Star Trek : Too Successful?

Star Trek, its spin-offs and the movies are my favorite form of TV. Most episodes contain symbology of some sort – regarding outlook on humanity, gods and technology. I may not always agree with its symbology; however, it is far better that there be something behind the stories instead of the brain-dead TV that is prominent in our day and age.

By my count (which may not be entirely accurate) at www.startrek.com – there are 698 episodes of Star Trek and its spin-offs covering a vast period of time from 1966 to the present.

Sadly, according to an article I read in PlayBoy of an interview of Jolene Blalock (she plays Sub-Commander T-Pol on Star Trek: Enterprise) shortly there will be no Star Trek producing new shows on TV. While I am sure that the re-runs will go on for quite some time to come – it is not quite the same as looking forward to a new episode and all the unknowns that come along with it.

It is quite possibly also good-bye to TV that has meaningful content for a while as well. Not to say that Star Trek has a monopoly on carrying meaning inside their shows – just that Star Trek tends to put meaningful content in almost every show – even shows that are designed to make the main characters more three-dimensional.

Star Trek may well be a victim of being too successful. The reason I say this is that now there are plenty of shows on TV with heavy science fiction content. There is an entire channel devoted to science fiction. You no longer have only one resource to watch possible futures when watching TV.

In fact the most recent incarnation of Star Trek competes with other science fiction shows. Shows like Smallville and StarGate SG-1.

And in watching the Star Trek shows I noticed something with my son.

He apparently doesn’t really like them. Now he’s only just about turning 22 months old – but he watches and likes other shows, such as StarGate SG-1 and Futurama.

The reason becomes quite clear as I watch the shows. A great deal of the content of Star Trek is dialog – understanding both the characters and the situations they are in – and understanding why they make the decisions they make.

Not a whole lot of action. The air-time given to the starship Voyager is sometimes minimal – that if you didn’t catch the opening credits you might not even see the ship at all.

Star Trek TV shows rarely make the trade-off for content vs. action.

And therein lies the problem with Star Trek today. Now that it has relatively brainless competition with lots of action – I suspect that Star Trek is losing the battle with its competition.

It may well be that Star Trek will need to sleep for a while – until the right factors come in to play again – and a show like Star Trek : Next Generation can be created again.

But the problems may be deeper than just time and creating a new show. It may be that the Star Trek universe is flawed.

In watching the evolution of the show – it appears that human development has ended. In Star Trek : Next Generation – throughout the series it appeared that the Federation and Starfleet were the leaders of our section of the galaxy in terms of technological ability and morality. I mean, where do you take the story from there? You’ve got no-place to go, except downhill. Maybe take a chapter out of Titan A.E. and have invaders from another galaxy destroy the Earth and break up the Federation – so that once again the members of Starfleet have to struggle and can be the underdogs in the battles.

Or maybe we have to journey farther ahead in time – to a point where humanity is in the process of speciation – and a homo sapiens becomes home spacers – a new form of humanity that does not live on planets – and will never see or completely understand life on a planet.

Or maybe Star Trek needs to get dirty. The Federation is so moral and politically correct, that perhaps what is needed is a series about citizens of the Federation that are pirates – and why might pirates in a moral society buck against the masses – and how these people lives might be.

Another problem with the Star Trek universe is its venue. A network channel caters toward political correctness – and technology has always been an enabler of sexual content. What effect do the holographic rooms have on relationships on sexuality? These are topics that would never be explored on a network channel. It may be the next version of Star Trek needs to be a cable-only version – on ShowTime or HBO, where difficult subjects can be worked out.

Star Trek has shown a hopeful place for the future of humanity – one perhaps that is far more hopeful than anyone willing to do an extrapolation of our current civilizations context – and certainly that was the context when Star Trek : The Original Series was created.

But now that we have seen this hopeful future – where does it go from there? Speciation is one possibility – and in a far future what we term as humans may not exist – and perhaps this is not something to be feared as to be welcomed. More like a worm becoming a butterfly.

Then again, changes to our species (naturally occurring) might take centuries to thousands of years. Perhaps the stories really should be about explorers. Stories about explorers willing to set aside their lives on Earth and spend the rest of their lives traveling to the next nearest star.

In the case of Star Trek : Voyager – the crew was set off at a place where in 75 years they might make it back to Earth. The story of effort in attempting to make it home in adverse conditions is a good one. The story of people that make the choice to take a 140 year journey – which they themselves will not survive – for the general improvement of human knowledge – is a storyline full of stories about people living in circumstance vastly unlike and like our own circumstances. It would be a chance to bring children to the forefront of the stories – as well as the time when the children are the leaders of the ship and the adults at the beginning of the story are at an end of their lives. What if a large number of people decided that they did not want to go to their destination solar system? Political division among the crew?

A story line like that could last seven seasons easily. Even if not every episode contained symbolic content. Some of it could be strictly space opera (or soap opera) taking place on a generation ship has new things that it could bring to people.

What happens when a generation starts its journey as top of the hill technology – and 30 years in to its journey it is met by a ship from Earth created 5 years ago that can go 50% faster? Would this happen multiple times during the journey? Do you try to turn back? Or does the generation continue on and become a moving way station for ships flying to and from the destination star system?

Anyway, I would love to see the Star Trek tradition continue – and I wish them luck in creating new stories that are both engaging and talk about morality.

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