It is generally accepted that the Star Trek franchise is comprised of 6 series, 10 (soon to be 11) films, and countless books and fan-written stories in varying degrees of aligning-with-canon-ness. The Star Trek canon is basically the established truths about the Star Trek universe as has been shown in the more "official" works, and a lot of people also include widely accepted truths based on well-known but less official works (you can read about all the complexities and debates on the page I've linked there). It tells the story of officers and people in Starfleet, an explorational military force that is part of a UN-like organization called the United Federation of Planets with Earth at its center.
A list of the series:
Star Trek, the original series (TOS), aired 1966-69
Star Trek, the animated series (TAS), aired 1973-74
Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), aired 1987-1994
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9), aired 1993-1999
Star Trek: Voyager (VOY), aired 1995-2001
Enterprise/Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT), aired 2001-2005
Obviously it would take approximately twenty zillion years to say everything I'd want to say about all of these series, and if you want to read more in-depth about them you can take a look at those links. I'll just say a few things here about each series and attempt to keep my longwindedness under as many wraps as possible.
The original series was, obviously, the first Star Trek series, taking place in the 23rd century. It featured Kirk and Spock and is the source of most of the pop culture references that the average American knows, like "Beam me up, Scotty!" (which, interestingly, was never actually said in the series). For its time, it really stretched the boundaries of acceptable television, which eventually resulted in its poor ratings (pre-syndication), time slot changes, and cancellation. Creator Gene Roddenberry wanted to make a show that intensely appealed and connected to a smaller audience, rather than the formula for most television of the day, which was to make a show that appealed superficially to a mass audience. Star Trek posited an inherently good human nature, which could be brought to the forefront in the case of elimination of external issues like poverty, discrimination, war, and disease for humans on Earth. Of course, it came from an American imperialistic point of view, but we don't have to get into that right now since this isn't one of my undergrad papers.
Although the three main characters were still white men (though one was admittedly an alien), the rest of the regular cast was comprised of both men and women from multiple ethnic backgrounds, including a Russian character at the height of the Cold War, which was considered completely wild at the time. In fact, the second-in-command in the pilot episode was originally a woman, but the network found that to be a completely "unbelievable" idea and nixed it. (The actress was instead re-cast as the Chief Medical Officer's nurse assistant.) Looking at these things today, it's easy to think "seriously?? they had TWO women on the bridge and one was basically the switchboard operator, the other a secretary?". I would never say that it isn't incredibly important to examine the countless ways gender and racial stereotypes are reinforced in the show, but again, comparatively, it was very progressive for a television show of its time, and was able to explore contemporary hot button topics most other shows would never even acknowledge.
The animated series was the shortest-lived of them all, but important for a few reasons. One thing to note is that it was largely the fan-driven campaign to bring Star Trek back after the original series' cancellation that led to this series, and later the first Star Trek film, to be created. This historically active and precedent-setting fan base is one of the biggest things that sets Star Trek apart from most other television phenomena of our time, and I'm sure I'll talk a ton about it later on. In addition, the animated series was able to explore many concepts that would have been astronomically out of the original series' budget, such as non-humanoid main characters and technologies that would have required difficult, expensive and time-consuming special effects in a live-action setting of the day; many of these technologies ended up being precursors to similar things being adopted on later series. Lastly, TAS was honored by the only "Best Series" Emmy ever won by anything related to Star Trek.
Deep Space Nine was a spinoff series based on a few episodes of The Next Generation, and was the first completely different Star Trek series. It is still the only one of the six not to have been based on a starship, but instead, on a space station near an anomaly known as a wormhole. The series broke the mold in a myriad of other ways, too; it had the first African-American captain, the first multi-jurisdictional collaborative crew (which was comprised both of Starfleet officers and members of the militia of the nearby planet Bajor), the first large number of recurring complex secondary characters, and the first main female characters not assigned to "traditional" female roles among the crew.
But beyond even any of that, Deep Space Nine may be best known for its infinitely more complex, multi-episode story arcs and the darker direction that its themes and stories took. Whereas most Star Trek up to that point had always cast its characters in a good light almost to a fault, Deep Space Nine characters were shown as being much more imperfect and flawed. Episodes did not always have happy endings, and the long-running Dominion War story lent a very tense, difficult to stomach edge to the show, with the Federation having to sometimes compromise its morality and deal with the effects of war in a very real way. But I will talk a lot more about this in future entries, as Deep Space Nine is my favorite series and the one that spurred me to write this background information post in the first place.
Voyager, which was aired concurrently with Deep Space Nine for 5 of each of the series' 7 years, was the first series to feature a female captain as a main character. It took Star Trek back to the starship exploration of previous series, but took place in the far-off reaches of the galaxy; the ship was completely alone with no allies, and had to build alliances and begin their potentially lifelong journey home with naught but themselves while trying to adhere to their Federation roots. It also went back to a more episodic and positive nature, in contrast to DS9. While Voyager introduced many interesting new ideas, species, technologies and plots to the Star Trek universe, it also began to show the effects of such long-running consecutive Star Trek production with some quickly and poorly written scripts and recycled plot devices. Still, I think the fact that it lasted for so long speaks to the fans' overall enjoyment of the show and happiness with the new, more feminist-friendly post-TNG Star Trek.
Enterprise was the only post- 9/11 Star Trek. It was a prequel, taking place before Kirk and Spock were even born and before the Federation had even been formed. The producers had to work (or attempt to work) within the constraints of established canon, while also having the most advanced film production equipment on any Star Trek show to date, but having to show a level of technology that was supposed to have pre-dated the 1960s Star Trek. It was a challenge, to be sure, and ended up being pretty hit-or-miss with its episodes. The series went back to the original series' format of mainly focusing on the three main characters, with the other main characters ending up looking like window dressing most of the time. While this was what it was in TOS, many fans (myself included) felt that they could have figured out by now, 5 series later, that this wasn't really a good choice for the show. In fact, many poor choices resulted in overall fan dissatisfaction with Enterprise, and it was cancelled after only 4 seasons.
To be fair, there were a few interesting story arcs, including a 9/11 allegory where a chunk of Florida was destroyed and a crew member lost a sister; new, innovative species were introduced, and established species that weren't very well known were explored more thoroughly; there were a few nods to fans in the form of indulgent episodes harkening back to some favorite old story lines from other series. Overall, though, Enterprise was the last hurrah from an exhausted industry that'd been cranking out Star Trek for almost 20 years straight, and by and large it fell flat. Plus, remember what I said about post-TNG Star Trek female-friendliness? Erase all of that once you get to this series. I'm sure I'll talk about that more in the future because I could go on and on right now, and I love talking about my issues and disappointment with this series.
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So there you have it: a long post introducing you to the Star Trek world which, even after I've spent hours writing it, makes me realize that I'm barely scratching the surface. Still, I hope that this will serve as reference material to help you, if you aren't already a fan, understand what I'm talking about later on in here. Next time I start a post, maybe I'll actually get to the part that I originally set out to write about!
