Star Trek never needed time for its properties to look good.
Star Trek exploded in popularity in the 1980s with its reboot series, The Next Generation. It was a surprise hit, especially since the market on televised Star Trek seemingly died with the original series’ sequel series, dubbed Phase 2, failing to get off the ground. So the amount of success that The Next Generation achieved was unexpected. Sure it was going to be good, but that good? That was unexpected.
So new shows, like Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and eventually Enterprise all were produced and created, and they were all equal to The Next Generation in terms of quality. Some episodes were better than others, but the series as a whole delivered that beloved Star Trek energy.
Yet, there are people out there who either never watched the other three shows from the 90s and 00s, or did so after watching The Next Generation. They then set the narrative around the shows, that they were inferior, or less than. That fans shouldn’t watch them because it wasn’t good. But thanks to Netflix and now streaming in general, many fans see these three classic shows as just that. Classics.
Yet there are those among us that believe that it was time that was kind to these shows when in actuality they were always that good.
The Star Trek bubble popped due to oversaturation, not quality
When you look at why the feelings around those shows became what they did, it was strictly due to oversaturation. 10 movies, four shows, 25 combined seasons, and some 700 episodes. That’s a lot of stuff to watch. Even in the 90s and early 00s, when streaming services weren’t producing a new property every week.
Fans got bored of the product and quickly turned away from it. They would cite things like “cheap knockoff” or “boring” as the reason why, but it was simply because there was too much of it. It happens all the time. Great ideas and properties get lost because they’re released at the wrong time.
It also didn’t help that The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and then later Deep Space Nine and Voyager, aired at the same time. Then you have to remember that they were all airing at the same time as the films. The market was already well saturated.
That’s also why it’s unlikely for a show like Discovery to ever have the narrative about it change. IT was the first of the Nu Trek wave of shows. It had nothing to compete with and yet it was still a very maligned show.
The newer Star Trek shows will eventually go the same way as Voyager and Enterprise. Eventually, fans will grow tired of the constant “new-ness” that Trek is posting, and they’ll turn away from good, quality projects due to how much there is.
It’s not shocking, Star Wars, Marvel, and DC fans are already doing just that. It happens in time to every property. Then it takes some time off, comes back, and repeats the cycle.