Questions About The New Star Trek Show

In case you hadn’t heard, CBS has finally pulled the trigger on a new Star Trek TV show with a premiere date slotted for 2017.  It’s a pretty major deal as this will be the first Star Trek show on the air in over 10 years since the end of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005.  This also means the show will have to contend with the very odd place Star Trek has come to hold in the pop cultural pantheon after nearly a decade of disappointments like Enterprise and Nemesis before J.J. Abrams films slouched into a position of mild popularity.  

Personally I’m pretty excited, I’m a pretty huge Star Trek fan so the prospect of being able to watch new Star Trek in my life time is incredibly exciting and after CBS’ recent excellent handling of Supergirl my faith in that network has gone way, way up.  What’s more, now is the time for a new Star Trek show.  Star Trek was one of the first and most influential blendings of speculative fiction and space opera that embodied an incredibly pro-tech futurism and an infectious optimism that has been in far too short supply lately.  However, the announcement, which was basically just “we’re making a new Trek show,” has left everyone with a lot of questions that I’m going to go over here.

WHEN IS IT SET?

In its 50 year history Star Trek has gone through a plethora of in-universe settings and time period.  There was the classic era of the original series, the revised universe of the first run of Star Trek movies, the modern continuity of The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, and Voyager, the prequel era of Enterprise, and the recent reboot continuity of the J.J. Abrams films.  That’s a lot of possibilities for the creators of this new show to draw from, not to mention the possibility of the show taking place in an entirely new time and setting all its own.  Of all the time periods at hand I think it’s most likely CBS will place its new Trek show somewhere adjacent to the TNG/DS9/VOY era.  That was the time when Star Trek enjoyed its greatest popularity and prevalence with audiences so it’d make sense for CBS to want to return to that time. 

What’s more CBS doesn’t actually get any money from the Star Trek films that Paramount puts out so it’s hard to imagine them trying to square a new show within the realm of the movie universe, especially given the back and forth that would end up dictating.  Paramount’s Star Trek movies are certainly successful but the franchise still hasn’t found the kind of dedicated fan interest that keeps multimedia franchises like the Marvel cinematic universe afloat through multiple mediums so it’s difficult to imagine CBS and Paramount trying to weave a shared universe between TV and film.  Additionally the new movies are just so sleek and glossy and expensive looking it’d be hard to replicate their aesthetic on a TV budget. 

CREW REPRESENTATION?

One of the biggest problems with the new Star Trek work of the 21^st century has been its regression in terms of representation.  In the ‘60s Star Trek broke boundaries by featuring prominent Uhura and Sulu as prominent non-white characters, even featuring the first interracial kiss on television.  Since then Trek has always boasted a very diverse cast of characters with a lot of representation relative to the eras the various shows were produced in.  However, in 2015 representation is a very different ball park and there’s really no excuse for the crews on Enterprise or the Abrams films consisting of “a bunch of white people and their 2 minority friends,” not when shows like Brooklyn 99, Blackish, The Flash, and Fresh Off the Boat are all about multi-racial casts. 

Additionally there’s the question of LGBTQA representation.  Star Trek has always had an abysmal track record when it comes to non-straight characters in that there haven’t been any.  Even some of the thoroughly asexual characters like Spock or Data ended up forced into heterosexual relationships in some form or another.  The closest the show ever got to having an actual queer character was Garak from Deep Space 9, who was intended to be a bisexual man though the show was never allowed to explicitly state as much.  Given the great strides made for LGBTQA rights in recent years now is the perfect time for Star Trek to final move forward and broaden its horizons. 

WILL THERE BE NEW TECHNOLOGY?

Something that’s always set Star Trek apart in the realms of science fiction was how much its technology has both predicted and influenced technological development.  Things like communicators, pads, replicators, and even warp engines have found parallels in the real world but in recent years Star Trek hasn’t had the chance to keep up with the developing world of technology.  Back in the ‘90s things like portal computer tablets and replicator technology was ahead of the curve but in the modern age of apps and social media Star Trek is a little behind the times so a new show would be the perfect chance for them to try and match or even surpass the modern world once more. 

The groundwork for a Star Trek iPhone analog is already there in the form of the tricorder but the idea of social media in the Star Trek universe would be the most interesting development.  Part of the entire Star Trek universe is the idea that there’s no such thing as mass media or popular culture within the Federation owing to the massive distance between ships, star bases, and colonies, that’s why the only cultural media the crews interact with are either classics or created by the crew themselves.  Introducing a great dynamic around social interactions and interconnectivity would add a whole new dimension to the entire Star Trek universe and open a lot of interesting story doors, especially given the way social media has been used to enact real world change in recent years.

SEX?

This is part of a broader discussion but it’s still worth getting into in its own right.  Star Trek and sex have always had a bizarre relationship.  Nowadays the original series might seem quaint or even a bit dated but at the time in the ‘60s the amount of making out and premarital sex on the show was incredibly risqué at the time.  Alongside James Bond and the newly minted Playboy magazine Star Trek was at the forefront of the ‘60s sexual revolution and Captain Kirk embodied the same “new man” archetype as James Bond or Hugh Heffner.  A big part of this emphasis on sexual content was that the original Star Trek was considered an adult franchise, to the point that it actually didn’t really have many child fans.  Additionally, the show runners would use the sexual content as a way to dazzle the network into accepting more divisive subject matters, for instance when they produced the episode ‘A Private Little War’ as a commentary on the Vietnam war they specifically had to add a major sexual subplot to the story to convince the network this was a mature story for adults. 

Since the ‘60s the sexuality has been slowly drained from Star Trek even though each series has kept at least one lady killer type character as a reference to Kirk’s classic antics.  Given how much of a sexual revolution we’re going through now with the anti-Slut Shaming movement and things like the growing digitalization of sex it’d be a great to see a new Star Trek show take a new and considered stance on sex and sexuality in society today.  Conversely, sex and sci-fi have only grown further and further apart over the years so if this new Trek ended up a very neutered and sexless genre show it wouldn’t be that surprising, there really hasn’t been that much sleaze in the space opera genre since Star Wars.

UTOPIA VS. REALISM

The biggest dividing point in Star Trek’s history has always been predicated on idealistic lines and series intentions.  The original series and it Next Generation follow up were both predicated on a utopian ideal of humanity’s future, specifically the thinking that the crew were essentially perfect.  The purest concept of both shows was that these were the best crews Star Fleet had to offer, the most impressive astronauts available facing down only the toughest and most outlandish problems because those are the only issues that actually count as problems for explorers and scientists of their caliber.  That’s the whole point of everyone in the original series justifying their own expertise in a world where someone like Spock, who is superior to a human in almost all conceivable ways, exists.  Everyone on the Enterprise has honed skills and abilities that make them Spock’s equal in one way or another and the same goes for the next generation crew and Data, they’ve all transcended human limitations in their skills and abilities.

However, in Deep Space 9 and Voyager that’s not the case.  The driving idea of those shows is that the heroes are decent, capable, maybe a little less if we’re being honest.  The entire point of Captain Sisko from Deep Space 9 is that he was a burnt out commander that was being put out to pasture, presiding over a crew of failures and bad decisions makers the Federation had basically given up on, and by sheer coincidence they become the face of the Federation to a whole new section of space and the leaders of Star Fleet in its darkest hour.  That’s also why Deep Space 9 and Voyager are more cynical shows in a lot of ways, they’re about flawed people thrown into difficult situations while also viewing the idealism and utopianism of classic Trek with a more skeptical and realistic eye.  None of that is a bad thing, it actually makes the Deep Space 9 and Voyager crews incredibly unique within the Trek canon with how human they all feel.  For instance, Lieutenant Torres, the engineer on Voyager, is one of the most fascinating Star Trek characters because she’s not actually a very good engineer.  She’s good enough, she’s adequate for the task but it doesn’t come easily to her, it’s not second nature like Geordi or Scotty or even O’Brian, she just does it because she wants to, regardless of whether or not it’ll ever get easier for her. 

There are merits to both the Utopian approach and the realistic designs so I could see this new Trek show going either way, though they’ll most likely take a fusion of both if other recent genre hits are anything to go by.  Personally I think there’d be an interesting story to be told in the actual clash of values between the two ideas.  At the end of Deep Space 9 the Federation had been basically transformed into a full on military organization that had been beefed up to essentially the police of the galaxy.  Their greatest foes had all been taken down; the dominion had been banished to the Gamma Quadrant, the Cardassian union was being occupied, the Klingon empire was stuck in recovery mode, and the Romulan homeworld had just been blown up by a supernova.  The Federation itself is at a crossroads between a humanitarian agency in the name of exploration and aid and a judiciary body that exists to impose its law throughout the galaxy, a new show that focused on the battle for the Federation’s soul or even a full on civil war within Star fleet would be a great way to continue the voyagers of the USS Enterprise. 


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