Star Trek TOS - 60th Anniversary! / BLOGS

2026/09/07

For a long time now I have been thinking about whether or not I was going to write a 60^th Anniversary blog post for Star Trek. I’ve already written one when it was the 55^th anniversary, plus, I so much dislike the current Star Trek, I didn’t see the point in doing so. But, I had to remind myself that it is the 60^th anniversary of the ORIGINAL Star Trek, not Kurtzman Trek. And because I’ve rewatched The Original Series last year, I have another reason to celebrate this huge anniversary, because it is very rare that something like this happens. Currently I can only name Doctor Who which has such a long-time anniversary and was still around till very recently.

Star Trek started on NBC back on September 8, 1966, after the initial pilot, The Cage, failed in 1964 to convince the suits of NBC. From the mind of Gene Roddenberry, who had this positive vision of the future. Essentially Star Trek was going to be sold as a western in space, only the setting is different for the rest the original Star Trek can be seen as a western. In that era westerns were very popular, so it also was a clever selling point to the suits and the audience.

When Star Trek premiered on TV on September 8^th, 1966, it changed Science-fiction forever. What began as a “simple” Tv show about a crew of the USS Enterprise, would eventually grew out to be one of the biggest science-fiction franchises in television history!

What attracted many people to Star Trek, was the vision Gene Roddenberry had for what humanity could become. A positive view of the future of mankind where there is no more war on earth, no hunger, no discrimination and so on. A vision of hope in these times this was really needed. Star Trek was famous for tackling current day’s issues like war, discrimination, inequality and so on. It addressed these kind of big issues in a way that would make the audience think about this issues, not to tell the audience what they should think, not telling them what to think but let the audience make up their own minds.

How was Star Trek different from the other Science-fiction out there, well it was about optimism, peaceful exploration, technological progress, while other science-fiction the future usually was of a dystopian kind.

The characters Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov have become iconic characters, a diverse group of people, working together, colleagues, equal to each other in terms of humanity, of course not in rank and such. These characters are still alive today, I do not mean so much in the current TV shows but more in the minds of the millions of Star Trek fans out there, who still daily watch the original Star Trek, watch the movies, read the comics and novels about the adventures with these iconic characters. I am 100% sure that if you ask anyone you come across if they ever heard of the names of these characters, you’d definitely get a “yes” for each of those names. If not, he or she has been living under a rock for many decades!

While we also celebrate a show like UFO from 1970, which last year had its 55^th anniversary, which is great too, but it is entirely different than the 60^th anniversary of Star Trek because it spawned so many TV shows and movies from the original one. In the 1970’s Star Trek become even more popular because of the many reruns. Fans wanted Star Trek back, first it was tried as a TV show, called Star Trek: Phase Two, but because of the success of the first Star Wars movie, it was decided to go with a movie instead of a TV series, while the casting was already done for the TV show, without Leonard Nimoy as Spock. We were blessed with four out of the six movies with the original cast when in 1987 Star Trek finally came back to the small screen, where Star Trek belonged in terms of its storytelling. Star Trek: The Next Generation was the first follow-up show after the original series. Star Trek: The Next Generation became almost as (or perhaps even more) popular than the original series. This spawned even more Star Trek shows in the 90’s with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. In 2001 we got the fifth Star Trek incarnation: Star Trek: Enterprise.

In the 90’s Star Trek was at its most popular, three shows were on the air, where The Next Generation was episodic, Deep Space Nine was serialized and Star Trek: Voyager was a bit of both in that it has many standalone episodes, but it was also about finding their way home to the Alpha quadrant. After The Next Generation ended, we got four TNG movies, first one starting in 1994 “Generations”, last one in 2002 “Nemesis”. Both Deep Space Nine and Voyager did an homage to the original series with its 30^th anniversary back in 1996.

In 2001 Enterprise came to our screens, a show which went back in time before Kirk and the others. Initially, the fans didn’t want this, they’d rather wanted to see a new adventure starting right after the movie Nemesis, The Next generation’s last movie in 2002. I too had these concerns and I too had my reservations when Enterprise started. But soon I embraced that show and its characters also. Right about Enterprise’s second season, there was talk of Star Trek fatigue, the last movie bombed and the ratings of Enterprise dropped after the initial promising first season. I never agreed with that, with the term “Star Trek fatigue”, if the stories are good, the fans will keep watching, but I think it was more a “writer’s fatigue”, after so many Star Trek stories, over the course of 35-40 years, it perhaps was understandable that this could happen. At the time, before Enterprise started, Rick Berman warned the executives that perhaps it wasn’t so wise to immediately come with a new show right after Voyager ended, he thought it was better to wait a few more years and then come back with a new show. Obviously they didn’t listen back then. Still, Star Trek: Enterprise has become loved as much as the earlier incarnations, and the last two seasons are mostly very good, such a shame it got cancelled after season four. Manny Coto (+) was responsible for that terrific fourth season.

Then, in 2009, Star Trek returned, but not on the small screen, but in the theatres. We got 3 movies, which were set, thankfully, in an alternate universe. As science-fiction movies, they were entertaining, but it was not really Star Trek in my humble opinion. At least not the Star Trek I loved. In 2017 Star Trek came back to the small screen: Star Trek: Discovery, followed up by Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and finally Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. For me, this only wears the Star Trek name, but nothing more, I tried the first 3 shows, didn’t like Discovery, loved Picard season 3 for obvious reasons, but I stopped watching Strange New World early season 3 and I did not even begin with Academy and I ignored the hell out of the Section 31 movie.

There is a big difference between the Star Trek from 1966-2005 and 2017-2026, both address our current problems we have in real life, but where the old Star Trek made you think about these issues, let you make up your own mind, current Star Trek shows tell you how you should think about these issues, what they believe is the truth, not let you decide what you think is right. At least this is how I see it. There are many more differences but lets not dwell on that in this anniversary blog.

But enough of that, because this is about the original series, which celebrates its 60^th anniversary. That is why I felt obligated to write another blog even though I wrote a 55^th Anniversary blog also back in 2021. In 2025 I’ve rewatched the original series, it still holds up, even today we struggle with the same kind of issues as we did in the 1960’s. War, discrimination, inequality, poverty, corruptness at the highest levels and so on, it is all still there. The original series sure is not perfect, but it was very enjoyable watching it again. If you are interested, check the Star Trek page, to check out my rewatch blogs of all three seasons.

Final Word:

After season two of Academy, and the shortened season 5 of Strange New Worlds, there won’t be any new Kurtzman Star Trek, hopefully the Star Trek, I and millions other fans love, will come back, and looking at Seth MacFarland’s The Orville, you know it is possible, that show comes much closer to the Star Trek I love than the last Star Trek incarnations. Why was this possible you ask? Because Seth MacFarland is a true Star Trek fan! It is as simple as that. Yes, I remain hopeful, but I also must admit that I am skeptical about it. But this is of course just my opinion and I so much hope that I am going to be proven wrong to be skeptical! One thing is for sure, whether or not there will be a new Star Trek TV show in the not so distant future, you can always go back to watch your favorite Star Trek shows! whether it’s The Original Series, Deep Space Nine or….perhaps even Strange New Worlds, Star Trek is here to stay!