You don’t.
Star Trek is big, and messy, and has a lot of flaws. It’s also fun, exciting, engaging and inspiring.
There are nearly 1000 total episodes of Star Trek in the franchise. There are 14 Star Trek movies. There are more than 850 officially licensed original fiction novels and adaptations.
There’s literally something for everyone.
Some Star Trek news from San Diego ComicCon 2026 revealed that there is a new film currently being written that will feature an entirely new cast and will be set further in the future than previous films.
Early movie news never excites me. We are years away from a film, and anything can happen in the next few years. My reaction to the news of an entirely new cast? Good. Set in the far future? Nice, because that’s my jam.
My overall apprehension about a movie is that the output will be in the spirit of the 2009 Star Trek film: big explosive action, lots of shouting, nice visuals, very little substance. Some people really like that in their science fiction movies. I’ll confess that Star Trek: Into Darkness is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s a weak Star Trek story, and they really go off the rails, but it’s fun to watch.
The following is my stream of thought on the future of Star Trek. Get your grain of salt ready.
I’m not an entertainment insider, and I won’t pretend to know how any of this works. I’m just a fan. Personally, I’d like to see the franchise take a break from producing movies or TV.
After five or six years, return to television using the formula that worked for Star Trek in the late 80s and into the 90s: new faces, new directions. In the contemporary sense, the 26 episode season died a long time ago. Instead of making 26 episodes in a season, keep it to 10. Make a QUALITY 10 episode limited series. No cliffhangers, no unanswered questions. Then make another limited series with a different ship, crew, timeline and story, with 10 quality episodes, with three months break in between each (instead of waiting a year or more for a new season.) Then repeat.
I’d rather have 10 quality episodes of a complete story, than deal with getting to know and becoming huge fans of a ship and crew who’s television production fate hangs in the balance every year. Yes, there was no reason to cancel Enterprise, Discovery, Lower Decks, Star Fleet Academy or Strange New Worlds.
I love Star Trek. There is a lot of positivity and optimism associated with this franchise. While the current state of Star Trek is not very optimistic, if this is truly a fan-supported franchise, we’ll pull through this.
