by Orrin Konheim

Created on: December 08, 2008   Last Updated: December 17, 2008

I don't think Star Trek is really dead in the sense that it lives on reruns and is constantly being discovered by new generations of television and film watchers and a palette for the kind of entertainment that Star Trek offers.

As to whether Star Trek should stop actively producing new television shows and movies in the immediate future, I'd have to say yes.

At this point, the quality of the movie or TV show has less to do with Star Trek's popularity than the fact that the Star Trek franchise started oversaturating it's product around the time of the release of the TV series, Star Trek: Voyager in 1996. This was the first time the franchise spun out a new series that didn't really offer anything new and made the viewing base think that like insubstantive Hollywood sequels, Paramount was producing more Star Trek series simply because they couldn't think of anything else to make.

Sure, Voyager started with a novel concept but it didn't really follow through on this idea of people being lost in space: Someone could turn on the TV after the first season, and not even notice that this was the case. The show was also brought down by laughingly bad acting, particularly Garret Wang and Robert Beltran, the overselling of Jeri Ryan's sex appeal, and the lack of plot continuity. By the time Enterprise came out, people were already pretty bored of the whole Star Trek thing and it didn't get off the ground because people already lost interest with the franchise. Whether the quality of Enterprise was good or not, I really couldn't tell you, because I was too burned out on Star Trek to watch it.

As for the film, I think that's a bad idea simply because I view the reinventing of franchises as simply using the brand name of the franchise with a completely different style of filmmaking and that reeks of commercial pandering to me. I am aware that Batman Begins and Casino Royale were enormously successful, but I still feel that the very principle of it lacks integrity and it doesn't make me confident that the Star Trek film would be any good.

At the same time, I can see that Star Trek might be conducive to reinvention because the franchise has a history of pulling it off successfully. Star Trek: TNG had very little in common with the original series, stylistically, but it managed to carry through on the ideals of the show and gain a new audience. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was a second successful reinvention, as the producers of that show bent the formula towards overarching continuity

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