Forgive me if someone has already done/observed this and written up something about it. For the sake of my mental health I avoid Star Trek discourse like the plague (particularly in the era of outrage = profit), so I’d probably have missed it. That is also why I’ve created a separate blog specifically to post this: cos I want a firewall between this and my gifset reblogging and fanfic writing regular blog.
With the rumoured tearing down of the SNW set symbolising the end of the current era of Star Trek, that got me consider another show: The West Wing. That show changed tones and was never quite the same after September 11, and I’ve been considering for sometime how Trump 2.0 is the equivalent of that event to latest iteration of Trek.
Then this morning, at 5am, it occurred to me how the high points of 90s Trek coincided with the Clinton administration – so I decided to do a timeline of Trek to US administrations. It’s a bit rudimentary as I was using LibreOffice (I probably could have got AI to spit this out in moment but fuck AI. Also: fuck Microsoft). I’ve also highlighted election years, because I remember the political winds feeling like they were changing quite dramatically in 2024 many months before Trump was re-elected.
Here’s TOS era. Interesting as the generally seen as lower quality third season aired during the Nixon Administration and the show was finally cancelled after that season.
Here’s 90s Trek. Most of TNG’s run was during Republican administrations (Reagan and then Bush Snr), but arguably didn’t get good until the era of Bush Snr. DS9 (often cited as the best ever Star Trek series) aired entirely during the Clinton administration and Voyager mostly during the Clinton administration. I haven’t watched more than a handful of episodes of Enterprise but my understanding is that it was very must influenced by post-9/11 US paranoia (like The West Wing was).
Discovery stared airing during the first Trump administration, but arguably found its feet during the Biden administration (in-universe: post time jump). It’s interesting to observe that flurry of amazing Trek that happened during Biden administration: most of Lower Deck’s run, all of Prodigy and the first two seasons of Strange New Worlds.
My conclusion is that Star Trek (at least Star Trek tv shows, this analysis has not included the movies) is an indicator species for US politics. Star Trek flourishes both in terms of number of shows airing and quality during periods when the US has or is in the process of swinging towards a Democratic President. It struggles in periods when the US has or is swinging towards a Republican President.
For additional thoughts: there are two Trek shows that have aired since Trump was re-elected. I think season one of Starfleet Academy has done well creatively even though it has aired during the second Trump administration as it has resisted the temptation to reflect the current vibe of US politics and instead focused on the (hopefully) near future of the US – deciding to be a metaphor for the recovery that will need to happen after Trump 2.0. Unfortunately, the powers that be want this era of US politics to last forever so of course it got cancelled.
Strange New Worlds is another story. Remember it went all in on MAGA is dead in its first episode, using footage of the Jan 6 Capitol Attack to make a point about the dark era of Earth. I suspect there was a little bit of ‘oh, fuck, what do we do now’ in the writers room when the MAGA movement rose back into political power. I believe SNW’s strategy is whatever it takes to not get cancelled/keep the franchise afloat, which is why season three felt so cowardly (can you imagine Ad Astra Per Aspera and its persecution of trans people/immigrants/ethnic and/or religious minorities metaphor being a season three episode?). But I can understand not wanting the show your working on to be cancelled, as that would see your colleagues out of work, many of them wondering where their next pay check will come from in a time when streaming has and AI threatens to decimate creative industries.