Why Star Trek should revisit time travel in a different way

Time travel is a staple of Star Trek.

Time travel has been used over and over again in Star Trek, like when the crew of The Original Series went back in time in “Tomorrow is Yesterday” and “Time’s Arrow” in The Next Generation. But Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was the largest amount of time spent on time travel, (this could change with Star Trek: Picard season 2) with the crew going back to the 1980s. When they returned to the current century, Dr. Gillian Taylor came with them and took her place aboard a science ship to catch up on 300 years worth of history, and it would have been great to see her learning the ropes of the new century she was in.

That is a type of time travel that Star Trek hasn’t explored. We’ve seen the crew go back in time (and the Discovery went way ahead in the future), and we caught a glimpse of what it would be like to wake up in a new century with “The Neutral Zone” when cryogenically frozen people awaken to find themselves in a new world. But there is so much more to be explored in this type of time travel, and it would work perfectly for the franchise.

Star Trek could introduce new characters to advance into the future.

The franchise has been focusing on revisiting former characters like Spock, Captain Janeway, and Captain Pike, and while we’ve been given new characters mixed in with those visits, there is plenty of room for new people. People that haven’t yet stepped foot into the 24th century or beyond. But they could, and how interesting would it be to watch people from the 21st century (or even earlier) learn how to survive in a Star Trek world?

Star Trek: Prodigy is teaching about Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, but there could be another series that shows life in the later centuries as seen through the eyes of people who have just arrived. And, along the way, we could learn more about the technology used in the future. Even by putting one time-traveler aboard a starship, Star Trek could inject a new energy into a series because here is a person who knows nothing about this century and has to learn everything in order to survive. That would be a different way to use time travel, and since it’s something most of us would like to do ourselves, it could be very popular on a new or even existing series.