Star Trek’s William Shatner is not Nu Trek’s biggest fan.
When Star Trek was re-launched as a series via CBS All-Access, fans were not to happy with the tone and details of the show. The show was over-polished, dark, and dreary, while also changing established lore to fit a shoe-horned character that didn’t need any of the fluff she was given. Fans were instantly turned off, and the franchise would continue to find ways to anger fans until 2022 when shows like Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds debuted. Apparently, fans weren’t the only ones not happy with the “Nu Trek“, as Trek icon William Shatner has issues with it as well.
Well, parts of it.
Shatner was at the San Diego Comic-Con this past week and took part in a Kevin Smith-led panel. The panel took questions, and one fan asked Shatner if he thought any of the new shows (Nu Trek) rivaled his show, which is referred to as The Original Series now, even though its original title was just “Star Trek”.
Shatner didn’t mince words, as The Hollywood Reporter quoted him saying, “none of them”, and then Shatner went on to say;
"I got to know Gene Roddenberry in three years fairly well. He’d be turning in his grave at some of this stuff."
William Shatner isn’t wrong about some of what Star Trek has been doing
Shatner sounds like a majority of fans. While some fans will swear they love the first bits of Nu Trek, it’s important to note that Strange New Worlds is what it is, because Paramount adapted to the complaints by the fanbase. A very large, and very vocal fanbase that demanded a change back to classic Trek.
That’s not to say that the older bits of Nu Trek didn’t have any fans, they did, but clearly, they didn’t have enough, otherwise, they wouldn’t have made the dramatic shift back to classic Trek with Strange New Worlds.
And it worked. Strange New Worlds is far and away the best-received show of the Nu Trek era both by critics and fans alike. Something no other show could lay claim to.
So clearly Shatner too knows what was coming out wasn’t Trek either.
But to be fair, Roddenberry has hated a lot of what Star Trek became after the original series. He even hated Wrath of Khan, so it’s not exactly the biggest indictment imaginable, even if Shatner has a point about the unevenness of Nu Trek.