All of these appeared on the heels of three big-screen adventures that featured classic characters but didn’t always try to recreate the classic Trek feel. An animated series aimed at younger viewers, it’s part of a strategy apparently designed to blanket the market with a Star Trek for every possible audience, from kids looking for interstellar adventures to those who like their Trek served up with wiseassery and in-jokes, to those accustomed to the serialized storytelling of contemporary TV (and who like to hear the occasional F-bomb dropped alongside talk of spore drives). The mid-’00s saw the beginning of an ongoing, if often creatively fertile, identity crisis of which Star Trek: Prodigy is just the most recent example. Questions started to swirl: Was there a place for Star Trek in the 21st century? And if so, where was it? That phase reached its end in the early ’00s with the truncated TV run of Enterprise and the box office failure of Star Trek: Nemesis. The shows offered variations on the original series’ mix of memorable characters and thoughtful stories (apart from the occasional dopey side trip, like a visit to the Old West by way of a malfunctioning holodeck). The movies mostly played like Trek adventures writ large. Each, in their own way, stayed close to the original Trek formula. A string of movies and a new wave of series followed from the late-’70s through the first years of the 21st century. Though declining ratings cut its run short, Star Trek found a second life in syndication and an adoring group of fans who loved it just the way it was, even if they wanted more.īut that was a long time ago and in a dramatically different media environment. The series ran for three seasons between 19 and focused on a handful of colorful crew members. Each self-contained installment (barring one two-parter) brought a new adventure and the mix of science fiction concepts and social commentary favored by Roddenberry and the show’s creative staff. Pitched by creator Gene Roddenberry as Wagon Train in space, Star Trek followed, as the opening narration reminded viewers each episode, the adventures of the Starship Enterprise and its five-year diplomatic voyage of discovery to the far reaches of space. For a long time, it wasn’t that hard to define what Star Trek was all about.
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