A New Trek Series for a New Generation of Fans?

Star Trek Convention -- Photo Credit: Sam Morris

 As you may or may not know the Star Trek franchise has one of the largest generational fan bases in the world spanning over 50 years from 1966 to 2016. Fans from all walks of life gather worldwide to the many Star Trek Conventions, Special Events and Movie Premiers to show their love of everything Trek. These fans have always been vocal about the Star Trek Series especially when it's about to be cancelled.

Long time fans will remember the infamous letter writing campaign, but the newer fans may not know about Bjo and John Trimble. Back in 1968 NBC was ready to axe Star Trek altogether and if it weren't for Bjo we would not be discussing Star Trek at all. The Trimbles started a grassroots letter-writing campaign that saved the show and resulted in a third season.

Bjo Trimble - The Woman who saved Star Trek

Subsequently Star Trek emerged as a new phenomena and from there the franchise grew and grew and grew to 7 series and 13 movies. This includes the new movie Star Trek Beyond coming in July 2016 and the new Untitled Series coming in January 2017.

But fans haven't always been positive when it comes to their beloved Star Trek, dissatisfaction with the last series Enterprise resulted in a decline in viewers and a cancellation of the series altogether.  Fans reacted by grumbling online and some even created their own fan-based Web Series presenting Star Trek the way they would like it to be. They want a return to the old order with as many references to The Original Series as possible.

Which brings us to the 2009 Star Trek film directed by J.J. Abrams. This is where the fan-base definitely splits apart in two. The older fans that were faithful to The Original Series do not like this rebooted movie at all and have made their thoughts known online while some even refuse to watch it.

Fans react to the 2009 Reboot of Star Trek Directed by JJ Abrams

But in all fairness the 2009 Star Trek film was indeed successful grossing over $385.7 million worldwide and was nominated for 4 Academy Awards. So who was watching this film? Well that answer lies in the newer generation of Star Trek fans who like movies that are action packed and quick paced. Most of them probably don't even know about The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager or Enterprise. For many new fans this was the first time they were introduced to the Star Trek franchise.

So this brings us to the new series coming in 2017. What will the writers do with this show? How can they make the Star Trek fans of old and new happy with this upcoming series? It's been made pretty clear that the older fans do not want to see any more reboots, yet how do the writers get the newer generation of  fans to understand the Star Trek timeline or prime universe without diving into the past? The Star Trek fan-base is huge and split apart in their opinions of how the series and films should move forward.

It has been rumored that the new series will be a Seasonal Anthology where a different story-line will be presented each season. This could get interesting and be the solution Star Trek writers are looking for. They could go into the future for one season, then go back into the past for another season. Possibly even tie up some loose ends with the other story-lines, like whatever happened to the Voyager crew after they made it back to Earth? Or what happened after the Dominion War and did Sisko ever make it out of the wormhole?

Star Trek on CBS All Access

The possibilities with an Anthology Series are endless and could surely fill up 7-8 seasons if not more, while appealing to the wide range of Star Trek fans old and young. It also could save the series from getting cancelled if the story-line is not gathering viewers. They could wrap it up and start a new adventure next season with a new crew, new ship, and new timeline. All this is speculation of course but a good solution to keep the Star Trek fan-base all together for years to come.