Star Trek should avoid the multiverse concept.
Star Trek invented the televised multiverse concept when it brought the Mirror Universe concept into the Original Series back in the 1960s. It was a smash hit and has seen sequels to that concept in Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, and Discovery to varying degrees of success. It’s a great idea to touch on every now and then.
Yet, exploring the greater theme of the multiverse as a perpetual plot thread throughout a series would hinder the franchise in ways not yet seen.
Screenrant recently posted an article pushing for the idea, implying that the multiverse is the new final frontier. The author really just builds up to the idea of reusing well-established characters in new ways as a way of pushing the narrative forward, without actually pushing the narrative forward.
Diving deeper into the concept of “What If?”. A concept that would see well-known characters doing things that are typically out of character for them, just for shock value. This has worked before in other stories, like X-Men’s “Days of Future Past” or Gargoyle’s “Future Tense”, and would work again if Star Trek did it as a two-parter. But as a full-on series idea? Hard pass.
It doesn’t matter about the “What ifs?”, Star Trek has always been about the “What’s next?”
Why re-use concepts when space is infinite?
Truly, the final frontier is death but beyond that, it’s still space. The multiverse is a scientific concept, one that not everyone believes in, and while the folks at Trek have found a way to create their own through time travel and the like, the driving force of the show has always been authentic, if not fantastical space exploration.
Considering the Alpha and Beta Quadrants aren’t fully explored, nor are the Delta or Gamma Quadrants even close to being mapped properly, it feels insulting to assume that a science fiction concept like the multi-verse theory would be the real final frontier.
Considering this is a gimmick used most often in comic book properties, it’d be wise to avoid it. Marvel’s “What If?”, a show dedicated to the multiverse idea, didn’t exactly break records. Doctor Strange’s latest film, “The Multiverse of Madness” was one of the weaker and poorer received Marvel films, and DC’s multiverse crossovers were largely seen as fine, but disappointing.
It’s ok to touch on the concept once in a while but to surmise that the multiverse should be “more important” to Star Trek when the concept has always been about the exploration of space seems like the wants of someone who is trying to take what Star Trek was, and make it into something else; something more akin to Marvel.
Star Trek shows that deviate from the Trek standard fail. Focusing more on the multiverse, other than space travel, is not the move. Move forward, create new characters, explore new parts of space and tell good stories.
Stop using nostalgia with a new paint job to tell stories. At the end of the day, the multiverse concept is just another way to milk nostalgia and the legacy characters even further. If the franchise doesn’t move past this and into more new concepts, the series will ultimately become a shell of itself and die.