These are the Voyages?

Abstract

The main thing noticeably absent from Star Trek’s half-century anniversary was a network television series. By 2016, the primary output of the Trek franchise was a set of commercially successful feature films that had retconned a substantial portion of the early series history and consequently left later spin-off television series adrift in continuity limbo. One year later, or perhaps one year too late, three programs emerged to take up the mantle of Trek: Star Trek: Discovery (2017-), The Orville (2017-present) and the “U.S.S Callister” episode of Black Mirror (2017). This chapter investigates how these series make a claim to and justify deviations from, a familiar science fiction formula legendary for diverse themes and progressive ideologies with particular attention invocation of Gene Roddenberry’s vision for Star Trek.