Star Trek is a Genre Now

More than 50-years ago a veteran World War II combat pilot created a TV show about an exploratory space vessel. That World War II combat pilot was named Gene Roddenberry, the TV show was called “Star Trek”, and the exploratory space vessel was the USS Enterprise. Through the years, fans have watched “Star Trek” grow from a 3-season series into a 50-year franchise. And in 2017, “Star Trek” became something more than a franchise, “Star Trek” is now a genre.

Some will scoff at the very idea that “Star Trek” could be a genre. “How can a genre be created? Aren’t genres set in stone?” skeptics will ask. But if we look back at history, genres are created all the time. Did not Edgar Allen Poe create the “Detective Story Genre” in 1843, when he penned “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”.  Did not Tolkien create the “High Fantasy Genre” in 1937 when he published “The Hobbit”. Did not high school students, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster invent the “Super Hero Genre” when they sketched a space-man with tights and a cape?

All this tells us that “Star Trek” can be a genre. The genre may lack a name, but if 2017 taught us anything, it is that this genre does exist.

2017 was a big year for Trek. In September, CBS gave us the first “Star Trek” television series in a dozen years. Just a week earlier, FOX launched its own “Star Trek” series, under the name of “The Orville”. And then in December Netflix gave us the Black Mirror episode “USS Callister”, a 76-minute big budget episode which is clearly in the “Star Trek” genre.

Some might label “The Orville” and “USS Callister” as mere parodies of “Star Trek”, and yet they are so much more. “The Orville”, in particular, was advertised as a comedy by FOX, but viewers were quick to learn that the Seth McFarlane show is high-concept sci-fi. Episodes such as “About a Girl” and “Majority Rule” are Science Fiction at its best. Strangely enough, “The Orville” has a lot more in common with the original “Star Trek” and “The Next Generation” than “Discovery” does.

Seth McFarlane claims that “The Orville” is his answer to the Post-Battlestar-Galactica Science Fiction TV landscape. Where shows such as “Black Mirror”, “Westworld”, and “Sense8” show dystopian futures, “The Orville” delivers a Rodenberry-Esque era of galactic peace and scientific prosperity not seen since the days of TNG.

In contrast to “The Orville”, the most recent Star Trek series, “Discovery” has darker tones. Heroine, Michael Burnham is not exactly a ball of fun (though fans are introduced the amazing Engisn Sylvia Tilly to help balance the equation).  From the get-go “Discovery” is unlike most other “Star Trek” shows: It is more serialized, less optimistic, and it is centered on action and warfare. None of these are bad things exactly, but it is a little odd when you consider that “Discovery” fits less into the “Star Trek” genre than “The Orville” or “USS Callister”. It is quite a wonder that CBS attempts to tap into the dark “Battlestar Galactica” genre, where at the same time Fox is pushing “The Orville” to resemble classic “Star Trek”. “Discovery” wants to grow beyond its past, where “The Orville” and “USS Callister” relies on TOS to inform their basic chemistry.

The “USS Callister” is, in fact, a love story to 1960s “Star Trek” and “Star Trek” fandom in general. Of course in this case fandom is the antagonist of the tale. For those who are unfamiliar with the TV Show “Black Mirror”, it is a 21^st century anthology TV series with similar themes to “The Twilight Zone”. Each episode centers on a future world or future technology. According to the showrunner it is “the way we might be living in 10 minutes' time if we're clumsy”. “Black Mirror” was originally a British show, but the last few seasons have been produced by Netflix. “USS Callister” is a slightly unorthodox episode of “Black Mirror” because it has a much higher production value compared to other episodes, and it is slightly more humorous in tone (humorous only in the darkest definition of the word, of course).

When I showed my wife the episode “USS Callister”, she thought it was a pilot episode for a series. While she admitted that she enjoyed the episode, she was confused about how the rest of the series would proceed. The answer, of course, is that there is no further series of “USS Callister” because “Black Mirror” is an anthology show. There is, however, a second season of television ordered for both “Discovery” and “The Orville”.

If you were to ask me personally, I couldn’t tell you which series’ second season I am looking more forward to. I am very eager to reconnect with “Orville” characters such as Bortus and Alara, who are as lovable as Worf or Deanna Troi. Yet, one cannot discount the “Star Trek Discovery” characters. Doug Jones’ Seru is a particular favorite of mine.

The closing minutes of the “Discovery” finale does bring hope for the future, especially to those fans that hope that “Discovery” will make a transition away from the genre of “Darkest Sci-Fi” into the genre of “Star Trek”. (Did I mention that “Star Trek” is a genre now?) But even when new television shows try to emulate Roddenberry’s bright hopeful future, we must remember that “Trek” is not beholden to its past. Instead, “Star Trek” should always endeavor to “boldly go where no one has gone before”.