Star Trek is about people being sexy and overly dramatic in space. It takes place in a future where humans have solved all their problems and flown out into the stars to find more problems and have ethical conundrums about them while tricking the audience into thinking about real-world issues.
Earth doesn’t have war, famine or Jeff Bezos anymore since humans became best friends with a bunch of space elves with bowl cuts who pretend they don’t feel emotions and they formed a club with their alien friends where everybody can just chill and be cool. Sometimes they get into fights with space orcs or cyborg zombies trying to strip everyone of their individuality but it’s usually resolved pretty quickly so they can go back to chilling and exploring space.
Every time they Boldly Go into space they find Weird Shit™ and People Who Are Very Different but this is resolved by doing technology stuff or making dramatic speeches. The elves also have imperialist cousins (dark elves) who sneak around in invisible ships and every once in a while try to trick us into getting in a fight with them, but this never works and they end up taking their football and going home.
Star Trek comes in 10 flavours:
The Original Series (Original Flavour) 1966 – 1969: a feminist captain with a weird speech pattern, a charming redneck doctor and a space elf drama queen (who is half human but very much in denial about it) go to space and run into all sorts of crazy things like sentient rocks, Cold War allegories, pouty gods and evil doppelgangers. The captain is gay for the elf who argues with the doctor all the time and a Scottish guy fixes the ship which is flown by Lieutenant Cheekbones while a Singing Queen keeps the phones working. Later they get a boy who insists everything was inwented in Russia. There are lots of miniskirts, fistfights and ripped shirts. The show was also adapted into a trippy animated series (Cartoon Flavour, 1973-1974: basically the same show but with a catgirl and even weirder shit going on) and six movies:
The Motion Picture (1979): putting the band back together to stop a giant space cloud who is just misunderstood. Everyone gets even gayer.
The Wrath of Khan (1982): this guy with his tits out hates the captain! He quotes Moby Dick a lot and steals a SPACE BOMB OH NO. The elf reaches peak drama queen.
The Search for Spock (1984): gotta go steal our ship so we can go find the elf on the Minecraft Planet, wish this orc would stop killing people
The Voyage Home (1986): gotta go to the 1980s to find some WHALES
The Final Frontier (1989): the elf has a secret brother who is EVEN GAYER and wants to find god
The Undiscovered Country (1991): time to stop being orc racist
The Next Generation (Sequel Flavour) 1987 – 1994: Same concept as TOS but there’s more of it. The captain is a bald guy who talks like he’s in a Shakespeare play all the time. There’s a bearded guy who’s always DTF, Doctor Mom, and a trained psychologist (who mostly gets used as a lie detector). The engineer is a dork who loves to cosplay Sherlock Holmes with his robot boyfriend, and since the orcs are our friends now one of them works on the ship and his job is to get beat up every episode. They spend a lot of time getting stuck in their cosplay machine, dealing with dark elves being sneaky, and getting kidnapped by a trickster god who wants to peg the captain. Also has four movies that are mostly about the captain and the robot:
Generations (1994): bald captain falls into a time hole and meets the original captain and they stop a mad scientist from exploding the sun
First Contact (1996): bald captain came here to do 2 things: stop the cyberzombies from altering history, and quote Moby Dick. AND HE’S ALL OUTTA MOBY DICK QUOTES. Robot bones the zombie queen.
Insurrection (1998): gotta save these hippies from…us?
Nemesis (2002): gotta stop this bald guy in leather from killing everyone
Deep Space Nine (Story Arc Flavour) 1993 – 1999: Instead of flying a ship around they’re on a space station guarding a wormhole to the other end of space (but sometimes they still fly around). The captain is a single dad who meets gods in the wormhole and accidentally becomes Moses to a race of aliens who defeated the fascist space lizards. His 2nd in command is a terrorist who fought the lizards, his best friend has an immortal worm in her stomach that carries memories of her past lives, and their grumpy Irish mechanic accidentally becomes best friends with a very annoying doctor. Head of security is a blob of Jello who can turn into anything he wants except a nice person. He’s always trying to arrest the bartender, a space goblin who worships capitalism. One of the fascist lizards keeps coming back to annoy them because he is Horny. There is also a gay assassin lizard who makes dresses, plus Pope Karen and literal demons. Later they have to fight an army of drug-addicted clones who came out of the wormhole. This one is my favourite!
Voyager (Action Adventure Flavour): Captain Mom Friend is chasing some rebels and her whole ship gets thrown to the opposite end of space (not the one with the convenient wormhole). She tries to get them home while dealing with cabin fever, aliens who try to kill them for trespassing, and a tragic lack of coffee. Her best friend is an elf but is not so Dramatic about it, their Doctor is a hologram who wants to be an opera singer, their pilot is obsessed with Flash Gordon, the engineer is half orc and the commander is a cheesy Native American stereotype who wants to bone the captain but they NEVER DO. They pick up this weird furry guy who cooks for them and almost kills the ship with cheese. Later she adopts one of the cyberzombies, and they spend a lot of time deliberately pissing off the cyborg zombie queen and it’s great. RIP to the psychic elf girl, she deserved better.
Enterprise (Prequel Flavour) 2001 – 2005: Humans are flying around in space for the first time, trying to make new friends (like the blue antenna people) so they can form their club, which doesn’t exist yet. The elves are kind of dicks about it, but they start to come around. The captain is a big lovable dork who gets beat up a lot and brings his dog everywhere. His best friend is a redneck and their doctor is a polyamorous puffer fish with a zillion weird pets and they fly around with an uptight British guy and their elf babysitter and a pilot who was born in space and a translator lady who just wants to go home. After being pestered by the time police for awhile, they have to stop some zoo people who want to make Earth go boom. Sadly gets cancelled just as they get down to business.
Kelvin Timeline (Reboot Flavour) 2009, 2013, 2016: three movies with new actors playing younger versions of the Original Series characters. An angry miner does a space elf genocide and makes a new timeline where the captain is a horny frat boy and his elf boyfriend is Straight™ and has temper tantrums all the time. They throw the angry miner in a black hole and then they fight Benedict Cumberbatch and a freaky vampire lizard man and his bees. Lots of big spaceships and explosions and the Beastie Boys.
Discovery (Modern Flavour) 2017 – now: now with Canon Gays! The elf from the beginning has a secret human sister who goes to jail for being right and ends up on a new ship with a grumpy fungus man who figured out how to fly around the universe with mushrooms, an adorable redhead nerd who talks a lot, a space gazelle man with Anxiety, Sadman the Spoiler, and mushroom guy’s doctor boyfriend. They & their rotating series of captains try to stop the space orcs from being such huge assholes, chase an angel around the galaxy, fight an evil computer and then time travel into the future where they have to fight Crimelord Elphaba and figure out why all the spaceships exploded, joined by Disney Princess Man, Nonbinary Squid Child and “Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time” Lady who is the best character even though she is Evil™.
Picard (Edgy Flavour) 2020 – now: Bald captain is back! And he comes out of retirement to help his friends Drug-Smoking Conspiracy Lady and Space Elf Samurai find out why the dark elves hate robots so damn much. Cyborg lady is back and she gets to wear real clothes this time. Sexy soccer man gives them a ride in his spaceship which is infested with a million holograms of himself so they can save the robots from Dark Elf Boytoy and Commodore Sunglasses before the robots make a terrible phone call. Lots of swearing and murder and homemade pizza.
Lower Decks (Joke Flavour) 2020 – now: Cartoon Flavour is back, but this time it’s funny on purpose! This time we aren’t focusing on the people in charge; this show is about the grunts! Specifically a girl with massive mommy issues who is 2cool4school, a dork who sucks and loves rules, and a green girl and a cyborg who are adorable nerds together. Along with Captain Mom, Commander Benchpress, Doctor Grumpycat and the angriest man in the universe they will boldly make fun of all the other Star Treks.
There are lots of people on the internet who will try to tell you which of these flavours is the Good Star Trek and which ones are Bad. Some of them will even say this or that flavour is Not Star Trek. Those people are wrong and you should enjoy whatever flavour you think is the most fun! Some of the flavours start out kind of bland at first but they grow on you, others are too spicy for some people and that’s ok. You might enjoy all the flavours or just one (or even none at all) but the important thing is you get to decide! Because the best thing about Star Trek is there’s a lot of it.
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