if they had the money. The days of "must see TV" are history.
Given that one didn’t even need cable to watch the first 6 Star Trek series…and now not just “streaming” but a specific streaming platform in first CBS All Access now Paramount+…it makes sense that there is less vast cultural impact.
We are left to wonder though: if the Star Trek franchise were owned by Netflix, Disney or Apple, would it have further reach? I’d think yes. Netflix has the largest reach. Disney has the family demo. Apple is the leader in sci-fi content.
There is something wrong with the modern writers they have on Star Trek. I can go back and watch old episodes and they are still fun to watch despite knowing what is going to happen. The same thing goes for Stargate, Eureka and a variety of other non sci-fi shows.
The only thing modern Star Trek has going for it is the fear of missing out or the expectation that it "might" have something awesome. Frequently they disappoint and don't inspire me to eagerly await the next episode. Trying to go back and watch episodes I've already seen is even worse. New Star Trek shows feel like a chore almost.
This isn't a problem with modern writers across the board though. There are still new shows out there where each new episode makes you want to watch the next. Tracker on CBS is one of those shows and One Piece of Netflix. So there are still plenty of good writers making good shows, but for some reason Star Trek doesn't have them.
It almost feels like the copy of a copy of a copy syndrome. As I've seen other say in the past, modern Star Trek seems almost like fan fiction who had fun watching Star Trek in the past and want to create those "fun" moments again, but they just don't know how to piece it all together into a good story.
I think the other issue is that a lot of NuTrek is morally and ethically bankrupt. Much of it is just a generic space action movie slapped with a Star Trek skin.
The best, most influential, and broadest impacting Trek conveys ethical, moral, and philosophical education into its viewers. It subtly elevates its audience, like Mr Rogers, or the shows of Carl Sagan.
What's missing from modern Trek is what made The Good Place such a hit, even though it's a show based on heavy philosophy content, not Kung-fu fights and starship battles.
There isn't one single post-Roddenberry Star Trek series that even attempts to deliver on Star Trek's core premise of utopia, enlightenment, ethical storytelling. Every single post-Roddenberry Star Trek franchise has been cannibalized by narcissists and psychopaths and is a perversion and betrayal of Star Trek's fundamental, foundational ideals.
It is no surprise that Star Trek's cultural significance has diminished over the decades, in the same way that it is no surprise when companies that become publically traded enshittify their products and services, or when companies get bought by hedge funds go bankrupt. Star Trek's core ideals died with Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek itself has been dying ever since.
Is modern star trek really star trek?
The original series stands apart because of its age and experimentation but it is still generally canon with the next generation which is roughly canon with Voyager, DS9 and Enterprise and all of the random films.
As much as I enjoyed the new Star Trek films, they invented a whole new universe for no reason (plenty of aliens to choose from instead of destroying Vulcan - how many films did they think they were going to make?!).
Discovery doesn't tie in with either the films or the original Roddenberry trek and is noticeably weird. Strange new Worlds is probably one of the better ones because it doesn't write off 700 hours of established Trek. Even the first two series of Picard were not great and were some separate program with actors from star trek.
Star Trek isn't a continuous progression and hasn't existed for a long time - it's just a badge engineered sci-fi program now. It's not especially relevant even to Star Trek fans, even those who started with Discovery!
I think it's foolish to make shows set before TOS with tech and such that completely clashes with and outclasses anything in TOS.
It's just weird. I understand they do the whole "well it's just the limited range of the old shows, this tech and it's presentation would have looked like this if they had the tech"
Nah, just silly.
🤔
Because it "does'nt tie in with either the films or the original shows"?
Yes.
with the rampant anti science sentiment and luddites running things I'm not the least surprised.
the "popular force" was (and is) an illusion
people on this subreddit think they were UNpopular because they liked this very popular thing, there's always a faction that hates it as much as we who love it
Huh? People hating something doesn’t mean it’s not popular. Star Trek was undeniably a huge force in pop culture. It completely shaped fandom and science fiction for years to come and spawned some of the most successful tv series ever.
Star Trek is at least in better shape than Star Wars.
Absolutely fair, but in terms of cultural cache, OP is absolutely right.
I could go to Target or Walmart right now (well not RIGHT now, xmas and all) and walk out with a half dozen different Star Wars shirts probably. Trek? Maybe online?
Theres dozens of Star Wars LEGO sets on the shelves of any dozens of stores, theres one Trek LEGO set at one store.
And thats with 700+ hours total of Trek to <150 of Wars! And still probably more hours of Trek coming out in 2026 than Wars even.
That's going to consequences in the long term. There's a lot of young Star Wars fans, but we Trekkies are getting up there in years, overall.
I mean i think that's the crucial element for why Star Wars persists and Star Trek fades. It's merch, and especially kids merch. Star Trek never came close to Star Wars in going all in on merchandising. Merch keeps a series alive in the public conscience even when there's not been much recent noteworthy content, and kids merch does a lot to propagate a new generation of fans. I'm a tremendous Star Wars fan as an adult: my current level of nerd in that series probably wouldn't have occurred had my family not gotten me Star wars toys, decorations, apparel, video games, and books for literally as far back as I can remember.
I think this is a good point. Star Trek merchandise has always lagged behind other major franchises, even franchises that shouldn't be as big as Trek. There is no franchise that can put out content all year every year, and merchandise is what keeps these things in the public eye during periods when its not active on screen.
Star Trek merchandise being terrible and lackluster is an unfortunate running joke since the Roddenberry days.
Maybe that is why the licensing fees went up for some vendors, which led to them leaving the property for good. Perhaps Ellison is thinking about putting more serious money and effort into the lackluster storefront?
I guess time will tell, but that would definitely be nice
It is definitely an area that could use improvement. It’s embarrassing how dismal merch is for this franchise, especially when compared to both Etsy shops and items sold by other franchises.
Theres the occasional standout like a Tom Paris Collectors Plate, but yeah holy shit thats a lot of crap on the official store. Just looking at the drinkware, theres only ONE (set of 2) prop replicas available and its $80 and literally everything else is generic cafepress shit. How hard wouldve a decent Moopsy plush in a timely manner been?
Last piece of Trek "merch" i bought? Completely unbranded and from a restaurant supply store, cuz i was watching a random DS9 ep and recognized something. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001PZBDU0 LMAO, called out in the first review.
But still, almost nobody wants an $800 perfect phaser replica, give us a $30 plastic one, holy shit. I have a couple $30 sonic screwdrivers that light up and make noise and then fucking Rick and Morty blew those outa the fuckin water with a $15 perfectly screen accurate portal gun that lights up, makes noise, AND projects on a wall! And i have how many plastic lightsabers...
I agree.
The whole "baby Yoda" thing (later revealed as Grogu) reverberated just about everywhere. I think the modern Star Wars TV shows have (mostly) been much better than the modern Star Wars films. Star Wars TV has kept the franchise in the public consciousness and for the most part the shows have brought fans together. Kind of the opposite of what's happening with Star Trek, sadly.
Not at all, Andor is more relevant and well written than any of the trek we have gotten in this new era.
Andor style show wouldn’t really fit with trek imo. Strange New Worlds season 1 & 2 maybe aren’t as intense but are at least close in terms of great writing and classic trek feel.
Not saying it needs a Andor like show, just that Andor was more poignant and relevant than any of the new Trek. It used to be the opposite between the franchises.
Andor wasn't particularly successful viewership-wise, though.
Andor has actual cultural relevance. It’s talked about outside star wars circles and used as a benchmark for other shows trying to take their ip seriously. That has a value that exceeds past simple viewing numbers. Current trek has no cultural impact or exposure outside its existing circle of fans.
I don’t give a damn about viewer numbers, they actually made a good show that will stand up to time. The new trek a hasn’t done that at all.
Well, the shows are good at least
Yeah, that’s not true. The Star Wars sequels, while not critically acclaimed, made tons of money... enough for all those offshoot movies and tv show projects.
Trek doesn’t have that same draw unfortunately. Maybe someday. Not in its current form. Probably not while it’s under Paramount in their current form either.
Ellison did say he wants to pour more money into Star Trek and commissioned a film to be made.
We’ll have to see whether this results in bigger things or is just big talk.
Star Trek had little cultural impact after TNG went off the air.
DS9 and Voyager were not cultural touchstones for most.
Part of this is just age. Star Trek was new when it was new. People knew it now so its impact is lessened because of familiarity.
Another part is it isn’t written to be impactful anymore.
Because of streaming, there is 1000% more television now than there was in the 1980s. This lets TV execs cater to niche groups, including Star Trek people. But it also means that everybody isn't watching the same shows and therefore people think less about Star Trek in particular. If you want a diet of 100% vampire shows or true crime or whatever, you can probably do that and never even think about Trek.
Star Trek's cultural relevance peaked with TNG and has been downhill since the 90s and maybe had a moment when the first Kelvin film came out in 2009.
DS9, VOY, and ENT did not have anywhere near the impact of TNG. This is not a nu-Trek only issue.
It’s almost as if streaming services are hurting the entertainment industry by putting up walls.
It stopped being this 25 years ago.
The monoculture died a flaming wreck 25 years ago, Trek is still popular by modern standards and certainly not dying as you want to imply.
I remember seeing a lot of Star Trek halloween costumes in the mid-late 90s. I think it was more popular back then because 1)90s Trek was good and 2) modern Trek sucks balls.
Popular culture in the 1960s: Movies, TV shows, Music, and the occasional Book.
Popular culture in the late 80s/90s: Movies, TV shows, Cartoons, Music, videogames, and the occasional Book/Comicbook.
Popular culture today: Internet, Streaming Services, TikTok, Social Media, Movies, TV shows, Videogames, Anime, Cartoons, YouTube, Music, Books, Comicbooks, Manga, K-Dramas, and so much MORE.
A single unified pop cultural landscape where everyone experiences the same media just doesn’t exist anymore. Even the occasional cultural watershed that does get super popular only lasts about a week or two before people move on to the next hot thing.
In the UK, TOS was repeatedly endlessly on the BBC during the 70s and 80s. TNG was shown once on BBC2 and DS9/VOY/ENT were only available on Sky (which many people didn’t subscribe to). So the idea that 90s trek was hugely popular/well known to the general public isn’t really true (in the UK anyway).
It’s why the average member of the public back then (and still today) equates trek with Kirk, Spock and the Connie Enterprise. They’ve never been succeeded/eclipsed by any other trek series and it’s why modern trek still can’t let go of it either.
And of course, having all modern trek on a platform that no ones heard of or wants to subscribe to doesn’t help either.
TNG was popular in the 90s in the UK - I was there, conventions got bigger, attracting actors, merch was in Woolies, the show itself moved to Sky but that platform was peaking - satellite dishes everywhere - and the VHS tapes being released monthly were always in the top 10 in Our Price and Virgin.
The old Trek (up to Enterprise) told stories that held a mirror up to human nature and threw in aliens to point out our foibles. They also stuck to traditional story telling tropes of: Man vs. Man, Man vs. Society, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Technology, Man vs Supernatural, Man vs. Fate, Man vs. Self … and ended with a feel good after school special moral of the story happy ending that gave people hope for the future. They were also easily accessible to everyone on “free” tv with commercial breaks. Today’s pay to view Nu Trek has better special effects, but chases Mulligans across the galaxy and doesn’t have the same wholesome atmosphere that the old stuff did. The old crews felt like being part of a family striving for the same goals. Nu Trek just feels like a generic substitute.
Canadas wonderland during the 90s was known as Paramount Canadas Wonderland. There were roaming romulan, Klingon characters and Star Trek merch. I can’t recall about other races or federation.
I have a picture with a Klingon.
Also used to be a great statue of the OG enterprise. I bought my micromachines enterprise d from the gift shop there.
Also why, if you’re familiar with the park, the main mountain looks similar to the paramount mountains.
Same deal when kings island was paramount owned. There was a star trek wection with models of ships and costumed klingons
I loved that era of star trek, well mostly anyways and have grown more fond of it over the years but the move from broadcast to streaming services change ho and when media was consumed.
People knew that era, because when TV was broadcast, it didn't matter what genre you were into, you had to watch what was available and as you surfed you would run into trek. Culturally, it was significant but it was never mainstream during the time it aired, just around enough that everyone saw it.
Now people live in bubbles, if you like reality TV, you never have to see anything else. This has reduced the chance for any modern media to spread beyond it's fan base.
This has fundamentally resulted in creators giving up any attempt to broadening the audience and just playing fan service, often badly. It's low effort, low return that mostly dies off quickly without making an impact.
It's not just the content, the entire ecosystem has devolved into generating this content.
Totally agree with OP.
I'll put it this way. In the 70's and 80s, everyone knew the names Kirk, Spock and McCoy (and others) even if they never really watched the show. References/quotes made in other movies were immediately picked up by the audience regardless of whether they watched Trek.
The same thing occurred in the 90's with TNG and (to an extent) DS9. Even the Emmy's had a Trek skit in he 90's where the cast of Frasier played the Voyager bridge crew.
Now people are surprised to learn Trek is still being produced.
My personal feeling is that Trek has lost ground due to the terribly poor writing quality. Kurtzman seems to rely on Easter Eggs and copying other popular (non-Trek) shows to get ratings and attention. The Orville was better and closer to Trek.
Imo it has very little cultural impact right now because it’s both not easily accessible, and what does exist doesn’t encourage the same hype as like a Yellowstone to justify even brief subscriptions per season because it’s not being made for mass market. It’s made for Trekkies.
Frankly Star Trek reach is bigger today than it has been since the mid 1980’s but there is so much more content out there today and so many more platforms that it seems and feels like less. The truth is today is that that there are just vastly more content options available.
Locking it all behind a C tier streaming service is the real problem (as well as refusing to get any theatrical movies off the ground)
If new Star Trek shows were capturing the same people who still watch bizarrely popular network tv shows (think The Rookie, NCIS, even something similar to when the CW was doing the DC universe shows, etc) I feel like the cultural hold would still be at least slightly there. The closest it felt to mainstream recently was when Picard S3 was being advertised in Times Square. It never needed to be prestige streaming TV, it never needed to be movie quality cinematography and efffcts on TV, it should’ve stayed a consistent but manageable network franchise that was put out on a regular basis on easily accessible channels. Idk for sure if that would have worked, but it feels more plausible than the current state of it gasping for a final breath on a dying streaming service that nobody uses.
I felt like TOS was the only real impact in popular culture, largely owing to Shatner and parodies of his performance. I never found it popular so if Trek is unpopular I'm not really bothered by it.
To be honest, I am okay with that. Star Trek had its moment, much like Flash Gordon did, or Robin Hood tales. Star Trek changed things, and shook up science fiction and television in good ways, but the stories belong to their eras.
The influence will be there, in the ripples and the offshoots and in how its version of a future where humanity has overcome its problems to reach to the stars will still inspire.
All the sci-fi between 79 to 87
The Star Trek Experience at the then-Las Vegas Hilton was amazing. Part rides, part museum and part restaurant/bar/gift shop. It was so well done. Great attention to detail!
I would say it takes a couple of decades to know if Trek made a cultural impact into younger generations; however, I doubt 10-20 years from now young adults will be reminiscing about DSC or SNW they watched on their Trekkie parent's CBS All Access / Paramount Plus subscription. However, there's a good chance some will remember Prodigy cartoon on Netflix.
And Lower Decks and Picard are so rooted in 90s Trek that I can't imagine any Trekkie under 40 really appreciated them -- and even us old Trekkies only hate-watched for the first 2 seasons of Picard.
But maybe we'll be surprised at the generation of rabid Section 31 movie fans in 20 years like when fans grew-up to praising Hayden Christensen because the prequels was their generation's Star Wars.
Nope. It's a terrible terrible thing that Kurtzman has done to this franchise
Oh man. The star trek experience in the Las Vegas Hilton. Last time we went our family mini van got stolen and all of our luggage too lol. Recoverd the van a few hours later minus all our stuff and the radio. Real easy to steal a 1992 Plymouth Voyager. Just pop the ignition ring off and stick a pair of scissors in it. We used scissors to start the car for a month til we could fix it hah.
9/10 would Trek again.
I can’t watch serialized TV.
It’s just not my thing.
This is why I watch voyager but not too much of DS9
I don’t watch discovery but I watch SNW.
Well, I really enjoyed it, but the Broadcast Era might as well be 79 trillion hours of Star Trek to watch for a general audience viewer. Even the trekheads got burned out in the end. What you described as a compartively small amount of star trek to watch in the streaming era is easily another 100+ hours of mainline/canon stuff. It's been around for an eternity and put out what seems like a nigh infinite amount of stuff to watch so people don't watch. I have skipped a lot of long running franchises because I didn't want a 1000 hour homework assignment.
Gene credited Star Trek making its way into popular culture through TV syndication. It was always on some channel. So inevitably, you ended up seeing an episode or two.
Now they locked it all behind a pay wall (I'm the only person I know who subs to paramount plus -and I only for trek)...
And they are about to dramatically raise the licensing fees for products...
And then they are focusing on shows that dont interest the fanbase (Academy) in a bid to entice new fans which will fail as its behind a pay wall so no one will flock to an unknown.
They are essentially cutting off the reasons star trek entered pop culture, slowly cutting off the oxygen of fresh fans via pay walls and slap dash projects (section 31, Academy).
I mean, I'm not trying to be "anti woke" or whatever, but this kinda always happens when niche interest media tries to use their platform to appeal to wider audiences.
The original niche fans begin to feel alienated from the new content, new fans don't have the drive or motivation to watch the new media in the first place so it kinda just becomes a regular show.
I don't blame them for branching out, especially when it worked out so well in the 90s, but it feels like they waited too long, and started too far from the original vibes and the modern shows just feel like every other bland, short lived sci Fi drama series that's been released in the past 10 years with some modern feel good vibes thrown in.
I was finally induced to watch SNW after not being able to sustain enthusiasm for Disco and Picard 4 episodes into the 1st season. I didn’t want to write them off as “woke” being the sole reason they didn’t appeal to me, but the heavy handed way it was delivered was definitely a factor. While watching TNG Chain of Command I realized the reason I preferred old trek to NuTrek. It’s all about the quality of writing. New Trek is intentionally dumbed down to appeal to the broadest audience. It’s all form over substance. What made classic trek so much better is they were written for an engaged and thoughtful audience. They had nuanced and complicated stories.
The current era of Star Trek is being made with the same model as other mainstream television just staged in the Star Trek universe.
Culture has changed...there is no syndication of modern Trek because it's tied down to a streaming service. The older series still hit reruns on channels like Me TV...but they're just not the same.
Even the Star Trek experience is a sign of the times, whens the last time an actual themed experience succeeded in Vegas? I'd suspect it's been 20 years.
This is because you are in the echo-chamber that is Reddit. PIC, SNW, and DIS were all the most watched Star Trek series ever. More people than ever are watching Star Trek than before. PIC and DIS each had seasons that were in the Nielson top 10 list, which no other Star Trek series had ever done.
This is a strange combination of capitalism mixed with labor-conscious policies. It is a lot cheaper to make 10-15 episode length seasons. That is also about how long a season can be, algorithmically, to retain optimal viewership. As for the labor policies, TV syndication used torture the actors. They would have no time to spend with their family. In fact, the brutal TV filming schedule is one of the main reasons we have Kate Mulgrew as Janeway.
This is more about the age of streaming. Television used to be a sort of National and even World Wide bonding experience. Now we're off in our own smaller communities or fandoms. It's a bummer, and I don't really see it ever going back to the way it was before. Outside of maybe sports and breakout shows that become rarer and rarer every year.
New faces, new themes. Not just exploring and sciencing. Why is game of thrones so popular? Not a single scientist in there. People want to know how kings and queens live. these days Picard should be a minister or president. Everyone wants his job. The federation goes through a difficult period attacked by the borg, members threatening to leave, rumors of a dangerous bioweapon, a legendary space whale has been sighted. Wait that's discovery... OK there is no hope.
You are spot on with this analysis. I too lived through the “golden age” and agree Trek is no longer part of the zeitgeist as it once was. I still have an old Newsweek featuring Spock on the cover with the headline, “The Enduring Power of Star Trek.” But that was a long time ago. Mostly when I talk to younger people and mention Trek, they respond with something like, “my dad or my grandpa loves that show! However, every now and then I do run into young Trekkies.
I would say, even though Star Trek had its Peak in the 90ies with TNG, DS9 and VOY, even then it was never as important to the mainstream as Star Wars or (later) the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For example: First Contact (iirc) was the commercially most successful Star Trek movies, but it wasn't even in the Top10 of that year. Star Trek never had and it will never have that commercial and cultural Impact, that these other franchises have and that is something, the creators of modern Trek (starting with the 2009 movie) had never understood. They wanted to compete with Marvel and they failed. Miserably.
If I have an Internet connection and an LG TV I can watch TOS and/or TNG 24/7, there's a dedicated channel.
Other than the cost of the ISP, its Free...
A lot of people first discovered Trek because it was on broadcast television, which is something that doesn't really happen anymore, no sits in front of the TV scrolling through TV channels.
because the abrams movies, picard and most of discovery are terrible. A lot of writing that fundamentally didn’t appreciate star trek. Discovery finally caught a grove and got canceled. Lower decks isn’t taken seriously and that’s fine cause it doesn’t take itself seriously, it’s a love letter to trekkies
Younger people are fans of fantasy more than science fiction nowadays, and they like emo soapy drama in long-form binge shows.
They also like stories about people with special powers. Star Trek was about natural people (with the exception of Troi & Vulcans) using intelligence and their wits to overcome a problem.
ST also had a moral message beyond "killing is wrong."
Star Trek's variety of episode types and unpredictability were part of its charm. I hope young people turn away from dragons, wizards, and superheroes.
I lived through that golden age as well, and tbh when enterprise dropped it gave me Star Trek fatigue, and the theme song didn’t help lol. 3 shows at one is a bit much for any franchise.
Star Trek is a work of utopian fiction. Modern versions forget that, which is ironic because they want Star Trek to serve as a tool for political change by mirroring real life when its peak power has been in difficult times where it served as an optimistic counter to contemporary realities.
I think the shorter seasons help the show be more digestible to audiences old and new. Yes there is fun trivia to be had regarding the odd non-plot-arc episode related to Data’s cat, but man the filler eps of the old TNG era were problematic for me as a youngster. Save it for the webisodes maybe.