Star Trek is more than a fifty-year entertainment franchise. The half century of various Star Trek offerings have gone beyond a brand; it’s a modern mythology. Even the most rudimentary search reveals an AI summation that includes the phrase “global pop culture phenomenon”, and a search for specifics of mythology within Star Trek reveals a battalion of commentaries. In fact, everything Star Trek reveals battalions of engaged people—from social media memes to dedicated conventions, there’s nothing niche about Star Trek.

Lest a modern viewer fear the painted plywood of a fifty-year-old television stage set, Star Trek’s later iterations offer all the computer graphics available to enhance the off-earth setting. Keeping up with the culture has never been a consideration with Star Trek, as it has often led certain subtle aspects of cultural expectation: there’s a rumor that Star Trek was the only television Dr King allowed his children to watch because of the presence of a black woman playing a bridge officer on mid twentieth century television, the Uhura character. Subsequent characters included the shock of a shaved-head woman as a sexual entity, and, as there has been increased sophistication in prosthetic makeup, Star Trek routinely features characters who might be blue with mobile antenna, or have very large ears, or forehead ridges and leather armor. […]