Part of Star Trek - The Project

There are currently six series of Star Trek, which can be considered as one original and five spin offs. Their production order is:


Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS)

Star Trek: The Animated Series

Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9)

Star Trek: Voyager (VOY)

Enterprise



However, their chronological order in the Star Trek universe means that the events in Enterprise occur before all the other series.

Each series of Star Trek essentially asks a different quesion and takes the audience to a different place.

Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS)

This series is defined by many as Gene Roddenberry's vision of the furure. This is untrue for several reasons;

• Gene Roddenberry was not pro-actively involved in the third (and final) season.
• Gene had many visions of the future¹.
• All TV shows are subject to changes by the director, producer, cast, crew and station executives.

However, few would argue that Star Trek is close to Gene's vision. In the 1960s, his vision was inspiring. It showed a future of humanity that had not only managed to not blow itself up, but had left the solar system, met alien species and made friends with them².

Don't forget that the show was made before the moon landings. Sci fi was not something seen often on the main stream, prime time television stations.

Star Trek showed people of all colours, races and creeds getting along with each other. It featured the first inter-racial on screen kiss in the USA (between William Shatner and Nichelle Nicholls) and created terms that are in popular usage today, like warp drive, phaser, photon torpedo, transporter, the prime directive, the neck pinch³, etc. It contained a computer complex enough to talk to; this was when few people had even seen a computer, let alone used one.

Star Trek dealt with racism, sexual politics, hatred, religion, and even cold war politics. It gave hope to a population that was genuinely scared that there was going to be a nuclear war⁴. It was, at times, a highly controversial show. And that's what Gene wanted - a show that made people think, not just mindless entertainment.

Star Trek also left us with some inspiring concepts, like the Vulcan IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) - a concept that essentially says all points of view are equal and valid.

Star Trek: The Animated Series

This was a spin off from the original series and the plot line continued from the end of the original series. It featured many more amazing adventures, inluding insights into how Vulcans discover the gravity plating that allows people to walk on the ship, rather than float around.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG)

Star Trek: The Next Generation is set almost 100 years from Kirk's time. Starfleet has changed in that time, but retains its core values. The Federation has expanded, including more species in the organisation and has made peace with the Klingons.

A more cynical view of TNG is that the first season repeated a lot of the stories from the original series. IN addition, some criticised the soap opera directing style typified by over the shoudler shots to other actors and following the actor around with the cameraman walking behind them. These critisisms were taken onboard and laster seasons had corrected this.

TNG was something of a gamble for Paramount. No-one knew how an audience would react to this new adventure. Thankfully Gene Roddenberry was an intimate part of the endeavour as the executive producer. He even managed to eventually rope his wife back into Star Trek as the computer voice and later as Troi's overbearing mother.

TNG also set a limit on the number of seasons for a Star Trek show: seven. The producers were quite emphatic about this point, the show should not run longer than seven seasons, despite the popularity and ratings of the show.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9)

Gene Roddenberry said that Star Trek was like cowboys and indians in space⁵. DS9 takes this to the extremes. Set on a newly annexed station at the edge of the federation, DS9 is about survival and maintaining the ideals of the Federation without the practical backup of the Starfleet nearby.

Deep Space Nine was the first Star Trek series to have a story arc - The Dominion War. Many criticised what was seen as a degradation of the Star Trek principles in showing a war, but others found it enlightening. The Federation is shown facing its greatest threat, and even possibly its defeat. Throughout are episodes showing how the ordinary enlisted personnel cope as wll as stories about the captains and admirals.

DS9 also had a running theme of religion with Prophets, the Emissary and even the Founders being worshipped as gods.

Star Trek: Voyager (VOY)

Voyager centres around a Federation ship that has become stranded in the delta quadrant, 70,000 light years from Federation space. Even at maximum warp speed, the ship can only travel about 1,000 light years per year, so they are 70 years from home.

Initially, one might expect the crew to become pessamistic and lethargic, but Captain Janeway rallies her crew, not through her charisma but through her determination. She talks about when they will get home, not if.

However, on the way home, Janeway is forced to make sacrafices. Like Kirk, she disobeys the prime directive, forms tactical alliances, trades technology and breaks the temporal prime directive several times.

Voyager also has a seven year story arc, although this one ran from episode one and is more simple: get the crew home. The delta quadrant offered the writers many opportunites to create wholly new experiences for the crew, but also limited them. They could not use existing species from any other series⁶, and were then forced to create new species from scratch. This is expensive, not only in the latex masks department but also in the amount of work that needs to go into creating new species. Name, homeworld, goals, fears, strengths and weaknesses, to name a few of the elements required to create a new species.

Enterprise

Enterprise asks a very interesting question. Starfleet's primary function has always been the defence of the federation. But Enterprise is set before the Federation is founded.

Many people have slated Enterprise, saying it has detached itself from the values of Star Trek. It's interesting to note thast this is the only spin off that does not have "Star Trek" in the title. Like all spin offs, the opening credits say: "Based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry".

Too much is made of this so called degredation of the ideals. The missing Star Trek in the title is very telling. This is not about Star Trek, ie the Federation, but about mankind's earliest exploration of space⁷. Without a Federation for guidance and support, the Enterprise is alone in space, often encountering situations that they have not trained for.

Enterprise is set in the not too distant future, and only 100 years after humans made their first contact with an alien species, the Vulcans. Sinve then, they have made more first contacts with alien species, but are still limited to a small area of the galaxy due to their primitive and inefficient warp drives. The Enterprise has the first warp 5 engine, the fastest that humanity has. Since no species appears to have gone much faster than warp 7, this is an impressive engine that thrusts humans into the galactic fore-front.

One of the ideas behind the show is that humans have effectively been given a huge quantum leap in their technology levels. Poverty, disease, crime, war have all been wiped out in the space of a single person's lifespan. They have gone from being trapped in their own solar system, to explorers of the galaxy. The show does offer hope, as the characters are coping with this well.

Enterprise offers an interesting glimpse into where familiar technology, ideology and concepts come from. For example, the famous non-interference directive is shown to be a Vulcan principle.