Prelude to History: Why STAR TREK needs to get back to the Final Frontier

This summer CBS will air the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. This will be the first Star Trek TV show to air in twelve years. As a result, you'd expect fans to be excited and energised by the prospect of new adventures on the final frontier.

This doesn't really to be the case, however. News about Discovery has been greeted with polite interest, a patter of discussion, but not the enthusiasm you'd expect from a return to the Star Trek universe.

On the surface, the powers behind Discovery have made a lot of really good decisions. They hired Bryan Fuller, one of the most respected and critically-acclaimed showrunners around, to develop the concept and serve as showrunner. He later dropped out due to scheduling issues with his previous project for Starz, American Gods, but several episodes will remain with his writing credit on them, he will remain as a producer and the door appears to be open for him to return in a more active role in later seasons. More impressive was the decision to hire Nicholas Meyer as a writer and producer. As the co-writer and director of the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, he is credited with single-handedly saving the Star Trek franchise from oblivion in 1982. He went to direct Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and co-wrote Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, therefore having a hand in the three most critically-acclaimed Star Trek movies.

Casting has likewise been well-received. Sonequa Martin-Green is a good performer on The Walking Dead but has arguably been under-utilised on that show. Putting her in a different role, as Lt. Commander Rainsford, an officer on the USS Discovery and the focal point of the series, is an interesting move. Doug Jones is a talented performer with many interesting collaborations with Guillermo Del Toro under his belt. Michelle Yeoh, of course, has been a tremendously skilled and respected actress ever since her star-making turn in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And if you need to recast Sarek, then you could certainly do far worse than the versatile and intense James Frain in the role.

One of the most popular moves has been the decision to set the show in the original or "Prime" timeline. For those unfamiliar with the situation, the Star Trek universe was split into two distinct continuities by the events of the 2009 reboot move directed by J.J. Abrams. Star Trek: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the first ten movies take place in the original continuity, whilst the three most recent films - Star Trek, Into Darkness and Beyond - all take place in the rebooted "Abramsverse", or "Kelvin timeline". The prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise, which takes place before the split in the timeline, exists in both. Although Abrams's glossy, Apple-aesthetic-channelling movies have been moderately successful (although falling short of Paramount's expectations), they have had a much more divisive critical reception and long-term Star Trek fans seem to regard them ambivalently, appreciating them for driving a new generation of fans to the franchise but less keen on their much looser commitment to real science and their overwhelming reliance on explosions and violence to solve problems.

The expectation was that any new show would also take place in the Abramsverse, but this was cast into doubt by the fact that Star Trek is no longer owned by one entity, with Paramount controlling the film rights and CBS owning the TV rights. With the new Abramsverse movies post-dating that split, CBS has no automatic legal right to the films and would have to strike up a new deal with Paramount to make one, and that would cost serious money (especially since Paramount and CBS have not been on good terms for a while). Clearly CBS decided it was not worth it and opted to simply set the show in the existing Prime timeline. Although largely irrelevant to a casual audience, this move please long-term Star Trek fans who either hated the Abrams movies or enjoyed them as, at best, a Marvel Ultimates-style alternate-but-limited take on established material, but not something that should supplant the originals.

However, since then many of CBS's announcements have been regarded with a lukewarm reception. One of these is technical and, I suspect, will not last the course, whilst the second is creative and delves much more deeply into the problems Star Trek has had in drumming up excitement since at least 2001, if not before. Let's deal with the bigger problem first.

Another streaming service. Yay.

This is a uniquely American problem, since in the rest of the world CBS has very sensibly sold the rights to the new series to Netflix, which is already showing the entire Star Trek franchise worldwide. This is quite a coup for Netflix and leads to the - somewhat bizarre - situation where British and German Star Trek fans are getting ready to watch the show on their existing service with no further hoops to jump through. But in the USA, where the majority of Star Trek fandom resides, this is not the case. CBS has instead chosen Star Trek: Discovery to lead its new digital streaming service, CBS All Access. The first episode of Discovery will air on CBS itself and subsequent episodes will be exclusive to the new service, in the hope that viewers will be impressed and sign up immediately. To put it mildly, this has gone down like a lead balloon.

American TV fans and viewers will already be subscribing to either (or both) Netflix and Amazon Prime. Many will also be subscribing to Hulu and HBO Go. There's also Sling Orange, PlayStation Vue, Seeso and a number of other options, including traditional cable. Introducing a further streaming service on top of this, a late entry in an already saturated market at a point when American viewers may be feeling economically squeezed, feels like an unwise decision. There are many Star Trek fans saying flatly they will wait for the DVD/Blu-Rays, or even illegally download the show over paying an additional premium on top of the other, far larger and more varied services they are already signed up to. Even if we assume many will change their tune, especially if Discovery's first episode knocks it out of the park (Star Trek doesn't exactly have great pilot form, however), this is certainly something contributing to the lack of excitement over the show.

To boldly go...where we've been before. Many times.

Far more a serious a problem for Discovery is the fact that it's a prequel. Again.

Let's break this down. Star Trek: Enterprise (which aired from 2001 to 2005) was a prequel, set 100 years before the original series. The Ambramsverse movies return to the setting of the original five-year mission. Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001) was set after the other series, but for all but the closing moments of its last episode it was set on the other side of the galaxy to the Federation and Earth. Aside from a few brief communications here and there in Voyager, the Star Trek setting and universe has not moved or evolved forward in any substantial way since the final episode of Deep Space Nine aired in 1999. For a franchise that's based on the premise of going out into space and exploring new frontiers, it's instead been spinning around in circles for almost twenty years.

Star Trek fans seem to be keen for a new show set a generation or two after the Next Generation/Deep Space Nine/Voyager period which features new technology, new ideas and new characters. Such a show could be as divorced from previous continuity or reliant on it as the producers wanted, but it would have absolute and complete freedom to do whatever it wanted. Discovery, like Enterprise before it, will be a show wearing a continuity straitjacket. Every story, worldbuilding and character decision they make has to be carefully scrutinised in case it conflicts with what has been established before.

This isn't to say that you can't have entertaining and interesting stories within those narrow confines, like Enterprise (occasionally) did, but it does make it a lot harder. It also introduces significant amounts of work for the writers to make sure they're not contradicting things established elsewhere.

A prequel or interquel could actually be quite interesting if it was set in a different part of the history. There was a strong rumour during early development that the new show would be set in the seventy-year gap between the start of the movie Star Trek: Generations and the start of Star Trek: The Next Generation. During this time period there were two starship Enterprises (the B and the C), the fate of the first of which is unknown, and there were plenty of interesting things going on in the background with the Klingons and Romulans but without a lot of detailed continuity to get bogged down in. This would have been more fertile and interesting ground to cover, with the bonus that the setting would have even allowed for cameos by surviving original series actors George Takei, Walter Koenig and Nichelle Nichols.

A second rumour was that the new series would be a Fargo-style show which changed timeframe and setting for each season, but where everything still happened in the same universe. So Season 1 might have been a prequel set on a starship, the second during the height of the Dominion War, the third on a Klingon starship and so on. With the broad canvas of the Star Trek universe to draw upon, this idea was also quite exciting and fans started speculating about what settings could be used.

The final announcement - that the show will instead be set ten years before The Original Series, in the same narrative space as The Original Series and the Abramsverse movies - couldn't help but be underwhelming in comparison. That's already a well-ploughed field. Also, if as seems possible, the new show expands on the Four Year War and the Axanar Incident, that may also annoy and alienate fans of the Star Trek: Axanar fan project, which was recently cancelled through legal action. Although CBS and Paramount were legally in the right to do this, since they own all the copyrights involved, if the new, official TV series ends up using the same story and idea, that may also result in claims of plagiarism or intellectual dishonesty.

To be clear, Star Trek: Discovery looks like it has a lot of impressive creative power behind and in front of the screen. A Star Trek series with shorter, more focused seasons that cut out the awful filler (although we hope that excellent stand-alone stories still make it in) and have more serialised storytelling sounds very interesting, especially one with such an enormous budget. I suspect it'll be quite a good show. But even if it's the best Star Trek show ever, there's going to be severe constraints over what it could do and where it could go in the future.

The hope for a lot of Star Trek fans is that Discovery will do well enough for more shows to be commissioned, and one will finally get back to what the franchise needs to be: exploring new worlds, new places and new civilisations.

Gratuitous Lists: The Star Trek TV Series Ranked

The philosophy of the Gratuitous Lists feature was to have lists of stuff that are unranked, because frankly if you're talking about the 12th best thing of all time or the 9th best thing of all time, the differences are going to be pretty minor. In the case of the Star Trek lists, however, that's kind of pointless because there's way too few things to put on the list. So for these ones I'm ranking them and people can argue away to their heart's content. So let us proceed:

The cast of Voyager: Lt. Harry Kim (Garrett Wang), Seven-of-Nine (Jeri Ryan), the Doctor (Robert Picardo), Neelix (Ethan Phillips), Captain Katherine Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran), Lt. B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), Lt. Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) and Lt. Commander Tuvok (Tim Russ)

6. Star Trek: Voyager

Created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor • Produced by Rick Berman, Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller and Brannon Braga • Aired 16 January 1995-23 May 2001 • 7 seasons • 172 episodes

Timeframe: AD 2371-2377

Premise: The Intrepid-class USS Voyager is dispatched on a mission to apprehend a vessel belonging to the Maquis, a terrorist group. Both ships are inadvertently transported 70,000 light-years to the remote Delta Quadrant of the galaxy. Captain Janeway is forced into an uneasy alliance with the Maquis commander, Chakotay, so that both crews can return home to Federation space.

Assessment: When Voyager started in 1995, it had a lot of promise to it. Fans had been criticising The Next Generation (and, to a lesser extent, the original series) because it spent an awful lot of time flying between starbases rather than genuinely going "where no one had gone before". By dumping a Federation starship on the far side of the galaxy with no Federation, no Starfleet, no Klingons and no Romulans, the hope was to create a completely new set of heroes and villains, with the incredibly isolated ship in genuine danger.

None of that really happened. Voyager remained in pristine condition despite not being able to resupply or get repaired. Continuity was minimal, with the reset button being hit at the end of every episode. Its new, original races were cheesy stock races which didn't vary from the Star Trek standard, and it wasn't long before the show was (rather desperately) trying to shoehorn in Klingons, Romulans and the Ferengi. The most prevalent new enemy race, the Kazon, were soon thrown out for being dire and the show settled on The Next Generation's most memorable foe, the Borg, as their main enemy, as well as reintroducing staple TNG villain Q.

The show moderately improved in the fourth season, with the introduction of Jeri Ryan as "saved" Borg drone Seven of Nine. Seven provided an able foil for Captain Janeway, with their on-screen antagonism giving way to mutual respect fuelled by the actresses' off-screen antipathy to one another. Rapidly improving CG effects technology also resulted in some visually impressive episodes late in the show's run. However, a largely indifferent and unchallenged cast, some awful writing and a lot of pulled punches made Star Trek: Voyager excruciating most of the time and just plain dull the rest.

The show wasn't a complete wash, however, with Robert Picardo's excellent performance as the ship's holographic doctor gradually attaining sentience providing a lot of humour and, surprisingly, pathos as the show continued. However, the show's greatest success may have been annoying long-term Trek writer Ronald D. Moore so much with its unfulfilled promise that he later went off and put most of his ideas into practice on the far superior Battlestar Galactica (2003-09) reboot instead.

Check Out: Scorpion (Parts 1 & 2), Year of Hell, Message in a Bottle.

Avoid at All Costs: Threshold, Fair Haven, Endgame and, to be frank, any episode that doesn't revolve around the Doctor or Seven-of-Nine.

The cast of Enterprise: Dr. Phlox (John Billingsley), Chief Engineer Charles "Trip" Tucker (Connor Trinneer), Ensign Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery), Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula), T'Pol (Jolene Blalock), Ensign Hoshi Sato (Linda Park) and Lt. Malcolm Reed (Dominic Keating.

5. Star Trek: Enterprise

Created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga • Produced by Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and Manny Coto • Aired 26 September 2001-13 May 2005 • 4 seasons • 98 episodes

Timeframe: 16 April 2151-55 (the final episode takes place in 2161)

Premise: In 2151 Earth launches its first Warp 5-capable ship, the NX-01 Enterprise, under the command of Jonathan Archer and the watchful eye of the Vulcan "advisor" T'Pol. Earth faces rising tensions between neighbouring worlds like Tellar, Vulcan and Andora, not to mention navigating the dangerous first contact with the Klingon Empire. But the Enterprise's adventures will eventually set the scene for the birth of the United Federation of Planets itself.

Assessment: When Paramount demanded that Star Trek uber-producer Rick Berman create a new series to follow up Voyager, he was dubious. He felt that the series was suffering from "franchise fatigue" after shooting twenty-one seasons in fourteen years and recommended resting the show for a while. But Paramount wanted the new series to start immediately. Reluctantly, Berman and co-writer Brannon Braga complied.

And they did try to be original. They decided to make the new show a prequel, set a century before the original series. Their aim was to gradually build to the founding of the Federation. The decision to have a ship called Enterprise which had never been mentioned before was cheesy, but they did at least attempt to justify it. They also made clever use of ever-more-impressive effects technology and the casting was much better than Voyager's, with the actors feeling more engaged and excited by the project. But too often in the first two seasons the writers fell back on stock Star Trek ideas and situations rather than doing the premise justice.

In Season 3 they abruptly course-corrected. They brought in a talented and imaginative new writer, Manny Coto, and began engaging in more serialisation. They also dropped the ill-advised "temporal cold war" story of the first two seasons (a pointless attempt to keep touching base with the post-Voyager timeline) and focused more on interstellar politics and tensions, laying the seeds for the foundation of the Federation. This culminated in the Coto-helmed fourth season which saw a dramatic upswing in quality. Unfortunately, when the series was cancelled they decided to go out on a truly diabolical note. These Are the Voyages... is the worst Star Trek finale and one of the worst episodes in the franchise's history, and soured both fans and cast on the show. Still, there are some great episodes to be found and if Enterprise was one series too far, at least it tried to be original and ambitious.

Check Out: Demons, Terra Prime, The Forge, Babel One, The Andorian Incident.

Avoid at All Costs: These Are the Voyages..., A Night in Sickbay, Two Days and Two Nights.

The cast of The Animated Series: Lt. Nyota Uhuru (Nichelle Nichols), Commander Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Commander Montgomery Scott (James Doohan), Lt. Arex (James Doohan), Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Lt. M'Ress (Majel Barrett), Lt. Hikaru Sulu (George Takei), Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and Nurse Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett)

4. Star Trek: The Animated Series

Created by Gene Roddenberry • Produced by Gene Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana • Aired 8 September 1973-12 October 1974 • 2 seasons • 22 episodes

Timeframe: approx. 2269-70

Premise: Continuing the five-year mission of the USS Enterprise under Captain James T. Kirk. Only in two dimensions.

Assessment: Given The Animated Series's relative obscurity (until its recent re-release) and the fact it's animated on a low budget, it's actually surprisingly decent. The writers (many returning from the live-action series) clearly revel in the fact that they can depict truly alien beings and planets and the TV show actors all return to voice their characters, which adds a lot of credibility to the show. The show has also been surprisingly well-suited to modern social media, with both Swear Trek and Starcher Trek generating a lot of laughs based on it.

Check Out: Yesteryear, The Time Trap, More Tribbles, More Troubles, The Lorelei Signal.

Avoid at All Costs: Mudd's Passion

The cast of the original series: Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan), Ensign Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Nurse Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett), Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Lt. Nyota Uhuru (Nichelle Nichols), Commander Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Lt. Hikaru Sulu (George Takei)

3. Star Trek: The Original Series

Created by Gene Roddenberry • Produced by Gene Roddenberry, Gene L. Coon and Fred Freiberger • Aired 8 September 1966-3 June 1969 • 3 seasons • 79 episodes

Timeframe: approx. 2265-68 (the pilot episode takes place circa 2255)

Premise: In the mid-23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk commands the Constitution-class USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) on a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilisations and to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Assessment: For a show made in the 1960s, the original Star Trek has withstood the test of time far better than you'd expect. The regular actors are on top form throughout and some of the episodes remain genuinely inventive, powerful and surprisingly topical. Other episodes are poor, particularly most of the third season when the network replaced Gene Roddenberry with hack writer Fred Freiberger, but the seeds of Star Trek and the reason the franchise has lasted fifty years are clearly in place.

The original show probably has the strongest set of characters in terms of archetypes, but it's actually startling how little most of the characters bar Spock, McCoy and Kirk get to do. Given there's 79 episodes, you'd expect Chekov, Sulu, Uhura and Scotty to have at least a few dedicated episodes apiece but nope. They'd have to wait until the films and the reboot movies to get a bigger slice of the action.

Still, the original series still packs an impressive emotional wallop in episodes like The City on the Edge of Forever and Amok Time, whilst episodes like Space Seed and Balance of Terror are effective, tense action stories and The Trouble with Tribbles is a splendid comedy piece. This is where it all started, and it (mostly) still holds up well.

Check Out: The City on the Edge of Forever, Space Seed, Amok Time, Balance of Terror, Mirror, Mirror, The Trouble with Tribbles.

Avoid at All Costs: Spock's Brain, The Way to Eden, Turnabout Intruder.

The cast of The Next Generation: Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Counsellor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner), Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg), Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton), Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and Lt. Worf (Michael Dorn)

2. Star Trek: The Next Generation

Created by Gene Roddenberry • Produced by Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor • Aired 28 September 1987-23 May 1994 • 7 seasons • 178 episodes

Timeframe: AD 2364-71


Premise: Almost a century after Kirk's time, Captain Jean-Luc Picard commands the Galaxy-class USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) as it defends the Federation, explores new planets and undertakes cutting-edge scientific research.

Assessment: Bringing back Star Trek was an obvious move, but employing a whole new cast and set of characters and putting them on a new (and, at the time, rather weird-looking) Enterprise a hundred years further in the future? Paramount made a massive gamble with Star Trek: The Next Generation and one that at first didn't look like it had paid off. Although ratings were strong, most of the show's first two seasons were torn apart by critics. It wasn't until deep in the second season that classic episodes started appearing.

It took Gene Roddenberry's retirement and the bringing-in of hungry new writer-producer Michael Piller to really let things take off. In particular, the writers Piller brought in like Ronald D. Moore and Naren Shanker soon really began making the show work by writing to the strengths of the characters. New enemies like the Borg were introduced, old races like the Klingons and Romulans were explored in greater depth and, most importantly of all, the show employed the formidable skills of some extremely talented actors like Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner.

The Next Generation is easily the most popular incarnation of Star Trek, its ratings dwarfing that of the rest, but it's also the most important. It showed that Star Trek can still work when you move away from the Kirk-Spock dynamic and that the universe can have numerous different kinds of story in it.

However, it's not the best. TNG is somewhat inconsistent in tone, with almost half the run of the show being blighted by weak episodes. At its best with episodes like The Best of Both Worlds, TNG is absolutely untouchable, but its worst episodes are horribly-written, badly-conceived and even outright racist (Code of Honour put off future Trek writer Brannon Braga from even watching the show). In addition, although TNG does pay more attention to continuity than the original show (or even Voyager), it still hits the reset button and avoids exploring the consequences of major character moments too easily.

Check Out: The Measure of a Man, Q Who?, Sins of the Father, Yesterday's Enterprise, Deja Q, The Best of Both Worlds (Parts 1 and 2), Family, The Inner Light, Tapestry, All Good Things, most of Seasons 3-6.
 
Avoid at All Costs: Code of Honour, Justice, Up the Long Ladder, Genesis, Sub Rosa, most of Seasons 1, 2 and 7.

The cast of Deep Space Nine: Lt. Commander Worf (Michael Dorn), Lt. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), Chief Engineer Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney), Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig), Quark (Armin Shimmerman), Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), Security Chief Odo (Rene Auberjonois), Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) and Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton).

1. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller • Produced by Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Ira Steven Behr • Aired 3 January 1993-2 June 1999 • 7 seasons • 176 episodes

Timeframe: AD 2369-75

Premise: After forty years of brutal occupation, the Cardassian Union has withdrawn from the planet Bajor, leaving it exhausted and devastated. The Federation agrees to provide assistance, directing relief efforts from an abandoned Cardassian space station, Terok Nor, which they rename Deep Space Nine. When a stable wormhole linking Bajor to the remote Gamma Quadrant of the galaxy is discovered, Bajor and Deep Space Nine become the most important locations in Federation space. When a hostile alien government in the Gamma Quadrant, the Dominion, stages an invasion of Federation space, it also becomes the flashpoint for the most devastating war in the Federation's history.

Assessment: When Deep Space Nine started in 1993 it was seen as The Next Generation's slightly crazy spin-off. That hasn't entirely changed in the quarter-century since then. It's the only Star Trek series not predominantly set on a starship, it doesn't feature too much boldly going where no-one has gone before and the cast is the most eclectic, oddball collection of characters ever assembled for a Trek series. It also had a perceived rivalry with another space station-set SF show, the conceptually bolder Babylon 5, which at the time it was felt that DS9 had lost.

History, on the other hand, has been much kinder to Deep Space Nine. The fact it's set on a space station is something it turns to its advantage, gradually accumulating a very large cast of secondary and recurring characters that really makes its corner of the Federation feel like a real, lived-in place. It explores the themes and ideas of the Star Trek universe in exacting - even uncomfortable - depth. It even has a cast of recurring, brilliantly-realised villains in the last couple of seasons. It takes a long look at the ideals of Star Trek, tests them, but often finds that they are still valid. Deep Space Nine is, indeed, the "darkest" incarnation of Star Trek but it is still full of hope and optimism, even at the bloodiest heights of the Dominion War in Seasons 6 and 7.

This is also the most mature and progressive installment of Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry liked to talk up a good fight, how he was going to be more inclusive and show gay people and stronger female characters in the Star Trek universe, but he always retreated from doing it. Deep Space Nine faced an uphill battle to even include two women kissing briefly, but at least it made the attempt. It also tackled issues like racism and social inequality head-on, never more powerfully in stories like Far Beyond the Stars.

No other Star Trek series matches DS9 for its organic, beautifully-played character growth across the series. There was also the attitude it took to entire races. It explored the spirituality and religion of Bajor, it made the Klingons a little scarier and more alien again and it rehabilitiated the Ferengi, whose sexism and misogyny had been played a little too much for laughs on TNG even when it got uncomfortable.

But for a show that could be the most serious Trek series it is also the most hilarious. Trials and Tribbleations (in which Forrest Gump-style technology is used to integrate the DS9 crew into footage from the original series) is hands-down the funniest episode of the entire franchise, with scenes including Worf's deadpan description of the genocidal war launched by the Klingon Empire against the tribbles, Bashir urgently trying to convince O'Brien he should sleep with a woman in case she's his own great-grandmother and he needs to ensure his own existence, and Dax throwing tribbles out of a storage compartment to hit Captain Kirk on the head. In the Cards is a more subtle episode which gently takes the mickey out of the Federation's hippy ideology ("We work to better ourselves, and all of humanity," "What does that mean, exactly?" "It means we haven't got any money!"). Little Green Men posits Quark as being the Roswell alien and somehow makes it work. Our Man Bashir has Dr. Bashir posing as a James Bond-style spy in a holosuite adventure that goes badly wrong.

Finally, Deep Space Nine has the finest space battles, some of the finest lines and some of the greatest moments in the history of Star Trek. It needed The Original Series and The Next Generation to lead the way and blaze the trail, of course, but for now Deep Space Nine remains the crowning achievement of the Star Trek franchise on screen.

Check Out: Duet, The Jem'Hadar, The Way of the Warrior, The Visitor, Little Green Men, Our Man Bashir, Trials and Tribbleations, In Purgatory's Shadow, By Inferno's Light, In the Cards, Call to Arms, Sacrifice of Angels, Far Beyond the Stars, In the Pale Moonlight, The Siege of AR-558, What You Leave Behind and most of the entire show (but especially Seasons 3-7).

Avoid at All Costs: Profit and Lace, Let He Who Is Without Sin.


The question now, of course, is where the new TV series, Star Trek: Discovery, will fit into the list.

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

Star Trek at 50: Returning to the Final Frontier

In January 2017, CBS will air the first new television episode of Star Trek in twelve years. It will be just over twenty-nine years since Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted, and just over fifty since the franchise started in the first place.

A new Star Trek TV show has been on the cards since Enterprise was cancelled in 2005, but development was delayed by the divorce between CBS and Paramount that saw the Star Trek rights split between the two companies. When Paramount began releasing its new Star Trek movies under the oversight of J.J. Abrams, CBS was also uncertain how to respond. It did not have the rights to make a TV show set in the Abramsverse and relations between the two companies were cool enough to make it unlikely they could get them.

A few things changed CBS's minds. One was the re-release of the original series and then The Next Generation in high definition. Although neither was the smash success they were hoping (and the prospects of a remastering of DS9 and Voyager now seem unlikely), both did reasonably well in international sales and performances on platforms such as Netflix. CBS were planning to set up their own platform, CBS All Access, and saw Star Trek as a potential vehicle to help get it off the ground.

In November 2015 CBS announced that it had commissioned a new Star Trek TV series, to debut on CBS proper with an event premiere in January 2017 but then to be followed by new episodes released exclusively through CBS All Access. International sales would be through more traditional channels.

Star Trek fans were initially disheartened by the news, feeling that locking Star Trek away behind a paywall for a minority service (the chances of CBSAA effectively challenging Netflix and Amazon are non-existent) in its fiftieth year was massively disrespectful to the legacy of the franchise. The news at Alex Kurtzman, who had worked on Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness, was the prime mover behind the series was also greeted with scepticism, although he is generally better working in television (such as on the excellent Fringe) than on film (such as the less-excellent Transformers movies).

However, in the months since then there has been a steady stream of good news. CBS announced that the showrunner for the new project would be Bryan Fuller. Fuller cut his teeth with several Deep Space Nine scripts before becoming a writer-producer on Voyager. He then worked on original, critically-acclaimed (if not massively popular) shows like Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me before working on the first season of Heroes, where he wrote several of the most popular episodes. His departure before Season 2 was cited as a key reason why the show's quality dramatically declined. His later work was highly acclaimed, particularly Pushing Daisies and Hannibal. Whilst developing Star Trek he was also working on the TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods for Starz, which is now shooting. Fuller brings a tremendous depth of experience in creating quality television with a deep knowledge and love of the Star Trek franchise.

Even more impressively, if that was possible, CBS announced that they had recruited Nicholas Meyer to provide support, advice and scripts. Meyer is the director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, as well as co-writing both movies and Star Trek IV: The Voyager Home. Those are the three most critically-acclaimed films in the history of the movie franchise. Meyer was also clever enough to take breaks between the films and only come back to work on the franchise when he was inspired by new ideas. Bringing Meyer on board was a very canny move, designed to appeal to old-skool Star Trek fans. Rod Roddenberry, the son of the late Gene Roddenberry, was also involved in the series as an advisor.

The premise of the new series is not known, although it is generally believed that the new series will not be set in the "Abramsverse" of the new movies, as CBS do not have the rights to it and there has been no formal announcement of a deal between CBS and Paramount to allow it. Based on comments from Fuller and alleged leaks from CBS, the new series may be set in the 71-year-gap between the opening scenes of Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but with a new ship and crew (not the Enterprise-B and C which were active during that period). The new series will apparently consist of 13 episodes telling one long, serialised story. There is also a strong rumour that the new series may adopt an anthology format, with future seasons able to move between time periods of Star Trek history and allow it to tell all-new stories or involve characters from prior series where appropriate.

Update: Bryan Fuller has shot down some of these rumours, denying both the pre-TNG timeframe and the anthology format. However, he has confirmed that the series will look to revisit previous Star Trek characters further down the line. It sounds extremely likely that the new show will still be set in the original timeline and probably post-TNG, post-DS9 and post-Voyager. Official confirmation of that has still not arrived, however.

We do know that the new series will shoot in Toronto between September and the start of 2017, and that the series will debut in January 2017. Casting should be announced in the next few weeks. 

Fan reaction to the rumours and to the news of Meyer and Fuller's involvement was overwhelmingly positive, but soured a bit when CBS (and Paramount) took legal action against several Star Trek fan series that were in production. The Star Trek fan community had been producing films and even web series for more than a decade, such as Phase II, New Voyages and Of Gods and Men. Remarkably, these had become popular enough to allow them to include veteran Star Trek actors such as Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols and George Takei.

In 2015 a fan film called Axanar crossed a red line when it sought to raise funds from crowdfunding sites and use the money to pay professional editors, writers and actors. CBS and Paramount initiated legal action. Axanar won support from many fans and Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin, as well as J.J. Abrams. However, an attempt by Lin and Abrams to get the motion dismissed backfired, with CBS and Paramount instead issuing guidelines that effectively made any fan films of feature length impossible. Some fans had regarded the Axanar project with scepticism and were unhappy with the allegedly profiteering nature of the project, but others decried what they saw as an attack on the fan community that had kept Star Trek alive in the long years between series.

Star Trek returns to television screens in 2017 and it remains to be seen in precisely what format and how well it does. But it does show that there remains an appetite for the venerable SF franchise fifty years on from its origins, and there is still interest in exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life and civilisations.

Star Trek at 50: Rebirth

In 2005 Star Trek looked dead, or as close to dead as it had ever been. Enterprise had been cancelled, Paramount was not interested in any further Trek projects and Rick Berman's plans for a new film dealing with the Romulan Wars (set after Enterprise but still before the original series) were politely rebuffed.

The cast of the rebooted Star Trek movie franchise: Anton Yelchin as Chekov, Chris Pine as Kirk, Simon Pegg as Scotty, Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy, John Cho as Sulu and Zoe Saldana as Uhura. Not pictured: Zachary Quinto as Spock.

Legal shenanigans also played a role. CBS, which was part of Paramount under the Viacom banner, broke away to become independent, taking the Star Trek TV rights with it. From now on, any TV and film projects would proceed independently from one another. In addition, the two companies did not part on the best of terms and were less than cooperative in supporting one another. The 40th anniversary of Star Trek in 2006 passed almost completely unremarked. But already there were moves behind the scenes to bring back the property.

Paramount were keen to make Star Trek a mega success on the big screen, and for it to join the ranks of the $1 billion blockbuster franchises like Batman and Star Wars. They felt that the TV and film series had become too entwined and that later films had suffered from not having the iconic original characters on board. They decided that a reboot was the best way to proceed and opened discussions with J.J. Abrams.

Abrams was the co-creator of TV shows such as Alias and Lost, the director of Mission: Impossible III and the head of Bad Robot Productions. He was seen as an increasingly influential and powerful figure in Hollywood, a potential heir to Spielberg and Lucas, and he was one of the few people in Hollywood whose name had almost become a brand in itself. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman were up-and-coming writers whose material so far - The Island and The Legend of Zorro - had been effective if not outstanding. The three teamed up for Mission: Impossible III, realised they had a good working relationship and began developing ideas for a new Star Trek movie. Abrams admitted he was only loosely familiar with the franchise, having been much more of a Star Wars fan growing up, and found Star Trek "too philosophical". Kurtzman and Orci - especially Kurtzman - were much more familiar with the franchise and bigger fans of it, and were excited about the idea of using the classic characters again.

The new Enterprise drew inspiration from both the Motion Picture refit version of the ship and Apple products.

During development Kurtzman and Orci decided to pay lip service to the original Star Trek universe by confirming that it still existed and the new film (and any sequels) would explore a splintered-off, side-universe. This was to allow the continued sale of novels set in the original timeline as well as not to adversely affect the development of Star Trek Online, a multiplayer video game set in the original timeline. They won a casting coup when Leonard Nimoy agreed to appear in the new film to "hand over" to a new generation of actors.

Development of the film continued through 2007, during which time the Abrams-Kurtzman-Orci troika also created the television series Fringe and brought in Lost producer Damon Lindelof to assist in script development on the Star Trek movie. Casting announcements were made throughout 2007 and there was widespread approval of choices such as Zachary Quinto as Spock and Anton Yelchin as Chekov, along with John Cho as Sulu and Zoe Saldana as Uhura. Famous SFF fan Simon Pegg's casting as Scotty raised some eyebrows due to his terrible Scottish accent, although fans also noted this was a continuation of the tradition from James Doohan, who was Canadian and whose Scottish accent was "variable" in quality.

Filming took place from November 2007 to March 2008, and the movie was finally released on 8 May 2009. Fans were split over the first trailer, which featured oddities such as the rebooted Enterprise being built on Earth rather than in space and sequences which seemed to emphasise explosions and a rock and roll soundtrack (Kirk being a fan of the Beastie Boys was thought to be incongruous). However, there was praise for the way the movie was tied into existing continuity. The actual release of the film saw a more mixed reception emerge: an acknowledgement of the excellence of the cast (including the returning Nimoy) and some of the aesthetic choices, but also condemnation of, even by Star Trek standards, massive plot holes, forced humour and completely nonsensical sequences such as Vulcan's destruction being visible from a planet millions of miles away. Film critics were likewise split, many praising the effects and casting but bemoaning the story and the lack of intelligence in the script.

Benedict Cumberbatch turned in a reasonable performance in itself in Star Trek Into Darkness, but he was not a good fit for Khan.

The film's budget was $150 million, a record for the franchise but relatively modest by 2009 standards for a big-budget, effects-led action film. The film took $385 million worldwide, also a record for the franchise, but this was judged to be moderately disappointing by Paramount, who had been hoping for a much bigger, breakout success.


Talk began on a sequel, with initial reports that the movie would have a similar budget. However, J.J. Abrams convinced Paramount that they should go all-in on a film that would echo The Wrath of Khan with massive action sequences, a hugely charismatic villain (who would actually turn out to be Khan himself) and a darker storyline. Abrams himself declined to direct, choosing to produce with Kurtzman, Lindelof and Orci returning to script. However, Paramount would only move forward with the larger budget if Abrams returned to helm the movie. Abrams agonised over the decision for many months before finally agreeing. This resulted in a four-year delay for the film, which Paramount later cited as a contributing factor to its disappointing performance.

Star Trek Into Darkness was released on 23 April 2013. It took $467 million worldwide, setting a new record for the franchise, but the film had been made for a budget of $185 million. Factoring in marketing costs, the movie broke even and made a very modest profit, but it still significantly underperformed compared to Paramount's expectations, especially considering that they were judging the film's success compared to things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which had just had its first $1 billion success and was soon to have more). Reviews were also largely negative, focusing on yet another nonsensical plot and the unoriginal decision to remake Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - even down to shooting some scenes in a very similar way - but without any of the wit, soul or charm of the original film. There was also criticism of casting the very white, very British Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan Noonian Singh, a warlord from the Indian subcontinent of Sikh decent (albeit played by a Mexican actor originally).

Star Trek Beyond features the final appearance of Anton Yelchin as Chekov, as the actor sadly passed away in June 2016 in a car accident.

Despite the criticisms, the film still made a small amount of money and, bereft of any alternative big franchises, Paramount decided to make a third film. They were left a little surprised when J.J. Abrams then abandoned ship to direct the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens. They slashed the budget ruthlessly back down to Star Trek (2009)'s level and hired a new director, Justin Lin, of The Fast and the Furious fame. Orci and Kurtzman began developing stories but they were swiftly jettisoned in favour of a new script written by Simon Pegg with input from Lin, a massive Star Trek fan. Kurtzman would later join the TV revival project at CBS instead. Fan anticipation for the third movie remained cool, but increased a little after Pegg and Lin confirmed that they wanted a film with less plot holes than the previous two and various incongruous elements introduced to the new canon (such as transporters able to beam people instantly across light-years of space) were simply ignored.

Star Trek Beyond is scheduled to open on 22 July 2016, but Paramount has been heavily criticised for a lacklustre promotional campaign, with a terrible first trailer and almost no mention of the film's heritage despite it being the franchise's 50th anniversary year. Later trailers raised more interest. Sadly, the film lost one of its actors a month before release when Anton Yelchin passed away in a vehicle accident outside his LA home, making Star Trek Beyond one of his last appearances.

The future of Star Trek on film hangs in the balance. If Beyond does well, more films are anticipated. Indeed, Paramount has already earmarked 2019 for the release of a possible fourth film. If it does badly, it's likely that Paramount will again retire the franchise and consider new directions. But to an enormous number of people, Star Trek on film has always been a bit of a bonus. The franchise's true home is, always has been and always will be on television, and that is also where its destiny lies.

Star Trek at 50: The End of an Era

In May 2001 Rick Berman and Paramount Pictures announced that the fifth live-action Star Trek TV series would be called Enterprise - and just Enterprise with no Star Trek or colon - and would star Scott Bakula as Captain Jonathan Archer. It would be a prequel series set a century before the events of even the original series, and would feature a very low-tech version of the Star Trek universe. The show would be set before the Federation is even founded, with Earth and Vulcan in a tenuous (and unequal) alliance and races like the Andorians and Tellarites causing mischief before they can be brought into the fold. The Klingons and Romulans are barely-rumoured threats on the horizon and the very first starship Enterprise is a primitive vessel lacking transporters or shields.

The cast of Star Trek: Enterprise.

Fans rejoiced. It sounded like the bold reinvention the franchise needed, a move away from the near-magical tech of the late 24th Century and a return to a time when even the systems close to Earth could harbour surprises and dangers. But such hopes were, if not dashed, then soon muted. The transporter is pretty much working as intended by the end of the pilot episode. Space battles would refer to "Armour buckling!" rather than "Shields failing!" but otherwise be pretty similar. Trundling around at Warp 5 maximum wasn't too different from trundling around at Warp 9.9. And the stories that were being told were soon becoming predictably Star Trek-by-the-numbers. Even the Borg - somewhat incongruously - soon showed up. Oh, and there's the theme song, which may be the worst piece of music ever used in the franchise.

That said, Enterprise was never quite as terrible as Voyager at its worst. The actors gelled a bit better and Scott Bakula made a strong leading actor. There were some pretty decent episodes in the opening couple of seasons and the show did learn from Deep Space Nine by bringing in multi-episode arcs, long-form storytelling and a recurring sometimes-ally in the shape of Shran, played by DS9 veteran Jeffrey Combs. The ending of Season 2 set in motion a new story arc in which the Enterprise has to enter a remote region of space in search of an alien race which has fired a devastating superweapon at Earth.

Season 3 was dominated by this storyline, and saw an uptick in quality as new writer Manny Coto came on board and made the show his own. At the end of the season he was promoted to showrunner, and spearheaded a fourth season which was driven by short arcs establishing elements of the Star Trek universe to come, as well as making good use of the Mirror Universe. Although some issues remained - the average episode quality was still patchy and some of the explanations for things in the Star Trek universe (like the human-looking Klingons of the original series) were deeply stupid - the show was clearly headed in the right direction, creatively. Reviews improved and there was clearly a fresh energy working behind the scenes.

But these improvements were not translating into good ratings. And whilst Enterprise was getting better, it would be hard to argue that it still looked tired compared to the storming and intense new Battlestar Galactica mini-series, which aired in 2003 ahead of the regular series beginning a year later (with ex-Star Trek writers such as Ronald D. Moore, Michael Taylor, David Weddle and Bradly Thompson on board). There was also fierce competition from the StarGate franchise, with StarGate: SG-1 feeling breezy and fun compared to Enterprise. And of course there was the disastrous box office and critical run of Star Trek: Nemesis in late 2002 and early 2003. If Nemesis hadn't killed the Star Trek franchise, it had certainly brought it to its knees.

The NX-01 experimental Enterprise. Not a Starfleet or Federation starship, which is why it was not counted or mentioned in previous Star Trek shows. Cough.

On 2 February 2005 Paramount announced it had cancelled Star Trek: Enterprise (the title and colon had been reinstated in the third season). Production ended on 8 March 2005 and the show's sets were struck and taken down. It was a historic moment. For the first time since mid-1977 - when Star Trek: Phase II entered pre-production only to be cancelled and replaced by Star Trek: The Motion Picture - there was no standing Star Trek set on the Paramount lot, and no in-production Star Trek project, either film or television. It was a sobering moment, but one that was almost ignored due to the controversy that erupted when Enterprise's final episode aired on 11 May 2005.

These Are the Voyages... was meant to show the impact of Archer's crew and their adventures, showing the founding of the Federation and the birth of the Star Trek universe. It did try to do these things...but in the context of a holodeck recreation created by Commander Riker and Counsellor Troi on the Enterprise-D during the events of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The last ship we see on Enterprise isn't the trusty little Enterprise NX-01 which gives the show its name, but the Enterprise-D, a ship that had been blown-up on screen eleven years earlier. Critics slated the episode, fans (even TNG fans) criticised the move as being disrespectful and the regular Enterprise actors felt insulted.

It was a low moment in the history of Star Trek. The franchise was effectively dead in the water. No-one was interested in making more Star Trek, the term "franchise fatigue" had become a mantra at Paramount and that seemed to be that.

Well, almost. Eighteen days after Star Trek: Enterprise ceased production, the BBC broadcast the first episode of Doctor Who in sixteen years. Battlestar Galactica had come back from the wilderness after twenty-five years and become successful, winning coveted Peabody and Hugo Awards and plaudits from serious critics. Star Trek wasn't dead forever, it was just resting. It just needed a fresh idea and someone willing to tackle the job of bringing it back...and that wasn't going to take as long as anyone might have thought.

Star Trek at 50: Torpedoing the Box Office

With both Deep Space Nine and Voyager over and a new series in the planning stages, the custodians of the Star Trek franchise turned their attention to a new movie starring the Next Generation crew. They made the decision that they wanted a clean break with how things were done in the past, with a new behind-the-scenes crew to inject some new blood and excitement into the films.

This, it turned out, was not an altogether successful decision.

Released four years after the previous Star Trek film, Nemesis was going up against The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Die Another Day at the box office. In retrospect, moving it might have been a good idea.

To make the tenth Star Trek movie, Rick Berman and Paramount decided to bring on board a new writer and a new director with no previous Star Trek credentials. Berman in particular was aware of how this had worked splendidly well for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, when producer/writer Harve Bennett and director Nicholas Meyer came on board and saved the franchise from oblivion. His hope was that a similar creative approach could yield similar results.

To write the movie, Paramount called on the services of John Logan. Logan was hot property in Hollywood, having just come off the tremendously well-received Gladiator and Any Given Sunday. His later movies would include the well-received The Aviator, Hugo and Skyfall, so clearly he was a talented screenwriter. He was also a major fan of Star Trek and was a friend of Brent Spiner's, who got him up to speed with the rest of the cast. Logan was keen to explore the Romulans, feeling that for such a classic Star Trek race they'd been grossly overlooked by the franchise, and there was a feeling that they could make both an epic action story and a more personal story about the characters and their fates (Picard's relationship with his young clone and Data's relationship with his android predecessor, B4). All of the pieces were in place for a strong movie. Paramount just needed to choose a good director.

 Tom Hardy was generally praised for his role as Shinzon, and has gone on to become a Hollywood superstar.

For reasons that are still a bit fuzzy, they went with Stuart Baird. Baird was a highly experienced and acclaimed editor who had recently moved into directing, helming the moderately well-received Kurt Russell/Steven Seagal vehicle Executive Decision and the so-so U.S. Marshals. Paramount could have gone with Jonathan Frakes, who had helmed First Contact and Insurrection, but Frakes was finishing up another movie (Clockstoppers) and Paramount chose not to wait, even though it was down to a matter of a couple of weeks on the schedule. It was hoped that Baird would, like Meyer twenty years earlier, bring a fresh and new perspective to the franchise. This was undone by the fact that, unlike Meyer, Baird refused to watch any of the TV episodes, was allegedly derogatory about the franchise to other people and jarred badly with the castmembers, getting LeVar Burton's name repeatedly wrong and making quips about his character being an alien. In more recent years the castmembers have called the director an "idiot". Paramount also insisted that the Voyager character Seven of Nine be inserted into the movie against the writer's wishes, an insistence that only went away when Jeri Ryan herself turned the proposal down, calling it idiotic. Kate Mulgrew was instead hastily written in with a cameo appearance as Admiral Janeway on a viewscreen.

Still, the movie that resulted wasn't too bad, at least if reports of the assembly cut are to be believed. There were impressive action sequences between the Enterprise-E and the Reman battlecruiser Scimitar, some interesting scenes musing on life, death and rebirth and the casting department knocked it out of the park when they turned up a young, hard-hitting and intense British actor named Tom Hardy to play the main villain, Shinzon. The effects team did great work and the script struck a nice balance between action, comedy, drama, tragedy and pathos. Baird's direction ranged from poor to mediocre, but the script and certainly the performances could have turned things around if Paramount hadn't received the cut of the movie and taken a chainsaw to it.

 The space battle between the Enterprise-E and the Scimitar wasn't too bad, but did miss the point from The Wrath of Khan that having two evenly-matched ships is more interesting than some super-vessel we know is going to get beaten anyway (Into Darkness makes this mistake as well).

Star Trek: Nemesis's initial cut was close to three hours long. This was, clearly, far too long for a Star Trek movie and there was scope for some of the scenes to be deleted. But Paramount had devised a - highly questionable - strategy for the film. They were going to launch it directly opposite the second Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers, and use its much shorter running time to pack in more performances and pick up more viewers from people who couldn't get in to see The Two Towers. As a result they hacked Nemesis down to barely 115 minutes, removing numerous scenes of character development or reflection in favour of action, explosions and violence.

This strategy was an unmitigated failure. As it turned out, The Two Towers wasn't the only game in town. There was also the new James Bond movie, Die Another Day, and the second Harry Potter movie, The Chamber of Secrets, to contend with. Released in December 2002, Nemesis simply couldn't stand up to that level of competition and retired from the cinema having taken a catastrophically low worldwide box office of $68 million against a budget of $60 million. With marketing costs factored in, the movie was an abject failure, the first Star Trek movie to actively lose money at the box office. The film's critical reception was also horrible, with the movie getting the worst reviews since at least Generations, if not The Final Frontier.

Wil Wheaton was to make a cameo appearance as Wesley Crusher, but his material was all cut from the final edit of the movie. Fortunately, a few years later Wheaton would reinvent himself as a cult geek figure by appearing on web series The Guild and on sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

Fortunately, the film was saved by the DVD release. The movie shifted over 1.1 million DVDs in its week of release, with strong sales for several weeks afterwards. Like most of the Star Trek franchise it developed a very long tail. Thanks to the DVD release, the film was pushed firmly into profitability, but it was far too close for Paramount's comfort.

The film's reception resulted in several things happening. A sequel script, which would have been the last Next Generation movie designed to send off the TNG crew altogether, was cancelled.  All further development of the Star Trek franchise in the cinema was halted. A proposed reboot projected helmed by Rick Berman was politely rejected. Paramount had a new buzzword floating around and that word was "franchise fatigue." Star Trek had reached the point of burn-out and it was time to put it on ice.

Star Trek at 50: Exploring the Final Frontier

In 1993, shortly after the launch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Paramount Studios held a discussion with Rick Berman. Having two Star Trek TV shows on the air at the same time had proved to be unexpectedly successful, so they requested that Berman and his team produce a new series to directly replace Star Trek: The Next Generation when it concluded in the spring of 1994. Despite the prospective rigours of running two productions simultaneously for many years to come, Berman agreed to sit down with his writers and consult on ideas.

The cast of Star Trek: Voyager during its first season, which aired in 1995.

As with Deep Space Nine, Berman brought Michael Piller in on the discussions. Both were keen that the new series should have a female protagonist and involved TNG writer and producer Jeri Taylor in their meetings. Taylor's influence and suggestions became key, and she was officially credited as the co-creator and executive producer of the new series. They also decided that the new show should involve a starship, as a contrast to the station-bound DS9, but wanted something different to TNG. In particular, they were aware of the occasionally-voiced complaint that TNG spent very little time in all-new or unexplored space, "boldly going where no-one had gone before." They hit on the idea of stranding a Federation starship thousands of light-years from Federation territory and having to spend years getting home through uncharted space, with no starbases, friendly ships or allies to call upon.

The producers were concerned, as they had been on DS9, by Gene Roddenberry's maxim that there should be no interpersonal conflict between the Starfleet crewmembers. To overcome the hurdle, they decided that the crew of the new ship would be partly made up of members of the Maquis, a freedom-fighting organisation that had been resisting a peace treaty calling for several Federation colonies to be turned over to the Cardassians. The Maquis were set up during the closing episodes of TNG and throughout DS9's second and third seasons. This sense of conflict was enhanced by the addition of natives from the Delta Quadrant to the crew and the reintroduction of the Vulcans as a regular race, through crewman Tuvok. The producers were also keen to explore the notion of holograms and Starfleet computers being able to create true AI, so added the character of the Doctor, an emergency medical hologram who develops intelligence and apparent sentience as the series progresses.

The new ship was dubbed the USS Voyager and was described as a lot smaller than the Enterprise-D of TNG and less combat-focused than DS9's Defiant, but also a lot faster and more manoeuvrable than either. It was also focused more on exploration and science, a return to Star Trek's core principles.

The USS Voyager was a smaller ship than the Enterprise-D but was also more flexible and a faster design. The ship soon drew derision for its apparently infinite supply of shuttlecraft and for its pristine appearance even after seven years in deep space with no servicing or refitting.

Shooting of the pilot episode began over the summer of 1994, with Genevieve Bujold cast in the role of Captain Nicole Janeway. However, Bujold was unprepared for the intense time schedule of making a weekly television series and dropped out on the second day of shooting. Production moved to other characters whilst the producers scrambled to find another actress. Kate Mulgrew, who had been on their shortlist for the role, was fortunately still available and came on board. She suggested changing the character's name to "Kathryn", to which the producers readily agreed. Most of the rest of the cast were relative newcomers, aside from Robert Picardo, an experienced supporting actor in film, who was cast as the Doctor. Robert Duncan McNeill was initially cast as Nicolas Locarno, who had appeared in the ST:TNG episode The First Duty as a disgraced Starfleet cadet. When it was realised that using Locarno would have meant paying royalties to The First Duty's writer on every episode, he was changed to the near-identical character of Tom Paris, to the initial confusion of many Star Trek fans.

The first two seasons of Voyager dealt with the ship being hurled into the Delta Quadrant, 70,000 light-years from Federation space, and having to negotiate its way through various hostile species, most notably the Kazon. However, fan reaction to the Kazon was negative and it was decided that, as an enemy species, they had not done enough to distinguish themselves from the standard, generic hostile Star Trek alien race. In the third season the Voyager left behind Kazon space and instead approached Borg territory. Although canon had previously established that the Borg were based in the Delta Quadrant, the producers had initially been reluctant to use them for fear of diluting their aura of indestructibility (the same rationale that saw them used only sparingly on TNG and not at all on DS9). With the Kazon a bust and Voyager's critical reception being lukewarm, it was decided that they would be brought on board in force at the end of the third season. The writers were helped by the movie First Contact, which refreshed the Borg with new ideas and concepts (such as the Borg Queen and nano-assimilation) they felt they could explore in greater depth.

Michael Piller departed Star Trek altogether at the end of Voyager's second season, with Jeri Taylor promoted to replace him. The third and fourth seasons, which reintroduced the Borg and a new, even greater threat called Species 8472, were judged successful. The transition from model-based effects to CGI (courtesy of Digital Muse and the ex-Babylon 5 Foundation Imaging team) also allowed for much more ambitious stories and non-humanoid aliens to be realised. Particularly successful, especially from a marketing perspective, was the introduction of a new, recurring Borg character, Seven of Nine, played by Jeri Ryan.

The premature cancellation of the excellent Dark Skies in 1997 allowed Jeri Ryan to join Star Trek: Voyager as rescued Borg drone Seven of Nine. Her arrival sparked a brief creative resurgence in the series, as well as Paramount using her for a renewed marketing drive. Ryan's performance was excellent but the studio's focus on her appearance and sexy outfits was regarded as a lowpoint for the franchise.

However,  the introduction of Seven saw the departure of regular character Kes (Jennifer Lien) and a gradual shift in the writing focus of the series, as more and more episodes switched their attention to Janeway, the Doctor and Seven. The rest of the crew had fewer and fewer storylines. This particularly offended Robert Beltran, playing the role of Commander Chakotay, the nominal first officer and second-in-command of the vessel.

"I just felt let down, ignored and insulted. I think they did a grave disservice to what I thought could have been an interesting character."

Famously, Beltran soon became outspoken about what he felt was being done to the other castmembers at conventions. This was also joined by rumours of a reported on-set coolness between Mulgrew and Ryan, and growing disputes amongst the writers about the future direction of the series. When Deep Space Nine ended in the spring of 1999, Ronald D. Moore joined the writing team of Voyager. He was extremely keen on messing up the dynamics of the show and depicting the Voyager getting more damaged the longer it went without servicing and the crew being forced to make harder moral decisions to keep the ship flying. However, his suggestions were shot down by Brannon Braga, who had taken over as showrunner (under Rick Berman's overall direction) in Season 5. Moore wrote two episodes for Voyager but ultimately only lasted a few weeks before quitting. He later took many of the ideas and plans he had for the show and instead applied them to the superficially similar but ultimately vastly superior Battlestar Galactica reboot which ran from 2003 to 2009.

The cast of Voyager during the seventh and final season, which aired in 2000-01.

A key debate within the fan community was whether Voyager should return to the Alpha Quadrant before the end of the show, with the fate of the Maquis characters and the ramifications of Voyager's actions (particularly its inflicting of several defeats on the Borg) providing a rich seam of new stories to tell. However, Braga and Berman ultimately chose to keep the show in the Delta Quadrant right up to the series finale in 2001, when it abruptly returned home thanks to some time travelling shenanigans. Unlike the triumphant, well-received ends to both TNG and DS9, Voyager ended on something of a damp squib of disappointment and cliche.

As Voyager began drawing to a close, Rick Berman proposed that Star Trek be rested for several years to recover from what he called "franchise fatigue" and for it to return with a radical new concept and idea. Paramount, however, wanted to maintain the momentum of the franchise. They asked Berman and Braga to submit ideas for a new series to pick up immediately after Voyager and, despite fearing the well had run dry, they began drawing up ideas.