We all miss Star Trek. When I was a little kid, Star Trek: The Next Generation series had just begun, I was completely enthralled. The idea of a holodeck, voice-activated computers, and walking/talking androids completely captured me. I continued to love Star Trek when Deep Space Nine launched in 1993. I appreciated the creative direction that the writers and producers were trying to take with the series, although not all fans would have agreed with me. Star Trek: Voyager was launched in 1995, and with the exception of the sexy Borg drone Seven of Nine, I personally found it difficult to be absorbed by it as much as the previous series. By the time Enterprise came around in 2001, I had become preoccupied with other things. But this wasn’t necessarily because the episodes of Voyager or Enterprise weren’t any good. I find it quite interesting to talk to fans today, and ask them where along the history of Star Trek their interest started to wane. The time point varies considerably between fans, but one truth is clear: somewhere along the lines after TNG, fans, including myself, stopped watching the shows. And everyone had their own reasons for doing so.
Marketing analysts might argue that market saturation probably played a role in the ratings decline (Rick Berman called it “franchise fatigue”). For over a decade, there was a continuous stream of Star Trek series being broadcast, sometimes two at one time, and within that time frame a film was being released in theaters every two years. Fans may simply have been bombarded with too much Trek. Some contend that the series became too dark, and too far removed from Gene Roddenberry’s original vision. In this regard, I respectfully disagree on both accounts. If Gene Roddenberry had released the very same episodes of ST:TOS today rather than fifty years ago (with modern special effects), would it still be successful? It’s an interesting and debatable question, but my inclination is that the answer is no. The truth is that the series addressed the concerns and fears of the time, and indulged in the fantasies of that generation. As such, this drive as it seems to “restore Gene Roddenberry’s original vision” of the 1960’s and repackage it in modern special effects seems misguided. I say this because I actually thought Enterprise was very faithful to that vision, and it failed to restore the ratings. On the flip side, JJ Abrams new film had almost nothing to do with it, and it was a smashing success.
Whatever the reasons or solution may be (and the solution may simply be to just leave Trek with JJ Abrams), I became deeply inspired to write my own Star Trek novel. It has been a long time coming; I became inspired as far back as 2003, when Roger Ebert wrote that ”it is time for “Star Trek” to make a mighty leap forward another 1,000 years into the future, to a time when starships do not look like rides in a 1970s amusement arcade, [and] when aliens do not look like humans with funny foreheads.” Ebert has always had a dim view of Star Trek, so I didn’t necessarily put too much stock in this particular review. But I’ll just say that it was enough to inspire me to take a stab at what he was suggesting. It was time to re-invent the future.
As I began writing, I decided that I found little point to write within the confines of The Next Generation universe. To play in this sandbox without the opportunity to break apart the toys, play with them, add new things to them, and put them back together in unique ways, I would only be able to appeal to the audience through nostalgia. I decided that that was best left to the hands of the many of capable writers of official Star Trek novels and fan-fiction/productions. There are many of them that I would even recommend, but the point of this website is to explore new possibilities for Roddenberry’s universe.
So what would the future of Star Trek look like after just a few more decades? What would The Next Next Generation look like?
This is the subject of my novel.
Image by: Andrew J. Hodges (03-30-1998)
NEXT: The concept design of the new ship!
