Why Star Trek Is Still The Gold Standard For Science Fiction Television

By John Crawford

In this article I'm gong to explore why I think Star Trek , and all of it's spin offs, still set the standard for all other scifi television shows.

I'm not old enough to remember the original Star Trek series when it was in prime time. In fact, I didn't take any interest in Star Trek at all, until about 1990. My wife was into all that, I worked allot, but it never caught my interest. There were scifi shows I did like such as Knight Rider and Quantum Leap, and later the X-Files. But there variety of scifi television shows were few and far between, and only one dealt with space travel - Star Trek. Babylon 5 would come along, and have a nice run. Earth 2 came out in 1994, but it didn't last long. The SciFi Channel was still in it's infancy, in fact, most of the cable stations we have today were not even thought of yet.

So when you are the veteran on the block, as the Star Trek franchise was, everything gets measured against you. Oh, there was Lost in Space, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, and a laundry list of Ray Bradbury projects that you might see during a holiday movie marathon. But, Star Trek had that way of taking an issue and turning it on it's ear.  They could take the human condition, transpose it to the another time and place, and play it out in a truly unique form.

This became much more pronounced when Star Trek : The Next Generation debuted in 1987. Our society had evolved tremendously due to technological advances, the Cold War, and changes in the economy. We were on the front end of the "political correctness" movement. TNG wasted no time taking on issues of the day and turning it on it's ear. It was no surprise it made short work of it's competitors in the ratings. In it's day, and after, it was the blueprint for all other scifi shows to mirror.

Through out the 1990's and into 2005, Star Trek found new and unique ways to touch our lives. This is evident when you look at the success of newcomer scifi shows such as Battlestar Galactica, The Dead Zone, and The 4400. Star Trek producers and writers such as Ron Moore, Michael Piller, and Shaun Piller have moved on to work with these shows, adding their own distinct twist to it's fabric. In a video blog,  Ron Moore makes a direct comparison to the realities of BSG and the 24th century we see in Star Trek. Even these guys are acutely aware that when twisting the curiosities of the mind with reference to space travel, who will not think of Star Trek first?

Even Stargate has made more than one reference to Star Trek , and even adopted their terminology such as "beaming down" with the rings.  They had an episode where they found a ship and wanted to call it "Enterprise". They certainly weren't referring to the space shuttle "Enterprise".

The very idea of having a huge space going vessel, that has faster than light capability, and being able to walk about the desk like walking on the ground is not a Star Trek exclusive. But which one has been playing on your TV? Certainly not the space shuttle "Enterprise".

When other shows have a few lines of parody about space travel, is it ever about anything but Star Trek? Like in the movie "Contact ", after 'contact' is made, the three scientists begin to argue about who is going to believe them, and as they all talk at once, the loudest voice comes out "... phasers and photon torpedos?" The three stop talking, look at each other, and share a momentary smirk.

Contrary to what the communist holdovers at Paramount and CBS would have you believe, Star Trek is as popular as ever, despite the recent cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise. I believe the producers and writers were burned out with it, and that's understandable. So bring in fresh minds, and ignore the ratings. The ratings are not accurate, and are biased toward nonscience fiction and network shows. If the studio can't handle Star Trek anymore, turn it over to someone who can like Spike or the Scifi Channels.

Their shortsightedness of cancelling "Enterprise" but renewing "Americas Next Top Model" showed that as much as Star Trek had evolved, the powers that be in the studio have regressed to neanderthals.

All the political rallying aside, until another show comes along and completely reinvents the wheel, and shares the same magnitude of success, Star Trek will be the gold standard that other Scifi shows are measured against.

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