1. The Federation is most interesting when it has an ideological foil
The original Star Trek pitted Captain Kirk against fake gods, rogue Starfleet officers, and sadistic computers, but the show was often concerned with a Cold War-style rivalry between the Federation and two warlike powers, the Klingons and the Romulans. The Federation seldom needed to demonstrate its own peace-loving, liberal values—it just needed to appear in contrast with civilizations that were bent on domination and conquest. Similarly, Star Trek: The Next Generation was never so vital as when its ethos of individualism and self-improvement was in contrast with the collectivist, anti-individualist Borg. (An earlier attempt to give the TNG-era Federation an ideological foil, the hyper-capitalist Ferengi, basically fizzled.)
In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Federation’s light touch when it came to matters of religion and self-determination (vis-a-vis the Bajorans) stood in contrast to the coercive theocracy of the Dominion. People often try to find a “bad guy” in Trek, like Khan for example—but these shows and movies usually work best when there’s an ideological struggle against another civilization or organization. Count me among those who really enjoyed the struggle against the Emerald Chain in Star Trek: Discovery, and was sad to see them dispatched so easily.
2. If Phase II had made it to air, that might have been the end of Trek
Back in the 1970s, Gene Roddenberry was trying to launch new TV shows with no success, but he was also trying to bring back Star Trek. First, there was the (underrated) Animated Series, and then the lavish and majestic Star Trek: The Motion Picture. But in between those two efforts, there was a failed venture called Star Trek: Phase II. This would have been essentially a continuation of the original series, except without Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. Some of the Phase II scripts were recycled for use in TNG‘s second season during the 1987 writers strike, and a lot of the show’s concepts found their way into both TMP and TNG.
My guess is that if Phase II had made it to air in 1977 or thereabouts, it would have felt a lot like the first two seasons of TNG, with all of their glaring faults—except that it also would’ve felt like an attempt to resurrect the Original Series, only worse. “TOS without Spock” does not sound like a winning formula to me. Especially coming on the heels of the original Star Wars, Phase II might have felt a little clunky by comparison. Moving the TOS cast to movies and then eventually creating a new show with a different cast, on the other hand, made Trek feel fresh and interesting again, and helped to ensure the longevity of the series by showing that it could survive the departure of literally all of its stars.
3. The contradiction at the heart of Trek gives it a lot of its power
Starfleet is simultaneously a militaristic organization loosely modeled on the U.S. Navy, and also a peaceful scientific institution whose members are encouraged to think for themselves and to take up artistic hobbies—as long as they only perform Shakespeare plays or music that someone from the mid-twentieth century would immediately recognize. Some of the most memorable scenes in TNG involve crewmembers who’ve disobeyed orders and get dressed down by Picard or some other officer. That moment when someone reaches the limits of Starfleet tolerance, and discovers that individualism and kindness aren’t always the order of the day, is always super fascinating. This dichotomy also powers a lot of the best Trek dilemmas, which boil down to whether to respond to some new, dangerous phenomenon with curiosity or aggression.
4. We need a Saavik TV show or movie
I understand why Jean-Luc Picard became the first Star Trek character to headline a TV series—because after all, Patrick Stewart is a beloved figure, even to extremely casual Trek fans. But when I think about Star Trek characters who both need and deserve to be explored further in long-form storytelling, my mind goes to Saavik. Even in a film as overstuffed with goodness as Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan, Saavik stands out as one of the most interesting characters: an ambitious young Vulcan who looks up to Spock while also striving to embody the Starfleet values that Kirk often overlooks (because they come in the form of regulations.) Later, there are hints that she’s half-Romulan. The treatment of Saavik after Wrath of Khan is one of the worst travesties in Star Trek history: first, she helps the rejuvenated but rapidly-aging Spock through a slew of pon-farrs, then she’s tossed aside. Saavik is basically transformed into one of many plot devices in a clunky movie that only exists to bring Leonard Nimoy back to the franchise he’d been so eager to escape. Saavik was supposed to return in Star Trek VI as a traitor to the Federation, but she was replaced by Valeris. I have so many questions about this character: Does she have Spock’s baby? Why didn’t she go with Kirk and the others in Star Trek IV? How does she approach her return to the Federation after everything she went through? Justice for Saavik!
5. Discovery is the most hopeful Trek of the past decade
There’s been a meme going around that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is better than Discovery, and I already wrote about why we can actually love them both, instead of pitting two great shows against each other. But one of the reasons people dunk on Discovery is because they feel like it’s not hopeful enough, and I strongly disagree. Sure, Discovery‘s first season overdosed on “gritty war drama.” But starting with season three, when Discovery really got good, it’s been a show all about resilience and rebuilding. Yes, a thousand years from now, the Federation has fallen—but that’s not the end of the story: Michael Burnham and her crew work tirelessly to restore the Federation without compromising its values, and they show that even in the dark times, you can persevere. It’s easy to be upbeat when you’ve got magical technology and unlimited warp drive. It’s a lot harder when all the dilithium is gone and most of your ships have blown up. Discovery doesn’t shy away from showing the enormity of the challenge, but also shows these characters rising to face it—while keeping their scientific curiosity and their respect for other forms of life, including the very unfamiliar aliens they meet at the edge of the galaxy in season four. I often think a pivotal scene in Discovery is the one where Admiral Vance is negotiating with the leader of the Emerald Chain, and he chooses not to take the expedient path, even though sticking to his principles may end up costing the Federation everything. That, to me, is the essence of Star Trek.
6. Discovery ought to be the present of the Star Trek universe
For a period of four or five years, we were getting Star Trek movies starring the original TOS crew, while TNG was also on the air. Star Trek VI leaned into this, with a storyline that showed us how the more constructive relationship with the Klingons in the TNG era had come to pass. At a certain point, it was obvious that the TOS movies were now taking place in the past of Star Trek, while TNG was the present. Star Trek is now missing this feeling of history moving forward, with events in the past contributing to progress in the here and now. Given that Discovery now takes place much later than every other Star Trek show, the best way to get back that feeling would be to make it clear that events in Strange New Worlds, Picard, Lower Decks, etc., are all moving us towards the future we see in Discovery. Not just because I like Discovery a whole lot, but because I like to see Star Trek showing how we are always moving towards a better future.
7. Star Trek needs to get back to being about what it means to be human in a messed-up cosmos
Gene Roddenberry brought a strong humanist ethos to Star Trek. During his lifetime, the series was always about humanity’s capacity for self-improvement. And it’s important to remember that Star Trek takes place in a universe that is completely ridiculous. There are space gods with terrible fashion sense everywhere you go, and giant planet-destroying super-carrots, and huge incomprehensible mysteries—and against all of this are a group of tiny fragile humans, who muddle through using their wits and their intellect and an ability to spew endless bullshit. TOS, TNG, and to some extent other older Trek series, always include at least one non-human character, like Spock, who has an ambivalent relationship with humanity but appears unable to escape a certain fascination with our species. I can’t think of a character in the newer Trek shows who occupies that Spock role, except for maybe Spock himself, in Strange New Worlds. (Maybe Saru a little bit, but not really.)
I would love to see Trek return to asking whether humans really can do better, whether we’re capable of dealing with a universe that is so huge and incomprehensible, and whether anybody would ever really want to be like us. After all, look around you—we are currently caught up in huge incomprehensible events, and at the mercy of near-omnipotent people with terrible fashion sense. Now is exactly the time when I need some speechifying about what it means to be human, and what humans can become if we work at it.
This article was originally published at Happy Dancing, Charlie Jane Anders’ newsletter, available on Buttondown.
All screencaps above via TrekCore.com.
Buy the Book
Promises Stronger Than Darkness
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of the young-adult trilogy Victories Greater Than Death, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, and Promises Stronger Than Darkness(which publishes on April 11, 2023), along with the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes. She’s also the author of Never Say You Can’t Survive (August 2021), a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney’s, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Tor.com, Tin House, Teen Vogue, Conjunctions, Wired Magazine, and other places. Her TED Talk, “Go Ahead, Dream About the Future” got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.
This is missing Lower Decks love.
Fascinating!
What I loved most about ST:DS9 was that Starfleet was, finally, shown to be *human*: individuals of all species had conflicts, with their peers, their societies, and the organization. The Federation shown to have actual *politics*. (And what I loved most about it was Kai Winn, because she was absolutely evil, but also in an absolutely believable way.)
SNW hasn’t really grabbed me as much, but that’s mainly because I don’t get a lot out of prequel series: we *know* what the future holds. And, also, a lot of prequel shows go to great lengths to incorporate specific incidents or people from the previously released shows. (Sometimes cringe-worthy, as when ST:E had the “Reed alert,” gah that was so bad even for that show.) I didn’t care for the second season of ST:D at all because of the annoyingly forced introduction of Spock (and a *bad* instance of Spock at that) and Pike.
But… SNW’s Uhura is great. Absolutely a fantastic way to show a ground-breaking character in a new light.
The best thing I see with ST:D, with their jump ahead, is that it gives the show two strong avenues for new stories: rebuilding the Federation (I *like* good politics), and exploration.
I think I’ve said all this before, and at least some of it to you elsewhere. ;)
Here’s my hot take: Clear the Cache.
Star Trek has a great history. It’s a cultural juggernaut. Its influence is unquestionable, reaching back generations. And that’s a problem now, in my opinion. Often times the makers of new Trek can’t seem to get past its iconography in order to tell a story that’s clean and coherent. They’re tripping over it. Just look at the new season of Picard. They’ve had enough problems keeping the basic plots straight in past seasons. Do we really need to see more shout-outs to Wrath of Khan wedged into this universe? I love that movie too, but come on. Can we move beyond it, finally, please? At least keep the shout-outs to the generation this show is about, huh?
For that reason, I’d love to see a new series about a new ship that explores planets we’ve never heard of, by people we’ve never heard of. Not a single thread to anything familiar. Just the unknown. Just a trek through the stars.
PS: Oh, and no giant ships or space things threatening our heroes and the Federation. No revenge. No Section 31. Enough already. And no monsters. This is Star Trek. There are no monsters, just creatures you haven’t made peace with yet. Ask a Horta.
The novelizations of ST2 and 3 do a lot more with Saavik. And she’s in some of the other books from the 80’s.
https://www.tor.com/2014/03/12/spock-walks-away-from-omelas-the-pandora-principle-by-carolyn-clowes/
Only thing I would say is that I disagree about Discovery being the most hopeful – that’s Prodigy. It’s whole premise is to hold out hope that the Federation can make things better. Enslaved kids making themselves into what they see could be.
@3 Absolutely agree with that hot take.
Let’s stop telling stories bound by references and easter eggs and prequels…
New characters, new locations, more adventures (and less trauma).
I also kind of feel that way about SW – less old, more new!
#6
I absolutely agree with that as well. So many of these franchises are stuck on themselves it comes across to me like some weird brand of corporate narcissism.
This is also the problem for Marvel and DC: are the movies and series meant for fans or to draw in non-fans who may become fans? If the latter then viewers need to feel comfortable in their viewing so less reliance on past events to underpin the current story and more looking at what’s to come rather than where we’ve been. Nothing alienates a potential new film or series fan more than feeling that they can’t fully enjoy a product because they aren’t aware of some continuity point from an issue of the comic it’s based on.
I just can’t love Discovery. Everything is just way too consequential; The universe is always hanging in the balance, and as a result we get Michael with her constantly furrowed brows and at least one weepy scene every episode, and everyone speaks in clipped whispers to each other to make sure we understand that what they’re saying is breathlessly important. I don’t know that I’ll tune for the next season if I find out Michael’s boyfriend is back after a relaxing stint in Club Med community service after the crap he pulled.
And I guess to be further the contrarian, I honestly have never really had as much of a problem with the fan service as some do. To be sure, some of the spin-offs have waded into nostalgia to the point they can barely touch anything original anymore, And it’s also an excuse for lazy writing as they know people will tune in because hey, Riker’s back, or whatever.
On the other hand, it’s a Trek universe. There are a gazillion sci-fi series I could watch, but I always give Trek a chance, because it’s Trek. Somewhere there is the ideal blend of continuity and innovation. Although it wasn’t perfect, I think DS9 did the best job with that.
I want to love Discovery but it’s just too try-hard for me. I have certain issues with it that I can’t go into here.
“Star Trek is now missing this feeling of history moving forward, … the best way to get back that feeling would be to make it clear that events in Strange New Worlds, Picard, Lower Decks, etc., are all moving us towards the future we see in Discovery.”
Isn’t the future we see in Discovery one where the Federation fell, amongst other issues? I mean, the remake of Andromeda where they are attempting to rebuild civilization might be hopeful, but I am less optimistic that making it clear all the other series are leading to said civilization’s collapse would be nearly as fun.
I want to chime in like some others here with good things to say about Lower Decks!
I’d also like to say that what I love about Khan, and why TWOK is my favorite piece of Trek media (perhaps not the best, but indisputably my favorite) is that he represents the worst of humanity while thinking he represents the best. That, more than his desire for vengeance, is what makes him compelling—he doesn’t have to be an alien or part of a collective to serve as a reminder of the fragility of human progress.
Something I realized when watching and loving Strange New Worlds is that a big part of the beauty of Star Trek is that it doesn’t have to have some big narrative to move towards. SNW has little relevance to the plot of shows like Picard or even its technical parent show Discovery – and that’s great! Instead of being bogged down in connections and mythology, it’s just about fun adventures in space and characters living and growing.
Your Opinions Are Mostly (60%?) Correct ;)
(4) I’m way more invested in Boimler, Mariner, Rutherford and Tendi than I ever was in Saavik (Vonda McIntyre’s novelisations aside), but then I also didn’t feel the need to revisit Chris Pike, and SNW is now one of my favourite shows.
(5 & 6) No. Just no. Discovery’s future is a colossal failure of the imagination. The Burn resets the Federation to Kirk’s (or even Archer’s) era. By the 32nd century, the Federation should have been pretty much the Culture.
Imagine if Discovery had arrived in a future where all the Federation’s taboos (Augments, machine hyper-intelligences, etc) had been overturned and the Federation now embraced at-will gender changes, drug-glands, and all starships had Minds, such that the Discovery crew were as culture-shocked as time-travelling H.G. Wells trying to save 1970s San Francisco from a serial killer? What an opportunity to show people dedicated to open-mindedness having to catch up rather than preach.
My dearest hope is that Discovery’s future is revealed to be a time-loop and we can have a new 25th century show (not Picard) with the positivity of SNW, LD and Prodigy to be our Star Trek ‘present’.
@7: Be careful what you ask for. You might end up with Star Trek: Franchissus. :-)
No Kirstie, no Saavik.
I really think the writers need to understand that the Federation in and of itself is not any better than the romulans or the Kardashians or any of the other species. very rarely do you see the Federation doing good for any of its other planets and societies sure in the trouble with tribbles they were trying to bring grain to a society that needs to be feeding himself,and they tended to move huge meteorites when they needed to but what was most interesting always was seeing how different societies were whether it was a planet that grew corn and only corn and seemed to survive by training with another planet or planets that only had pleasure. I am wondering why so many writers of the stories always had to have confrontations as the basis of the story plot. there could be so many good stories just to develop characters to show their history and their upbringing and why they are the way they are. I just saw the movie otto,and that is what I’m talking about, no real violence no confrontations just a good script
Regarding Point 4, by NextGen, Starfleet seems more modeled on the Royal Navy during “Pax Britannica’ (1815 – 1914). It appears to be mostly engaged in commerce protection, scientific exploration, and backing up diplomatic missions.
I’ve been thinking about point three lately, and it occurs to me that this is why Starfleet as-seen-on-screen is rife with insubordination, theft of equipment, and occasional mutiny; unlike a conventional military (like the Romulans or Cardassians), Starfleet still insists on seeing itself as a scientific organization, even in wartime. Starfleet officers are expected and encouraged to show initiative, adaptability, and lateral thinking. The more colourful misadventures and apparent lack of “proper” discipline isn’t a bug, it’s a feature (or at least an accepted trade-off).
(Compare with Glinn Dygan’s observation in one of the Relaunch novels that Cardassian military officers are trained to follow orders without question or need for explanation [contrasted with how Captain Picard goes out of his way to explain the overall details of their mission and make sure every department can fully collaborate].)
@5 Absolutely this.
I suspect Prodigy has an uphill climb to reach a larger Trek audience, but it does a great job of focusing on what for me is a core theme of the franchise: there is a better future we can aspire to.
I’ll admit the first episode or two did not grab me. It felt like a very generic action show for kids. But it quickly developed into a show that felt very ‘Star Trek’. I’m going to give kudos to the creators—I think they knew exactly where they were going from episode one. As one goal of the show was to act as an introduction to Trek it was able to focus on some core concepts.
To the concluding point in the article about Trek being anthropocentric, and providing a way to hold humanity up for inspection to judge whether or not we can be worthy of emulating, is absolutely valid and something Trek shares with a lot of science fiction. But another interesting part of Prodigy is the central cast are all alien outsiders and the presence of the Federation for most of the season isn’t a ship full of humans showing up to solve the problem of the week but the idea of the Federation itself.
If I were to add an 8th hot take to the list it is that we currently live in a golden age of Trek. In addition to having an abundance of shows each one is radically different from the others. TNG, DS9, and Voyager were much more aligned stylistically and narratively than the current crop of shows. A down side could be that if you really like one take on Trek it’s easy to feel other shows as missed opportunities. But the flip side is if a particular viewer has any interest at all in Trek there is probably a show that connects with them. And that seems pretty Star Trek to me.
My hottest take about Star Trek is that we need a thirty-year moratorium on all references to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
My second hottest take is that, to move forward, it needs to let go of just being about Starfleet. There’s an entire universe there, but we only ever see it at any length from the perspective of a human-dominated paramilitary organisation. One of the things that I actually loved about the first season of Picard was how it finally showed us a civilian perspective (but this was immediately walked back in the second season).
There’s a danger of this becoming a Discovery pile-on. With good reasons, but I’ll just say that I felt it suffered from Doctor Who syndrome. Once The Doctor saved the odd planet and solved mysteries. Recently, like Disvovery, it’s all universe threatening situations every week. It’s boring.
I have to say no No NO HARD NO. To number 6. There is a thousand years of Trek history that I felt it was irresponsible to just skip forward to after a bad end for the entire universe. I do not like Post Apocalyptic as a genre, and Star Trek itself is already a post-apocalyptic series, just with a happy new beginning instead of scrounging around in the shadows of Ozymandias’ works. Also I think they made the ultimate size of the Federation that was paltry in size and scope. Three hundred and some civilizations in the Federation makes it seem like they stopped exploring after the TNG era.
Hope isn’t really the word I would use to describe Disco. I’d use armageddon. Because they always seem to be facing the end of the galaxy. Discovery needs to go smaller, not bigger.
@15 Idrydenb
That’s absolutely brilliant. The Discovery crew going into the future and instead of being the hope bringers, they became the relics. Not that the Federation had become worse off in their absence, but had become even more of itself with new ideas from new civilizations. Earth becoming so much of a technotopian paradise that it”s unrecognizable even to them. In that way, the Academy Tree still being there is both a touchstone to their past, but also a mark that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
@20 Cybersnark,
I agree completely.
Also, we need a proper new rival for the Federation. The Klingons are overplayed (and allies most of the time in any case); the Borg are either licking their wounds or on friendly terms with the Federation; the Romulans and Cardassians have been devastated; the Breen are dramatically uninteresting; and it’s not clear that the Prophets are even willing to let the Dominion send ships through the wormhole anymore. There needs to be someone fresh.
I enjoyed Discovery although I do agree with the overload on end of life scenarios all the time gets boring. My personal bugbear is the over affection with TOS; honestly before my time and didn’t really enjoy the few episodes I watched. Agree that Kirk and Spock were cool and I have enjoyed watching Anson Mount embody Pike.
The ST I grew up on and fell in love with were TNG and DS9. I especially loved DS9 my favourite ST series. I would love to see more TNG and DS9 stories rather than the seemingly endless TOS obsession.
My all-time hot Trek take:
Star Trek is at its best when the Federation actually is what it purports to be: a post-scarcity utopia. Which isn’t to say there can’t be individuals who get it wrong, but the institutions of the UFP and Starfleet are ideologically sound and true justice prevails (consider: “The Measure of a Man,” “The Drumhead”).
DS9 started the slide into this, and they got away with it because they had really, really good writers. But it’s ultimately resulted in the grimdark hot mess that is Picard, which is the least Star Trek thing I’ve ever seen (with some of the most deeply embarrassing writing, to boot, whether we’re talking about plot, dialogue, or characterization). Lower Decks–an animated sitcom!–is somehow succeeding at being the best Trek since DS9 specifically because it understands that. Even as LD satirizes the Trek that’s come before, it’s ultimately more hopeful and better executed than any other Trek running.
Grim, gritty sci-fi scenarios are a dime a dozen. Star Trek is, at its heart, hopeful and aspirational–when it’s done right. Roddenberry was a real asshole in his personal life, but the best thing he did for Star Trek while he was still in charge was strictly enforcing the Federation as a utopia where civilization had evolved beyond its current form, for the better. It makes the universe much more challenging to write in, but if you can’t hack it, your ideas have no place in Trek. Lazy or bad writers who can’t figure out how to build a compelling story without the crutch of “ACKchewally, the Federation/Starfleet are bad/are corrupt/have a seedy underbelly” need to shut up, go home, and keep their fingers off of Trek.
@27. Damn straight Drop that mic!!
I love this from comment 15: “By the 32nd century, the Federation should have been pretty much the Culture.” Of course in the sense of being a society no longer based on scarcity mediated by money, it was always halfway there.
Does anyone know if Banks ever stated that Trek had been an influence? The tragedy is he’s no longer here to ask.
I’m going to be a little heterodoxic here and point out that every series got a mention save Star Trek: Enterprise. Our household is doing a bit of a re-watch, and rather enjoying, so far, how much the show limits itself. (I especially like how much the ship isn’t infinite — either in size or in abilities — the way it is in later shows.) I think the show does a reasonable job of trying to exploit the frictions between being human and/or Star Fleet (before SF actually exists?!) and avoids too much fan service.
And, goodness, am I glad that they ditched the time travel angle. I’ll give you FTL travel, but I really loathe time travel. But that’s mostly me.
I remember watching STVI on the big screen when it came out and wondering why they didn’t write the part for Saavik. Did they not want Robin Curtis back? Then the plot twist came and I figured that they didn’t want to “damage” their character, so they created a new one.
I like the version of Saavik shown in these fanfic novels Star Trek Lost Destiny: Book I: Race of Death
From the blurb:
I am LIVING for all the comments on The Culture and Lower Decks in here.
I know Banks’ works have been optioned several times, but it feels unlikely they will ever make it to the screen. I think current TV writing philosophy just does not know how to deal with a utopia unless it holds a “dark secret!!” even if The Culture actually does have flaws in its Anti-Prime Directive philosophy.
I freaking love Charlie-Jane Anders. What a great author, and I love these ideas about Star Trek. It has brought me so much peace, and inspiration. I think my values probably originated here.