Wertzone Classics: Star Trek: The Original Series

Space, the final frontier. And so forth. In the mid-23rd Century, the Federation starship Enterprise explores strange new worlds under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, making discoveries both wondrous and terrifying.

Reviewing the original Star Trek is a bit like reviewing oxygen (you're not going to convince too many people about not using it), or Lord of the Rings. People are probably already going to watch it or have decided not to. I can't imagine there's too many people sitting on the fence over it. Still, having just watched the whole thing, reviewing it is only polite.

Perhaps the most succinct review of The Original Series, as it is now doomed to be called, came from Futurama back in 2002: "79 episodes, about 30 good ones." This is maybe a little harsh but also not entirely untrue. Airing from 1966 to 1969 (with an unaired pilot produced in 1964), Star Trek was a product of 1960s American assembly line television, producing a mind-boggling 29 episodes in its first season alone. Episodes were not so much carefully written as thrown together in a mad rush, with location filming being a rare luxury and decent visual effects an even rarer one. If anything, it's remarkable that the OG Star Trek holds together as well as it does, and when it works it's still excellent television.

The core of the show is the regular cast, particularly the triumvirate of William Shatner as Captain Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Spock and DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy: the action hero, the logical analyst and the emotional heart. This trio works extremely well, with consistently outstanding performances from Nimoy and Kelley across the entire show (Kelley is easily the most underrated performer on the show and in the following movies, and is always a delight to watch; Nimoy's brilliance has been extolled so much over the years it's almost redundant to repeat it now). This focus on the core trio detracts somewhat from the wider cast: George Takei as Lt. Sulu, Walter Koenig as Ensign Chekov, Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura and James Doohan as Chief Engineer Scott (with frequent guest appearances by Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel, and a rotating cast of recurring actors as crewmen, some of whom play multiple characters). The wider group gets relatively little time in the sun compared to the core three, which feels a bit weird from a modern lens but was relatively normal practice at the time.

From a performance perspective, William Shatner is a fascinating study. He is, for the first half of the show, consistently very good. Kirk is authoritative, moral and decisive, balancing the logic of Spock with the humanity of McCoy to good effect. In the latter half of the series, starting late in Season 2, it feels like he's checked out a little. The much-lampooned cliches of over-enunciation, attempts at dramatic pauses (which just feel like he's forgotten his lines midway through a speech) and occasionally wild over-acting become much more pronounced. When he has a good day, or is in a good episode with good material, he is still great, but that does become less common as the third season goes on (his worst performance is easily in Turnabout Intruder, which mercifully is also the last episode of the series).

From a writing perspective, the show is often inventive, intriguing and relatively smart, at least in the early going. Later episodes tend to emphasise action and develop tropes that are so rapidly reused they become tedious: the godlike entity who can crush the Enterprise and its crew any time they want, but first they have to use Kirk and the crew as pawns in some game, and are eventually defeated either by semantic trickery or (less commonly) some kind of technological breakthrough. The Enterprise mysteriously loses the use of its weapons, shields and transporter so often that your eyes may roll into the back of your head. Kirk talks sentient computers into self-destruction frequently enough that you wonder why an anti-Kirk firmware update isn't in circulation in the sentient evil computer club.

But the show is also remarkably adept at employing metaphor: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield's commentary on racism is so subtle it flew over the heads of some people, who wrote into the studio to complain that the near-identical aliens hating one another on the basis of skin colour alone was stupid (right in the middle of America's Civil Rights period). It also sings when it moves away from the all-powerful aliens trope to more even engagements: Balance of Terror's WWII submarine-inspired tension is superb, and Space Seed's battle of intellect and wills between Kirk and genetically-engineered warlord Khan is excellently portrayed. The battle between two Federation starships and a powerful (but not unbeatable) planet-killer in The Doomsday Machine is outstanding. The Devil in the Dark is possibly the show's best statement on how to respect and treat sentient life even if it looks and acts nothing like you are used to.

Like most shows of the period, the idea of "worldbuilding" is absent as a conscious idea, but when it strays into it, it is excellent, such as with our first visit to Vulcan in Amok Time and the Federation conference in Journey to Babel. The Klingons and Romulans are both intriguing enemies, although the portrayal of the Klingons lacks depth (maybe aside from Michael Ansara in Day of the Dove); the Romulans appear less frequently but more memorably, with both Balance of Terror and The Enterprise Incident being series highlights.

The show also gives good comedy, with both The Trouble with Tribbles and A Piece of the Action emerging as comic powerhouses (and The Naked Time having its moments). Gene Roddenberry was definitely less keen on comedy episodes, feeling they encouraged people to mock the show, but it's something Trek has been consistently pretty good at over many different shows and episodes. The show is also adept at existential horror, particularly in the early going through episodes like Where No Man Has Gone Before and Miri which make you wonder how the hell Trek got its reputation as a family show with a lot of charm: these episodes are cold, bordering on the bleak at times. That concept doesn't really emerge until the latter part of Season 1 and really sings in Season 2. It's been said so many times as to be redundant now, but Season 3 sees a marked slump in quality, with some of the worst episodes of the show and the franchise like Spock's Brain. Excellent episodes still crop up amongst the dross, like The Enterprise Incident and All Our Yesterdays, but it can be hard going.

Production value-wise, the show is obviously almost sixty years old so doesn't look fantastic. Location shooting is a bonus, hugely enhancing episodes like Shore Leave and Arena, but most episodes are forced to rely on sets (of wildly varying effectiveness) to portray exterior locations. Makeup and prosthetics are mostly underwhelming, but imaginative design can help overcome that: the Gorn looks weak, but the drama of the script helps overcome these deficiencies. Modelwork and space shots are often decent, and the 2006 remastered version of the show is excellent for updating the space shots whilst staying true to the original design intentions. In a similar vein, the show has some wince-inducing dialogue and ideas about the treatment of women and minorities compared to modern shows, but in other respects, and especially by the standards of the day, the show is remarkably progressive (and later Trek shows aren't always fantastic in this regard either).

Star Trek: The Original Series (****) is, in some respects, dated. But in many others it is remarkably watchable, with frequently great performances. It mixes horror, comedy and SF action-adventure to good effect. It set the scene and groundwork for the most successful TV SF franchise of all time. Sure, there's a fair number of episodes which are poor and don't work very well, but when the show does work - such as in City on the Edge of Forever, Balance of Terror, Amok Time, The Doomsday Machine, The Trouble with Tribbles and more - it remains excellent entertainment. The show is available right now in most territories via Paramount+ and on DVD and Blu-Ray.

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Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

The Klingon moon Praxis has exploded, disrupting the Empire's energy production and polluting the atmosphere of the Klingon homeworld. The United Federation of Planets sees the catastrophe as an opportunity, offering assistance in repairing the damage in return for a lasting peace. The Klingon Chancellor travels to Earth to negotiate the treaty but is killed, his assassination pinned on Captain Kirk, a well-known enemy of the Klingon Empire. With Kirk and McCoy imprisoned, it falls to Captain Spock and the Enterprise crew to exonerate their comrades, rescue them and stop those who are determined to end the chances of peace forever.

With the release of Star Trek V in 1989, it was felt that the time of the original Star Trek crew had come to an end, and the next film would star the Next Generation crew. However, Paramount were not keen on waiting until The Next Generation finished before making a new movie in the franchise. Plans for a prequel film set at Starfleet Academy also failed to excite anyone. At the same time, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War was firing up the excitement of Leonard Nimoy and Wrath of Khan writer-director (and Voyage Home co-writer) Nicholas Meyer, who saw the opportunity for a great analogy with real-life events. The frugal Meyer's involvement worked for Paramount, who wanted to make the film for less money than the disastrous Final Frontier, and also for Nimoy, who had pondered directing but knew it would annoy co-star Shatner; Meyer was a neutral figure everyone respected and whose work on two previous movies had been lauded. The meme that "every odd-numbered Star Trek film is rubbish" had started gathering pace by this time as well, so the fact the next movie was an even-numbered one and Meyer had worked on the two previous even-numbered films was encouraging.

Star Trek VI is not a subtle film. The comparisons to contemporary politics are fairly obvious, with the destruction of Praxis being basically Chernobyl in space, and the Klingon-Federation peace talks are the end of the Cold War by any other name. However, the film does start building a genuine sense of mystery. When the Enterprise fires on the Klingon ship, despite its records showing a full set of torpedoes on board, it creates a paradox that Spock, Scotty, Chekov and Uhura have to work to unravel. This is great fun - Star Trek usually handles mysteries well, at least those that do not bog down in technobabble - and is preceded by some very powerful scenes employing actors of the calibre of David Warner and Christopher Plummer (an old friend of Shatner's, who's clearly having an absolute whale of a time) as they debate realpolitik and quote Shakespeare. There some startling scenes as Kirk has to confront his racism towards the Klingons, inspired by his constant struggles with them and their murder of his son (in The Search for Spock). Characterisation is strong and the actors do well with the material, Meyer again getting a great performance out of Shatner (though he seems more willing to let some hammier takes go through, possibly due to a lack of time and money) and Nimoy showing up with his A-game, having understandably lost the will to live during The Final Frontier.

The film also features George Takei's best performance as Sulu, as well as giving him much more to do as the Captain of the Excelsior. More disappointing is the absence of Saavik, who was originally supposed to be the traitor on the Enterprise. Kim Cattrall auditioned for the part and impressed Nimoy and Meyer, but was unimpressed to learn she would be the third actress to play the role and turned it down. The producers agreed to rewrites making her a new character, Valeris (Cattrall even named her). However, the script was not adjusted to fit a more Vulcan-like character, leaving Saavik's more emotional tendencies (a result of her supposed half-Romulan heritage, although that revelation had been cut out of The Wrath of Khan) in place with a supposedly purely-Vulcan character. Cattrall does as good a job as she can as Valeris, but the character is somewhat under-written as a result of the changes.

The sequences on Rura Penthe are also disappointing; the lack of budget results in unconvincing sets and iffy alien makeup, though Iman gives a good performance as Martia, and the sequence relies a lot on Shatner and DeForest Kelley's effortless banter to get through it.

The film has a rousing climax with a solid space battle, and it's good to see the constantly-hamstrung USS Excelsior finally cutting loose and showing what it is capable of. The fact that this time everyone knew they were making their last full picture together makes for a more final and emotional ending, enhanced by the fact that the film launched in Star Trek's 25th anniversary year and that Gene Roddenberry sadly passed away shortly before the premiere. 

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (****) is not as accomplished as either The Wrath of Khan or The Voyage Home, but comfortably emerges as the third-best Star Trek film, with some excellent characters and storylines and some great dialogue. Only a few clunky scenes and budget constraints hold it back from matching the earlier two Meyer films.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Two and a half years have passed since the end of the infamous five-year mission of the USS Enterprise, under Captain James T. Kirk. Kirk has been promoted to Chief of Starfleet Operations, but he's going stir-crazy behind a desk. The Enterprise has been effectively rebuilt and refitted for a new mission under Captain Decker. A state of emergency is declared when an alien "cloud" of unknown origin and staggering size is detected heading for Earth, destroying three Klingon warships and a Starfleet listening post along the way. Kirk resumes command of the untested, new Enterprise on a mission to communicate with the alien intruder and discover its purpose.

Airing between 1966 and 1969, the original Star Trek series is best-remembered for its warm camaraderie between the crewmembers, its fast-paced action sequences and its light humour. When the franchise made its way onto the big screen ten years later (for the first of - so far - thirteen theatrical installments), the curious decision was made to almost entirely remove these elements in favour of elaborate special effects sequences, minimalistic dialogue and lengthy, weighty considerations of what it means to be human. Fans waiting for the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture feared it would be a too-fast-paced, action-heavy movie made under the influence of Star Wars, which had been released to great success two years earlier. Instead they found a film which tilted much more heavily towards the tone and style of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture has a stunningly simple narrative. A strange alien vessel, surrounded by a vast cloud, is heading towards Earth, vapourising everything in its path. An untested, upgraded version of the Enterprise is sent to intercept it. There's some mild character conflict as Admiral Kirk replaces Captain Decker in charge of the mission, to Decker's annoyance (given Kirk's lack of familiarity with the new ship), but this is quickly resolved. The Enterprise intercepts the alien ship, narrowly avoids destruction in an initial communication misunderstanding, then enters the ship, learns how to communicate with it properly, and resolves the situation. The end. Told with verve and economy, this story could have easily filled one or two forty-five minute episodes of television; unsurprising really, as The Motion Picture's script had been repurposed from a planned pilot episode for a new Star Trek TV show.

To pad out the film's length to two hours, the producers decided to resort to visual effects. Lots and lots of visual effects. Most of the film's first half-hour is dedicated to sweeping, grand flybys of Klingon warships, Federation starbases and the very best iteration of the Enterprise herself, who gets a majestic introduction as Admiral Kirk conducts a visual inspection by shuttlepod, accompanied by Jerry Goldsmith's outrageously good soundtrack. Later in the film we get almost-as-long sequences as the Enterprise passes through the alien cloud, then over, behind and inside the giganormous spacecraft inside. These sequences have been criticised as being interminable, leading to the film's inevitable nickname as Star Trek: The Slow-Motion Picture, although in reality that is somewhat overblown. The effects sequences are certainly longer than any sane movie would get away with these days, but they are also visually stunning achievements, remarkable given they were shot in-camera using gas tanks, weird lighting setups, animation and intricately-detailed three-dimensional models, long before CGI was a thing.

The film is light on character work, but what there is, is well-handled. William Shatner plays Kirk as grumpy and obsessed, so desperate to get back control of the Enterprise that he inadvertently puts the ship in jeopardy because he doesn't know how its new systems work. There may also be early signs of the mid-life crisis more thoroughly explored in The Wrath of Khan here: Kirk seems to resent the younger, more handsome Captain Decker for taking over his job, and seems keen to get his friends back on the ship rather than the next generation of Starfleet's best and brightest. This is all fascinating stuff (and well-played by an unusually restrained William Shatner), but the movie resolves it all pretty quickly: after Decker's superior knowledge of the ship's weapon systems saves the day, Kirk agrees to work cooperatively with Decker and the whole character arc is put to bed immediately. Similarly, a storyline revolving around Spock having purged himself of his few remaining emotions to embrace a Vulcan philosophy of pure logic, resulting in him acting cold and alienating to his shipmates (Leonard Nimoy gives the best performance of the film, impressively given it mainly requires him to stare impassively at people), starts intriguingly and peters out long before the end.

Most of the rest of the crew get short shrift, with Chekov, Sulu, Uhura and Scotty reduced to their standard expositionary roles, though DeForest Kelly does great work as usual as Dr. McCoy, given a wider role here as the only person whom Kirk will listen to when he tells him he's being an ass. New players Persis Khambatta (as Ilia and later the alien probe) and Stephen Collins (as Decker) also give solid performances. To be honest, apart from the "big three" and the two guest stars, there's not a lot of opportunity in the film for great acting or dialogue scenes as the script doesn't call for it.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is not - by absolutely no means - the best Star Trek movie or instalment, but also not the worst. It may be the weirdest, and arguably the most interesting. If Gene Roddenberry had complete, unfettered control of the franchise, you imagine that all of Star Trek would look like this: slow, talky and odd, with characters endlessly debating the morality of how to talk to aliens even when it appears that Earth is about to be imminently destroyed. That would have killed the franchise, but as a rare example of Roddenberry's unfiltered vision (outside of a few episodes of The Next Generation's first season), The Motion Picture is fascinating. The film builds up a genuine sense of hard SF existential dread as the Enterprise encounters something so utterly powerful and so far beyond the crew's comprehension that they are genuinely flummoxed by it (even Spock's gambit to communicate with it is an absolute desperate gamble). V'Ger is one of the most successful depictions of a "Big Dumb Object" (an inscrutable alien object, usually of stupendous size and unknown origin, like Arthur C. Clarke's Rama or Larry Niven's Ringworld) ever seen in a film, and seeing how Kirk and the crew can investigate a phenomenon they can't shoot at or (for most of the film) talk to is actually quite enjoyable.

But it's hard to discount the common complaints. There's long periods in this movie where not a lot is going on and, though Robert Wise is an excellent director, he's not Stanley Kubrick, and he can't quite make the longueurs work as quiet moments of art like Kubrick on form could. It's a cold film, with almost no sign of the franchise's trademark character banter and warmth (which would return, with interest, in the sequel). There's no villain or antagonist of any kind, which is a bold move but one it feels like Star Trek struggles with; three films later, The Voyage Home would do a more successful job of delivering a villain-less Star Trek movie.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (***) is vast in scope, gaining a sense of sheer epic scale that the franchise would rarely ever reach again. It's slow and simple, not really justifying even a standard two-hour running time. But the cast do good work with the material they are given, and the visual effects are still often breathtaking, more than forty years after the movie's release. The soundtrack to the movie is also absolutely outstanding and arguably the best its ever had. Most notably, The Motion Picture has a unique and weird atmosphere and tone that the franchise never had before and has never had since, but remains quite fascinating. Not the absolute disaster it's often dismissed as, but certainly not the franchise at its best, Star Trek: The Motion Picture remains an intriguing, unique oddball of a Star Trek movie.

A note on versions: Star Trek: The Motion Picture is available in two distinct editions. The Director's Cut, released on DVD in 2002, represents Robert Wise's preferred vision of the film. Many scenes are recut and some of the lengthier vfx sequences have been trimmed, whilst some cut scenes focusing on characterisation have been restored. Foundation Imaging also provided new vfx clarifying some confusing points in the original film. This version of the film is, unfortunately, no longer officially available, as the DVD was removed from sale and the original mastering work was all done in standard definition, and is not suitable for a high definition re-release. Rumours constantly state that Paramount are preparing a HD/4K rebuild of The Director's Cut for release in the near future, but nothing has come of this.

In the absence of this edition of the film, the definitive version remains the 2009 remastered Blu-Ray release (available both independently and as part of a box set with the other nine films featuring the original and Next Generation crews). This is a standard film re-scan and clean-up, but has been done extremely well, restoring some colour to the prints that had been lost over the years and resulting in a brighter, more enjoyable picture. However, this is also the original, long cut of the film complete with extremely long vfx sequences.

SF&F Questions: Does human religion still exist at the time of Star Trek?

Star Trek is the most extensive live-action science fiction franchise of all time, spanning 762 episodes (as of July 2019) across seven distinct television series, along with thirteen theatrical movies and countless novels, video games and comics. The Star Trek timeline extends from the near future to more than a thousand years in our future.

In all of that time, Star Trek has somehow managed to sidestep the question of religion, specifically human religion. Alien religions are covered, sometimes in exacting depth, with multiple episodes focusing on the religious beliefs of races including the Bajorans and Klingons, and the ideological attitude and spirituality of the Vulcans. But the show tends to shirk away from answering questions such as whether humans still believe in God in the 23rd and 24th centuries.


Word of God
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, a committed atheist, secularist, optimist and humanist, was unequivocal on the matter: he believed that by the time of Star Trek (the 23rd and 24th centuries), human beings would have come to the realisation that religion was outdated superstition and would have embraced a philosophical and ideological point of view that rejected both religion and the pursuit of money as the motivating factors of the human race.

Of course, such a viewpoint was fairly radical for 1960s American television, and it seems that Roddenberry didn’t enforce this POV on his writers, who frequently adopted more traditional viewpoints, with characters affirming a belief in God at several points. Later Star Trek producers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore confirmed that Gene’s tenet on religion remained in full force on the 1990s Star Trek shows (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager). “On Roddenberry's future Earth, everyone is an atheist. And that world is the better for it.”

In addition, it appears that humanity has abandoned the use of the Anno Domini (After Christ) or Common Era calendar in favour of non-denominational Stardates instead. In fact, it took twenty-two years after the airing of the first episode of Star Trek for a current year to even be mentioned in this system (in The Next Generation’s The Neutral Zone, when the current year is identified as 2364 AD).

Evidence in The Original Series
In Balance of Terror it is revealed that the Enterprise has a non-denominational chapel on board where religious ceremonies can be held, including weddings and funerals. This suggests that human religious faith still exists and all beliefs are catered to on the ship.

However, in Who Mourns for Adonis? Kirk seemingly contradicts this by saying that polytheistic religious beliefs are considered outdated as “we find the one [god] quite sufficient.” This seems to suggest that Hinduism and any belief not centred around a single god (such as Buddhism) no longer exists. It also suggests that most humans still believe in a single god at this point in history.

In Space Seed, Lt. McGivers reports that Khan is of Indian descent and may be a Sikh, although when he wakes up, Khan does not identify himself with any religious belief. However, given that Khan originates from the late 20th Century, that doesn’t mean that the Sikh culture and faith is still extant in the 23rd Century.

In Bread and Circuses, Septimus asks the crew if they are “Children of the Sun,” to which McCoy replies, “If you’re speaking of worship of sorts, we represent many beliefs.”

In That Which Survives, navigator Lt. Rahda is shown wearing the bindi (a traditional Hindu symbol on her forehead), contradicting Who Mourns for Adonis?




Evidence in the movies
In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, a funeral is held for Spock after his death in the battle with Khan. The funeral is apparently non-religious, with no prayers offered, although Scotty does play the 1779 Christian hymn “Amazing Grace” on his bagpipes. It should be noted that as a Vulcan (a half-Vulcan, but raised on the Vulcan homeworld as a full Vulcan), Spock would presumably not have requested any kind of human religious funeral anyway. Several characters also exclaim “My God!” at various points in the film, but Dr. McCoy also refers to the story of Genesis as “a myth.”

In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, religious faith and fundamentalism is a key theme and it is even hinted that the hostile alien entity imprisoned at the centre of the galaxy may be the inspiration for numerous real-world religions (as Kirk memorably points out, “What does God want with a starship?”).

In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Captain Sulu yells “My God!” upon seeing the shockwave from the Klingon moon Praxis approaching his ship, the Excelsior.

In Star Trek: Generations, Picard celebrates Christmas, although Christmas is of course considered a secular holiday by many.




Evidence in The Next Generation
In Who Watches the Watchers the crew of the Enterprise interfere with a preindustrial civilisation and inadvertently create a religion based around their activities, to Picard’s evident horror. He describes the age of religious belief as a primitive “setback.”

Several weddings take place in the series, most notably the marriage of Miles and Keiko O’Brien in Data’s Day, but these are non-denominational weddings. However, in the same episode Data notes that the Hindu Festival of Lights is currently ongoing and there will be celebrations of this on the Enterprise.

In Sub Rosa, Dr. Crusher’s grandmother is given a Catholic funeral.




Evidence in Deep Space Nine
In The Ship and The Sound of Her Voice, wakes take place. However, they are not overtly religious ceremonies.

In the episode Penumbra (taking place in AD 2375), Captain Kasidy Yates says that her mother would expect her to be married by a minister.

Evidence in Voyager
Commander Chakotay is of Native American descent and frequently mentions his spiritual beliefs.


Evidence in Enterprise
Taking place a hundred years before Kirk’s times, Enterprise features much more overt references to religion still existing. Dr. Phlox is a student of human religion and in Cold Front mentions taking mass in St. Peter’s Square and visiting a Buddhist monastery in Tibet.


Evidence in other materials
Various Star Trek books and comics make more overt references to religion still existing: A Small Matter of Faith focuses on the career of a Starfleet chaplain and Guises of the Mind features Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu believers in Starfleet. The video game Star Trek: 25th Anniversary features a group of religious separatists living on a breakaway colony, and Kirk can respond to their beliefs either respectfully or sardonically.

However, none of the Star Trek comics, video games or novels are canon, so these are not germane.


How could religion disappear in just 240 years?
Given that many of the world religions are thousands of years old, the idea that religion may disappear in just the next 240 years appears to be fanciful. Star Trek writer Ronald D. Moore notes that he considers it to be impossible, but could not overrule Gene Roddenberry’s rule.

One possibility is related to the fictional World War III. In Star Trek’s timeline, WWIII erupts in 2026 and rages until 2053, although there are apparently lulls and ceasefires during the conflict. The war involved both conventional military activity and nuclear strikes, which eliminated many of the world’s major cities. One reason San Francisco becomes apparently the biggest and most important city in North America in the Star Trek timeline is that many of the other major cities of the continent were destroyed. The death toll from WWIII is about 600 million.

It is possible that this war was so devastating that entire religions were wiped out, or driven underground or to the point of extinction and that the post-WWIII rebuilding process, especially after First Contact with the Vulcans in 2063, was undertaken specifically with the idea of uniting humanity under a single humanist banner.

It is also possible that the discovery of intelligent alien life resulted in a massive philosophical shift on Earth which contributed to the decline of religion.


So, has human religion disappeared by the time of Star Trek?
Based on multiple data points, it appears that religion continues to endure even by the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine: Dr. Crusher’s grandmother is a Catholic, Captain Yates and her mother appear to be Christians of unknown denomination and a Hindu religious festival is observed on board the Enterprise-D. There are also Hindus serving in Starfleet at the time of The Original Series.

As a result, we can conclude that although religious worship among humans is much less widespread in the late 24th Century compared to now, it remains extant and people do continue to follow the major world religions, albeit in much smaller numbers than at present.

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Happy 50th Birthday to STAR TREK

On 8 September 1966, NBC television in the United States debuted the first episode of a new science fiction series. It was called Star Trek and they did not expect it to run for very long.

An American TV listings magazine on 8 September 1966.

Fifty years later, Star Trek is possibly the biggest science fiction franchise ever created. 726 television episodes have aired across six different series, with a combined run time of 516¼ hours. There have been thirteen feature films released over a period of thirty-seven years. Over 600 novels have been published set in the Star Trek universe, not to mention around eighty video games, two dozen board games, several wargames and roleplaying games, hundreds more comic books and numerous CD soundtracks. There's also hundreds of model kits, action figures and toys. All in all, it's been a massively popular and successful franchise, watching by tens of millions of people in dozens of countries.

It's had its ups - the Borg, The Wrath of Khan, Yesterday's Enterprise, Deep Space Nine - and its had its downs - Neelix, The Final Frontier, Into Darkness, Voyager - but Star Trek as a whole is both an entertaining and refreshingly upbeat (compared to many other SF shows) view of the future, and a surprisingly prescient font of SF ideas. The fact that the iPad was effectively created in the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, airing in 1987, remains crazy. Star Trek also gave us a huge number of catchphrases, memes and brilliant characters. It even gave us Pixar (who started off doing experiment effects work on The Wrah of Khan), and of course the living legends that are its indomitable cast and crew.

A few years ago the fate of Star Trek looked uncertain. This year Star Trek Beyond, the third (and best) in a series of big-budget reboot movies, has been released and has done well. In January the seventh Star Trek TV series, Star Trek: Discovery, will begin airing. I suspect that the franchise will now always be around in one form or another, still boldly going...you know the rest.

For a full account of the history of the Star Trek franchise please check out my previous articles in the Star Trek at 50 series:

 The Star Trek Paradox
1964-66: The Genesis Project
The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)
1966-75: The Original Series
1975-79: Phase II and The Motion Picture
1979-86: The Genesis Trilogy
The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-A)
1986-88: Building the Next Generation
The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-B)
The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-C)
1988-94: The Best of All Worlds
The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D)
1986-91: Crossing the Generations
1992-98: The Next Generation On Screen
The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E)
1991-93: Defending the Final Frontier
1993-99: Tearing Up the Rulebook
1995-2001: Exploring the Final Frontier
1998-2002: Torpedoing the Box Office
2001-05: The End of an Era
2005-16: Rebirth
2017: Returning to the Final Frontier

Gratuitous Lists: All 13 STAR TREK movies...ranked!

The point of Gratuitous Lists is that the things on it are not listed in order of excellence, but are just on there so people can talk about the shows/games in question rather than argue about the order, which is often arbitrary. But sometimes arguing about the order is just too much fun. After Entertainment Weekly issued a list of Star Trek movies ranked by quality that is simply objectively wrong (how high up is Nemesis?), here's my riposte:

13. Star Trek Into Darkness

Directed by J.J Abrams • Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof • Released 23 April 2013

Woah! Shots fired! Into Darkness isn't a good Star Trek movie, I think most people agree, but the worst? Worse than The Final Frontier or Nemesis? That seems harsh.

But on reflection, I think not. Each of the previous eleven Star Trek movies, even the deliberately nostalgia-evoking 2009 reboot, at least had at their heart a core idea, or something they wanted to say. Not necessarily anything that was particularly original or good, but at least something that gave them a reason to exist. Into Darkness doesn't do that. Having laid down a fresh new direction in the 2009 movie, J.J. Abrams abruptly reverses course and gives us a poor remake of The Wrath of Khan whilst completely missing everything that made that earlier movie work (like the fact that it was based on us having known the characters for fifteen years, 79 episodes and another movie previously; this cast and crew hadn't earned that story yet), whilst also dialling back on screen time for everyone bar Kirk and Spock. There's a nasty, dark undercurrent to the film, a lack of respect for innocent life that just isn't very Star Trek and a horrendous casting decision in using Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan. Add to that the lacklustre final battle against a poorly-designed enemy ship and a near-total absence of plot logic, and Into Darkness becomes a sprawling, incoherent mess which aims to be gritty and morally murky and ends up just being comically inept.

12. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Directed by William Shatner • Written by David Loughrey, Harve Bennett & William Shatner • Released 9 June 1989

The Final Frontier is, in many respects a badly-directed, indifferently-written movie which is saved by some absolutely killer lines ("I've always known that I'll die alone" could be a Wrath of Khan line; "What does God want with a starship?" could...not) and the emotional bond between the characters. It also acts as some kind of trans-dimensional portal, through which you can gaze into the inner workings of William Shatner's mind. If you emerge with your sanity intact, congratulations, but spend too long gazing into the abyss and The Final Frontier starts looking like something approaching a good film, an offbeat and bizarre character piece with an occasional decent action beat and an ending that was so far beyond the budget's ability to deliver that someone should really have stopped Shatner from attempting it. But of course no mere mortal could stop Shatner once he had been given this kind of power.

I can see why EW put The Final Frontier further up their list. There's something compulsively watchable about the movie, if only because you're not entirely sure what the hell Shatner is going to do next (either directing, acting or writing-wise) and you have to admire the fact that a movie starring actors in their fifties and sixties went up against the Tim Burton Batman film and the Ghostbusters sequel and somehow held its own. But it does only work once. On rewatches, the film's many flaws including its howl-inducing dialogue, weak effects, uncertain tone and poor villain become almost overwhelming.

11. Star Trek: Nemesis

Directed by Stuart Laird • Written by John Logan, Rick Berman & Brent Spiner • Released 13 December 2002

Nemesis almost killed Star Trek. The only film to bomb at the box office (although thanks to DVD it did eventually turn a modest profit), it was responsible for ending Rick Berman's stewardship of the franchise and causing Paramount to completely rethink their plans for how the property would be handled going forwards. For all of that, Nemesis is not entirely without merit: in a young Tom Hardy as a Reman general (and clone of Picard) it has a reasonably good villain, the concluding space battle is one of the better in the series and both Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart deliver killer performances, both rich in tragedy, introspection and pathos. It's also good to see some major changes to the Next Generation paradigm, with characters being promoted, getting married and moving on with their lives.

But it's also a bitty and underwritten film. The scenes focused on character development were almost entirely cut from the final movie, leaving a string of half-thought-out and underwhelming set pieces (the buggy racing scene is a bit pointless). The film also makes the mistake of killing off a major character and then bringing him back five minutes later. You can only do that once in a franchise (and Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock earned it a lot more), and doing it for the second time here (and a third time in Into Darkness) is a big mistake in terms of building suspense and tone.

Nemesis isn't the worst movie ever made or even the worst Star Trek movie. At its core it has a really strong premise, which is more than you can say about The Final Frontier, but it's certainly the most undercooked and indifferently-directed movie in the history of the series.

10. Star Trek: Insurrection

Directed by Jonathan Frakes • Written by Michael Piller • Released 11 December 1998

Insurrection is the Star Trek movie that everyone kind of forget exists. It's just kind of there. A lighthearted film, even marketed as the "Star Trek date movie" (because that is a thing that anyone ever asked for or wanted), it's completely inoffensive. The villain (played by F. Murray Abraham in fine, scenery-destroying form) is okay, the effects are okay, the story is okay and everything about it is kind of okay without ever being outstanding. It's worst sin is being boring, like a late-Season 5 episode of TNG that you completely forget ever existed until you hit it on a complete rewatch and then you've forgotten about again ten minutes after it ends. However, the film does have one outstanding moment: Data going haywire and Picard defeating him using Gilbert and Sullivan. For that gloriously demented scene, we'll forgive Insurrection its overwhelming beigeness.

9. Star Trek: Generations

Directed by David Carson • Written by Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga • Released 18 November 1994
Picard and Kirk meet and team up! To ride horses! And punch Michael McDowell! In the last twenty minutes of the film!

In terms of marketing, Generations oversold the idea of Kirk and Picard joining forces to take down an enemy threat. The budget wouldn't allow for the entire crews of both past and present Enterprises to meet and writers Ron Moore and Brannon Braga were distracted by also having to the write the (far superior) Next Generation series finale, All Good Things, which even Patrick Stewart admitted would have made for a better film.

As it stands, Generations isn't too bad. The saucer separation and crash-landing sequence is splendidly realised, McDowell is a reasonably charismatic bad guy and director David Carson brings a dark, subdued tone to the film which doesn't make any sense (apparently it was encouraged by the studio who loved his work on the classic TNG episode Yesterday's Enterprise) but is extremely atmospheric. Patrick Stewart also gets a meaty emotional storyline when confronting his own mortality and that of his family. But the plot is clunky and filleted with holes (why doesn't Soran just fly into the Nexus in a ship instead of blowing up entire star systems and killing billions of people?), Whoopi Goldberg doesn't get enough to do and the feeling is that they destroyed the wonderfully-designed Enterprise-D (its successor is a much less interesting design) just for shock value.

8. Star Trek

Directed by J.J. Abrams • Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof • Released 7 April 2009
J.J. Abrams's reboot of Star Trek is filled with problems which sound rather damning: the comedy moments are awful, there is zero respect given for science or plot logic and Chris Pine is woefully miscast and unconvincing as the young Captain Kirk. But at the same time, the film is energetic and kind of fun, the rest of the new cast (especially Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban and Zoe Saldana) is excellent and the film makes a decent fist of tying in to the existing mythology and continuity whilst also doing its own thing. You also have to give massive respect to Leonard Nimoy who delivers a well-measured performance filled with gravitas. It's also surprising and welcome that Abrams gives us a whole new villain (played with deranged intensity by Eric Bana) rather than trying to bring back any of the big Star Trek monsters or aliens. There's many wince-inducing moments and a tonal mismatch with what came before, but the 2009 Star Trek reboot hits a lot more than it misses.

7. Star Trek Beyond

Directed by Justin Lin • Written by Simon Pegg & Doug Jung • Released 7 July 2016

The newest Star Trek movie is, fortunately, one of the better ones in the series. Problematic elements in the new canon (beaming between star systems, magic blood) are simply ignored, the plot is refreshingly straightforward and mostly bereft of major lapses in logic, the cast is much-better served by the script and Starbase Yorktown is the first outright stunning piece of new Star Trek design in decades. The film moves fast, Idris Elba is a good villain and overall this feels like a fresh, breezy and massively-budgeted episode of the TV show.

6. Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Directed by Robert Wise • Written by Harold Livingston, Alan Dean Foster & Gene Roddenberry (uncredited) • Released 7 December 1979

In Gene Roddenberry's head, all of Star Trek would have looked like The Motion Picture and the first season of The Next Generation: slow, talky and only occasionally letting off a phaser for the fun of it. If the Roddenberry who made the original Star Trek series was a fast-working administrator who understood the beats and needs of action-adventure television, a decade of constant praise and being hailed as a visionary ("The Great Bird of the Galaxy") at Star Trek conventions had not so much gone to his head as triggered an explosion of vanity that could have sunk the franchise. The Motion Picture, in particular, is held up as an example of film-maker overindulgence at its flabbiest.

It's hard to argue with that. But it's also hard to argue against the idea that The Motion Picture is a good film. Whether it's a good Star Trek film is another matter, but The Motion Picture makes some quite bold decisions that, in an absolute million years, no director or writer on Earth would get away with today. It's a slow-paced movie with tons of expensive visual effects. There's lots of scenes where characters sit around and make philosophical scoring points. Spock doesn't get involved in the plot until almost halfway through the film. The Enterprise only fires its weapons once, to destroy an asteroid. There's more lip-service paid to science and the dangers of the everyday technology the characters use (the death-by-malfunctioning transporter scene is still grimly disturbing). There isn't even a bad guy. The Motion Picture is much more Solaris or 2001: A Space Odyssey than Star Wars, which for an effects SF movie released in 1979 was a very bold and counter intuitive decision.

But there's a sense of gravitas, of vision and of scale to this film that Star Trek never achieved before or since. V'Ger is a stunning creation, the best-realised Big Dumb Object in the history of SF cinema, and Kirk and crew's first reaction being to study and negotiate with it is welcome. The film is also a love letter to the starship Enterprise, which arguably has never been depicted with more aplomb than in this movie, and of course its design in this film is now the gold standard for all other attempts to depict the ship. And it easily has the best soundtrack of any Star Trek film (which given how good some of the others are, is saying something). It's not for everyone, and if Roddenberry had been allowed to continue with the franchise he probably would have wrecked it, but The Motion Picture is the oddest, weirdest and - arguably - most interesting Star Trek movie of them all. But, obviously, not the best.

5. Star Trek: First Contact

Directed by Jonathan Frakes • Written by Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga • Released 22 November 1996

When The Next Generation created the Borg, it always felt like they were trying to unleash an enemy they didn't quite have the money to realise fully. This, combined with the fear of over-using them and losing their implacable menace, saw them deployed on TNG in only six out of 178 episodes, and arguably only in three of those episodes were they the "proper" Borg.

Using the second TNG movie to fully realise the Borg as a horrific, invasive force of assimilation and destruction was a wise move and First Contact is full of well-directed moments showing this unstoppable enemy in full swing (all handled with aplomb by TNG actor Jonathan Frakes). It also features some rather howl-inducingly terrible moments which are best forgotten (most of the Earth subplot involving James Cromwell's spectacularly grating mad scientist), not to mention how the ridiculous ease with which the Borg cube is defeated in the opening minutes of the film reduces the threat level of the Borg quite a lot. But overlooking that, Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart deliver killer performances, as does Alice Krige, whose Borg Queen may be the most sinister and disturbing Star Trek movie villain of them all. One ends up wishing for an adult-rated version of this movie where they really go to town with the body horror and action sequences.

We never quite get that and ultimately First Contact pulls a few too many punches. But it's a watchable, enjoyable action film featuring one of Stewart's best performances in the role of Picard, and certainly is the only TNG movie which can withstand comparisons with the best films in the franchise.

4. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Directed by Leonard Nimoy • Written by Harve Bennett • Released 1 June 1984

The Search for Spock is the Star Trek movie franchise's most underrated entry, and one that seems to be gaining more in popularity as time goes by. It's the film that introduces more iconic ships and ideas into the Star Trek universe than almost any other: the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, Spacedock, the Excelsior and transwarp technology go on to star in many future Trek movies and episodes. It also uses a fairly narrow plot directive - resurrect Spock - in an enjoyable and rather smart way throughout. Like The Wrath of Khan the script is built on a series of thematic elements which resonate throughout the movie. Kirk's growing age, his frustration with his desk-bound career and his mixed feelings on family: in The Wrath of Khan he gained a son but lost his best friend. The Search for Spock's absolute masterstroke is giving Kirk back his best friend, but taking away his son and his ship and his career: his very reasons for living. For a film that gets a lot of flak (some, like Christopher Lloyd's well-played but ill-defined Klingon villain and the dodgy planet sets, justifiably) The Search for Spock delivers two of the franchise's most brilliantly-staged and tensest moments: stealing the Enterprise from Spacedock and later blowing it up over the Genesis Planet. I mean, how many movies can make reversing the car out of the garage into one of the most iconic set-pieces in the franchise's history?

The Search for Spock's best moment is when Kirk nails that being human is to be irrational and illogical: "The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many" doesn't make sense, especially when the many includes Kirk's son, his ship, his career and those of his crew. But then in the final scene Spock lives again, and more adventures are promised, and then it makes sense.

3. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Directed by Leonard Nimoy • Written by Harve Bennett, Nicholas Meyer, Steve Meerson & Peter Krikes • Released 26 November 1986

A plot summary for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home sounds like a bad acid trip. Millions of years ago, an alien probe surveying the galaxy visited Earth and made contact with the most intelligent species on the planet at that time: whales. Figuring that the whales would eventually evolve into a more impressive lifeform, the probe leaves with a promise to swing back by. It does, only to discover that the whales have been killed off by the ape-descendants who have evolved in the meantime. The probe is a bit annoyed by this and prepares to destroy the planet and everyone on it. Kirk and co., heading home to face the music after the events of The Search for Spock, realise they have no choice but to travel back in time to rescue two humpback whales and bring them back to tell the probe to bugger off.

But it works. The Voyage Home is a barmy film which starts off as a relentless, doom-laded SF thriller before turning into an 1980s-tastic comedy in the second act, complete with "nuclear wessels" and right-on ecological messages. It's also genuinely funny, with some great culture-clash moments. It's unusual because there is also no sense of tension: because Kirk and co. can return to their own time at the exact moment they left, they could spend several years in the 20th Century if they really wanted to. This results in some breezy pacing and great character interplay. The finale, where they return home and try to see if their plan worked, is predictable but effective.

The result is the most light-hearted Star Trek movie and the most atypical. It's fun and slightly cheesy but is rooted in these characters and the easy chemistry they've developed over twenty years.

2. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Directed by Nicholas Meyer • Written by Nicholas Meyer & Denny Martin Flinn • Released 6 December 1991

After The Final Frontier's ghastly critical reception, both the original series actors and Paramount wanted to to send them out on a stronger note. Leonard Nimoy was brought in to produce and he decided to re-recruit Nicholas Meyer to direct and co-write, developing the idea of glasnost and the notion of the Federation and the Klingon Empire making peace whilst generals and spies on both sides desperately want to prolong the cold war.

The result is a film that takes the metaphor and pushes it forwards a little too obviously, but is really watchable and clever for that. The movie also tackles racism (Kirk invoking the death of his son by Klingons in The Search for Spock as a reason for hating them) and the notions of age and moving on, with Sulu and his Excelsior, a ship bigger, more powerful and faster than the Enterprise, making the Enterprise crew realise that their adventures are over. Thrown in some fun battle sequences and a great villainous turn from Christopher Plummer as a Shakespeare-quoting Klingon general and you have a perfect send-off to the original crew.

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Directed by Nicholas Meyer • Written by Harve Bennett, Jack B. Sowards & Nicholas Meyer (uncredited) • Released 4 June 1982

This is the film that saved Star Trek, by bringing on board a writer and director who had no knowledge about the franchise at all and letting them deliver a faster-paced and better-written movie than the ponderous Motion Picture. Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer hit paydirt by bringing back the powerfully charismatic Ricardo Montalban as Khan, a villain from the TV series, and turning their limited budget into a boon. More than half the film is shot on the same set standing in for the bridge of both the Enterprise and the Reliant, and a large chunk of it is a taut, expertly-directed game of cat and mouse in a nebula. The film also has one of the cleverest doomsday weapons of all time with the Genesis Device, a terraforming aid which can be perverted into a force for destruction, and it also competes with The Motion Picture for the title of "best soundtrack in the franchise", promoting James Horner to the big leagues of Hollywood composing.

But where the film works best is its exploration of age, which sees Kirk plunged into a depression as he struggles with the demands of responsibility and his desire to command a starship once again, and it is only as the film unfolds and Kirk gains a family, defeats an enemy and loses a friend that he realises how well off he really is. The film usually sees William Shatner praised - this is by a light-year his finest moment as Kirk - as well as Leonard Nimoy, but DeForest Kelley also does sterling and under-appreciated work as McCoy acting as Kirk's conscience.

Great music, fine performances, brilliantly-developed themes and a superlative soundtrack all make The Wrath of Khan the best Star Trek movie...and we haven't even mentioned the fact that its groundbreaking CG sequence resulted in the creation of Pixar Studios. Not just the best Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan is one of the finest SF movies of all time.