Background

HOW IT BEGAN

Gene Roddenberry was a former pilot and LAPD officer turned television writer. He pitched the idea for the series as a "Wagon Train to the Stars," envisioning a futuristic space adventure that explored social and political issues of the time through allegory and metaphor. Unlike many examples of worlds created by science fiction writers, Roddenberry had a vision of a bright future for humanity, one in which we didn't destroy ourselves and instead had found ways to overcome our differences and achieve a great, thriving, sustainable, utopian society. Not only that, but this future society would strive to become even more through humans' strong curiosity about the unknown, and would find themselves in a galaxy full of other intelligent life, anomalies, and opportunities to explore and learn about the cosmos as well as about what it is to be human.

Roddenberry faced challenges in getting the series greenlit, but eventually convinced Desilu Productions, owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, to produce the show.

Yes, Lucy from I Love Lucy backed the project.

Star Trek (later known as Star Trek: The Original Series to distinguish it from later additions to the franchise) first aired in 1966.

“For me, science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic. It bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.”

—Gene Roddenberry

LEGACY

Despite initially low ratings, Star Trek gained a dedicated fanbase and became a cultural phenomenon. It spawned multiple spin-offs, films, novels, and other media, cementing its place in popular culture. Star Trek: The Original Series introduced many new ideas to audiences at the time, many of which were controversial and/or history-makers. Many of the themes had subtle (or often not-so-subtle) progressive political messages. It also provided audiences with the ability to see a familiar situation from our reality (such as a disagreement between two cultures) and see it from a more objective standpoint, that of humans observing the situation playing out from a place of non-interference.

NOTABLE CONTRIBUTIONS

First American on-screen interracial kiss between white and black actors (William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols in TOS S02E10: "Plato's Stepchildren")

“When I was nine years old, Star Trek came on, and I looked at it and went screaming through the house: ‘Come quick! Come quick! There’s a Black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!’”

—Whoopi Goldberg ("Guinan")

TO THE SILVER SCREEN

With the wild success of Star Wars in 1977, Paramount Pictures recalled that they still owned the rights to a science fiction series themselves and perhaps it was time to try to take it back out of the box, freshen it up, and make it worthy of putting on the big screen.

In 1979, they released the first film: Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It received less than stellar reviews because, compared to Star Wars, it was slow and cerebral—which is perfect for a science fiction film, but not all audiences going to see this movie were prepared for that. Still, it was successful enough for Paramount to develop additional sequels, all the way up through 1991.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

“[Star Trek] was not only entertaining but thought-provoking, hopeful, and optimistic about a future in which we come together as a planet.”

—Barack Obama

REINVENTING A CLASSIC

In the late 1980s, a new Star Trek show was proposed, which would come to be titled Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The eventual success of this show would catapult the franchise into a new era and provide the fans with multiple other shows (Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise).

“I was not a science-fiction fan, but Star Trek was and is a show that is full of hope for the future. That’s why it has survived.”

—Patrick Stewart ("Captain Jean-Luc Picard")

THE GOLDEN YEARS (THE BERMAN ERA)

From the start of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry had hired Rick Berman to be an executive producer with him, apparently selected especially since Berman had never watched the original show so his perspective would be different. After the first season, Roddenberry took a less active role due to ill health, and he continued to consult on the series until his death in 1991. Rick Berman was now in charge of the franchise, and it led to multiple successful spin-offs.

Here are the series developed during the Berman Era:

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993)
Star Trek: Voyager (1995)
Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)

Also, multiple movies were filmed during this time:

Star Trek: Generations (1994)
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

“It conveys a hopeful vision of the future and presents the argument that we can get out there, that we can become a spacefaring civilization.”

—Carl Sagan

THE DARK YEARS

After the box office flop of the Star Trek: Nemesis film in 2002 and the cancelation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005 after only 4 seasons, the franchise as a whole slowed to a halt.

It wasn't until a few years later that filmmaker J.J. Abrams was put on a project to create a movie to reboot the series. The movie, simply titled Star Trek, was released in 2009 as an action movie that recast the original crew (Kirk, Spock, and the gang).

This film was shortly followed up by two sequels: Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek: Beyond (2016).

NU-TREK ERA

For better or worse, it did seem that the film series started by J.J. Abrams sparked some new life into the franchise, enough that Paramount began development on a wave of new shows. Most of these follow a much different format than their predecessors, with shorter seasons of only about 10 episodes each (as opposed to an average of 24-26 back in the day) and episodes that built upon each other (rather than being mostly episodic as before) with a climactic season wrap-up. While employing much more impressive cinematic techniques and CGI, many of the newer shows have been regarded as darker, edgier, and more akin to other modern dramatized shows. Many of them (like Discovery and Picard) have often been critiqued as having lost Roddenberry's original vision, though it does occasionally still show up. Others (like Lower Decks) are aimed to provide a very different entertainment experience: an animated comedy following in the footsteps of successful shows like Rick and Morty. Paramount even created another animated show (Prodigy) that is aimed at a younger audience.

New shows/films started in and after 2017:

Star Trek: Discovery
Star Trek: Picard
Star Trek: Lower Decks
Star Trek: Prodigy
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Star Trek: Section 31

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